Formed of Clay: a novella of ancient Egypt

By Thea Atkinson

Betrayal will cost you your soul

More than anything, young Sentu wants to learn the new letters of Pharaoh Menes's court. No one of his caste in this ancient civilization learns the language of hieroglyphics, and so, born of lowly  stock, his acceptance into the Egyptian priesthood must surely be a miracle.

 

He soon learns that not all is as holy as it appears in the privileged world of scribes and priests. Black magics and malice abound in the court of the first pharaoh of ancient Egypt, and Book of the Dead theology is twisted into an avenue for personal gain.

 

The acolytes suffer under the tutelage of Hozat, the High Priest: ritual sacrifices involve more than  mere beasts, they involve anyone who stands in Hozat's way to ultimate power. Though Sentu is at first spared much of the darkest of Hozat's secrets, he soon realizes he cannot escape the fate of his
ka forever.

 

When Pharaoh invades Nubia and takes hostage that land's powerful sorceress, Sentu's own world crashes around him, and he has to discover whether justice is more important to him than forgiveness.

 

Formed of Clay is historical fantasy that transports the reader into a dark exploration of a world before the pyramids in a time rich with mythology, betrayal, and sacrifice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thea Atkinson
• Release date: Feb 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781498980159

Thea Atkinson

Thea Atkinson writes character driven fiction to the left of mainstream; call it what you will: she prefers to describe her work as psychological dramas with a distinct literary flavour. Her characters often find themselves in the darker edges of their own spirits but manage to find the light they seek. She has been an editor, a freelancer, and a teacher, but fiction is her passion. She now blogs and writes and twitters. Not necessarily in that order. Please visit her blog for ramblings, guest posts, giveaways, and more http://theaatkinson.wordpress.com or follow her on twitter http://twitter.com/#!/theaatkinson or like her facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Theas-Writing-Page/122231651163413 a special thanks to Tiffany Atkinson for taking my author photo.

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FORMED OF CLAY

Copyright 2010 Thea Atkinson

Published by Thea Atkinson

No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form electronic or otherwise without permission from the author.

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Before

Wa-whump. Wa-whump. Wa-whump.

Darkness. Floating.

Space.

Wa-whump.

Wa-whump.

Contentment.

Her heartbeat is clear, even in this darkness. I hear two heartbeats, but they move together, so they could easily be one sound with just the merest of echoes coming after. There's less room for me to move than before. Still, I feel wanted; everything is as it should be. She speaks to me through the thin veil of skin that separates us and traces the bottom of my foot. I press against her hand with the part that is my sole and I hear voices then.

They speak to each other, those on the outside. Her voice, familiar now even though I have only heard it few times before, echoes as my own heartbeat, while this other--a brusque voice--sounds muted, disconnected.

She speaks to this other, The time is near.

He answers back. Yes?

And then his hand presses against my bottom. I can't help squirming away from it. His touch is not tender like hers. Only she knows how to press gently against her skin to feel mine against it, as if we were one flesh and that my sense is her sense. We are one. I take her air. I take her food. I take her blood. From her bones and flesh she has stitched this garment for me. And I must remember when I am born that I should be eternally grateful. I hope I can remember.

After

He wanted justice black as shade, and sure as death.

They were strangely deep feelings for a ten-year-old to fathom, stranger still, that he could articulate them clearly at all, but fury settled into his organs and twisted them into a hate he'd never felt before. Some part of him felt broken off, and Sentu wondered if he looked up at the thatched ceilings, would he be able to see that shadowed part lingering there before dissipating like smoke through the crevices.

Someone was speaking. Yes. His father. He tried to offer respectful attention but all he saw as he looked into the almond colored skin and black eyes crouched next to him was a face so unlike his that he finally understood. Fellahin. That's what he was. Poor mud digging class born to do nothing but turn the fetid land into some sort of substance, to fish the waters, to drink from the edges of the Nile, braving the beasts within as they waited for their supper.

Sentu, did you hear me? The man was saying. Did you hear me say it doesn't matter to us?

