The Trickster god tapped the massive Scales, clicking his long nails against the stone surface. It pulsed with a soft green glow where he touched it, causing his imitation skin to ripple with the weight of its curious power. "I feel I have lingered longer than I ought to, Dresden - there are things in motion that will soon come to affect us all."
"I don't suppose these are things you actually plan on telling me about, are they?" I leaned against my staff, trying to take in the sheer volume of information that Loki had just told me. The idea of invading the outside was beyond insane. Outsiders weren't exactly from anywhere - they were, in point of fact, from exactly nowhere. The sheer mechanics of trying to invade a place that wasn't part of either reality or linear time as we knew it were - literally - beyond my ability to comprehend.
"Obviously not." Loki's image of human form dismissed and I was once again facing the little grey Roswellian. He walked past the collected Pharaohs, whispering something in a chittering language into the ear of one of the seated Pharaohs as he did so. "I've told you more than enough to go on for the moment."
I walked up to follow him, only to find a transparent barrier of energy between us. My gauntlet sparked off the barrer, pulsed orange lightning illuminating the circular shield enclosing me within the onlooking mummies. "Loki! What the hell?"
"Dresden, you have spent - in my estimation - nearly a year doing your best to avoid critical thinking. I am removing the luxury of distractions, so that you can stop and consider what you do next." He pulled out a glowing stone from thin air, resting it with no visible tether three feet above the ground as he tapped a sequence of symbols along its edge. "Your pathological aversion to self-reflection was barely tolerable when you didn't have billions of lives in your hands. It thus falls to your betters to correct it."
"And trapping me in a Steven Sommer's film helps me with that how exactly?" I gestured to the whispering collective of mummified onlookers. The long dead Goa'uld chittered and rasped, but seemed in no hurry to interact with me. "This isn't exactly feeling overly helpful to me."
"Dresden, Dresden, Dresden." Loki murmured, in near disappointment. "I thought you knew your history better than that. Have you forgotten who and what I am?" The grey creature's eyes sparkled with mischief as he disappeared into a pillar of silver light.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, running over multiplication tables in my head as I tried to focus on something other than the blinding rage I felt for my own stupidity. Of course he trapped me in a forcefield while he left me to wait for my friends. He was freaking Loki. I was lucky to get away from him with just a minor inconvenience.
Hell's Bells, if even some of the Norse legends about that guy were true I could have been in for way worse. That guy was less "rape and pillage" and more "turn myself into a horse and give birth" style nuts.
Which, come to think about it, brought up another problem entirely. Could I trust even a single world that had come out of that guy's mouth? The fact that Ammit and Enlil both vouched for his authenticity didn't exactly speak volumes to his character. Sure, Enlil and Ammit were my monsters but they were still monsters. About the only part of his story I was pretty sure could be taken at face value was the fact that the Goa'uld evolutionary chain was going to confuse the hell out of me.
"I don't suppose any of you feels like letting me out of here?" I inquired to the mummies. They remained ungratifying mute. Admittedly, I much preferred their silent observation to that active malice I'd encountered from the last massed group of undead creatures I'd dealt with - back when the Necromancers had been attempting to enact the Darkhallow. But these were a different breed of undead from the unsophisticated slave constructs the Necromancers I'd seen before had been able to summon.
I recognized the stitch work along the linen wrappings and the hieroglyphs along the jewelry they wore. They were magical symbols intended to preserve not only the soul within the physical body, but to allow the undead construct to retain the same keen intellect and capacity for thought in death that the being had experienced in life. The Great Library of Nekheb contained what was possibly the greatest collection of studies into the art of Necromancy that had ever been conducted. There were massive gaps in the literature - empty shelves of materials that had been purged from the Library as part of the Terms - but what remained was still many centuries more information into the subject of staving off death than I had ever believed even possible. Apparently once the ethics of valuing any individual human life ceased to be part of one's personal calculus, one could conduct necromantic research on a mass scale beyond my wildest nightmares.
