Who is this Nefermaat?
An image flashed in his mind. A painting in a forgotten temple of a child being crowned with a feather by a cat-headed god.
“The oracle…” Karim murmured.
Nefermaat blinked, and the spell broke.
Karim stumbled back from her and shook the strange feeling away.
The girl tilted her head, looking quite catlike herself. “What oracle?”
It took Karim a few seconds to recover from his reverie. Was it possible that fate had brought them together, as Pasenhor had hoped it would? For what purpose? If he was going to find out, he had to tell her the truth—both to convince her to help him and because he had the feeling he was supposed to.
I can’t believe I have to put my trust in yet another Khetaran, he thought miserably.
“The Oracle of the Lamb,” Karim finally replied.
The girl paled. “The lamb?”
Karim nodded. “Painted in a Temple of Khnum, south of here. That same priest I mentioned earlier was its caretaker. He told me alittle about it, something about water turning to blood and broken crowns…” He left out the part about the secret rising from beneath the earth. “The thing is, the painting showed a man who looked a lot like me, and a girl exactly like you. But I don’t know how that’s possible. The priest said it’s more than a thousand years old.”
With every word he said, the girl’s fear sharpened. “This priest, did he happen to come to the palace many years ago, to tell the king of this oracle?”
Karim blinked. “Yes, he did, actually. But your king threw him out and told him not to return. And now… the priest is gone.” He didn’t elaborate on the manner of Pasenhor’s death.
Nefermaat shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she murmured, mostly to herself. “Why me?”
A priest carrying a tray full of jars and linen passed by and glanced at them curiously. The two of them quieted, not wanting to be overheard.
When the priest had passed, Karim leaned forward. “I recognized you from the painting, but you’ve never seen it. Yet clearly you know something about all this. You said you know who I am. How?”
The girl fidgeted uncomfortably. “That wasn’t exactly true,” she admitted. “I don’t know your name, or where you come from, or anything about you, really. I saw you in a vision.”
“Avision?”
The girl quickly told him about her recurring dream. The similarity to the Oracle of the Lamb was too great for Karim to dismiss. Then she told him how she’d been brought to the temple to train to be a priestess.
“The vision I experienced here at the temple showed me four people, each of them somehow connected to the lamb. I was one of them, and you were too, just like you saw in the painting. The others and me were alone, but for some reason, you—” Here herbrow furrowed in confusion. “You had two shadows.”
Now it was Karim’s turn to be afraid.
“Do you have any idea what that might mean?” Nefermaat asked.
Karim looked away. “No idea,” he lied.
The little priestess seemed trustworthy, but he wasn’t ready to tell her about the monster. If he did that, he’d have to tell her about the Jackals, the tomb robbing, maybe even Djet and Pasenhor’s deaths. Would she still be willing to help him, knowing so much of what was happening was his fault?
Better to keep that to myself for now.
“Out of curiosity,” Karim said, “The other two people from your vision—was one of them the princess?”
Neff looked even more amazed. “One wore a crown. I assumed that meant it was one of the royal triplets. I didn’t know it was Sitamun.” She paused. “The last one carried a scepter.”
“What kind of scepter?” Karim asked. He racked his mind to remember what Pasenhor had called the weapon he’d seen in the painting. “Was it a… sack-ham scepter? Or something like that?”
Neff nodded vigorously. “Yes! A sekhem scepter! Exactly!”
Karim thought of the girl Raetawy and scoffed. “I think… I think I may have met her. Though the odds of such a meeting are too incredible to imagine.”
