Diana Pho - Steampunk World

General Mu collapsed onto all fours. Sputum erupted from his mouth and cascaded into his helmet.

Akhu and Umat pulled the ebon-skinned goliath to his feet. “Let’s get you to bed, uncle,” Akhu grunted as he struggled to support General Mu’s massive weight with his shoulders.

“You must see the Shekhem, boy,” General Mu croaked. “Take my scepter; show it to the guards. They will let you pass. Warn the Shekhem, boy!”

“Warn him? Of what?”

“Sa-Seti allowed me to live so that I could deliver this message to the Shekhem – he has three days to return Sa-Seti’s hand, or Ta-Sut is dead and all of Menu-Kash will soon follow.”

Shekhem Tehuti Ur-Amun rubbed his goatee with his right hand, which – as always – was encased in a crimson, silk glove. He studied Akhu, who knelt before him. “And what is General Mu Ankh-Kara’s condition now?”

“He is feverish; nauseous; and grows weaker with each passing hour, your Majesty.”

“A curse?”

“It appears so, your Majesty.”

”Perhaps the General’s talk of returning Sa-Seti’s hand is just the ranting of a man wracked by fever, then.”

Akhu shot a glance at the Shekhem’s gloved appendage. “I think not, your Majesty.”

The Shekhem smiled wryly. “You have always been a clever boy, Akhu Ankh-Kara. A clever boy, indeed. What, exactly, do you know of my hand?”

“Just what every citizen of Menu-Kash knows, your Majesty – you were wading in the River Ise, presenting an offering to Pademak, when a crocodile sprang from beneath the surface of the water and attacked. You killed the crocodile, but suffered severe and disfiguring injuries to your right hand.”

The Shekhem rose from his golden throne. Akhu bowed his head in reverence.

“Stand up, son,” the Shekhem commanded.

Akhu rose to his feet. The Shekhem stared into his eyes. “What I tell you now never leaves this room. Understand?”

“Yes, your Majesty,” Akhu replied.

“The story of my hand is a…fabrication,” the Shekhem began. “The truth is – I heard my father speak, in whispers, of a powerful sorcerer who once ruled Menu-Kash. It was said that this sorcerer had been kissed upon the right hand by the Goddess Ise herself and thereafter, the sorcerer-king could see the past and future.”

“I have heard the legends, your Majesty,” Akhu said.

“Yes, but only Shekhem know that sorcerer’s identity. There have been twelve sorcerer-kings, but all of our powers pale in comparison to the third.”

“Sa-Seti,” Akhu said.

“Indeed. It was his hand that Ise kissed. It was his hand that held the key to the powers of precognition and postcognition. And it was his tomb that I raided for that hand over thirty years ago.”

“But what does that have to do with your hand, your Majesty?”

The Shekhem paced back and forth, his bare feet making slapping sounds on the cool marble with each step. “The ritual to claim Sa-Seti’s hand as my own required a sacrifice. I sawed off Sa-Seti’s hand and placed it in a calabash…”

The Shekhem returned to his throne and flopped down in the huge chair. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead as he continued to speak. “Then, I…I severed my own hand and placed it atop Sa-Seti’s. Suddenly, the world went black. When I awakened, I was at home in my bedchamber. I felt no different, but when I looked beneath the covers to peek at my stump, I found this…”

The Shekhem snatched the glove from his hand. Akhu stared at it in disbelief. The Shekhem’s hand was withered and the digits were twig-like and twisted, ending in long, cracked, yellowish-pink nails. At the center of the leathery palm was a large, fully developed, alive and alert human eye. The eye’s piercing greenness both fascinated and disgusted Akhu.

“With the hand of Sa-Seti, I can indeed see the past and the future, but only of others; not of myself or my bloodline,” Shekhem Tehuti whispered.

“To have your daughter returned to you alive, you must sever that accursed hand and return it to its rightful owner, your Majesty,” Akhu said. “I am a skilled surgeon. With Umat’s assistance, I can…”

“I’m sorry,” The Shekhem said, interrupting him. “I…I don’t know if I can do that.”

“You don’t know, your Majesty?” Akhu said, lowering his gaze to hide his disgust for this man, who had just proven himself to be a thief, a liar and a coward.

“Look, Akhu,” the Shekhem sighed. “I love Ta-Sut with all my heart – she is my firstborn and heir to the throne – but the many outweigh the one. With insight from the hand of Sa-Seti, I have brought Menu-Kash unimaginable wealth and glory and I have kept this great land of ours safe. And – one day soon – I will heal the festering wound carved into this world by Pademak and restore peace to all of Ki-Khanga.”

Akhu knelt in salute. “If you speak it, it is so, your Majesty.”

The Shekhem slipped the crimson glove back over Sa-Seti’s mummified hand. “Leave me now, Akhu. I must devise another plan to rescue my beloved daughter from the clutches of that monster.”

Akhu sprang to his feet and – as custom dictated – walked backward out of the Shekhem’s throne room.

A cool breeze sent a chill down Akhu’s spine, awakening him.

He sat up on the couch in his litter, stretched his sinewy arms and then peeked over the back of the couch at the top of Fusii’s head. The steel plates of her barding glowed a soft red as the armor reflected the tint of the morning sky. Her trunk was raised high, set to deliver another blast of air.

“I’m up, sister; I’m up!” Akhu chuckled. “Why have you awakened me?”

A soft whistling sound made Akhu snap his head toward Gahs. Umat stood in her litter, pointing toward something in the distance.

Akhu followed Umat’s finger. A towering obelisk loomed in the distance – the tomb of Sa-Seti. “Strange…the tomb is surrounded by some sort of black liquid, which ebbs and flows like an ocean tide.”

“That is no liquid, my Neb,” Umat replied. “Take a closer look.”

Akhu pulled a small bronze telescope from a pouch on his belt. He raised it to his eye and gasped. “Beetles! Beetles the size of a man’s hand!”

“Hundreds of thousands of them, my Neb,” Umat sighed. “Perhaps millions.”

“Prepare yourselves!” Akhu shouted as he pulled the lever on the arm of his couch. He swallowed hard, hoping to swallow the knot in his throat and quell the rapid pounding in his chest.

Umat pulled her lever and the litter bridge snapped into place.

Akhu snatched a large tarpaulin from under his couch and dragged it to the center of the bridge as Umat set up an iron tripod.

The war elephants galloped forward as Akhu and Umat continued to work, busily sliding tubes, gears and large canisters – all from the tarp – into place.

Gahs let loose a powerful roar, which shook the ground beneath him.

Akhu looked up from his work. The beetles had taken flight and a dark, clicking cloud closed upon the litter bridge.

“I’ll finish assembling Ra’s Rain ,” Akhu shouted, wiping beads of sweat from his brow. “Fuel the Horns of Sekhmet and the Steamsword !”

Umat was a blur, grabbing a large calabash from her litter and emptying its contents into vents in the helmets of the elephants’ barding.

Akhu hoisted Ra’s Rain onto his shoulder then tossed the long, iron barrel of the weapon onto the tripod, fitting holes bored into the barrel’s bottom onto the tripod’s hooks. The massive weapon locked into place.

A shadow darkened the litter bridge.

“The creatures are upon us, my Neb!” Umat yelled.

“I suggest you work a little faster, then!” Akhu replied as he screwed a tube into the spigot of a steel barrel that sat over a roaring flame.