Revenant by Catrina Burgess Page A

at the head of
every body.
    I found myself moving toward the closest
table. My hand reached out and touched one of the jars. The tops weren’t smooth
lids—they were molded into animal
shapes. One lid was shaped like a human head.
Another had the face of a dog. There was one that resembled a bird and another
shaped like the head of a baboon.
    “The Egyptians called them canopic jars,
named after the four sons of Horus.” Gage pointed to each one. “ Imsety holds the liver, Hapy has the
lungs, Duamutef holds the stomach,
and this last one…” He paused for a long moment and looked at the girl working on the table next to him, then
held up his hand. “Don’t tell me. Let me see if I can remember.” We both
watched him for a moment before a smile lit his face. “Ah, it’s Qebehsenuef . The god Qebehsenuef holds the
intestines.” He looked immensely pleased with himself. “I’ve learned quite a
lot about mummification. One Egyptian god holds each of the spare parts.” He picked up a jar and studied it. “The
Egyptians buried these canopic jars with their dead. I thought any container
would do, but the preservation spell we’re adding to the process won’t work
without the jars. It’s as if the organs still serve some function, even though
they are no longer attached . Fascinating,
isn’t it?” He put down the jar and looked around the room.
    One of the zombies was stacking bolts of large,
white material in the corner. It was one of the better-preserved specimens, and only a few drops of fluid oozed from
its rotting flesh to drip onto the fabric. I wondered who was putting the
spells on them to contain what must be an overwhelming stink. The solution was
obviously not working very well, as it did nothing to stop the rot. I could
feel the tattered remains of healing spells clinging to the walking corpse. My
mother the healer could’ve told them their attempts to heal the bodies were useless.
Some things can’t be healed, or no one would die at all. It was the natural
order of things—ashes to ashes and all that. I was thankful that the
spells helped the smell, though. Whoever cast them must be one powerful mage. There were six zombies moving in
and out of the room, and instead of rotten flesh I smelled copper and iron. I
realized I was smelling the blood and viscera of the fresh kills lining the tables.
    Gage followed my gaze and gestured toward the
pile. “Rolls of linen for wrapping. We are waiting on a shipment of natron. You
can’t start wrapping the bodies until you’ve poured it on and let the bodies cure. Natron is like salt —it will suck all the moisture out.” He gave a frown. “That’s
the part that’s going to slow us down. It takes forty days before the bodies
are dry enough to be stuffed .”
    “Stuffed?” I asked in a sickened voice.
    He pointed to a section of the room where
shelves full of plants and glass jars lined the walls. “Stuffed with spices, salt, and herbs. But the majority of the
stuffing they used in the past, traditionally, was sawdust. However, I was
thinking—why not straw or cotton?” He leaned over one of the bodies,
studying it. “We honestly don’t have to stuff them at all, but I think it will
give them a more realistic look. A full-bodied mummy has a more spooky effect,
don’t you think?”
    When I didn’t answer, he looked up at me and
continued. “This is only a temporary fix until we can find a proper spell to
keep them from rotting. A spell that can completely mummify them without all
the work.” He looked over the half-dozen girls, all dressed in black, who
worked at tables spread across the room. “We
must find a spell soon because this process is so time consuming. You
would not believe the man-hours
involved. That’s why I pushed the timetable back six months. It gives us time
to experiment.”
    He gave me a hard stare. “There are a lot of
questions that need to be answered . Will
you be able to raise the dead after they’ve been laying