‘Show yourself,’ I said.
‘Why?’ he replied. ‘Do you not know who I am?’
‘I want to look upon the face of Obsidian.’
‘Obsidian has no face,’ he replied.
‘We have that in common, then. I, too, am a shadow returned from the Otherworld to feed upon revenge. So show yourself. Or is the great Obsidian afraid?’
He slowly slipped off the hood. In the moonlight, the face was familiar, and yet now it seemed possessed by a stranger. I knew him and I did not know him. His eyes were black stones.
‘Names are powers. You should use them carefully, with respect,’ he replied. ‘They bring the forces of eternity to life in this world.’
‘You lied to me. You left me to die.’
Obsidian’s face betrayed no emotion.
‘Have you not discovered there is so much more to yourself than you ever believed? And is it not so much darker than you could ever have imagined?’ he said.
I took another step closer to him. I could see a faint sweat on his skin. His right hand held on to a hidden weapon. He stood poised, like a different man entirely.
‘I have lost my family,’ I said.
‘All earthly things end. But the way forward calls you now to something far greater…’
‘Don’t talk that rubbish to me. I know you too well,’ I said.
‘You do not know me at all.’
‘I want my life back,’ I hissed.
Obsidian almost smiled.
‘Your old life is gone. It’s finished. But there is a place for you, in the future of a new world, without dynasties-if you join me now.’
I tightened my grip on my scimitar.
‘What future? Ankhesenamun cannot prevail now. Horemheb will occupy Thebes. Nothing you have done will prevent that calamity. You have simply made it possible,’ I said.
‘The royal dynasty is finished. General Horemheb is a soldier without imagination. He believes he will bring “order” to the land. It is a shallow ambition. He would stifle the priesthood, and impose his own dynasty. Egypt is the greatest of all empires. But it has for too long been ruled by kings and dynasties, beset by vanity and jealousy. That shall be no more. There will be no more kings. And that is not all. There will be no more worship of the Gods, for they too have failed. Only Osiris, Lord of the Dead, eternally incorruptible, will rise again at the midpoint of the night, reborn in me. When Ra ascends tomorrow, time itself will begin again, a new age and a new world,’ said Obsidian. ‘It is I who will prevail.’
Somewhere in the distance a dog howled, and another answered. It would soon be dawn.
I took another step forward. With the next I would be close enough to slay him. But he was prepared, too. He watched me carefully. The city was silent all around us. I looked up at the eternal ocean of the night, glittering with stars. A harrowing sorrow entered my heart.
‘I have one last question,’ I said.
‘Of course you do,’ he said.
‘Why did Obsidian kill Khety?’
‘You already know the answer to your own question,’ he said, simply. ‘Because you told me about him. Your own words condemned him. And now here we are.’
He might as well have cut my heart out with his knife. I had told Nakht about Khety for the first time on the boat, on our way to the palace. I had trusted him.
He took one more step towards me.
‘You have looked into the dark mirror of the truth, so you now understand.’
He touched his heart. And when he smiled, I attacked.
Our swords sliced through the moonlight. His was made of obsidian; a long, black, deadly, shiny blade, honed to the finest edge. This was what had cut off the head of my friend. This was the blade that had sliced him apart, while he was still alive.
We fought intently, closely, our faces almost intimate, our breaths close in the cold air, our swords desperate to find each other’s hearts.
The obsidian blade whispered through the silence and I twisted out of its dark path, parrying each brilliant thrust and slice with my own curved blade, battling to maintain momentum. Suddenly his sword sliced into the muscle of my right forearm. My blade clattered across the stones, and blood slipped from the perfect cut.
He leapt back, light as a cat on his feet, and disappeared around a dark corner of the street. I tore a piece out of my robe to bind the wound, and stood still, listening to the silence. Then I picked up my sword in my left hand and moved slowly around the corner. The shadowy doorways seemed empty. Up ahead was a derelict space between two buildings, where a large house was being reconstructed. I knew he must be in there. I knew he was leading me away from his mansion.
As I entered the darkness, sand and grit crunched lightly under my sandals. I peered into the gloom. Here and there slants of moonlight entered through the timbers of the roof. I inched forward, my sword ready, trying to see into the gloom. And then I heard something, the faintest whisper-the obsidian blade slicing through the air. Just in time, I threw myself down, and as it flashed over me, catching the moonlight, I twisted around on the ground, drew my old dagger from its place across my chest, and threw it, left-handed, with all my strength. There was a moment of silence; and then Obsidian’s face loomed out of the shadows. The dagger was planted in his chest. He looked curiously at the bloom of black blood that stained his linen robe, made luminous by the moonlight. And then, to my astonishment, he offered me the obsidian blade.
‘Take it. Kill me. For Khety. For the dead boys. Taste your revenge. Do it now…’ he said quietly, with a strange remorse.
I hesitated. Was he now himself again? But then the wrong smile crept over Obsidian’s face. He began to draw the dagger out of his chest. Blood followed. He hissed in some kind of dark rapture. Then he pointed the dripping blade at me.
‘I knew it … you are too weak even to take the revenge you have sought for so long,’ he said. ‘But I am perfect.’
And in the moment it took him to smile, I grasped the obsidian knife with both hands, and with one absolutely silent motion, the blade cut through the dark air, and through his flesh and bones as if they were insubstantial as a spirit’s. His torso remained standing, his arms moving as if in apology or confusion; his blood pulsed out of his neck in gushes that quickly lost their strength, until his body slipped over and fell to the ground. It jerked a few last times, and then lay still.
His head had rolled away; I scrambled to find it, then ran into the street with it still warm, still full of secrets, in my hands. I held it up, dripping, by the hair, in the last of the moonlight. His eyes were open wide, staring, as if he had seen something that truly surprised him.
‘What do you see now? Do you see the truth and the light? Or just the darkness?’ I cried.
But his features were changing again. Slowly, and in death, I could once more recognize not Obsidian, but Nakht, the man I had called friend nearly all my life.
I walked to the Great River. The vast waters were black under the late-night sky. I sat down, and studied the head: this simple skull, with its once-mutable, lively face, had contained secrets, and languages and ideas, and the knowledge of the stars and the Gods; it contained brilliance and mercilessness, crimes and cruelties, and somewhere, somehow, even love. But those things were all gone now. With the last of my strength, I threw the head as far out as I could. It landed with a faint splash, and vanished.