This must be what Xena feels like, rushing into battle at the head of an army- Gabrielle thought. The mix of excitement and fear, the surging adrenaline, the deadly work at hand with no more time for anything else. She ran, straight up the cliff it seemed to her, following the Dahomean wrestler’s broad back. Captain Musu was on point, charging like an onrushing river. Geb followed close on Gabrielle’s heels, with a score of Amazons arrayed behind him. The sun, Re, ran ahead of them, their rival and their foe, sinking behind the honeyed hills. Gabrielle wished she had the breath to curse the failing light. The tomb would be sealed at sunset.
They crested the cliff and charged down the path. The air was blue as smoke, light bleeding away. Gabrielle could feel the cold where a moment before the sun had touched her.
The Egyptian workmen were setting the last coat of mortar. Two thirds of the cave mouth was covered in limestone blocks, sealed in place. An opening large enough for a child to crawl through was all that remained. It caught the last red flare of the sun, before Re dropped off the edge of the earth. Captain Musu roared her battle cry, terrifying the workmen into dropping their tools and fleeing madly down the path to escape this avenging goddess.
“The mortar is setting. Quick, grab a mallet.” Geb said.
Musu took one of the sledges in her right hand, spear still held in her left. She turned abruptly to Gabrielle and handed the spear to her, then gripped the sledge with both hands. The muscles of her back and shoulders writhed like snakes under her basalt skin. The sledge crashed into the stone blocks, knocking several directly back into the cave mouth. Limestone splinters flew as Musu demolished the wall. The dust hung in the air as Musu threw the hammer aside. She moved to enter but checked herself, looking back at Gabrielle. This was the Queen’s place. Musu took her spear back, and stepped aside.
The tomb was small, rock cut, similar to the one she and Tanit had shared in the yellow valley necropolis after escaping the slavers. The difference was the sarcophagus that dominated the small space. It was stone as well, body and lid, massive. Too heavy for her to move alone.
“Musu! Get some of the Amazons in here.”
“Any sign of the necromancer?” Geb asked.
The Amazons levered the lid away from the sarcophagus enough for Gabrielle to leap in, straddling the mummy-bound body of the warrior. Xena lay touching the Phoenician’s mummy like man and wife, entombed side by side for eternity. The sight was chaste, as burials go, but the implications of it shook Gabrielle’s bones loose. She stood in Xena’s grave, above her ritually prepared corpse. And it was not she that rested beside the warrior. Time had moved on without her.
Musu helped her lift the wrapped body free of the stone coffin. Geb handed her a knife from his belt, and took up position at the mummy’s feet, watching her. The knife point poised above the linen wrappings as the dwarf and the bard looked at one another, down the length of the warrior’s body. Both seemed to acknowledge the import of what they were about to do. The Egyptian necromancer was gone, vanished like a ghost himself at the rising of the sun. There was no telling what spells he had used, what wards he had set, what complications could arise from interrupting this journey.
Gabrielle dipped the knife point down, questioning her impulse. Was it right to tear Xena free? How could she know? She wasn’t a priest, or a necromancer. Gabrielle closed her eyes, and felt for Xena. Often, she could feel the warrior with her, even when they were physically separated. Xena laughed about that, sometimes, calling it only the fancies of love. Yet she felt it. It had been weeks since that was true, since the chaos and madness of the rage of Oya had torn them apart. Rent their wholeness.
Ok. I might just be talking to myself. But if you are there, if you can hear me wherever you are, let me know. Give me a sign. Tell me the right thing to do.
Nothing but silence filled her. Gabrielle opened her eyes, and started to cut.
“Are you sure?” Geb asked her.
“No,” Gabrielle said, sawing away the strips that covered Xena’s face.
The Nubian’s dagger tore through the wrappings of the warrior’s feet, echoing Gabrielle’s motion. Soon it snowed in the cave tomb, raining down great swaths of linen. Scarabs pinged and rang against the stone floor. Black hair came free, then her face, stilled and white as alabaster, eyes closed on this world. Gabrielle could smell palm wine and resins, the bite of natron. Not the scents she associated with the living Xena. Cold scents, foreign scents.
