Hand of Isis Read online

  Copyright © 2009 by Jo Wyrick

  Excerpt from Stealing Fire copyright © 2010 by Jo Wyrick

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Orbit

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: March 2009

  Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-04077-8

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  Amenti

  A City by the Sea

  Companion’s oath

  In the House of Pharaoh

  Cats and Snakes

  The Hands of Isis

  Amenti

  The Flute Player’s Twilight

  Flawed Alabaster

  The Wolf’s Heirs

  Debts

  The Mirror of Isis

  Lord of The Black Land

  The Gates of Amenti

  Coming Forth By Day

  Amenti

  The Wind of The World

  Son of Venus

  Fire

  Promises And Dreams

  The Venus Throw

  Isis Enthroned

  Rome

  Europa

  ET In Arcadia Ego

  Ties of Flesh

  He Lives And Reigns

  THe Ides of March

  Amenti

  The Moon Veiled

  The Progress of Dionysos

  The Successors

  In The City of Isis

  Moon and Sun

  Shades of Love

  The Parting of The Waters

  Lords of the East

  Amenti

  Antonius’ Gamble

  The Inimitables

  Shadows Gathering

  A Company Passing Invisible

  Amenti

  Isis Invicta

  Afterword

  People, Places, And Things

  For Further Reading

  Acknowledgments

  extras

  meet the author

  interview

  reading group guide

  Black Ships

  The Magician’s Apprentice

  Once, in a palace by the sea, there were three sisters born in the same year.

  The eldest was born in the season of planting, when the waters of the Nile had receded once more and the land lay rich and fertile, warm and muddy, and waiting for the sun to quicken everything to life. She was born in one of the small rooms behind the Court of Birds, and her mother was a servingwoman who cooked and cleaned, but who one day had caught Ptolemy Auletes’ eye. Her skin was honey, her eyes dark as the rich floodwaters. Her name was Iras.

  The second sister was born under the clear stars of winter, while the land greened and grain ripened in the fields, when fig and peach trees nodded laden in the starry night. She was born in a great bedchamber with wide windows open to the sea, and five Greek physicians in attendance, for she was the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes’ queen, and her name was Cleopatra.

  The youngest sister was born as the earth died, as the stubble of the harvest withered in the fields beneath the scorching sun. She was born beside the fountain in the Court of Birds, because her mother was a blond slave girl from Thrace, and that was where her pains took her. Water fell from the sky and misted her upturned face. Her hair was the color of tarnished bronze, and her eyes were blue as the endless Egyptian sky. Her name was Charmian.

  Once, in a palace by the sea, there were three sisters. All of the stories begin so.

  by Jo Graham

  Black Ships

  Hand of Isis

  For Amy

  The city of Alexandria is teacher, apex of Panhellenism

  And in all fields of knowledge and all the arts the wisest.

  —The Glory of the Ptolemies,

  C.P. Cavafy, translated by Aliki Barnstone

  Amenti

  In twilight I approached the doors, and in twilight they stood open for me. I was not surprised. I knew that I was dead.

  I walked through the doors and through the hall beyond, pillars thick as the tallest trees carved round with symbols in red and gold, with stories of those who had walked this way before. Above the high capitals ornamented like lotus blossoms was not the star-painted ceiling one might expect, but the wide expanse of the night sky, blue-black and deep as eternity. I stood in the Halls of Amenti, the Uttermost West, and the sun did not come here. I walked in starlight.

  Light glimmered at the end of the long hall. I walked among the pillars, my feet soundless on the stone floor. Shades make no noise, even in their sorrowing.

  At last I came to the end of the hall, where the veil stretched between two pillars, and before it on a dais sat the thrones.

  Serapis wore a robe of white. His gray hair was cut short and His eyes were as dark as the sky, an old man but hale, with a black hound sitting alert at His feet. Beside Him, Isis glimmered like the moon. Her gown was white as well, but Her dark hair was covered by a black veil, and beneath it Her face was pale and beautiful.

  “Welcome to the Halls of Amenti, daughter,” She said.

  I knelt. “Gracious Ones,” I said. To the side I saw the scales, Ma’at with a feather in Her hand, the golden balance waiting.

  “You know what must be,” He said, seeing where my gaze went.

  I nodded, and moistened my lips. My heart should be measured against a feather to see whether the deeds of my life condemned or released me. I knew the formulas. Every child learns them. “Hear, Gracious Ones, how I have not offended. I have not done wrong. I have not robbed. I have not slain men. I have not spoken lies. I have not defrauded the gods. . . .”

  Isis raised Her hand, and it seemed for a moment that there was amusement in Her voice. “Well We can believe that you have memorized all of the words, Charmian. But when you stand before the Thrones of Amenti, it is not enough to have learned the words that should rest by your side on a sacred scroll. Your heart must be weighed on its own merits. You must be judged by your own deeds.”