He stood there trembling, the limestone walls threatened to fall in. This man. This man was not his father. That's what he was saying.

Sentu, it is okay. But you needed to know.

He needed to know. And why was that? For all these years that he has endured the taunting of his neighbors, fought in the dusty avenues to protect his mother's honor. Why does he need to know this now? What of that man who sired him: that coward. That he would leave these people to lie for him year after year.

Sentu felt a strange clump in his throat, one that had the feel of choked off words that his mind had to break apart, to separate into sounds. His true father: who was he, really, but a traitor to his flesh. A man not worthy to carry the label this foster father had owned all these ten years.

And when some sense of words did come, they were hateful ones, formed in curses that had Sentu begging for Set to come in furious victory, to seek out and dismember that man like he had done to his god brother Osiris; scatter his body to the four winds.

He wanted to speak. Words tangled in his voice box.

You came to us straight from your birth, his foster father said, trying to soften the news. Such a wonderful man was this man, so considerate. She was young, too young to be birthing.

The woman spoke then: his supposed mother. The woman whose honor he had fought for. I am barren, she tried to explain. "You were a gift from the aten; who were we to refuse it?"

She snicked in closer to her husband and reached out so that his palm met her elbow, drawing her closer as though to create a wall that fury could not get through. A jasper amulet swung from her long neck, a large drop of rock that she had fashioned herself with bits of scavenged gold. Sentu had helped her craft it, spent hours melting and shaping and hammering the links to wrap around the tiny pebble. Jasper is for inner power, she'd told him. It fosters loyalty and courage.

She wore it everyday, and Sentu often wondered why she would need a stone to remind her to be devoted. Now he knew. He wasn't of her flesh. This thin, graceful woman next to this man of sturdy build--almost too sturdy for a man of wisdom within Pharaoh Menes's court--was so doting Sentu had never questioned his heritage. But he should have known. Their skin was far lighter; he should have known he didn't belong. He was foolish. Stupid.

Both of them were the color of the brief bit of skin that surrounded the almond, a seed prized in Kamt for its rich oil. Prized. Valuable. His more base hue of Nile mud revealed his true worth. He'd been foolish enough to argue when the other boys insisted he was different, when he'd overheard their mothers gossiping about the dark boy and how he might have ended up in such a light skinned household. Surely, some educated person of the elevated hedj shentis would never debase themselves by fostering such filth. He must have come from an outside union. An unholy union. A disgrace.

Sentu had spat in their bread, those gossip mongers, as the rounds lay on benches outside to cool for the shame they spoke of this woman he'd always called mother. He saw the moisture collect in the stamped initials they put in the dough so they got the right loaf from the ovens.

The same shame thickened into a sludge that crept along his veins and hardened his heart. He felt it cure the muscle to a stone that barely trembled with its own heartbeat. He wondered if his blood would move through his veins at all. He certainly felt like a ruin.

You have been admiring the new art, his foster father said trying to distract him. He lifted Sentu's hand and turned it over to stare at the fingers. You like the letters?

Sentu thought of the times he had been allowed to bring this man a brief lunch of smoked fish and flatbread, of coarse, dried honeycomb, and how in those travels he had seen Pharaoh's men of learning dipping their reeds into inkpots of paints of all colors: wadj like the sky, deshr like blood. He thought of the times his foster father watched him stare at the symbols.

It was a great art: symbol making. It recorded on papyri of the gods and their lives before man. Did he want to learn?

He looked around within his own home's limestone walls, at the murals that were newly vivid, but not so grand as those in the palace. He thought of the letters on those walls and on the bottoms of his sandals, magic letters to entreat health, and how perfect they were, how much better than any shapes he'd ever seen.

Yet, those letters, so pleasant as good magic, could make curse magic as well, and he caught his breath, thinking: those letters. He could create them if he studied. He could create them and with them could create whatever history he wanted, or curse the man who couldn't see his value enough to keep his own son. He could curse him. He could force him to find his justice.

So did he want to study those skills? Oh,