The mummified creatures surrounding me weren't the "real" beings any more than a ghost was really the person who'd left behind their shade. They were psychic impressions of who that person had been, copies of their memories and reflections of their souls bound to a discrete purpose in death. In truth, Loki's explanation - or as much of it has actually been truth - explained a good deal of the three separate states of the soul as the Goa'uld saw them. Their elaborate death and necromantic rituals to see to the needs of the Ka, Ba, and Akh - each of which would have separate needs when a man died - made sense in context with the irregular nature of how the Goa'uld borrowed spiritual weight from either their Unas or human host body. Preserving a remnant of stolen soul within a properly prepared host was possibly all the afterlife that the early Goa'uld could have hoped for.
How much would Heka's stolen flesh affect my own soul after I died? I was certain that I would eventually die - everything ceased eventually. But even within the Great Library there was basically nothing recorded that referenced even the existence of the Ritual of Necromantic Ascension, let alone what the postmortal consequences of having undergone it might be. Life after death wasn't something that I'd felt overly confident in even when I'd just been Harry Dresden, Wizard. I hadn't been a bad person - and I'd done enough good things for the right side of that equation that I was hopeful that I'd get to a nicer afterlife, but there was the whole "thou shalt not suffer a witch" part of the equation that even having spoken to an Angel directly left me a bit wary of my prospects.
Having God's hype guy at my coronation left me pretty sure that I wasn't going to be smote by the Holy Hosts any time soon, but there were way too many people worshipping me for at least three of Big G's top ten no-nos not to be majorly in the red side of that ledger. The whole "burning DuMorne alive" thing pretty much guaranteed me another two screw ups for both "shalt not kill" and "honor thy father." About the Commandment that I hadn't screwed up was the prohibition on adultery, come to think of it.
It wasn't my fault that I'd become what I am, but "a Fallen Angel's Shadow made me do it" didn't exactly sound like a reason for the White God to excuse the whole "rival god created by necromancy" thing. Who would I even ask to figure something like that out? I wasn't insane enough to summon the Metatron and abducting the Pope didn't feel like a "fast track my way to Heaven" sort of choice to make. The Knights of the Cross might have the answers but I didn't dare make contact with Michael Carpenter, he was too tied to my past, or Shiro, I'd be too tempted to meddle in his life to prevent his death. And Sanya… Sanya was Sanya. I wasn't going to find spiritual answers from a Knight of the Cross who didn't believe in God.
Michael's answer would more than likely be for me to abandon my power and seek the Lord's forgiveness. And honestly, I wasn't convinced that walking away from my power was even an option any more. It might have been for Harry the Wizard, but I wasn't even Harry the human any more - as Loki had been so blunt to point out only moments ago.
My mind raced, uncomfortably forced by my own mortality and the reality of my situation as I stood in the circle. I looked at the watch on my wrist, considering the distance between the Pyramid and where I'd seen the shape of Ammit leading my retinue through the Necropolis. Assuming there was no mystical or technological short-cut to the pyramid, it would take them ten hours to reach where I was on foot. Longer still, if they took time to rest for the mortal men. Muminah would be fine, she'd been raised in a primarily agrarian society and walking for days at a time wouldn't even register as strange to her, but the Russians had lived with the Automobile. Their stamina wouldn't match hers, especially after the prolonged exertion to reach this point. I'd be lucky if they didn't actually make camp half way to me, which seemed likely. Ammit felt this place was safe. More importantly, Enlil thought it was safe - that man mistrusted everything that didn't put several million armed Jaffa and a planetary defense screen between himself and danger. If he was comfortable somewhere, it was damn near guaranteed to be safe.
I didn't love the idea of my brother alone with the Russians and the Goa'uld, but Muminah would protect him because she knew I cared about him and Kincaid would keep him alive just because he was the only other guy there exclusively at the Archive's behest. I hoped they would - I didn't want to know what I might do if something happened to him. Not with the power I now had, I didn't want to know what I would do with it to someone who hurt someone I loved.
Not with how potentially dangerous actually using that power seemed to be. I pulled off my gauntlet and examined my porcelain-white hand, staring at the dark veins beneath the skin. I had felt that same flesh rotting away into nothingness, putrefying as I expended massive amounts of my own power. It had reformed when I had stopped, but I was certain that if Ammit hadn't interceded I might have rotted myself into a fetid mass of nothing as I annihilated the fairies.
