“They’re small figurines we place in royal tombs,” Sitamun explained quietly. “To serve the dead as servants in the afterlife. We inscribe the name of the king on them so that when the ushabti comes to life, it will know its master. But why is he using an ushabti spell here? This isn’t the underworld.”
Karim thought of the army of tiny men he’d seen in Setnakht’s tomb. Those must have been ushabti. They’d been arranged in front of a Set statue much like the larger one standing before them. It was as if that chamber of the tomb was a miniature replica of Perset’s palace courtyard.
Karim swallowed hard. “I have a bad feeling about this…”
“Heed me, O ushabti!” Setnakht cried once more. “Wake and hear my call!”
The insects scattered.
Setnakht fell silent.
From where they lay concealed behind the column, Karim had a clear view of one side of the tree-lined courtyard. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead and along the bridge of his nose, where it hung suspended for a long, long moment before it fell.
“Did you feel that?” Sitamun whispered.
“What?”
“The ground. It’s shaking.”
As soon as she said it, Karim felt it too. The earth beneath them had begun to quake, like something under the sand was clawing to get out. Then, like an unholy growth, a blackened arm sprang from the ground a few lengths in front of them, reaching for the sky.
First one, then three, then a dozen, then more.
There were copper spears, khopesh, and maces gripped in the hands, each one covered in a greenish-brown patina. As the sand fell away, heads and shoulders emerged after them. Karim watched in horror as men crafted of dark, pitted stone, their features either grotesquely distorted by cracks and fissures or worn smooth by time, rose from the ground. They’d been carved wearing Khetaran headdresses and false beards, and they were all identical aside from what the centuries had wrought upon them.
Then, one by one, they climbed to their feet and began to speak in voices as dry as the khamsin wind.
“Here I am,” said the ushabti.
“Here I am.”
“Here I am.”
Setnakht’s army, Karim thought with a shudder.
The ancient pharaoh wasn’t done yet. Turning back to the statue of Set, he raised his arms and began again.
“Heed me, O Shesmu!” Setnakht commanded. “Wake and hear my call! You whom I name Butcher, Mutilator of LivingFlesh! You who I call the Dismemberer, who slays man and god alike, who makes the blood of the unworthy flow like wine! Wake, Shesmu, and remember that purpose for which you were crafted! Wake and lead my legion to glory!”
The shaking intensified, and the ground directly in front of the statue splintered, then exploded, sending a cloud of sand into Karim and Sitamun’s faces.
Karim shielded his eyes from the stinging grit. Then he saw it, emerging from the reddish dust like a mountain from primeval waters.
Shesmu knelt before Setnakht, an enormous figure made from the same blackened stone as the ushabti but at least twice their size. He was sculpted in the image of a broad, powerful man clothed in scale armor, and he held two copper butcher knives crossed in front of his chest.
His head was a helm in the shape of a lion’s skull, and as Shesmu looked skyward, red sand poured from the holes where his eyes would have been.
When the red dust had settled back to earth, Shesmu rose to his feet, brandishing the knives in a salute to the pharaoh. Karim noticed that the symbols for Setnakht’s name—the cloth, the loaf, the jagged line, the vulture—were engraved on his chest.
The name of his master.
Shesmu moved to join the ushabti. The stone men stood at attention, waiting for their king’s next command.
“I-I don’t understand,” Sitamun murmured. Her face was haunted. “Magic this powerful…it’s not possible…”
Just then, a horn sounded from the village.
“Elyas is raising the alarm,” Karim whispered.
