But Set does not reply.
“Whatever,” says Madrak, “it draws near. How strong is the Red Witch? Will she give us trouble?”
"She was not so strong but that she feared her old Lord, Osiris, avoiding him for many centuries-and I am certainly as strong as Osiris. We will not be beaten by a woman-not when we have come this far.”
Madrak bows his head, mumbling, and begins to beat upon his breast.
“Stop that! You're being ridiculous!”
But Set laughs, and Anubis turns upon him with a snarl.
“I’ll tear your heart out for that!”
But Set raises his bleeding left hand which he has just torn free and holds it before his body.
“Try it, dog! Your one hand against mine! Your staff and any other weapon you have against the left hand of Set! Come closer!” and his eyes glow like twin suns and Anubis falls back beyond his grasp.
The lights continue to dazzle and spin.
“Kill him, Madrak!” cries Anubis. “He is of no further use to us! You wear the gauntlet of power! He cannot stand against it!”
But Madrak does not reply; instead, “Forgive me, Whatever You Are or Were, wherever You May or May Not Be, for omissions and commissions in which I indulged or did not indulge, as the case may be, in this matter which has just come to pass,” he says, still beating his breast. “And in the event that-”
“Then give me the glove!” cries Anubis. “Quickly!”
But Madrak continues, unhearing.
A shudder runs through the cockleshell, and magicians and poets being very good at that sort of thing, a doorway which had been doubly sealed springs open and Vramin enters.
He waves his cane and smiles.
“How do? How do?”
“Take him, Madrak!” cries Anubis.
But Vramin advances and Madrak stares out the window, mumbling.
Then Anubis raises his staff before him.
“Angel of the Seventh Station, and fallen, depart!” says Anubis.
“You use my old title,” says Vramin. “I am now Angel of the House of the Dead.”
“You lie.”
“No. By appointment of the Prince do I now occupy your former position.”
With a great wrenching movement, Set frees his right hand.
Vramin dangles Isis’ pendant before him, and Anubis backs away.
“Madrak, I bid you destroy this one!” he cries out.
“Vramin?” says Madrak. “Oh no, not Vramin. He is good. He is my friend.”
Set frees his right ankle.
“Madrak, if you will not destroy Vramin, then hold Set!”
“ ‘Thou Who might be our Father Who perhaps may be in Heaven…’ ” Madrak intones.
Then Anubis snarls and points his staff like a bazooka at Vramin.
“Come no farther,” he announces.
But Vramin advances another step.
A blaze of light falls upon him, but the red beams from the pendant cancel it out.
“Too late, dog,” he says.
Anubis circles, draws near the port where Madrak stands.
Set frees his left ankle, rubs it, stands.
“You are dead,” says Set, and moves forward.
But at this moment, Anubis falls to the knife of Madrak, which enters his neck above the collarbone.
“I meant no harm,” says Madrak, “and this is to pay in part for my guilt. The dog led me astray. I repent. I make you a gift of his life.”
“Thou fool!” says Vramin. “I wanted him prisoner.”
Madrak begins to weep.
Anubis bleeds in red spurts upon the deck of the cockleshell.
Set lowers his head slowly and rubs his eyes.
“What shall we do now?” asks Vramin.
“ ‘… Hallowed by Thy name, if a name Thou hast and any desire to see it hallowed…’ ” says Madrak.
Set does not answer, having closed his eyes and fallen into a sleep that will last for many days.
FEMINA EX MACHINA
And she lies there big with child within the chassis of the machine. A wall of the cubicle has drawn back. The wires have fallen away from her head and her spine, disconnecting the icy logic, the frigid memory banks, the sex-comp compulsions, the nutrient tubes. She is deprogramed.
“Prince Horus…”
“Megra. Rest easy.”
“… You have broken the enchantment.”
“Who did this terrible thing to you?”
“The Witch of the Loggia.”
“Mother! Her ways have always been wild, Megra. I am sorry.” He places his hand upon her. “Why did she do this thing?”
“She told me that a thing of which I was unaware- that I am to bear Set’s child-is the reason-”
“Set!” and Horus’ fingerprints are imbedded in the metal table. “Set -Did he take you by force?”
“Not exactly.”
“Set… What are your feelings toward him now?”
“I hate him.”
“That will be sufficient.”
“He cares nothing for life…”
“I know. I shall not ask you of him again. You will come away with me to the House of Life, Megra of Kalgan, and dwell with me there forever.”
“But, Horus, I fear that I must be delivered here. I am too weak to go far, and my time is near.”
“Then so be it. We shall abide for a time within this place.”
And she clasps her hands upon her belly and closes her cobalt eyes. The glow of the machine causes her cheeks to blaze.
Horus sits by her side.
Soon she cries out.
The Citadel of Marachek, empty, not empty, empty again. Why? Listen…
Set stands his ground, facing the monster, and it lunges toward him.
For a long while they wrestle, there in the courtyard.
Then Set breaks its back, and it lies a groaning.
His eyes blaze like suns, and he turns them once again to the place where he had been headed.
Then Thoth, his son, his father, the Prince Who Was A Thousand, opens again the bottle of instant monsters and removes another seed.
Sowing it there in the dust, another menace blooms beneath his hand, then bends toward Set.
The madness that lies within Set’s eyes falls upon the creature and there is more conflict.
Standing above its broken body, Set bows his head and vanishes.
But Thoth follows after him sowing monsters, and the ghosts of Set and the monsters he fights rage through the marble memory that is wrecked and rebuilt Marachek, the oldest city.
And each time that Set destroys a creature, he turns his eyes once again toward a place, a moment, where he had battled the Nameless and destroyed a world and where the dark horse shadow his son rears and blazes; and heeding the beck of annihilation he moves toward that place, that moment. But Thoth follows, distracting him with monsters.
This is because Set is destruction, and he will destroy himself if there is nothing else that is suitable at hand or somewhere in sight, in time or in space. But the Prince is wise and realizes this. This is why he follows after his father on his temporal journey toward the altar of annihilation, after his awakening from the trance of battle against the Thing That Cries In The Night. For Thoth knows that if he can distract him long enough from his pilgrimage, new things will arise toward which Set’s hand may be turned. This is because such things always arise.
But not they move through time, filling perhaps all of time, considered from this moment of it-the wise Prince and his deadly father/son-skirting always the Abyss that is Skagganauk, son, brother and grandson.
This is why the ghosts of Set and the monsters he fights rage through the marble memory that is wrecked and rebuilt Marachek, the oldest city.
She sleeps, in the House of the Dead, in a deep, dark, buried crypt, and consciousness is a snowflake, melting, gone now. But the motorcycle that is Time backfires as it races by, and there, within the remembered mirror, lie the last days’ battles: Osiris dead, and gone away Set. And there is the green laughter of Vramin; Vramin, mad and a poet, too. Hardly fit Lord for the Witch of the Loggia. Better not to set an alarm. Sleep away an age, then see what Thoth hath wrought. Here, amid the mummy-dust and the burned-out tapers, here in the bottommost cellar of the House of the Dead, where none have names nor seek them, and where none will be sought; here: Sleep. Sleep, and let the Middle Worlds go by, ignorant of the Red Lady who is Lust, Cruelty, Wisdom and mother and mistress of invention and violent beauty.