I moved to sit down in the bronze throne capped with crocodiles, only to meet another force field barring me from reaching it. I groaned. "Oh, come on. I can't even sit down?"
I looked at the other chair, weighing the value of getting shocked again versus the value of potentially being able to sit down. I didn't want to sit on the floor if I didn't have to do so, but Goa'uld made force fields hurt to touch. I gave it about thirty minutes before I said, "Screw it, it's this or sit on the floor." and reached out towards the bronze seat covered in Jackals. To my extreme gratification, I was not barred from touching it. I sat down upon it, exhaling deeply in relaxation as I felt my spine fall into alignment as the chair automatically reclined into a comfortable position. It pivoted towards the scale, internal mechanisms groaning as the ancient throne pivoted counter-clockwise to face the scale from its previous position looking out at the circle of pharaohs.
"Well… that's different." I muttered as my hand found the octagonal gems along the hand rest, caressing them as I felt their welling font of power. The chair was a foci - a tool like my staff or blasting rod, with an apparent ectomantic or necromantic purpose in mind. It took me all of half a second to realize what that purpose might be as I was suddenly subject to hundreds of ghostly forms that had previously been cloaked from view. The chair, the room, and possibly even the entire necropolis had been designed to better facilitate interactions with beings of spirit.
I was not, in fact, just holding court for the Pharaohs and their assorted mummy entourages. The vast expanse of the pyramid wasn't empty, it was utterly overrun by ghosts and spirits of every description I could possibly imagine. The Pharaohs and mummified creatures, that had seemed still and without passion only moments ago, became apparent vehicles for the vibrant blue-green shades of the men, women, children, and cats they had once been. They were gleefully bantering, gabbing away with each other as I might have expected from any living court of Jaffa and Humans on Nekheb.
There was a wide space between the doors of the great hall where none of the spirits trod, a wide section of open stone leading down to the colossal stairway. The spirits stared into that void expectantly, watching and waiting for something that never came. The souls of the dead? It seemed likely. Though neither Anubis nor Ammit still served in their roles as judge and jury for the deceased, the mummified Pharaohs still stood vigil – waiting to shepherd good men on to what lay beyond.
The whispering voices of the Pharaohs became a sonorous choir of men discussing matters of import in vibrating tones of amusement, their ghostly voices still humming with the metallic drone of the Goa'uld. Their language was still alien to me, echoing and distant like music echoing in a warehouse. It was familiar enough to know that they were speaking words but distorted by time and neglect. Perhaps when this place had been full of gods and empowered by worshippers they'd been more than just animated memories, but now they were just a reflection of what had been.
What had this place truly been like when it had been the dominion of Ammit and Anubis? Judging by how little of the Goa'uld records survived regarding him, I was certain that the same magical purge of memories that had been applied to every other memory of Thoth's Folly had been applied to him. He'd been an instrumental figure in the Folly of Thoth, important enough to merit a complete near-complete erasure of his roles in the Pantheon but I had some facts about him. I knew that he'd been exiled at least twice, possibly as many as four times, though none of them seemed to actually last "for all time" as the prescribed punishment would imply was their intention. I was reasonably certain that it had been he who imprisoned on the same planet on which I'd conducted the Ritual of Necromantic Ascension.
Assuming, of course, that the Jackal that came up in the mad ravings of Cum Hau was the same Jackal who'd once sat in the throne I now occupied. Bob seemed to think it was plausible. Both Goa'uld had been death gods for their respective pantheons and both had been psychopomps - spirits who saw to the disposition of spirits after they died. It was clear that he'd been powerful, even after the fall of the Pantheons. There had been too much security at the prison where I'd found the Key of the Dead for anything but the most dangerous of inmates.
But other than knowing that he was extremely dangerous, probably alive, and affiliated with death the truth was that I knew very little about the Egyptian God of the Dead, in spite of having lived in a palace with his former second in command. She didn't talk about him except in the vaguest of terms and always with a tone of extreme sorrow. Ammit was, near as I could tell, the only living Goa'uld who still harbored fond feelings for the psychopomp of the Egyptians. It wasn't clear what of her silence on the subject was the Terms robbing her of the ability to remember him and what of that was the pain of losing a sibling but it was abundantly clear that Ammit would not be compelled to speak of him except in maddening vagueness.
