Heretic of the Nile

015

Three days.

Kha had said that he would make contact in three days, and that if he didn't... Mereneith didn't want to imagine that possibility, but time was leaving her little choice. The sun was already setting on the third day they agreed upon, and still there was no sign of any message from the prince.

Did he not make it? Has he been captured?

She sat huddled on a straw mat in one corner of her underground cellar, staring blankly at the little fragment of crystal she was rotating between her fingers.

In the three days that she'd been back at the temple, she discovered that little had changed besides the appointment of the new head crystal keeper and a few junior priests being reassigned to the crystal vault. She had been keeping an especially close eye on Sef, trying to catch him doing anything out of the ordinary, but her efforts thus far had been futile. Sef continued to be the subdued wallflower that he'd always been and had been delegated to floor sweeping in the vault by Nephi, the same menial task he had been doing before his reassignment.

"No, I can't just wait around and do nothing," she declared, clamping her fingers around the crystal.

If Kha didn't return, then she was the only one left who knew of the simmering plot of which Rekhmir had been a casualty.

Having made up her mind, Mereneith got up and headed out of her room, making her way swiftly towards the priests' sleeping quarters. Along the way, a few priests were making their way towards the dining hall, since it was time for the evening meal.

The priests' quarters was still and silent, its tenants gathered elsewhere, engaged in pointless banter about yet another day of work over plates of warm bread, cheese and dates.

Mereneith deftly navigated her way to the corridor where the junior priests' dormitories were located, pausing briefly when she passed the doorway to Rekhmir's room. Or what used to be. Already his bed had been colonised by a new occupant—a messily thrown blanket and pile of unwashed clothes contaminating the previously tidy space. Sighing softly, she moved on, slipping into the room that Sef shared with three other priests.

Holding out the small crystal shard in her hand to shed some light to the darkened space, Mereneith started with the wooden trunk sitting beside the priest's bed, and then moved on to the shelves leaning against the walls. There were clothes and washcloths, scrolls and brushes, bottles of oils—but nothing that gave any hint that Sef was involved in anything vaguely treasonous.

A glint of something reflective caught her eye.

Mereneith turned and reached under the bed, pulling out a circular bronze piece. Under the illumination of the crystal, she could decipher the stylised image of a man's face with bull horns protruding from his head, engraved into the metal.

She had seen this likeness before, perhaps only once or twice, from the dusty scrolls left forgotten in the temple's vast library.

Baal.

She stretched her hand further under the bedframe, fumbling about until she felt a cloth pouch beneath her fingertips. The pouch contained some more of the same—twenty pieces in total.

Voices echoed down the corridor and drifted into her ears, so Mereneith quickly shoved the pouch back where she had found it, keeping only one bronze piece clutched tightly within the palm of her hand. She hurried out of the room, disappearing back towards her own before any of the priests returned.

Once she was back in the confines of her den and certain that she hadn't been detected, Mereneith unfurled her fingers to reveal her find. She ran her thumb over the grooves that etched out the creature's hideous countenance, then flipped the piece back and forth thoughtfully.