Drinker Of Blood lm-5 Page 9

  "Kysen, listen to me. Breathe deeply."

  Someone was shaking him and splashing water in his face, and people were making a great noise all around him. For long moments his thoughts seemed like sleepy crocodiles paddling through muddy water in the heat of the day.

  Then he remembered. "The lion!"

  His eyes popped open as he tried to rise. His arms flew up to protect his face. Meren grabbed his jaw and made Kysen look at him.

  "The lion is dead, Ky."

  Chest heaving, his face damp more from a cold sweat than from the water his father had splashed on him, Kysen nodded. Meren's hand left his face. Kysen managed a smile to reassure his father, whose own features were graver than an embalmer priest's.

  Yamen pushed between Djoser and Tharwas to beam at him. "Well done. We killed the beast together."

  Kysen sat with his forearms on his knees and closed his eyes against the morning sun. When he opened them, he was surrounded by hunters. A few wore anxious expressions. Most grinned at him. Yamen straightened and let out a shout that was taken up by the men waiting with the horses. Kysen felt a chill run through him, a chill of pleasure. These men were saluting him. With a jolt he realized that they no longer thought of him as Meren's low-born adopted son. When had that happened, and why hadn't he noticed until now?

  Yamen was still grinning at him. "Behold, Kysen."

  The hunters parted to reveal the carcass of a young male lion. He could see his arrow protruding from the animal's chest. A javelin was sunk deep in its back. Meren offered his hand. Kysen grasped it and rose, and together they walked over to the body. Yamen joined them and pointed at several gashes in the lion's fur. They were black with old blood. A part of the animal's muzzle had been ripped away, exposing the bone.

  Yamen grasped the blood-flecked mane. "He must have lost a battle with another male."

  "Such injuries would drive him mad with pain," Meren said. "I don't think he would have charged otherwise."

  Kysen tried not to think of those gaping jaws and curved, yellow teeth.

  Yamen slapped him on the back. "You don't look well. You should sit down. He landed on you hard enough to flatten you like a papyrus sheet."

  Kysen sat on a rock. Meren brought an earthenware canteen and made him drink. About them the hunters busied themselves checking reins and examining horses for injuries. Glad not to be the object of everyone's attention, Kysen watched Yamen direct several men in binding the carcass for transport back to Memphis. Then he heard Meren whisper.

  "I should kill him at once."

  Startled, Kysen glanced up at the lean, elegant figure of his father. "Why?"

  Meren's gaze-hard as pyramid stone and cold as obsidian-was fixed on Yamen. Without taking his eyes from the officer, he handed Kysen his dagger. It was stained with the lion's blood.

  "He couldn't have known the lion would be there," Kysen said.

  Meren shot a severe look at Kysen. "You defend him?"

  "There's nothing to defend. It was chance that the lion hunted the same quarry that we did."

  "I like it not that the first time we seek out this corrupt army officer, he nearly gets you killed."

  Kysen began rubbing his dagger with sand. "If he'd wanted to kill me, he would have let the lion have me."

  There was silence while Meren continued to shred Yamen with a razorlike gaze. "There is another possibility." Yes?

  "He deliberately sought danger in order to impress us."

  At Kysen's skeptical look, Meren went on. "Think for a moment. The man is a place seeker and a purveyor of corruption, and this is the first time he has been invited to hunt in a party of great men, in a group of which I'm a part."

  "You think he wanted to catch your attention."

  Meren nodded almost imperceptibly. Then he smiled. It was a smile that had seen rivers of blood on the battlefields of the empire, a smile that lurked in dark alleys and behind sacrificial altars.

  "And if he has put himself to so much trouble, we should reward him," Meren said.

  "We should?" Kysen wiped the dagger on his kilt and sheathed it.

  Meren didn't answer. He raised his voice and called to Yamen. By the time the officer was with them, Meren's features had assumed one of the countless masks Kysen had come to recognize. A twinge of pity caught him by surprise as he watched Meren turn upon his victim that disarming and gracious smile that had been the downfall of greater men than Yamen.

  "I haven't yet thanked you for saving my son's life, Yamen."

  The officer made a low bow. "I but assisted Kysen, lord."

