The City of Refuge: Book 1 of The Memphis Cycle Read online

  He hauled the team to a halt, swearing at their uneven temper. He could not see the tracks properly from where he stood. Were they heading from the east and channeling down through the Northern Sentinels and into the city?

  He stepped down from the chariot, looped the reins around the rail, and knelt in the dust, tracing the curved line of a hoof print. Southeast, as though they had not come from the city itself.

  All thoughts of tracks fled from his mind as a deep thud was followed by a shriek from the larger of the two horses. The beast reared and snorted; the motion pulling its harness-mate off-balance with a squeal of protest. They circled, dragging the light chariot sideways through the dirt and gravel.

  Khonsu cursed and sprang to his feet, lunging, for the reins. The lead horse screamed again, wheeled and plunged down the pass leading to the valley below, its teammate running beside it. Khonsu saw them a moment later careering madly toward Akhet-Aten.

  It was too late to go after them now. He swore again, eyed the sturdiness of his sandals and the roughness of the path, and resigned himself to a long walk back. But then he hesitated, gazing at the tracks again, and then stared after his fleeing horses.

  They would be sending a search party after him once the horses arrived at the outskirts, he knew. He rejected the notion of being found trudging back along the main track. Karoya would probably enjoy returning him in doubtful state to Akhet-Aten.

  He decided that Karoya could wait. He would leave a message beside the road, rocks piled in a pre-arranged fashion to indicate that all was well, and take another way back.

  He took stock of matters. He had a three mile walk ahead of him over rough terrain. As an experienced patroller, he always kept a water skin at his belt and a good knife sheathed at his waist. He regretted the loss of his bow and arrows, but there was no help for that now. He remembered the message from Sherit, sat down beside the path, opened the message, and read it again, silently blessing whoever was responsible for hiring the messengers as he brushed at his eyes.

  He climbed to his feet and gazed down at the city for a moment. From where he stood, Akhet-Aten was clean, whole, healed of her hurts, as Akhenaten had probably envisioned her over thirty years before, already taking on the golden glow of late afternoon. The sun, as bright and blazing as its gilded image adorning the audience hall, was descending toward its setting, though Khonsu estimated that there was still a good period of daylight remaining, followed by the afterglow before nightfall.

  He smiled to himself and turned to ascend the path. Plenty of time to get him back to the city, though he had lingered far longer than he had intended, caught by the sheer beauty of the sight. He had missed patrolling in the desert, seeing the sun filtering through the haze of blown sand, watching the world turn to gold in the afternoon, gazing at the intense glitter of stars in the black midnight sky and through it all the faraway shimmer of the Nile.

  The path had grown steeper; he was climbing on all fours now, the breath coming swiftly through his parted lips, the muscles of his thighs and shoulders burning slightly with the effort. The cliff edge loomed just above his head. A short climb and he would be there.

  He caught a flash of motion to his left as he came level to the cliff top.. He whipped toward it, ready to scurry backward if necessary. The unguarded movement overset his balance and he skidded his own length back down the path.

  He could not retreat with any speed; best to go forward. He set his teeth and climbed again. As his eyes cleared the level of the cliff top he could see the sunlight feathering softly across two impeccably groomed hooves. They were close enough for him to see the short, glossy hairs of a bright chestnut coat edging the upper border of the nearer hoof.

  His eyes traveled up the pasterns, along the strong, flat line of cannon bone, up past a bronze-mounted breast-strap to an inquisitive-eyed, white-blazed face inclined toward him. Ears pricked toward him; the horse's nostrils flared and snuffed, testing his scent. A harness mate stood beside him, eyeing him with white-rimmed eyes as full and dark as plums.

  The horses stood before a light, strong chariot. And, negligently resting his forearms upon the rail, Lord Nebamun of the temple of Ptah impaled Khonsu with a glare so filled with fury that it was almost tangibly hot.

  The Second Prophet was alone; the horses were the same splendid team that had drawn his chariot at Khemnu, though this vehicle was plainer. He wore a plain, loose tunic. The Udjat amulet and a gold archer's bracer on his left wrist were his only items of jewelry. His powerful bow, with arrow knocked, was held in a light, expert grip. Both the bow and the bracer were worn and scarred.

  The wrath faded from Nebamun's eyes to be replaced with surprise and concern. The Second Prophet set the bow aside. “It is you, then, Commander!” he exclaimed. “I hadn't thought to— Are you hurt at all?”