The warrior’s naked body came free of the grave. She was so still that Gabrielle, for a heart stopping moment, wasn’t sure that she was breathing. The flat of Geb’s knife, held against her nostrils, showed the fog of breath. Slowed, shallow, but real. Xena lived.
“Hand me her leathers,” Gabrielle said, to Beru. The Amazon moved like a flash of light on water. The bard took the proffered clothing, and lay it over the stilled body as a blanket. The warrior’s flesh was cold, as if her blood had drained away.
She had no idea of what she was doing, but the Amazons and the Nubian obeyed her and looked to her for orders. Part of her had hoped that Xena would just open her eyes and spring up, alert, as soon as she was unwrapped. That hope died stillborn. In the face of this, Gabrielle did what she could.
“I don’t want to move her more than we have. I’ll need a fire, blankets. Wine. Food. Geb? If you can, find me the necromancer. If not, you know the Egyptians better than any of us. Find me someone who knows anything about these spells.”
The Nubian nodded his head, bowed to her, and left her to begin her vigil.
Two of the Amazons stood guard, without being asked, at the tomb mouth. Others brought her food and blankets, skins of wine, lit a fire, and withdrew. Soon she was left alone, sitting next to the bundled body of the stilled warrior as the night deepened around them.
Through the tomb opening, cleared now of the masonry, she could see the firelight play on the Dahomean spear tips, on the gold and ivory armbands of her guards. Next to her, she could see the red-gold light wash over the pale greenish flesh of the warrior. It looked disturbingly like Xena were underwater.
“Here we go again,” She said to Xena, as if she were merely reclining before the fire, sharing it with her as they had shared so many nights in Africa. “You go do some damn fool brave thing, and get in trouble, and I have to haul you out. You know, you’re lucky I don’t get tired of saving your admittedly gorgeous behind.”
Gabrielle laughed. “That must be it. I put up with you because you are so damn cute. It sure isn’t for your cooking. Or your other domestic skills. Or your people skills, lately. I do have to grant that you are usually more social than the past few weeks.”
Gabrielle folded her arms around her knees and stared into the fire. It had been a long time since she and Xena sat and talked, the way they used to, that the warrior’s stillness couldn’t prevent her from continuing. She needed this. It came to her, how very much she missed Xena, missed the company of her partner. As much as she missed the lover, she missed the woman who would let her talk for hours and listen to every word; would ask her for stories at night, spun out of the fancy of the mind.
“I know you’ve had a hard time lately, that it isn’t your fault. All that anger must be eating you alive. It has to be, to get past your control. Keeps escaping, like steam from a kettle. You’d hate that image, not warriorly enough for you. But I like it. It makes it easier to think of it. All I have to do is find a way to remove you from the fire, and you’ll go back to normal. The anger that lives in you will melt back into water. You might have another mood, for a change. You might even smile. I’ve almost forgotten what it is like to hear you laugh.”
Gabrielle wiped the tears away and glanced sidelong at the warrior’s body. “You have such a beautiful laugh. Elemental. You give yourself over to it, completely. I don’t think I’ve ever told you that. How can that be? You spend years with someone, every day, you talk enough words to fill valleys and bury mountains, but there can still be things you haven’t said. Not for lack of trying on my part, you’d tell me. But there are words left to say, always.”
“Storyteller?” Geb said softly, from the tomb’s door. Gabrielle could tell from a glance at him that he had bad news. His hands were clasped in front of his belt, worrying together, as the Nubian rarely did and then only from deep discomfort.
“You can’t find Setnakhte,” She said, looking back at the fire.
“No. Nor did anyone in the village, upon questioning, know of or recall seeing the necromancer at any other time. He came from nowhere and vanished back there.” Geb sat down next to Gabrielle. “How is the hero?”
“Quiet.”
“Yes.”
The fire spat and sparks landed on Xena’s blanket. The Nubian and the Greek both jumped to crush them out, and collided.
Gabrielle sank back down when she saw Geb stamp the sparks. “We’re both so ready to spring into action, but there isn’t anything to do. I hate this.”
“I’ve sent out word, through official channels and unofficial, that I have urgent need for a necromancer. Horem and his sailors have gone ahead to seek the priests of Anubis and Osiris. I let it be known that I will pay six talents of gold,” Geb said.
