Servant of the Gods by Valerie Douglas

day.
    If she’d been here in his hands…his rage was savage as he spent it on the body of the slave bound before him.
    A voice from the darkness spoke, a sound like gravel grinding against itself. “What has angered you, my master?”
    The figure that stepped out of the darkness would have caused any common man to flee in horror and terror but not Kamenwati.
    In form the thing vaguely resembled a man slightly taller and broader than himself, with two arms and two legs. All resemblance to human form ended there. Hairless, its skin resembled blackened coals in a hearth, crackled, fissured and dusted with ash. A dull red glow pulsed between the cracks. Its eyes were narrow, red in color, threaded with gold.
    Still and all, it moved surprisingly gracefully, appearing to flow out of the darkness.
    “Paniwi is pregnant. There will be a true heir to the King, after all these years,” Kamenwati said, his tone bitter.
    All of his plans come to naught.
    He’d waited and waited for Narmer to name him heir. At first, it had been nearly enough to be named Grand Vizier, to be the power behind Narmer’s throne. Almost. Nearly. For a time. Then one day it hadn’t been. He’d taken care to make certain the King’s new consort didn’t quicken, it was a simply matter of lacing her food with certain herbs with the unwilling aid of one of her maidservants.
    Paniwi, it seemed, had stopped eating with the other women.
    She was far too intelligent for her own good.
    Childbirth, however, was not the easiest of things. Many a woman lost both her life and the child to it.
    He couldn’t risk allowing her to come to term. It was too chancy, too much of a gamble. Narmer would be certain to give Paniwi the best of care.
    If the child lived…
    One more life would stand between him and the crown. As much as he loved games of chance, this he wouldn’t risk. Not when he could be King and rule over all of Egypt. He’d waited, bided his time for far too long, for what should have been rightfully his…had the Gods willed it. None had. None but one.
    “What will you do now?” the creature asked.
    Kamenwati ignored it.
    Few folk knew he was High Priest of the Great God Set – the greatest God, the God who had killed Osiris and scattered the parts of him the length of the Nile, had even separated Osiris from his manhood. Not even his cousin the King knew of Kamenwati’s devotion to Set. Few would’ve approved his worship of that particular God, the god of evil, chaos, and war.
    He stepped to the altar, offered his sacrifices – a dead slave’s heart, another’s eyes. The God’s amorphous gaze looked down on him, his expression fierce and cruel.
    “Perhaps, my master,” the creature behind him said, softly, “great one, High Priest of Set, if we joined forces more truly…”
    Kamenwati looked at it, finally.
    Djinn.
    They were creatures of stories and legend, created by the Gods to be like man and given free will as man was. But where man had been born of earth and sky, the Djinn were creatures of magic formed from smokeless fire. There were many kinds of Djinn. The ghul, who haunted the places of the dead and hunted both the living and the improperly buried dead; the sila, the shape-shifters, appearing as smoke or living flame; the ifrit who could shift shape and did often appear as a hyena to lead men astray; and the powerful shape-shifting Marid, who appeared as beautiful men.
    Evil Djinn hunted men in some way, shape, or form. Most weren’t as bright as men but were far stronger and quicker, frequently resorting to trickery and guile to lure men to their doom and women to their mercy. There were no female Djinn, only human women to bear the race of the Djinn in their bellies.
    Although the Djinn possessed free will, one could – through wit and will – enslave one. It had taken a great deal of time, preparation and worship at the God’s altar before Kamenwati had even attempted to call one.
    Some could also possess a man…if his