Distantly Falling Stars (GRAND WINNER * ONC 2019)

10. Arriving Alive in the Hall of Osiris

"Seti? I need your help." 

A knock on his cabin door roused Seti from a half-sleep. Fumbling with the door bolt, he opened to find Mehu standing in the last light of dusk.  

"I thought I could do it myself, but apparently not." 

Seti stepped outside and followed Mehu towards the back of the ship, passing by the sailors eating their dinner. None of them looked up.

The ship was moving strangely and it took Seti a confused minute or two to figure out what was different. They were drifting on the waves. The turbines had stopped.

"Why have we stopped? Has something gone wrong?" 

"No." Mehu moved the silver wheels on the transportation lockers until the internal cogs lined up and the doors clicked open. "Here, help me lift them out."

Seti didn't move. Mehu looked up at him, deep black rings circling his eyes and a rash covering the right side of his still pleasant face. He looked as if he hadn't been sleeping at all, either. 

"Answer me a question first."

Mehu straightened up but didn't rise. "Still want to know why you're here?"

"No, that question's been answered. Who was watching from the shadows in the shrine of the Star of Bekumen when I was first summoned there?" 

A smile played on Mehu's face. "You noticed that? If I wasn't impressed with you before, I am now."

"Who was it?"

"My father, Lord Amunkheper. He wanted to see if you really were a sensitive like the oracles said. Which, so am I, by the way, and so is he. Not as good as you are, as we've seen. But still." 

That told Seti everything he needed to know, and the remaining pieces that had been eluding him for so long fell into place. He had been selected first by the plot and then thrown to the counterplot as an expendable, but versatile pawn. Mehu could have found the stars himself, given time, and after both Seti and Neb-ka were dead. 

Another question rose in Seti's mind, although he thought he knew the answer. 

"What oracles? Both you and the prince mentioned oracles."

"I'm sorry. I can't tell you that." Mehu seemed genuinely regretful. "Let's just say, they were very convincing."  

Seti simply nodded. They'd come from Dendera, just like the information about the stars and the plasma lanterns. 

"Help me now?" Mehu asked, raising his eyebrows. 

Together they rolled the stars out of the locker. Mehu reached an arm back inside and pulled out a leather pouch from which a hammer and chisel emerged. He set the chisel carefully against a knot on the top of the star and pounded the end of it with the hammer until chunks the size of fists were falling around his knees, reducing the star to rubble. 

Shards. The shards the foreign kings had possessed. 

Mehu looked up, breathing hard from the exertion. "Help me throw the pieces overboard." 

"Why are you doing this? I thought we were to bring them back safely."

"It's better this way, trust me. We don't need all of them. And both you and I will finally be able to sleep." 

Mehu chose out two shards, one from each star, and wrapped them in the leather pouch that he laid back in the locker before he began to scoop up the remaining pieces and hurl them overboard into the Great Green. Seti squatted next to him and soon there was nothing left of the stars but some black grit and splinters on the ship's deck.