Gabrielle looked up. “Six talents? Geb, the wealthiest man in Athens couldn’t bring that in a year.”
“The great killer has been of some importance to me. It is nothing, to set forth the wealth of the tribe I used to lead. Perhaps there is some worth, after all, to having been a chieftain of bandits.”
Gabrielle took his hand. “Thank you.”
Geb handed her a skin of wine. Gabrielle shook her head, but the Nubian merely smiled and kept the skin extended until she took it.
“My last skin of Harrian red. Ah, I wish I knew the hero when she was the Lord Chabouk in Har; I’d never run out.”
“I’d write to Oromenes and Malache and have a vineyard for you, if you like.”
Geb pointed toward the doorway, and the Amazons standing guard. “My future lies with them, and with Egypt. But, if ever I seek to retire, I will take you up on that, storyteller.”
They sat for a while in silence, sharing the wine. The fire burned low. Geb fed it, Gabrielle set her hand on Xena’s brow.
“She’s so cold. The blankets and the fire don’t warm her.”
“Blood is needed, to warm the dead, as the Bedouin say,” Geb quoted.
“Xena isn’t dead,” Gabrielle said, sharply.
“Of course. I meant only that your blood can warm her. Lie next to her,” Geb said.
Gabrielle pulled the blanket aside, and curled up to the warrior. “So cold. Nothing shall part us in our love till Thanatos at his appointed hour removed us from the light of day.” Gabrielle said, looking at Xena’s still face.
“What is that?”
“A saying, in Greece. Thanatos is Death, the twin brother of Sleep.”
“Then invoke his twin, and leave Death aside for tonight. He has enough work, elsewhere. I’ve built up the fire, it will last. Sleep, if you can,” Geb said, standing.
There are two gates in the realm of Hypnos, twin brother of Thanatos. Lord Sleep sends forth dreams from these gates, one of ivory, and one of horn. From the Gate of Ivory come dreams that are false; fantasies, lies. But from the Gate of Horn come true dreams, divination, divine words. When a god wishes to tell a mortal the truth, they go to Hypnos and ask for a dream from the horn gate. When a god wishes to lie, they ask for the gate of ivory, as Zeus did to Agamemnon before the walls of Troy. Hypnos seems to care equally for both gates, or so the myths tell. All the phantasms of the land beyond the gates are his children.
So be wary, when you dream, even of the words of a god. They might come to you through the gate of ivory.
Gabrielle dreamed. It was a cavern, deep underground, lit by the fire of pine torches gripped in desperate hands. The clangor of steel on steel filled her ears, the familiar, terrifying sounds of men fighting in close quarters.
Not men only. There, coming forth from the darkness, reddened about with blood and torchlight, glare a pair of eyes like ice. The body is strangely clad, Asian, but every line as familiar to her as her own. Madness, chill as Hyperborean winter, breathing forth from her in a miasma. An axe in her hands. Behind her stands a young man, Greek, dark and sere. In his left hand, he holds a butterfly. In his right, a torch, inverted, the flame pointing down. The woman does not see him, but he follows her like a faithful hound. He looks right at our dreamer, and he smiles- the somber shadow of pleasure, the imitation of the mortal emotion. This young man, this idea made flesh, this function wearing a human face, is happy, to be following the ice-eyed killer. She gives him his due sacrifice.
There, out of the mouth of the cavern- another woman, dark and brilliant, black eyes burning, exalted. Clad all about in royal gold, with a helmet in the shape of a roaring lion. At sight of her, the young man with the butterfly inclines his head, in respect.
Gabrielle woke abruptly, cold as metal under water, clasping the cold form of Xena to her.
“He can’t have you,” The bard whispered, fiercely, terrified. She threw an arm around Xena, and looked dartingly into the shadows of the tomb. Sleeping in a place meant for the dead wasn’t wise, she could feel that now-feel how close Thanatos was, how close he followed on Hypnos’ heels. “Persephone, watch over us tonight, and keep your husband’s minions from us, great lady,” Gabrielle prayed.