Enlil had been much more vocal, and substantially pejorative in his opinions of "the Jackal." It was apparently common knowledge among the System Lords that Anubis had died the wars that followed the Terms imposed upon the Goa'uld - killed by a coalition of the other Goa'uld for his "boundless ambition" and "unspeakable crimes."
I hadn't pressed him for details on either Anubis or Cum Hau beyond what I could bring up casually and neither person found themselves in regular conversation. In part because I didn't want to let them in on how one conducted the Ritual of Necromantic Ascension and in part because I didn't want him to realize that Anubis very well might now be free.
I couldn't say why I hadn't shared my suspicions about Anubis with anyone other than Bob. Maybe it was the fact that none of his legends actually made the guy out to be that bad. Maybe it was the fact that Ammit liked him and Enlil hated him. Perhaps it was how much Heka's diaries seemed to indicate that he despised Anubis. But it was probably mostly because I didn't want to think about Lash.
It was hard for me to talk about anything that happened on that moon. Not without thinking about her.
I was angry for what she'd made me into, but it was hard to stay angry at the dead. Not when they were as badly missed as I missed Lash. I winced at the thought of how cruel my words had been to Lash after the ritual - she hadn't deserved that. Not then, not ever. Not when she'd sacrificed herself for me. I tried not to dwell on that thought. Lash was in heaven, I reminded myself. She would be happy.
It was true, but why didn't that make me feel any better?
My mind wandered to the dream of her I'd had after my coronation. The fantasy of flesh meeting flesh had been so real, so loving. It had been a dream – it had to have been a dream. I watched the Metatron take her away into death. I'd not had a dream that vivid since the night of my coronation, I hadn't slept much at all since then. But even in idle daydreams the Fallen Angel's shadow was a prominent player nearly as much as Susan was nowadays.
Both women were lost to me now.
"You are not Anubis." Rasped a reedy voice as a mote of shadow congealed into a robed form, a spectral blob of ectoplasmic residue shimmering into a complete body. This was no ghost – it had substance to it in addition to form.
"I am indeed not." I agreed, looking the curious personage from head to toe. He wore clothing that might have been Egyptian – or perhaps Greek – a loose fitting black tunic that covered his near skeletal body. His close cropped hair bordered a face that might have been considered handsome – if not for the gaping pits where his eyes ought to have been. A glimpse of the mirror polished necklace on the neck of one of the Pharaohs told me that there had been bleeding holes gouged in the back of his head, into which the wild and crazed eyes of the man had been put after ripping them out from the front of the man's face.
Oh – Stars and Stones – I recognized him. I wanted to kick myself. Not because I thought I was in any real danger – the Ferryman was reportedly an extremely benign creature of the Nevernever. I was furious because it had not been my studies of magic, history or even the voluminous repositories of learning on Nekheb that I recognized him from. No – that would have been too dignified for Harry Dresden. God help me, if Billy Borden ever found out that I, Harry Dresden, Wizard of the White Council, Defeater of Loup-Garou, Slayer of Vampires, Summoned of Fairies, Defeater of Necromancers and Ascended God-King of a freaking Alien domain, recognized a figure from legend from one of his Arcanos games I would never hear the end of it.
"You are Mahaf, I presume?" I inquired of the man with the backwards face. "The Ferryman who carries the dead to the other side."
"I am one of the Ferrymen." Replied the creature, picking at the blood seeping from his eye sockets. "The River is too large for any one man, even with a boat as magnificent as mine."
"I don't suppose that you would care to tell me something about this place, or Anubis?" I inquired, leaning forward in the throne.
"I carry the dead across." The thing replied. "I don't bother with the affairs of either side."
"You… you've seen the other side?" I couldn't help but be curious. It wasn't common that one had the opportunity to speak with something that was supposed to cross the lines between life and death.
"Ain't nobody supposed to see. It's why I can swap the eyes." The Ferryman replied. He rocked his head forward and his eyes spun from the back of his head to the front, bloody marbles shining blue as they tumbled to face forwards. "Charon got rid of them altogether – but I like to see the people in my boat. Makes for better conversation."
