Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [51]
‘Set.’
‘What?’
‘His image. The statue from his temple. Each day we bathe and feed it, just as we did when it was in the inner shrine. We saved it from Akhenaten, and when the tyrant is overthrown, we will reinstate it.’
‘The Setcave,’ Ace laughed. ‘Right.’
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‘The real Set is hidden somewhere else.’
‘Is that right?’
‘He’s waiting. The gods shackled him after he and Horus fought. But he’ll be back, back from the west, the land of the dead.’ Sesehset leaned closer.
‘That’s what the doorways in the air are for,’ he murmured. ‘One day, Set’s going to walk through one of them. Maybe sooner, maybe later.’
‘Listen, if he’s the god of evil, how come you were allowed to have temples and stuff?’
‘He’s not evil. He’s thunder in the desert. He’s a hippo trampling the papyrus crop. He’s dancing and sex and,’ he raised his bowl in a toast, ‘good wine.’
He waved the wine about, indicating all of Egypt. ‘They call disorder evil.
They turn us all into numbers, numbers on the scrolls here. This whole country runs on records and numbers and records and clerks, measuring everything and scribbling everything down.’
‘Like we were pieces in a machine,’ said Ace.
Sesehset was in full flight, not listening to her. ‘He can’t be measured by anyone, written down by anyone. He has his place – had his place, before the madman came. “I am Set”,’ he recited, ‘“strongest of the gods, and I slay Ra’s enemy every day, standing at the front of the ship of millions of years – and no other god can do that.” The universe wouldn’t work without him. He is chaos. He is the storm.’
Ace nodded coolly. ‘A butterfly flaps its wings, making a tiny change in the air. That change gets magnified, right? A breeze turns into a gust, a gust turns into a wind. The wind turns into a hurricane. All because of the butterfly.’
Sesehset laughed out loud. ‘That’s superb! A hurricane caused by an insect.’
‘Every storm starts with something small.’
Sesehset reached out and touched her on the nose. ‘Set sends the butterfly to start the storm.’
One of Sesehset’s servants brought them more wine, and they sat in the shade of a palm tree, slowly drinking the strong stuff. Sesehset said, ‘We had about five years. Then Akhenaten picked up the court and moved it to this blasted desert plain. They hadn’t even finished building the palace – he lived in a tent for a year.’
The ex-priest plucked a bit of grape stem out of his teeth. ‘No Net, no Isis, no Khepri, no Khnum. No stories, no pictures, no moral teachings, no priests or rituals. Just Akhenaten and his silent, faceless Aten. He just stands around in the sun all day, throwing flowers at it. His brain’s probably boiled by now.’
‘He’s not crazy,’ said Ace. ‘Or if he is, he’s crazy like a fox. What he is is a tyrant. That’s why there are soldiers everywhere, right? No-one likes what he’s doing.’
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Sesehset snorted. ‘And meanwhile, foreign princes are taking our lands, and there’s plague devouring the Levant. One thing you could say for old Amun, he looked after the wars. Akhenaten’s father used to stuff Amun’s temples with booty. But now Pharaoh lives in a dream, talking to his Aten, his eyes closed to the real world.’
‘You’ve gotta fight back,’ said Ace. ‘You can’t let him do this, he’s wrecking everything.’
‘Now I think you have been standing in the sun for too long,’ said Sesehset.
Ace shook her head. ‘Let this go on and you’ll have a civil war on your hands. Religion’s one of the best excuses for war, right? Belfast, the Draconian jihads. It’ll be Egyptian soldiers killing Egyptian people. Our people. Unless we do something about it.’
‘You know,’ said the priest, ‘you’re not like any woman I’ve ever known.’
‘You propose to me, and I’ll gut you.’
Sesehset shouted with laughter, pouring them both a fourth bowl of wine –
or was it a fifth? ‘Copper will be beaten into swords, bread will be bought with blood,’ he recited, his voice growing more serious. ‘We will laugh like the sick, we will not weep