Eos woke from Tithonus’ bed; saffron robed, and languidly strolled the slate edged sky. After the dream, Gabrielle abandoned hope of sleep and sat the night watch, only stirring from her warrior’s side to feed the fire. Life ran sluggish in Xena; even her eyes did not move beneath their lids. The dead do not dream, Gabrielle thought.
And what would she do, if Xena woke, still in the grip of her rage? Still convinced that their time as lovers had ended? Oh, she didn’t share that opinion, though the bard had sense enough not to argue with the warrior when she wasn’t herself. But when she was restored, they had to have a talk. This halfway in, halfway out stance was wearing Gabrielle out. Either throw yourself in, all the way- cross the threshold and shut the door, or close it from the outside and bar it. No more of this, warrior. Love me like you mean it. Love me like I am worth your life, because I am. You will not stand against Eternity alone.
She’d learned about this, not so very long in years, but a lifetime ago in experience. Her home town hadn’t been a city like Athens, or Corinth, or even Eleusis or Piraeus. Far off from the centers of the blazing Greek culture, the theatre, the philosophers and politicians and poets, she had to seize whatever scrolls came through Potidaea on merchant’s carts. Bad enough that his daughter knew how to read; it would send her father into paroxysms if he caught her doing it when she had work to do. Girls always had work, on a farm. So time stolen for reading became as precious as Lydian electrum, as sacred as the gods.
Androkles, the Argive merchant who worked the route through Potidaea and down to the sea, took a liking to this strange girl and would bring her copies of Euripides’ new plays, the latest speeches from the Areopagus, the gossip of the Agora in Athens. It wasn’t a sexual love; his Eros was only for boys, as Plato’s was. Small harm, then, for a girl of an age to worry about her reputation to be seen talking with him. If asked why he bothered to talk to a girl, he would remind them that Socrates himself learned from Diotima, and who was he to reject this? The girl was alive. Full of life, burning with it, straining against the tethers of home, farm, duty, obligation, place.
He could remember, the inchoate yearning to leave the placid rural home and drink deep of life while he was young enough to thirst. That longing had driven him to Argos, and the sea. He found his life and never looked back. This girl didn’t have the option of running away. Life was different for girls. She was of an age when her father would choose her husband. In a few months, she would marry, and then be locked away in a farmhouse by a thick skulled and jealous lout who wanted her only to breed him strong sons.
It is likely that I am doing the girl harm, by letting her read. By encouraging her to dream. It will only increase the weight of her chains, when they seize her, knowing what lies outside. But, Androkles could not stop himself from hiding a scroll or two for the bright eyed girl, when he made his way through Potidaea. It was as if he were in the hand of a god, and had to serve. So then, Lord Apollo, I will do your will, and continue.
It was Spring, the fields were silver with asphodel and dripping with Hyakinthos’ blood. The terraced hillsides were ripe with vines; barley waved its tasseled heads in thanks to Demeter.
Androkles returned, with his cart drawn by mules, with Baltic amber and Cimmerian gold, tin from Brittania, red figure pottery from Neapolis. Hidden under a bolt of Scythian wool, a copy of Plato’s latest work, the Drinking Party. A gift, for the bright eyed girl.
Pity she wasn’t a boy, Androkles thought. Then he’d just take her with him. She’d never shown any interest in boys herself, nor mentioned them to him. No sweetheart, for a girl so brilliant and fair? He recognized a certain loneliness in her that she might not see yet in herself, and felt kinship. Her own Eros was still unknown to her, but Androkles suspected that she was destined for a similar path. He broached the subject, after handing her the new scroll and accepting her glowing thanks.
“You light up like a girl getting a token from her swain. All this, for a scroll?”
Gabrielle hugged him, and sat down on the cart, cradling the scroll in her hands. “This is better than any other gift.” Her golden head bent to the kidskin, absorbed.
“You’re an odd one, Gabrielle,” Androkles said.
She looked up, confused, and a little hurt. He’d never said anything like this to her, and she’d grown to depend on his approval. Her family, the townspeople, everyone thought of her as odd. To have one person accept her, exactly as she was, gave her a haven. Kept her going, even if months would stretch long between his visits. Her nature was too sensitive not to feel her own estrangement from her people, even if there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Born different, she longed to be normal. To be accepted. Androkles had provided that, up until this moment.