  "Without your javelin, I'd be dead," Kysen said.

  Meren nodded. "And without your skill with the chariot, you'd both be lion's meat." Hauling Kysen to his feet, he grasped the arms of both men, held them high, and shouted to the hunting party. "Lion killer!"

  The men gave an answering shout. "Lion killer!" The nobles matched the shout with a salute of dagger and spear.

  Meren released them and turned to the officer. "Come, Yamen, ride back with me. I would know more about the man to whom I owe so much."

  Left to himself, Kysen went over to the team of white stallions, which had been examined by the grooms and pronounced fit. Had Yamen seen the lion and aimed the chariot for it? A shiver rippled through his body. From his record, Kysen had assumed the officer to be cowardly and corrupt, but what kind of madman risked being savaged by such an animal? What ambitions demanded so perverse an impulse? Or so desperate a distraction.

  He got into the chariot and drove it over to Meren's. Yamen stood beside his father, smiling. Kysen had seen that same look of glutted satisfaction. Where? Ah, on Isis's pretty face. He'd seen her smile like that when she'd attracted the attention of yet another handsome courtier.

  Just then his father laughed at some comment Yamen made. It was an easy, musical laugh that sent warning trumpets blaring in Kysen's ears. Such ease of manner, such charm and courtliness. With that remarkable ability of his, Meren had sensed danger. The laugh, the manner, told Kysen that Yamen's fate had been decided. Deserved as that fate might be, he found himself pitying the man who had just saved his life.

  Chapter 8

  Thebes, the independent reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten

  The hawk had flown to the sun. That was the way one referred to the death of a living god. The royal family had left the isolation of pharaoh's new city and returned to Thebes for the funerary ceremonies of Amunhotep the Magnificent. Egypt grieved, not only for the old pharaoh but for herself.

  On the evening after the Magnificent was sealed in his tomb, Nefertiti sat in her personal sailing vessel and watched the black waters of the Nile flow by. Painted red, green, and gold, the boat slid across the water like hot oil on polished granite. Streams of golden light from the boat's torches marked her progress along the canal toward the quay in front of her father-in-law's mortuary temple. The hawk had flown to the sun, and one of the strongest foundation stones of Nefertiti's life had vanished.

  So much had happened in the past few years. Fulfilling his promise, Akhenaten had taken her, the family, and the entire government of Egypt to his newly built city, Horizon of the Aten. Her husband's choice of a site for his capital was in keeping with his unpredictability. Instead of selecting a place where there were green fields, a place with access to the busy cities of the delta or the all-important Nubian territory, he chose a barren, empty plain.

  Lying between Memphis and Thebes, this plain was startling in its vastness, stretching as it did from the Nile to the distant cliffs of the eastern desert. And it was drab. No starkly beautiful desert reds and creams here, just pale tans and grays, and only the sky offered any color. On the opposite bank lay fields, scattered and sparse. To Nefertiti, Horizon of the Aten was a place of emptiness.

  In the past few years Akhenaten had closed many of the old temples, especially those of Amun and his goddess wife, Mut. All work on the Theban Sun Temples had ceased, and Nefertiti feared that many of her predictions were coming to
pass. Word reached her from Memphis and other places of the suffering of the displaced and neglected.

  She had overcome her disappointment at failing to bear a son, to carry on the royal line; and now she had just learned she was to bear another child. Her daughters were growing from precocious little top-heavy creatures into slim girls. Merytaten, the oldest, already copied the manners of her mother and spoke with becoming gravity and stateliness to her royal father. She and her sisters were golden orbs lighting Nefertiti's days.

  The children had provided comfort during the long fading of Amunhotep the Magnificent. Not long ago, the old man had succumbed to a disease of the mouth and gums and to corpulence and old age. To the last, Queen Tiye remained at his side, refusing to allow him to give way to pain and desperation. He left behind a kingdom swirling in a whirlpool of dissent, and two younger sons, the children of his old age. The youngest was but an infant, and Nefertiti had taken over his care when Tiye gave way to despair upon her husband's death.

