“There were four figures depicted,” Karim continued. “They all surrounded this image of a bloody lamb. One of them was me.”
“You? In a Khetaran oracle?”
Karim nodded. “The second was a warrior, the third a priestess…” He swallowed, his eyes meeting hers. “And the last was you.”
“What?” Sita shivered as a cool wind blew through the willows, bringing with it a strange scent—sweet and smoky and intoxicating. Behkai raised his quivering nose to the air, but as soon as it had come, it was gone. “How can you be sure?” she asked.
“There were three royal children,” Karim explained. “Your two brothers and you. Your face. Your eyes. It could be no one else.”
As an afterthought, he added, “You held a heart in yourhands.”
Sita shook her head. It was all too much to believe. Still, she was shaken by the thought of her image holding a heart, weighing it as the gods did at judgment. She and Mery had taken lives into their own hands—what punishments might they face for usurping the gods’ will? “What did it foretell, this oracle?” she asked.
Karim’s expression darkened. “Nothing good. Ruin. Betrayal. War. A river turned to blood.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled up Sita’s throat. She put one hand on Behkai’s head, and the dog leaned against her leg, as if to comfort her. The hysteria subsided.
“Naturally,” she said bleakly when she regained her composure.
“Since both you and your siblings are pictured, maybe your brother’s rise to the throne has something to do with the oracle. And this business with Setnakht—that’s part of it too. The painting showed me opening his tomb.”
Karim cast another glance over his shoulder. “I thought I’d killed the monster—the ‘mummy,’ as you call it—but ever since we left the city and its crowds and distractions, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched. It is as if these events are connected… like streams converging into one river.”
So that’s why he’s been startled by every little noise, Sita thought. Still, she was skeptical. Without seeing this so-called oracle for herself, she had only a few coincidences and Karim’s word to go on.
“So what are we supposed to do about it, us four? Did the lamb happen to mention that?”
Karim shook his head.
“No, of course not,” Sita said.
“You don’t believe me.”
Sita gave him an apologetic look and shrugged.
“Now, listen, princess—these areyourgods who dragged me into this, not mine! That young priestess knew all about it already.She’d had visions of all this.That’swhy she helped me at the temple. I didn’t want to believe it either! I only came to Thonis because I made a promise to that old priest before he died. And just when I thought things couldn’t get any stranger—youshow up. When I found out who you were, I knew our meeting couldn’t be a coincidence.”
Sita dropped her head onto her hands and stared at the map lying between them. Evading Mery and figuring out how she was going to stop him was hard enough—now this? The very idea that she was wrapped up in some kind of ancient prophecy was simply too much for her mind to handle.
Her eyes focused on a block of text written next to the red star marking the location Karim had indicated as the mummy’s tomb.
“‘Here lies Setnakht,’” she read aloud. “‘His spirit indestructible, as powerful as a god. If he commands you to die, you will die. If he commands you to live, you will live. The word is the deed.’”
Karim stared at her.
“You can read it?” he asked, and then smacked himself in the forehead. “Of course you can read it. You’re probably the most educated woman in the kingdom. Is there more?”
Sita squinted at the next words, which were faded and harder to decipher. “‘He shall not travel West, for his work is unfinished. Through the…’” She paused. “I’m not sure about this symbol. Blood? Flesh? ‘Through the… flesh of an acolyte, he will live again.’”
Silence fell between them.
Karim had gone pale. “His work is unfinished… What work?”
“Unless you found more information about him at the temple, I guess we’ll never know,” Sita said.
“There was a letter,” Karim went on, “From an embalmer who’d been involved in the king’s burial. It didn’t say much, but it did mention that Setnakht abandoned Thonis and built his owncapital city in the desert, away from the rest of the kingdom. Do you know where it is?”
Sita shook her head. “I’ve never heard of such a place. But that’s not surprising. If Setnakht’s very existence was erased from the history books, his city was probably abandoned too. It’s been a thousand years—it’s probably been retaken by the sands.”