He saw her heart start to break.
“Don’t go crying on me, I didn’t mean it that way. I’m strange, too. I travel from town to town, from hamlet to city. I’ve sailed the Euxine, stopped at every port from Scythia to the Cyclades. Walked the streets of Athens and Sparta both. I’ve met all sorts of people. And you, girl, are not from here. You might have been born here, but you aren’t from here.”
Her downcast look softened, but only a little. “If I’m not from here, I don’t know where I’m from.”
“The first moment I set eyes upon the sea, my heart grew wings. Don’t worry. You’ll know your home when you find it. Here- read this section. He tells the story of how people were once double creatures, joined back to back, until Zeus split them apart with his thunderbolts.”
He watched her face as she read, and saw the moment when the idea came to her. There, like the first true light of the day. There had been traces of light before, there are always fingers of dawn before the sun is risen. Androkles witnessed the birth of that idea in Gabrielle.
“Some of the first pairs were men. Some women. Some women joined to men. The soul recognizes Love. Zeus must want us to search, or he’d not have split us up. Who are we, to argue with the father of the gods?” He patted her hand kindly.
“Have you...met your other half?” Gabrielle asked, carefully.
“Several,” He said, grinning. “Some of us also follow in the train of Eros. I’ll meet a youth, and my heart will slam out of my chest for him, my bones melt, my breath catch like a bird in my throat. I’ll write him poetry, I’ll follow like a lovesick pup when he goes to the palaestra to exercise. Potters will inscribe cups with his name, for me. It will be bliss, for a few months. Then, unlike Hephaestus’ forge, my heart will cool, and we drift apart.”
“Haven’t you ever felt everything, for one?” Gabrielle asked.
Androkles grew silent for the space of seven heartbeats. “There was one boy, from Thessaly. Red haired, eyes as grey as the Middle Sea. Strangely enough, not the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen. But the way he looked at me...ah. Him, I would have kept, and forsaken all others.”
“What happened? You were lovers, right?” Gabrielle asked, her shyness gone.
“Lover and beloved. Erastes and eromenos. Oh, he was my heart. He gave me his admiration and his love, I taught him how to be a man. How to be a soldier. To stand with courage in war, to be a gentleman in peace. He traveled with me for long about a year.”
“What went wrong?” Gabrielle insisted.
Androkles smiled. “Wrong? Nothing. Everything went exactly as it should. He came to me a youth, and I loved and helped him to become a man. He turned nineteen, and he was a boy no longer. As it should be. He was a man now, and ready to start his own life. Marry, perhaps, and have children. Meet a boy of his own, and fall in love, and train him in virtue as I had trained him. That’s the cycle of life.”
“That’s terrible!” Gabrielle cried.
“Why? Dear child, this is the way of men.”
“You still loved him, right? He loved you?” Gabrielle demanded.
“Yes,” Androkles said.
“Then why not stay together?” The girl asked, her green eyes sharp.
“My dear girl. Because that isn’t how its done.”
Sadness overcame the girl. “Surely lovers must stay together, sometimes. Even if years pass. Love can’t fade like that.”
Androkles leaned against her shoulder. “I will tell you a secret. It doesn’t. I love him still. But there comes a time when being erastes and eromenos no longer works, when the beloved begins to grow, and achieve his own power. Then there is a need to change. Most consider this the time to end the affair. But there are some, who continue past being lover and beloved- and become peers. Equals. Lovers, both.”
“That’s what I want,” Gabrielle said.
Androkles saw the girl catch the idea, and fill with it. Such heart! She would have to leave this small town eventually. “Then you will have it, my dear girl. When you meet her, allow yourself to follow the joys of Eros. Be her beloved. But remember what I say to you-there will come a time when you must cease being lover and beloved. If you have the stubbornness that I think you have, you will ride it out, and become lovers.”
”Lovers,” Gabrielle said softly, looking at the mound of blankets stretched out on the tomb floor. We unwrapped her, only to wrap her again. Lover. What would Xena do? The question is, what will I do? I’m her lover. It is up to me.
