The Unknown Prince

He was whisked away soon after birth, once a blood test had proven he was the son of a prince. Not that being a son of a prince was a bad thing unless you happened to be born out of wedlock and into a different religion, as he was. He would've been killed instantly except the signs and portents in the heavens forbade that. The magicians said he was needed to bring change to the world when he attained his majority. Rachme, agreed to have his son exiled, so that the prophecy could be fulfilled once his son had grown.1

His mother wept, to no avail as he was snatched from her arms, 'for her own good' they said.2

His mother named him Ahdum before he was taken from her but she was just a slave and her feelings weren't important. She never survived the loss. She spent her remaining days as a shadow, unable to work and therefore unable to eat. Her kin cared for her and fed her scraps as long as they could but they too had barely enough. In the end her body was discarded and left for scavengers in the same way her feelings and desires had been discarded in the wake of the princeling's birth and removal.3

Ahdum lived in the time of magic and sorcery, magicians guided through the prophecies written in the stars, who were mostly men. Women with magic were witches, so called 'wicked' and despised for their sex that corrupted the magic. They too hid from sight. However it was to the wicked witches that the baby princeling was unknowingly sent. The seers knew much about the world but they didn't know, or refused to acknowledge the existence of witches, especially in their realm. Therefore they didn't see the shift in the vision of the future when the seers sent Ahdum to them. The witches shrouded the visions of the seers and Ahdum was lost to their sight. They were too afraid to report this to the prince so he remained in ignorance to the fact the child was lost.4

Life went on, as it's wont to do, long years passed before Rachme, now a pharaoh thought again of his son. He had been unable to sire any other children. Despite, threats, beatings and traditional cruelty to his wives and concubines, they never carried a child beyond the first season of bloom.  He had prayed to the Gods. Anubis had granted him a vision of the change. He had seen a monument built to glorify his power. He had seen the sacrifice needed to bring about change. He had seen the blood test that would renew the earth.  He saw a monument he'd begun to glorify him become a tomb that held the bones of a prince. Then he remembered once more that his only son lived. He sought out the seers and magicians, killed those who acknowledged that the child was lost and commanded the rest to find the child at any cost or they too would pay with their lives. Many wore themselves to exhaustion in the search but finally they located the child now a young boy, in the care of the hags of Brunin. Although the boy was found; no-one knew exactly where the hags were located and so soldiers and citizen alike were sent out into the wilderness beyond the river to bring back Pharaoh's son, so that he might take his rightful place. Only Pharaoh knew what that rightful place was to be.5

They were given the warning that the world as they knew it would die if they were unsuccessful. The evidence was all around them. The slaves, believed to be an inexhaustible supply of labour, sickened and died. They also didn't breed in the numbers he expected and despite the use of whip, chains and starvation the work on his monument slowed and ground to a halt. The land, once so fertile, was becoming a desert and no amount of bloodshed could fertilise it beyond the scope of the river and the oases that dotted it here and there. The people themselves, chosen by their Gods had become lethargic and unable to bear children. The children that were born of noble families were deformed and useless to carry on the line that had begun with the first Pharaoh.  Rachme inspired the questers with his words, provisioned them, sent them out and then promptly forgot about them. He turned his eyes towards the monument and focused his will and his resources on finishing it before his son was returned to him.6

Meanwhile, although times were cruel and life destitute of warmth; Ahdum found love in the hands of the witches. And he found something else – he found himself. They taught him of his birth, of the prophecy that surrounded him, of his father and most importantly of his heritage. They nurtured him and kept him safe they gave him charms of concealment and held him in arms that rocked him to sleep and later held switches of chastisement. Ahdum seldom felt the cruelty of the world outside his doorstep until one day when he was ten, he returned home, to find his village smoking and in ruins. The bodies of his mothers were strewn around like straw dolls with the stuffing pulled from them. So much blood covered the ground that it was hard to see the soil underneath. Ahdum screamed and he ran from mother to mother, tears streamed down his face as he pleaded with them not to be dead. It was not so and Ahdum did what he had been trained to do since birth, he ran into the jungle and hid in the sacred place his mothers had told him about.  There weeping, dirt streaked and huddled in a ball for comfort; he slept.7

Evil pursued him even though he was hidden away. The searchers who had found the hags had killed the witches from frustration but when the boy was wasn't there they left. All except two, who feared returning to Pharaoh empty handed. They stayed and watched. When Ahdum grieved they smirked. When he left, they followed silently and captured him while he slept.8

When Ahdum awoke, it was to darkness and he couldn't move. He cried some more and slept again, too spent to do anything else. When he awoke the next time it was before the throne of Pharaoh.9

Ahdum looked up into a face that was similar to his own but one that bore the marks of cruelty on his mouth, in his eyes and most of all in the pinched look of hatred that the Pharaoh bestowed on him. Ahdum flinched but didn't move. He was lying on cold hard marble but he was unbound and he had suffered no ill at the hands of his captors. Pharaoh embraced him warmly and Ahdum wondered if he had imagined the look.  It was only later that night when Ahdum was lying on a bed of silk that Pharaoh told him of his plan for him. Ahdum bowed his head, yet his eyes hooded beneath lowered lashes blazed fury. If Ahdum was to be a prisoner and then a sacrifice to his father's will he would comply – for now. However, he silently vowed to have revenge for the deaths of his mothers before he died.10

He was kept in luxury while the people – his people, suffered and bled under the whip and knife. He kept an aura of calm and smiled sardonically each time Pharaoh heaped another cruelty on the populace. And he grew, in both wisdom and strength. His façade of compliance worked in his favour and for eight years he watched and waited unguarded. It was during that time he laid his plans.11

On his eighteenth birth day Rachme had Ahdum brought to the monument, which had now been completed. He dismissed the guards and mocked Ahdum's helplessness throughout all his years of captivity. He gloated that Ahdum had been born for this one purpose, that he might die and bring glory back to Egypt through his blood shed.12

Ahdum smiled; a slow, lazy, smile that held years of malice and he raised a bone knife before Rachme's face, one that was only held in the temple of Anubis. 13

'I too have had visions,' he said 'and they are dark. You hold my life but I hold you to account for all the death you have visited by your cruelty.'14

Then Ahdum smote his father with his Anubis' knife and threw him into the tomb designed and built to hold Ahdum's bones. The guards hearing the noise rushed in only to find Ahdum had taken the knife from his father's body. Then Ahdum stabbed himself in the neck, as he had been taught to do by the hags who had sacrificed goats in this manner. He smiled, a smile of perfect peace before his body crumpled and landed on his father's. Just then a great noise was heard and the slaves rose up as one to claim their freedom.  The guards ran away, as did all those in Pharaoh's household. The slaves, no longer weak and sick because of the food and medicine that Ahdum had smuggled to them during his eight years in captivity, chased them to the ends of the earth. When Ahdum's people returned the monument to glory had become a tomb.  The sands of the desert rose up and covered the cities sending them into oblivion. Change had come on the winds of prophecy but it was not the change of glory that Pharaoh had expected. It was instead the change that utter destruction brings. 15

After that Egypt's majesty and wonder was lost to the sands of time and became no more than the image in a snow globe, which a child shakes and as quickly forgets.16