  Despair. Nefertiti frowned as she stared at the oars plied by the sailors in a rhythm coordinated by drumbeats. As well as she knew Akhenaten, she couldn't have predicted that years of argument and impotent commands by his father would fail to dissuade Amunhotep's son from his radical course. The old pharaoh had even enlisted the support of his other wives in the fight, but that only gave Akhenaten a violent distaste for the most vocal of them-poor Tadukhipa of Mitanni.

  Nefertiti was afraid that Akhenaten's resentment of his father had spilled over to contaminate Tadukhipa and the whole kingdom of Mitanni. She had warned Queen Tiye and Amunhotep, but the prejudice had already crept into Akhenaten's heart. This was an evil happening, for Mitanni had been an ally to Egypt and served as a bulwark against the encroaching Hittites. Sometimes Nefertiti suspected that if his father had hated Mitanni, Akhenaten would have loved the kingdom.

  Shortly before Amunhotep's death Nefertiti had taken over the queen's network of messengers, spies, and informants, with Akhenaten's agreement. Worn out with nursing her husband, weighed down with grief, Tiye had given Nefertiti lists of cities and agents and sent all messengers to her successor.

  "Pay attention to any word from Rib-Addi, king of Byblos, and all that comes to you regarding Aziru of Amurru," Tiye had said. She handed Nefertiti yet another list. "These are the chiefs and small kings who can't be trusted. They will prostrate themselves before pharaoh and spout all sorts of servile blandishments in order to convince Akhenaten to give them gold and troops."

  "Yes, Aunt."

  "Watch the trade routes, Nefertiti. Trade is vital, and any who interfere with it must be crushed. However, it's often a simple matter to quell unrest. Demand that the vassals near the trouble solve the problem. It's far easier for them to round up bandits than they'd have you believe."

  Thus had she inherited another royal task, one for which Akhenaten had little liking. And now Amunhotep the Magnificent was dead, and the strongest curb on her husband's bizarre nature had vanished. Tiye said that they were fortunate that Nefertiti had borne children to steady him somewhat. Nefertiti wasn't so certain.

  It was true that his attitude toward her had changed after the girls were born. Before, she had been his beautiful and amusing younger companion. When Merytaten came, he fell in love with the babe. He was already enamored of the mysteries of nature, and the force of creation became much more personal to him with the births of his own children. Akhenaten's wonder grew to include and envelope Nefertiti as well. Then his fascination with her had taken an unpredictable turn.

  Akhenaten proclaimed her the fount of life for his new religion, the royal spouse of the Son of the Sun. He'd given her a new title-Exquisite Beauty of the Sun Disk. She remembered how, more and more, he had brought her forward during royal ceremonies and state occasions. Nefertiti found that her husband listened to her as an equal rather than as an entertaining child. The change had irritated her as much as it gratified her. She was no cleverer after becoming a mother than she had been before the girls' births.

  With the growth of her influence over her husband came added risks. She'd become the focus of court intrigue. Noblemen who had barely noticed her now fawned over her as they had over Queen Tiye. Such hypocrisy was even more irritating than Akhenaten's unaccountable change of attitude. Sometimes, after days spent navigating the white-water rapids of the court, Nefertiti longed for the peace and obscurity of her childhood.

  Most of all, she longed for the comfort of Amunhotep's presence. The old pharaoh had been so kind to her. He'd encouraged her to be brave, assumed that she was as clever of heart as his wife, protected her from the more dangerous members of his lascivious and jaded court. As long as Amunhotep had been alive, she had been merely Queen Nefertiti, wife of the junior ruler. Now she was much more. She was the great royal wife, She Who Was Pure of Hands, Great King's Wife Whom He Loves, and Lady of the Two Lands, beloved of the great living sun disk.

  Being the great royal wife meant that she was no longer an apprentice. She was queen of Egypt, and the future seemed as unpredictable and dark as the river's black water. Nefertiti sighed when her sailing vessel gently bumped the quay. Her chief bodyguard, Sebek, helped her out of the boat. Half Nubian, with the height of a temple column and a face like a brooding jackal, Sebek didn't approve of this night visit to the mortuary temple on the west bank, but Nefertiti needed comfort. She was not yet twenty-one, mistress of an empire, wife of a man whose ideas and actions threatened his own kingdom.

