Duamutef and the Swordmaster
Everything comes to her who waits
I arrived at the local nursing home shortly after midnight, having been summoned by the facility’s head nurse to confirm the death of a patient. I performed the usual A to E systematics, ending with the motor response to pain and peripheral tissue temperature. She must have been dead for at least a couple of hours.
I had talked to her just the night before while administering the IV fluid, and as her breath caught on every second word, she whispered to me, yet again, her confused story of how He would return for her before the shadows coalesced.
She was slightly over eighty-two and had obviously been a stunning redhead in her day. She was said to have hobnobbed with many famous Fantasy writers in the Sixties. She had been able to recite whole passages from acclaimed works such as Leiber’s Swords in the Mist and Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness until a rapid descent in dementia the last few years had taken most of her short and medium memory.
A scared young woman became trapped in a shrivelling body, convinced her situation resulted from a jealous witch’s curse.
She beseeched me to convey a message to Him, the love of her life, to arrive on the Steed of Dusk and save her from the dying place, leaving behind merely her empty vessel. She had a tattoo of him on her right wrist; a caped handsome guy with a giant sword and overabundance of muscle, depicted somewhat in the style of Boris Vallejo.
I tried to alleviate her terror by anchoring her to the present, if only fleetingly. I used a trick a psychiatric colleague had revealed to me years before; appeal to their hubris. So, I steered the conversation to her attire and coiffure, commenting that she should really do something about the grey in her auburn.
Perhaps I could recommend some hair-dyeing techniques?
Her eyes would flash indignantly, and from beneath the embers, the Elder Court Lady from Thebes emerged, the embodiment of grace under Chronos’ siege.
I sigh and move to cover her with the sheet anew, but the head nurse arrests my hand, murmuring.
“Her skin art.”
I could still turn her chicken-boned forearm with ease.
Instead of the improvised Conan, a fresh image of a stylised Egyptian canopic jar with a smiling jackal-headed Duamutef of a stopper gleamed under the fluorescent lighting.
Our smiles joined her frozen one as we left the room where the Raven Swordmaster from Lankhmar had finally swooped her from her vessel.
The above texts were first published on Twitter and are © 2023 by David Pahor.
Please subscribe to me with your e-mail, so we can stay connected when I start serialising my novel, amidst the fall of the platforms.
In my Twitter list, you will always be able to find all of my new flash fiction, recounting Kekuros’ tales of Iaanda, Garnaaq and Sorkaii — and assorted wizards, umbras and lethal females — https://t.co/Y3YrWpfkm7 .
(The rest of David’s tales on Medium)