  “Only my pride,” Khonsu admitted as he took hold of the edge of the cliff and started to hoist himself over the side.

  Nebamun stepped down from the chariot, leaned down to grip Khonsu's elbow, and hauled him to the plateau. “I saw a pair of bolting horses,” he said. “Were they yours, then?”

  “Is that why Your Grace seemed so furious?” Khonsu asked. “You must have thought I was that intruder that Paser spoke of earlier.”

  “I thought you were a tomb-robber.”

  “I see,” said Khonsu.

  “They infest Sakkara, northwest of Memphis,” Nebamun said. His eyes were snapping again. “His Majesty gives them short shrift when he catches them.”

  “As a matter of fact, Your Grace,” said Khonsu, “I was looking for tombs.”

  Surprise flared in Nebamun's eyes, but he merely lifted his eyebrows. “Were you, now?” he asked.

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Khonsu said. “I was thinking of what Paser told us, and it occurred to me that there are probably rich burials here. No one guards these tombs. I was looking for tracks, at least. I thought it might give me something to go on, but my horses bolted as though they had been stung by scorpions. So I decided to walk back along the hilltop track.”

  Nebamun's gaze traveled from Khonsu's knife to his water skin. “Armed as lightly as you are,” he said, “and expecting to encounter tomb-robbers, you nevertheless chose to go along this ridge, far from any help?”

  Khonsu nodded. “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “You have a disturbing streak of folly in you, Commander. You will oblige me by resisting it from this moment.”

  Khonsu was about to respond, but he saw that Nebamun was smiling.

  “Climb in, Commander,” said the Second Prophet. “I'll let you drive. If it is tombs you want to see, I think I can accommodate you.”

  XVI

  The damaged carvings adorning the abandoned tomb of Pharaoh Akhenaten showed the full splendor and elegance of the court at Akhet-Aten. Gracefully bowing courtiers, languidly reclining ladies, little princesses standing shyly behind their royal parents, snatches of conversation caught on the walls, and everywhere the reaching, caressing rays of the sun.

  Everywhere except the wall of an inner chamber, where the carvings depicted a frenzy of grief. A princess lay stiff and lifeless upon her bed. Pharaoh and his chief queen bent over her with their hands to their faces in extravagant gestures of sorrow while beyond them, to the right, mourners with streaming eyes raised their arms and wailed.

  “Her name was Meketaten.” Lord Nebamun said beside him. The dwindling echoes sounded the name over and over. “One of his heart's darlings.”

  Khonsu stared at the scene, puzzled by the transports of mourning, by the king doubled, incredibly and against all precedent, with the weight of sorrow.

  “She died in childbirth, and the babe with her.” Nebamun's voice rolled through the rock-hewn chamber with a sound of distant thunder. “It was a cross-birth, and she was in agony. They tried to cut the baby from her womb upon her death, but too late. Her husband was her half-brother by Queen Keya. He took his own life a week later. And so Pharaoh and his two chief queens lost daught
er, son and first grandchild within two weeks. This part of the tomb was completed during the seventy days of embalming, and she was laid to rest here, with this portion sealed off.”

  “I am sorry,” Khonsu said. Who could not feel the terrible grief depicted on the wall? And how could he, who had come so close to it, himself, pretend not to understand it? He surreptitiously touched the message, held snug in the breast of his tunic.

  Nebamun was gazing thoughtfully at the dead princess lying still and quiet on her bed. “They were too inbred to beget and bear children,” he said. “That is what happened with Tutankhaten and his half-sister wife...”

  Khonsu looked around at the depictions of the family. “I don't understand any of this,” he said.

  “I suppose it is hard,” Nebamun said. “To find yourself gazing unexpectedly into the heart of one you had always thought of as an accursed heretic and find that it is no different from your own would give anyone pause. We're all no different under our skins, Commander, though few of us are willing to admit it. It is much easier to hate a shadow than to see the man who cast that shadow and acknowledge him as a brother.”

  “Your Grace is right,” Khonsu said, looking around the tomb. The grief still seemed to shiver in the air. He turned away from it. “I'm amazed that Your Grace can find your way about these tombs,” he said.

  “What's there to amaze you?” asked Nebamun. He was sitting on the edge of the empty red granite sarcophagus that had once housed Akhenaten's coffins. He was gazing thoughtfully at a depiction of the king cuddling a child on his lap. “Mersu drew a map for me, and he's an excellent draftsman.”