"You work with the boatman to Hades?" I knew that Hades controlled a realm within the Nevernever. He was one of the big players in the spiritual world - I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me that he'd gain some of the Egyptian pantheon's servitors after the Folly.
"I have to work for someone and there are only so many I'd care to work with." The boatman was very deliberate in his use of that last word. His eyes flashed twice, pulsing with the light of a Goa'uld. "I'm not looking for new management, if you get my drift. I don't care if you are a scion of Anubis' power. I'm already gainfully employed."
I let that sentence sink in for a second, biting back the migraine I knew was incoming. "Even if I'm what?"
"I can taste the blessings of Anubis upon you. The kiss of the True Death. I don't care if he's willing to let you in his inner circle, I've got enough to do already without adding a third afterlife to my career. I'm not paid enough as is." The Ferryman crossed his arms, tilting his head back petulantly as his eyes rolled back into his head – once again exposing the bloody sockets. "Aint nobody sitting in that chair what don't have Anubis' blessings on em' – so don't you try lying to me. I've been around too long to pull that one on me."
He made an effort to wink, a truly stomach churning gesture given that it pinched one socket enough to prevent the bloody eye from rolling back forward but not the other. Instead of the cheeky expression he was going for it looked more like the blistering pustule of his left eyeball was jammed halfway through a fleshy, bleeding tube-sock in his skull. "Now I'm polite enough to come when called – even if it is my day off."
"The Ferryman to the afterlife takes day's off?" I asked the question in befuddlement as I tried to unpack whatever it was that he was telling me. Presumably this blessing – whatever it was – had been given to Cum Hau and piggybacked its way to me when I'd consumed his power.
"We have a Union." The man said proudly. "Charon's idea. Apparently it was something the mortals started doing in Greece and we don't see as many souls bound for Hades these days so the Boss wasn't too put out by it."
"Ah – what, exactly, does this blessing Anubis gave me… do?" I asked, the memory of a mordite blade through my chest giving me at least one major hint.
"It lets you touch death – do you know nothing of your work, lad?" The Ferryman tutted disappointedly. "It won't make you immortal but you can touch the water from the stream and stones from the River's bank – even from places the River does not travel."
I winced at that logic. "How can there be a place stones from the "bank" of a River if the river goes nowhere near them?"
"No clue, but it hasn't stopped the bastards from trying to jump into it and make a dam to stop it." The Ferryman grinned. "Now, if you'll pardon me, sir – if you aren't going to demand my service, I'd very much like to get back to my vacation. I've got places to be – ya' see."
"Where?" I asked, still a bit befuddled by this interaction.
"Lake Tahoe." The Ferryman grinned, pulling a set of sunglasses and wide-brimmed hat from his tunic. "There's a lass I met at Burning Man who I have a date with and I do not mean to miss it."
"You… you go to Burning Man on your off hours?" I asked, trying to suss out at least some logic from this conversation. It just felt strange to think of the spectral Goa'uld hanging out with the drugged up trust-fund crows that frequented that sort of thing. Not that his preposterous choice of clothing would be noticed there, come to think of it. "Isn't Burning Man in the middle of a Desert?"
"So was Egypt." Replied the Ferryman, dissolving back into ectoplasm.
I stood up from the throne, wondering if Loki had drugged me or if I had hallucinated that entire interaction out of some sort of psychotic break. I eventually reconciled myself to having actually met the Ferryman - regardless of how mad the interaction had seemed. There were some creatures of the Nevernever that defied any measure of sanity, even if they meant you no harm. I shook off the interaction, stretching my legs as I looked at the chronometer on my gauntlet. Hours still till I could expect Ammit and the rest, I tapped the forcefield with my staff just to re-assure myself that I was still trapped.
Yep – it was still there. I was still trapped at the center of the Pharoahs, in the middle of the massive crowd of ghosts. Ghost that were still there. Ghosts that I could still see, plain as day. Ghosts that had been invisible before I'd sat down in that chair. Ghosts that were still visible now that I wasn't sitting in that chair anymore. A chair that had summoned Anubis' former servitor across the planet because he knew I was marked by Anubis.
"God damn it Dresden," I groaned. "You just had to sit in the chair."
