“Long sleeps the summer in the seed.

Verse CIV”

- Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam

Somewhere in Sur Kesh years ago.

The mudbrick hovel housed her and her family. It was always either too hot or too cold and the cramped quarters reeked of sweat and unwashed bodies. She was the eleventh child of the family but the fifth to be alive. The rest had made their last way to the field of reeds due to illness, malnutrition or violence. Theirs was not an uncommon household and many such hovels stood together in the shadow of the great monument to the goddess and at the banks of the great river of life. The father worked as a fisherman but had lost the boat that had once been his father’s and was not able to build his own so times were lean and work was hard.

The Trusted came as always in the summer when the great flaming chariot of the sky lashed down on their backs with whips of heat and sickness hung in the air. Beyond the banks of the river was only the desert, the sea of hunger, thirst, and dust.

The father looked at the veiled woman and saw her scaled and clawed arms, the symbol of her blessing, and threw himself to the ground groveling.

“Hem Netjer.” He said and “Great Lady.”

The wife was more withdrawn. She was brown and tough as river grass, long inured to hardship but she bowed behind her husband looking at him with a bit of scorn in her slit-yellow eyes which were her small blessing.

The woman looked them up and down she was clothed in dark green robes, lose enough to hide her figure. She seemed slight of build but very tall and hairless, her movements fluid like a snake. A hint of yellow eyes stared through the veil, unblinking.

“The blessing of her-that-is-many-and-one upon you. I come to seek for those who might be reborn in the goddess grace.”

The man secretly rejoiced for he hoped to gain some coin and lose some useless mouth he had to feed. The eyes of his wife showed a deep sadness and she lowered her head further to the ground to hide her thoughts.

The children were kneeling behind the parents on the cracked dusty earth before the hut, the eldest son was still in his late teens with shaggy hair, a crooked nose, and an uneven musculature that made him seem awkward. There were the girls, hungry-looking, emaciated little things with overlarge eyes. Some had a few scales, some a claw instead of a finger but there was one girl who had the eyes and the scales and she was fine-featured.

The eyes behind the veil lingered on her and the woman beckoned her closer. The guards at her side leaned on their spears.

The little girl, perhaps five years of age, crept closer and looked up at the Trusted.

“She is chosen.” The woman nodded. “Give them the death-prize.” One of the guards nodded without a flicker of emotion and grabbed a small pouch and threw it before the parents. There was a faint jingle of coin. The sun burned down on them, no wind brought relief.

The man grinned and thanked them profusely, the woman sighed and looked furtively at her youngest whom she had labored to bring into this world. The small child looked at her uncomprehendingly as the mother gave a tired smile and nodded to reassure her. And she mouthed ‘Iseret my little treasure snake.’

The guards grabbed the child who began to cry. Silently as she had been violently taught by the man. And then they were off.

A gigantic temple at night.

The lost eye shone through a large opening set into the ceiling and an altar was lit by its pale glow.

Dark rectangular patches in the otherwise lightly colored sandstone surrounded the stone block inscribed with symbols depicting snakes and humanoids in different forms of fusion.

A priestess with scaled skin and with the head of a viper stood behind the altar and dripped the poison of a snake as thick as a leg and longer than three grown men into a chalice. Chanting a prayer she surveyed the children that kneeled before the holy stone.

One by one they were called and made to drink from the golden vessel and as they shook and frothed from the poison they were lowered into the small deep shafts that dotted the floor. Inside those recesses were snakes, hundreds and hundreds of them, and as the small shaking bodies were lowered inside they were swallowed by the teeming multitude. Finally, the shafts were closed with large stones inscribed with prayer runes. And all was silent but for the soft scraping of scaled skin on skin.

The snakes bit them and in the grip of the poison their flesh grew cold and their minds broke.

The darkness swallowed them and their life ended only to be Reborn.

Iseret stood among her fellow slaves and looked at the temple warrior. A great man with scales and claws, he sported two large fangs that jutted over his lower lip forever marring his speech with a lisp...but no one laughed.

Before him lay a girl perhaps seven years old and the blood pumping from the slash in her torso slowly ceased.

“She was weak as you are weak but she also lacked in faith. I will tear you apart and build you anew and you will serve until your death whenever she needs it.” He spat on the cooling corpse. “And be it only as an example. You will be useful.”

The training was ceaseless and began with the first faint grey on the horizon and lasted until the stars rose into the canopy of the night.

Prayer, religion, academics, poisons, assassination, combat both armed and unarmed.

Of the hundred that were lowered into the embrace of the snakes there lived one out of every three.

Of the perhaps thirty that were given into the care of the great temple in the dry mountains there lived but ten.

But there would always be more. The great river of life surged with frothing muddy water and gave the earth that birthed the crops that nourished the holy kingdom of her that-is-many-and-one.

The process was by no means perfect and there were always failures, mistakes that would be rectified and the buzzards feasted on those that were caught but...

The girl sat in a corner and was determined not to cry. Her right arm was a bloody mess and ribbons of flesh had been cut with brutal precision. She heard soft footsteps and looked up to see a small shadow stealthily coming near.

“Shhhh.” A voice whispered to her. “Hold still.” Cool ointment was spread on her arm and the painful burning sensation lessened as the strong magic slowly mended the most serious wounds.

“Iseret is that…” the girl looked up eyes blinded by tears.

“Don’t talk.” And then she was gone.

Another morning on the training field.

The warrior gripped the haft of the long whip and slashed towards the kneeling aspirant drawing lines of red on her thin back. But then there was a crack and the haft broke, the whipcord flew off into the distance and the warrior clenched his teeth in fury while searching for the servants assigned for maintenance. But there had been an emergency and he was called away.

Deft fingers manipulated the tally and wrote orders anew.

Iseret blinked her slit-yellow eyes she had inherited from her mother and a small smile stole onto her stoic face before she slunk into the shadows and away.

...sometimes, those mistakes lived nonetheless. Perhaps it was the wish of the goddess after all.

The day of her ascension to the ranks of the Reborn was a hot day in autumn and the palm trees swayed in the slight breeze. The monument to her that is life, Many-as-One stood behind the priestess, the same snake-headed matron that had poisoned her in the temple all those years gone by.

And then it was over and she was still not free.

The dark-scaled woman with the cobra hood and the humanoid features looked at her and whispered. “I know what you have done.” And with a smile, she continued. “And I mostly approve, but your actions here would sooner or later get you and your friends killed. Come with me and I will show you other lands, other ways of life. The goddess is not as rigid as it is proclaimed here. Come and assist me, it will not be to your detriment.”

And she followed Kadira the Cobra as she was sent to the north, for infractions and sins too small for death and too big for life in the heartland.

She looked back once as she boarded the ship and that was the last of Sur Kesh she ever saw.