Sa'bak

Sa'bak is tall and lean in the manner of Khemi’s priest-aristocracy: bronze skin, hawk nose, a scalp and body kept shaved and eyes so black the iris and pupil are nearly one. Gold sits in the septum, the nostrils, and the ears. An old pale scar crosses the forehead. He does not glow. He does not rot. Set’s house in the oasis keeps its priest clean.

Sa'bak was born to the aristocrat-priest caste of Khemi and put to the schools while other boys still ran the quays. He learned the signs, the stars, and the House of Life before he was permitted a man’s other lessons. At eighteen the temples ordained him. Years later Luxur named him High Priest of Sacrifice — the office that takes the heart and offers it, that stands between the Ivory Throne’s city and the god who does not bargain.

He is a scholar first among his trades and a priest through the body. He reads fever the way he reads a chart of heavens. He sells what a southern house must sell: medicines, incense, honest weight in the market, and rites for those who keep Set in their pantheon. He is not a sorcerer of the Black Ring. He will not call the god’s will by a northern word for magic.

Luxur did not keep him. A High Priest with friends in the Ring died over a matter of temple and marriage; Sa'bak’s wife was a priestess of Derketo, and the south does not forgive a man who chooses his house over another man’s influence. He was cast out. The Exiled Lands had already known him Sepermeru, New Luxur, a vanishing and they know him again. He does not explain the gap to strangers.

Serpents Rest is a small beginning at the Oasis of Nekhet. Sa'bak is its face. The camp welcomes Stygians, Shemites, Kushites, and any southern people who still name Set among their gods. It is cold to true outsiders. It keeps slaves in the old Stygian custom. It wants temple guards. A few times in a season the oasis will hold the festivals of the Stygian year Akhet, Peleto, Semut and the priest will see them done properly.

Those who wish it may bring blood and a heart to the altar for a blessing. Those who do not may still come for a wound bound, a fever named, a star read, or a civil word in the shade. He is courteous. Courtesy, in his mouth, is not kindness. It is rank.

If you are of the south, come to the water and speak your name. If you are not, come anyway and be measured. The serpent does not hunt every man who walks past the stones. It remembers the ones who do.