Reawakened (The Reawakened Series) by Colleen Houck
For my dad, Bill, who left us all too soon
THE WINE OF LOVE
An Ancient Egyptian Love Poem Oh! when my lady comes,
And I with love behold her, I take her into my beating heart And in my arms enfold her; My heart is filled with joy divine For I am hers and she is mine.
Oh! when her soft embraces Do give my love completeness, The perfumes of Arabia
Anoint me with their sweetness; And when her lips are pressed to mine I am made drunk and need not wine.
In the great city of Itjtawy, the air was thick and heavy, reflecting the mood of the men in the temple, especially the countenance of the king and the terrible burden he carried in his heart. As King Heru stood behind a pillar and looked upon the gathered people, he wondered if the answer his advisers and priests had given was their salvation or instead, their utter destruction.
Even should the offering prove successful, the people would surely suffer a terrible loss, and for him, personally, there was no way to recover from it.
Despite the simmering heat of the day, he shivered in the temple’s shadow, surely a bad omen. Uneasily, he ran a hand over his smoothly shaven head and let the curtain fall. To quiet his nerves, he began to pace the temple’s smooth, polished dais and ponder his choices.
King Heru knew that even should he defy the proposed demands, he needed to do something drastic to appease the fearsome god Seth. If only there was a way out, he thought. Putting the proposal to the people was something no king had ever done before.
A king held his position precisely because it was his right, his duty, to see to the needs of his people, and a king who could not make a wise decision, however difficult, was ripe for deposing. Heru knew that by allowing the people to decide, he proved himself to be a weakling, a coward, and yet there was no other outlet he could see that would allow him to live with the consequences.
Twenty years before King Heru’s time, all the people of Egypt were suffering. Years of terrible drought further complicated by devastating sandstorms and plague had almost destroyed civilization. Marauders and old enemies took advantage of Egypt’s weakness. Several of the oldest settlements had been wiped out completely.
In a desperate act, King Heru invited the surviving leaders of the major cities to come to his home. King Khalfani of Asyut and King Nassor of Waset agreed to a one-week summit, and the three of them, along with their most powerful priests, disappeared behind closed doors.
The results of that meeting had been a decision that tipped the balance in the pantheon of the gods. Each city worshipped a different god—the residents of Asyut, which played host to the most famous magicians, were devoted to Anubis; those of Waset, known for weaving and shipbuilding, to Khonsu; and King Heru’s people, skilled in pottery and stone cutting, worshipped Amun-Ra and his son, Horus. The kings had been convinced by their priests that their patron gods had abandoned them and that they should come together as one to make offerings to appease a new god, namely, the dark god, Seth, in order to secure the safety and well-being of the people.
And so they did. That year the rains came in abundance. The Nile overflowed its banks, creating fertile lands for planting. Livestock flourished, tripling in number. Women gave birth the following year to more healthy babies than had ever been recorded. Even more astonishing was when the queens of each city, who had been the most outspoken against the deity change, were appeased when discovering that they, too, had conceived.