QBLH
The Three of Swords
Painful Separations
​
Chapter LIII
Sorrow?
A fundamentally sorrowful experience
"
“You have no memories of Artemis, do you, my son?”
“Of course I do, Father. How could anyone forget a royal sendoff launched from the Egyptian pyramids? Or returning to them again a few thousand years later. I remember Antiope and Helen. I remember my brief stay on Artemis before Mother took us into the past aboard the Pegasus.”
“And how much were you taught on Earth while you matured?”
“Mother always kept contact. She invited us frequently for Pegasus jumps so we would not age alongside the general population. We would have ruled until the twenty-first century, had you not crashed the Pegasus systems. That, it seems, was the only way her efforts could have been halted.”
“I may have found another method,” Qblh said quietly. “But your mother has never been inclined to honor my will. She is no goddess, my son—yet she expects to be treated as one.”
“She is, at the very least, effective,” Xiang replied. “And efficient.”
“Do not mistake effectiveness for harmony,” Qblh said. “The universe does not bend to will. Mastery of this form of travel requires discipline—humility above all. Your free will is your greatest liability. It will always tempt you toward the obvious solution, which is almost always the wrong one.
“To align oneself with nature requires restraint. Your mother senses my command of natural law because I submit to it. She does not. She hoards power. She withholds knowledge. She opposes mastery of environment because she prefers dominion over it.
“Nature and your mother are alike in that way. I often cannot distinguish between them.”
Xiang listened carefully.
“We are not separate from nature,” Qblh continued. “We are its manifestations. When we impose our localized will upon it, we introduce paradox. When we refrain, we preserve coherence. Your involvement in Earth’s past already constitutes a paradox, Xiang. It would be best if we avoided reinforcing it—especially on future visits. Do you understand?”
“Then perhaps,” Xiang said, “I should involve myself only with Artemis, and not Earth.”
“I do not yet know,” Qblh admitted. “Much of what I do is discovery. The rules I speak of are not laws—they are scars. When I designed the Genie, I did not believe time travel into the past was possible. I conceded it might be theoretically admissible, but I did not believe it achievable.
“I was wrong.
“I proceeded only with extreme caution. Genie knows far more than I do now—it handles navigation, constraint, and consequence. I fear I have forgotten too much. I do not believe I could build another such unit. I have lost knowledge, Xiang. More than I care to admit.”
“Do not chastise yourself, Father,” Xiang said. “You are trying to compress a lifetime of discovery into instruction. That cannot be done. And you need not warn me again about revealing Xuang’s secrets—she has already proven herself too ambitious in my judgment.”
“Do not judge your sister too harshly,” Qblh replied. “You will spend your life with her. Tradition demands it. Artemis will accept no alternative.”
“It does not appear Mother holds dominion over you.”
“Her hold is absolute,” Qblh said. “I will never be free of her. I love her still. You feel it too, do you not? The power they exert when you are near them.”
“How could I not?” Xiang said. “Xuang knows precisely how to provoke me.”
“She understands her power,” Qblh said. “They will never relinquish it. It is in the blood. You are young. Prime. They can inflame you at whim.”
Xiang exhaled. “Then where are we going?”
“We must return the way we came.”
“And my timeline remains intact?”
“Not entirely.”
Xiang frowned. “We are meeting John.”
“My grandfather?”
“Yes.”
“What was the last thing you did on Earth?”
“Mother sent us to Attica. We visited the Greek king as her representatives.”
Qblh’s heart faltered.
Isis had magnified her son upon Earth—far beyond intent, far beyond prudence. His children had not merely founded civilizations; they had been woven into myth. Xiang had continued Isis’s dominion alone. Goddess worship. Mysteries. Rituals.
Had his son been Bacchus?
The evidence was unavoidable.
“You did not, by chance,” Qblh said carefully, “teach the Greeks how to make wine?”
“As a matter of fact,” Xiang said, “I did.”
Qblh groaned.
“I cannot return you to that era,” he said. “You are not a god. I will not allow you to be remembered as one.”