  She needed solace. Facing the grand facade of the mortuary temple, she walked down the paved avenue toward the pylon gate that marked the entrance. Sebek was at her heels, grumbling. Chosen by Tiye, he was a mature warrior, a commander of infantry and charioteers, and looked upon Nefertiti with a fatherly concern that sometimes grew irksome.

  Nefertiti ignored Sebek's muttering and paused before the soaring images of the dead pharaoh that guarded Amunhotep's pylon gate. Carved of magic-stone, they represented pharaoh seated in majesty. They towered above her so high she could barely make out their eyes. Not that it would matter, for the statues stared ahead over her and everyone else below.

  Sebek snapped an order at the two guards who accompanied them. Despite his glowering disapproval, Nefertiti was determined to make a food offering. She hoped to entice her father-in-law's spirit with a few dessert cakes made by the chief cook of the House of Rejoicing. Then he would appear as the ba, the human-headed bird, that manifestation of the deceased's personality that traveled between the tomb and the netherworld. Now that the king was no longer plagued by disease, he could enjoy the sweets he'd loved so by taking the form of the ba bird.

  It took her a while to get past the astonished priests on duty, but at last she entered the dark cella that contained the offering table. With her box of cakes in one hand and a lamp in the other, she approached the slab of alabaster. Sebek waited at the door. Nefertiti scowled at him, and the warrior turned his back. Placing the lamp on the floor, she set the box on the altar and recited a spell. She had to get the words right. It was important in magic to repeat words of power in their exact order. She finished without a mistake and sat down on the floor before the altar to wait.

  Nefertiti wrapped her arms around her bent legs and concentrated on the low relief behind the offering table. It portrayed Amunhotep in his prime, as Nefertiti had never known him. The artist had made Amunhotep's nose too long.

  Nefertiti could smell the scent of flowers, bouquets and wreaths from the funeral. Beside the altar lay a scrap of material. She picked it up. It was from a mourning tunic, one of the blue-white linen garments made by the women of the royal household. At the funeral the women mourners had cried, thrown dust and ashes on themselves, and rent the tunics.

  The frayed linen brought back too-clear memories of the funeral. The ritual of burial had been a shock. Although preparing for the afterlife occupied a great deal of one's lifetime, Amunhotep's funeral taught Nefertiti that the utilitarian business of mortuary endowments and collectin
g funerary furniture afforded little protection from the reality of death. Seeing her father-in-law's mummy on its boat-shaped bier had frightened her. Until then she had managed to remember Amunhotep as a vital, laughing man who delighted in good food and the caress of a woman. Now he was a thing of gold and precious stones, an unbearably remote product of metal-smiths and carpenters. The face created by those strangers was the face of cold eternity.

  During the ceremonies she had kept her eyes averted from the mummy until her aunt threw herself at the foot of the coffin and screamed. Nefertiti had never before heard Tiye so much as raise her voice. Aunt was the essence of serenity, always in control. She had ruled with her husband, helped plan great temples, and tricked foreign ambassadors with aplomb.

  Nefertiti sat in the dark chamber with her arms clutching her knees and tried not to remember her aunt's screams, but the memory forced its way to her heart. Tiye's grief had been terrible to witness-the great royal wife, mighty of strength, lay shattered. Tiye's disintegration, even more than Amunhotep's death, shook Nefertiti's world and left her more frightened than she had ever been. The death of pharaoh was awful but could be endured; her aunt's grief was a nightmare.

  Drawing in a breath, Nefertiti let it out slowly and pressed her fingertips to her forehead. Her greatest worry had been that Akhenaten would interfere with the king's proper burial ritual in the name of his new god and thus deny the old king eternal life. He'd promised Tiye a traditional burial, but Akhenaten often changed decisions.

  Her fears had been for nothing. Akhenaten officiated as priest, performing the ceremony of the Opening of the Mouth so that Amunhotep could eat, drink, and speak again. Her husband even attended the banquet after the funeral without treating the family and courtiers to a harangue about the Aten. Nefertiti was anxious to leave Thebes before being in the city of Amun aroused Akhenaten's fanaticism.