With the dawn came the exorcist. Geb preceded him into the tomb. “I’ve located an Egyptian attached to the temple of Osiris. He thinks he can help the hero.”
The Egyptian entered in a halo of sunlight, like Re coming forth on the bark of the sun. Behind him, his assistant held the leash of a black dog in one hand, and a furious red rooster in the other. The exorcist was dressed like a priest, in a kilt of fine linen with the hide of a leopard cast across his shoulders. Like a priest, he’d shaved all hair from his body. His arms were heavy with gold, hematite and lapis lazuli bands graced his wrists, his pectoral was a scarab embracing the sun disk, below the guarding wings of Horus the Avenger.
He crouched on the cave floor while his assistant washed his limbs with a sponge and hyssop-water. When his ablutions were complete, he took a leather bag of sifted bone ash and rock salt and sprinkled it around the margins of the tomb. The black dog was staked near the wall. A bronze wedge was used to carve a trench in the floor of the cave. The red cock was hauled forth, and summarily beheaded. The exorcist held the body above the trench and poured the blood down into the earth. Libations of wine followed, and a sprinkling of laurel leaves. He rapped thrice, with his open palm, on the ground, then scratched a small hole beside the trench. Only then did he look at the amazed Greek bard and the bundled form of the warrior.
“Names matter. Her name is?” The exorcist asked.
“Xena,” Gabrielle said.
“Stranger. Yes? My Greek is not so good,” The exorcist admitted.
“Your Greek is fine. As I wish our Greek to be, so begin your treatment, exorcist,” Geb said, impatient.
The Egyptian bent down and set his mouth to the hole, and whispered. From the hole issued forth small sounds, the squeak and rattle of the dead voices, like the sound of mice scampering across dried bones.
“Come forth, to the light of day!” The Egyptian cried out, sitting back on his haunches.
A mist came from the small hole, a thread of gray-white smoke. It rose up, until it assumed the height and shape of a man. Gabrielle gasped in recognition- it was the necromancer, Setnakhte.
“Who calls me forth?” He grated, in a perversion of human speech.
“I, the servant of the Lord of the West. I, the right hand of the Beautiful One. I, your master. Tell me your name,” The exorcist said.
“That’s him! Setnakhte, the necromancer who cast the spells. But that means he’s-“ Gabrielle couldn’t finish the sentence when the ghost looked right at her with his hollow eyes.
“That snake grated on me, I just couldn’t place why,” Geb said.
“Tell me how you died, and give me your name,” The exorcist said.
“By my own hand I died, to seal with blood the spells I cast on the Greek. I will not tell you my name. Names are power,” the ghost said.
“I will compel you, then.”
The ghost stood silent.
“I rebuke you, I command you, I adjure you, unclean spirit. I am a servant of Anubis, I have seen the mortuary temple, I have sailed across the sky in the bark of Re. Osiris is my name; I am justified. Answer me, in the name of the lord Un-Nefer,” The Egyptian stood and held his arms to the roof of the tomb.
“Mermnus,” The ghost grated.
“Your nation?”
“Lydia.”
“You are far from home, Mermnus, Lydian, to die on this strange errand,” The exorcist said.
“I serve my Lord, he called me here. It is not for me to know his will.”
“You killed yourself, you staggering fool, and don’t know why?” Geb snapped.
“I know why I lived, Nubian- to die, today, for this ritual. All my life moved toward this aim. I am content,” Setnakhte said.
“May you rot, may generations of worms make a meal of you, may your bones be scattered by jackals and vultures. May you never know rest,” Geb cursed him.
“You are an echo. You are a shadow. You are less than dust. Tell me the spells you set on the Greek,” The exorcist commanded.
Mermnus laughed. It was a black, bubbling sound, the last swirl of swamp water filling the lungs of a drowning man, the end of reason, the end of breath, life, hope. The form of the Lydian, as insubstantial as it was, tore into shreds. The exorcist’s power was strong, and held the struggling shreds like so many snakes, like so many birds caught in lime, but the unified person of Mermnus was gone. The exorcist watched the writhing gray shreds with disgust as they danced, caught in his circle.