  I looked at Ma’at, where She stood beside the scales with justice in Her hands, and I knew how heavy my heart must be. “Then condemn me now, Gracious Lady. I shall offer no defense.” I felt the tears pricking behind my eyes, and all of the sorrow of these last days came rushing back. “I have no defense to offer, and readily accept whatever punishment you shall name.”

  “It is not that simple,” Serapis said. “We are just, and do not condemn out of hand.”

  “Surely if the prisoner will offer no defense, the judge must convict,” I said, and heard myself choke. Whatever should happen would be no greater than this pain that already was.

  Her voice was calm. “In a human court, perhaps. But We are in no hurry. We shall wait for your testimony as long as it takes.”

  I bent my head and the tears overflowed my eyes. “I can give no defense, for I have failed in my charge. I have failed, and through my weakness have destroyed all those I love. I can make no excuses, now or ever.”

  Serapis put His hands together, like a philosopher in disputation. “I think perhaps you overestimate your own culpability. But We shall see, when your testimony is complete.”

  “I cannot do that, Gracious Lord,” I said, and I could not even see His face through my tears, m
y hands pressed against the stone floor. “I beg You to condemn me. There is no punishment You could devise worse than what already is.”

  “We will wait,” She said. “In time you will be ready to speak to Us.”

  I pressed my forehead to the floor, my hands in fists.

  Above my head, I heard Him speak. “And yet while you are here, time runs true. Even the gods may not stop time. In the world, days and nights are passing.”

  “And what is that to me?” I asked bitterly. “There are none I love who still walk beneath the sun and moon.”

  “I do not think that is true,” Isis said quietly. “Are there not those you love who have not yet crossed Death’s threshold? In the world that is, time is passing for them, and things happen that cannot be amended.”

  “And what may I amend, dead as I am?” I asked. “There is nothing I can do for them, and You cannot persuade me that I am not really dead.”

  “No,” She said. “You are dead. Even now your mummy lies in your tomb, preserved by the embalmer’s art. Your life as Charmian has ended, and never again in that mask shall you walk under the sun. And yet your spirit endures.”

  “I should rather that it did not,” I said. “When I have lost all, and when I can do nothing for those I have failed.”

  “You do not have the choice of that,” Serapis said. I looked up at Him, and there was something in His face both familiar and serene, though a line of worry creased between His brows. “Your spirit is old, and you have endured much worse. But time runs true beneath the sun, and ships ply the seas homeward bound under the stars of heaven.”

  Ships . . . There had been something about ships, something in that last day . . . “The children,” I whispered. “Oh, Gracious Lord, the children . . .”

  “Even now they sail,” Serapis said. “Horus and his brother, and the moon their sister. Even now, they are bound for Rome. And you sit here lamenting.”

  I knelt upon my knees, swaying before Their thrones. “Are You saying there is something I may yet do? Gracious Ones, if there is anything I may do at any cost . . .”

  “There may be,” She said. “But firstly your heart must be judged. You have come before the Thrones of Amenti, and what must be, must be. Speak true, and recall to yourself all that you have been, that We might test the weight of it.”

  “Then I shall begin, Gracious Lady,” I said. And I stood up.

  A City by the Sea

  My mother was a Thracian slave girl who died when I was born, so I do not remember her. Doubtless I would have died too, as unwanted children will, had Iras’ mother not intervened. Asetnefer was from Elephantine, where the Nile comes out of Nubia at the great gorges, and enters Egypt. Her own daughter was five months old when I was born, and she took me to her breast beside Iras, a pale scrap of a newborn beside my foster sister. She had attended at the birth, and took it hard when my mother died.

  I do not know if they were exactly friends. I heard it said later that Pharaoh had often called for them together, liking the contrast between them, the beauty of my mother’s golden hair against Asetnefer’s ebony skin. Perhaps it was true, and perhaps not. Not every story told at court is true.

  Whatever her reasons, Asetnefer nursed me as though I were a second child of her own, and she is the mother I remember, and Iras my twin. She had borne a son some years before Iras, but he had drowned when he was three years old, before my sister and I were born. It is this tragedy that colored our young lives more than anything else, I believe, though we did not mourn for him, having never known him. Asetnefer was careful with us. We should not play out of sight of people; we should not stray from her while she worked. She carried us both, one on each hip in a sling of cloth, Iras to the left and me to the right, until we grew too heavy and had to go on our feet like big children. She was freeborn, and there was doubtless some story of how she had come to be a slave in Alexandria by the sea, but I in my innocence never asked what it was.

  And so the first thing I remember is this, the courtyards of the great palace at Alexandria, the slave quarters and the kitchens, the harbor and the market, and the Court of Birds where I was born. In the palace, as in all civilized places, the language of choice was Koine Greek, which educated people speak from one end of the world to the other, but in the slave quarters they spoke Egyptian. My eyes were the color of lapis, and my hair might glow bronze in the sun, but the amulet I wore about my neck was not that of Artemis, but a blue faience cat of Bastet.

