Heretic of the Nile

017

The sounds of clashing metal and wood woke Mereneith from her uneasy slumber. It was coupled with loud angry shouts drifting through the gaps between the sealed cell door and its sturdy frame.

Still not dead.

She painfully angled her head left and right, trying to figure out if anything had changed since the last time she was lucid.

Since Tiye left, things went quiet for a long time. Longer than she had expected. There were no new interrogations, no salt-laced whips and fire-hot brands—nothing. For brief moments, she even wondered if they had given up on her.

The answer was no.

The commotion from outside drew closer and closer, the fighting getting louder and louder, until it culminated in a deafening crash. Mereneith shut her eyes and jerked her head to one side as wooden splinters flew towards her like little pitchforks. The hinges of the cell door had been ripped off and the door itself lay collapsed at her feet. A dead body was sprawled on the ground, spread-eagled, a spear sticking out from the back.

Two men rushed into her cell, their faces masked by pieces of linen. They wasted no time in slashing the chains that kept her prisoner, and Mereneith felt her body falling like a limp rag doll. She was caught by the arms, one man on each side, and hauled towards the gaping doorway.

"Who are you?" she asked as they navigated her through a litter of bodies strewn along the narrow corridor. Guards lay in the mix, some of whom she recognised from the earlier episodes of torture.

The men didn't reply. They continued pressing forward, until eventually they emerged up a flight of stone steps and out into the open.

A gust of fresh air slammed into her face, leaving Mereneith reeling momentarily. After being locked with the stench of blood and rancidity for such a long time, she had almost forgotten what being alive was meant to smell like. She opened her mouth and gasped, inhaling as much of the balmy air as she could manage.

And then she was flung onto the ground.

She cried out as her lacerated knees struck the gravel, the tiny grains of sand and stone rubbing against those open wounds.

"This is as far as we've been asked to take you," one of the men said. He pointed in the direction of an amalgamation of rock-like structures in the near distance. "I would head that way if I were you. You have some time before they find out what's happened here."

Mereneith opened her mouth to ask more questions, but her two rescuers were already gone.

She picked herself off the ground and turned her head to take one final look at the prison she had escaped. It was an innocuous-looking building that could easily have passed as a traveller's rest stop. No one would have guessed that beneath those mud-slapped walls lay a hellish labyrinth that now lay claim to countless lives.

Gritting her teeth, she dragged her torn feet in the direction that the men had pointed her to. She didn't know if she could trust them, but if they helped to set her free then she was willing to take a gamble.

It wasn't long before the barren landscape evolved into something more sinister. Towering rock-like structures surrounded her, their twisted and gnarled surfaces reaching towards the skies like the arms and fingers of the wrongful dead. For the first time Mereneith was grateful for the pain that consumed her body, for it provided a welcome distraction to the shadowy surroundings.

She looked up to the night sky, following the constellations as best as she remembered and praying that it would lead her back to Memphis. What had happened in the capital since her capture? Was Kha safe? Were there any changes to the king's condition, or had Kanefer discovered what she had done in the palace?