“He is gone. A power greater than mine was set on him, to destroy him before he spoke of the spells. Even the afterlife is beyond him- he will wander, a faceless shade, for all eternity.” The Egyptian’s shoulders twitched with horror of this final, most unendurable fate.
Pity warred with anger on the features of the Nubian. “Release him, then. Have done with it.” Geb said.
The exorcist waved to his assistant to release the black dog. The dog ran, howling, out of the tomb. The gray shreds danced up like a flame blown in the wind, then sank down beneath the earth, running away like water.
“How are we going to find out what he did to Xena?” Gabrielle demanded.
The exorcist looked sheepish. He motioned his assistant to gather the tools of his trade. A quick glance to Geb, then he spoke in his halting Greek to the bard.
“Spells may fade now that he is dead. Magic takes....light? Energy, energy to maintain. Gone, gone, no blood. It is vital that you- ” He frowned, struggling for the words, then turned to Geb and spoke in rapid Egyptian. Geb listened intently. The exorcist touched Gabrielle’s hand with a gesture of pity, then left the tomb.
“Egyptians know how to breed gentlemen. He refused payment for his services.” Geb said.
“He should refuse payment! He didn’t do anything for us!” Gabrielle snapped.
“Storyteller, he is the most gifted exorcist I have ever seen. No other in my knowledge could have even called up the Lydian. The power that moves against us here is stronger than he would say. I think it is a god, one that the exorcist would not name.”
“Oh.” Gabrielle sat down by Xena’s body.
“Oh? That should have frightened the skin off your very bones, a god of which an exorcist won’t speak, but it calmed you. Why?” Geb asked.
“We’ve faced gods before.” Gabrielle said. It was easier, knowing in any form what they might be up against. The unknown was the terror, a darkness peopled with all manner of demons from her active imagination. This she could handle.
“Yes. Certainly.” Geb sat beside her.
“You don’t think so.” Gabrielle said.
“You read me that easily?” The Nubian asked.
“Try traveling with a warrior for a few years. I speak understatement. Tell me what you really think.” Gabrielle said.
“I believe that you and the hero have faced gods, storyteller. I have seen, with my own eyes, the proof of it. Yet...how can I say this, and not offend? You are Greeks. Western barbarians, compared to the civilizations of this part of the world. Youths. Your great strengths, as Hellenes, comes from your youth- your audacity, your willingness to experiment, with ideas, with language, with politics, with. even, the gods. As befitting such a raucous and vigorous people, your gods are very young. Zeus is a stripling, compared to Marduk. Or Shamash. Or Osiris. And they, even, are not the oldest gods. In Egypt, recorded history goes back four thousand years, to when Osiris was young. Before men carved the names and symbols of the gods in everlasting stone, they worshipped them. Back when people lived in reed huts, and were new to fire. When weapons were stones. There are gods older than language. Older than memory.”
“I knew that Zeus and the Olympians replaced Kronos and his kind, overthrew them. But even they weren’t the original gods of the land we call Hellas. Not chthonic- not from the Earth. Cretans were worshipping a Goddess long before the warlike Myceneans invaded. What happens to gods when they people who worship them are gone? Do they die? Fade away?” Gabrielle asked.
“This is what strength comes from the quarrelsome, flexible Greek way of thinking. You are able to ask such questions. Had I not been educated in the Pharaoh’s court and learned, from Alexandrians and from native Egyptians, I would not be able to imagine such things. I am not a priest, or an oracle. I cannot pretend to know what happens to the gods after they are no longer worshipped. Whether they pass on, or fade away, or sleep. But my blood tells me this- if they sleep, then they can wake. If someone worships a god that has been asleep for millennia, perhaps that wakes the god. Brings back the force and focus. Ah, I speculate. All I know is this: if an Egyptian exorcist thinks a god too powerful, or terrible, to name, then we are up the Nile without a paddle.”
“So what do we do?” Gabrielle asked.
Geb smiled. “What we always do. We live. We fight. We see if the hero wakes, and we watch her like perching hawks. We take what we know, and we continue. Come to Alexandria with me. These matters are beyond the provinces. Come to Alexandria, and seek wisdom from the scholars at the Great Library. It is said that all the recorded wisdom of humankind is available to them.”