  In truth, that was not odd. There were golden-haired slaves from Epirus and the Black Sea, sharp Numidians and Sardinians, men from Greece fallen on hard times, mercenaries from Parthia and Italy. All the world met in Alexandria, and every language that is spoken was heard in her streets and in her slave quarters. A quarter of the people of the city were Jews, and it was said that there were more Jews in Alexandria than in Jerusalem. They had their own neighborhood, with shops and theaters and their own temples, but one could not even count the Jews who studied at the Museum and Library, or who taught there. A man might have a Greek name and blond hair, and yet keep the Jewish sabbath if it suited him. So it was of little importance that I looked Greek and acted Egyptian.

  Iras, on the other hand, looked as Egyptian as possible and had the mind of a skeptic philosopher. From her earliest days she never ceased asking why. Why does the sea pile against the harbor mole? Why do the stars shine? What keeps us from flying off the ground? Her black hair lay smooth in the heavy braids that mine always escaped, and her skin was honey to my milk. We were as alike as night and day, parts of one thing, sides of the same coin.

  The seas pile against the harbor mole because Isis set them to, and the stars are the distant fires of people camping in the sky. We could not fly because like young birds we had not learned yet, and when we did we should put off our bodies and our winged souls should cavort through the air, chasing and playing like swifts. The world was enchantment, and there should be no end to its magic, just as there was no end to the things that might hold Iras’ curiosity. And that is who we were when we first met the Princess Cleopatra.

  Knowing all that she became, it is often assumed that at that age she must have been willful and imperious. Nothing is further from the truth. To begin with, she was the fifth child and third daughter, and not reckoned of much account. Her mother was dead as well, and the new queen had already produced a fourth princess. There was little reason for anyone to take note of her, another Cleopatra in a dynasty full of them. I only noticed her because she was my age.

  In fact, she was exactly between me and Iras in age, born under the stars of winter in the same year, and when I met her I did not know who she was.

  IRAS AND I were five years old, and enjoying a rare moment of freedom. Someone had called Asetnefer away with some question or another, and Iras and I were left to play under the eyes of half the other slave women of the household in the Court of Birds. There was a fountain there, with worn mosaics of birds around the base, and we were playing a splashing game, in which one of us would leap in to throw water on the other, who would try to avoid being soaked, waiting her turn to splash the other. Running from a handful of cold water, I noticed a girl watching us with something of a wistful expression on her face. She had soft brown hair falling down her back, wide brown eyes that seemed almost round, smudged with sooty lashes. She was wearing a plain white chiton and girdle, and she was my height precisely. I smiled at her.

  At that she came out from the shadow of the balcony above and asked if she could play.

  “If you can run fast enough,” Iras said.

  “I can run,” she said, her chin coming up. Faster than a snake, she dipped in a full handful of water and dashed it on Iras.

  Iras squealed, and the game was off again, a three-way game of soaking with no rules.

  It lasted until Asetnefer returned. She called us to task immediately, upbraiding us for having our clothes wet, and then she saw the other girl and her face changed.

  “Princess,
” she said gravely, “you should not be here rather than in the Royal Nursery. They will be searching for you and worrying if you have come to harm.”

  Cleopatra shrugged. “They never notice if I’m gone,” she said. “There is Arsinoe and the new baby, and no one cares what becomes of me.” She met Asetnefer’s eyes squarely, like a grown-up, and there was no self-pity in her voice. “Why can’t I stay here and play? Nothing bad will happen to me here.”

  “Pharaoh your father will care if something happens to you,” Asetnefer said. “Though it’s true you are safe enough here.” A frown came between her eyes, and she glanced from the princess to Iras, who stood taller by half a head, then to me with my head to the side.

  A princess, I thought with some surprise. She doesn’t seem like a goddess on earth. At least not like what I think a goddess should be.

  “Has he not arranged for tutors for you?” Asetnefer asked. “You are too old for the nursery.”

  She shrugged again. “I guess he forgot,” she said.

  “Perhaps he will remember,” Asetnefer said. “I will take you back to the nursery now, before anyone worries. Girls! Iras! Charmian! Put dry clothes on and behave until I get back.”

  SHE DID NOT RETURN until the afternoon had changed into the cool shades of evening, and the birds sang in the lemon trees. Night came by the time Iras and I curled up in our cubicle in one bed, the sharp smell of meat roasted with coriander drifting in through the curtain door. Iras went straight to sleep, as she often did, but I was restless. I untangled myself from Iras’ sleepy weight, and went outside to sit with the women in the cool night air. Asetnefer sat alone by the fountain, her lovely head bent to the water as though something troubled her.

  I came and stood beside her, saying nothing.

  “You were born here,” she said quietly, “on a night like this. A spring night, with the harvest coming in and all the land green, which is the gift of the Nile, the gift of Isis.”