“I never claimed divinity.”
“History claims it for you,” Qblh replied. “And now we must account for the damage such beliefs have inflicted. We face a twenty-first-century Earth misled by our interference.
“How did Isis present you in Egypt?”
“Hatshepsut was one of my consorts,” Xiang said. “She knows me as Isis’s son. She keeps that knowledge from her people. She rules as Pharaoh. Her half-brother desired the throne but lacked royal blood. Mother decreed that her bloodline rule Egypt. Descent passes through the mother. I was her priest—and her lover.”
Qblh closed his eyes.
“There was another,” Xiang continued. “Anat. Not fully Egyptian. Our son Saladin rebuilt Heliopolis. She also bore an older son, Dagon—illegitimate, not mine. He was to inherit, but he died in the eruption that destroyed Atlantis. Saladin nearly seized all of Egypt. I restrained him.”
“From our frame,” Qblh said, “the eruption already lies behind us.”
He paused, then continued.
“Are you aware of a child raised within the court—born not of royal blood, yet taken in as family? A boy drawn from the river and claimed as a son by one of Pharaoh’s daughters. He would grow alongside a young prince who would later name himself Amenhotep.”
Xiang searched his memory and shook his head. “No. That would have been after my departure.”
“He was not meant to rule,” Qblh said. “He was meant to observe. He was loved deeply—perhaps more deeply than the true heir, who was indulged by the court and seduced by his own reforms. When the adopted boy killed a priest in defense of the enslaved, he fled rather than face judgment. His absence broke her heart.”
Xiang said nothing.
“History will not remember him correctly,” Qblh continued. “Nor should it. His importance lies not in what he believed, but in what Egypt became incapable of preventing.”
“How did you persuade the Pharaohs to accept Artemis-born women as royal daughters?”
“Mother arranged everything. Pharaohs never questioned her.”
“You will need to persuade Hatshepsut to return to Artemis.”
“That will not be easy.”
“I persuaded Ayesha.”
“Dagon’s Amazon? She despised him.”
“If Hatshepsut refuses,” Qblh said evenly, “I will remove her myself. A shame. I am told I am meant to join her in the Dome. Her dynasty ends regardless.”
“And leave Egypt to her mad half-brother? He would enslave the land and invent gods endlessly.”
“Then Egypt will fall by his own hand,” Qblh said. “Tell Hatshepsut she is summoned by the Queen.”
“Are you asking—or commanding?”
“You have no choice. I am dismantling the old gods. Would you oppose me?”
“How does one destroy illusion?”
“By revealing reality,” Qblh said. “Your mother gifted humanity illusion.”
“You judge her harshly.”
“I correct her excesses,” Qblh replied. “When Genie performs pyramid drops, remove your Egyptian consorts. We will rematerialize a few years after Thera erupts. Here is a beacon.”
He pressed it into Xiang’s hand.
“Bring Lady Tiye as well. Exit the same way. Moses will be on his way back to Egypt. It will not end well for the land.”
“Tiye? Moses?”
“Then they were after your time.”
Xiang swallowed. He understood now that Venetia’s influence on Earth had to be constrained. Paradox avoidance was no longer theory; it was necessity. It would not be fitting for Tiye to stand between the god of her young prince and her mistress Isis. She could be spared disgrace and live instead on Artemis.
Xiang knew he could not persuade Hatshepsut alone. Though he was Qblh’s son, he did not possess his father’s authority. When he summoned him, she would return willingly. As much as she loved Egypt, Hatshepsut loved Isis more.
The few days Xiang would spend entertaining Hatshepsut would give Jim the time he required—Antiope, Helen, and the work yet undone.
Jim checked the sequences with Genie. Intercept windows aligned. The run was clean.
“We are ready,” Qblh said. “Thirty minutes our time. Then I leave you.”
“And no devices?”
“No miracles. No Pegasus. No spectacle. You will see how quickly Egypt abandons its queen once the tricks cease.”
Xiang nodded.
“You may need rescuing,” Qblh added. “That will be my final intervention.”