  Khonsu followed his gaze. The king was seated on his throne, crowned with the blue war-crown. His thin, nervous-looking face was bent toward the upturned face of the boy, who was stretching a hand up to touch his cheek. The king's long hand was curved to support the boy's head in the traditional gesture of an adult holding a child. For a moment Khonsu had the impression that Pharaoh was about to drop a kiss on the boy's forehead.

  The scene was a touching one, for all that the figures were marred by the distortion introduced by the king himself, if Mersu was correct. Khonsu looked from the king's caricatured face to Nebamun's profile, remembering Mersu's quick charcoal sketch and his own surprised comment that the drawing could be Nebamun.

  And suddenly he could picture Nebamun holding a wriggling child on his lap and laughing down at it with the sure humor of an experienced father.

  But who was the child? Khonsu read the name. A semicircular wickerwork basket, the sign for the sound “Neb', followed by a reed, a loaf of bread, and the waving lines depicting fluid: “Aten', with the disc of the sun following the signs as a final determinative: Neb-Aten. “Aten is lord'.

  Khonsu formed the name under his breath, his lips moving silently. “Was that one of his sons?” he asked.

  Lord Nebamun eyed the hieroglyphs. “No,” he said. “That was his nephew, the son of his sister, Merit'taui, and Prince Nakht, his cousin, who was vizier.”

  Neb-Aten. The name struck a chord of memory. Hadn't Mersu spoken of him?

  “I remember now,” Khonsu said. “The king must have loved him to have shown him so. What became of him?”

  Lord Nebamun pushed himself from the edge of the sarcophagus and looked around the dim, wrecked chamber with an odd smile as he brushed his hands off against the skirt of his tunic. “Neb-Aten?” he repeated. “He's long dead, buried somewhere among these cliffs.” The thought seemed to amuse him. He was smiling as he left the burial chamber and emerged into the comparative brightness of the antechamber.

  Khonsu looked around once more. The walls teemed with activity: ambassadors appearing before the king and his queen, state processions. But the movements seemed languid, the gestures soft and somehow weary.

  Khonsu closed his eyes. “I still don't understand any of this,” he said. “It looks evil. There are no gods, no texts, nothing as I know things. Only this Aten disk. It looks like a spider to me.”

  Nebamun was idly tracing the curving line of a seated tot's back with one fingertip. “Why should that upset you, Commander?” he asked. “The fact that someone is mistaken doesn't make him evil.”

  “But he's wrong here!”

  Nebamun eyed the carvings with slightly raised eyebrows. “Akhenaten was not a theologian,” he said at last. “That's what my reverend father-in-law, who was his brother, tells me. He was one who was meant to be a father of many children, but without tremendous power. A man who could contemplate the beauty of nature and let it move him. An inarticulate man, as far as expressing what he felt. Though he did write the magnificent Hymn to the Aten.”

  “I have never heard it, Your Grace!” Khonsu protested. “I don't think I want to!”

  Nebamun's smile grew mischievous. “Tut, tut, Commander,” he said. “There's nothing twisted or frightful in it. Listen:

  “How splendidly you rise on high,

  O living Aten, creator of all!

  Dawning in the east,

  Your splendor fills all the lands!

  You are beautiful, great, radiant,

  Over all the lands.

  Your rays enfold all your creatures.

  Though you are distant, you touch the earth

  The object of our gaze, your strides are Yet unseen.

  O sole god, beside whom there is no other,

  How manifold are your deeds,

  Though hidden from our sight!

  Through you were all things made,

  All folk, flock and herds;

  All who walk upon the earth,

  All that soar upon their outspread wings,

  The far, fair lands so strange to us,

  And the beauteous black land of Egypt.

  You set every man each in his own place,

  Supplying his needs from your abundance;

  There is nourishment for all,

  And each man's days are numbered in your Heart.

  Man's tongues differ in their speech

  And our characters likewise;

  Our skins are distinct, each in its own way,

  For you distinguished the tribes of the Peoples...

  Mighty over all, you yet are in my heart.”

  “There's nothing to upset anyone in that, and it is what he truly believed, foolish or not. The disk of the sun embodying the life-giving power of the Creator. But he couldn't express it properly, and no one else could understand but his queen. And now he's gone down into dust and his name is become a hissing in the dark, a word for evil.” Nebamun paused to look at the carving of the king. “It would have broken his heart if he had known,” he said.

  “Then he wasn't evil,” Khonsu said, watching as Nebamun moved past him and into the light at the entrance to the tomb, visible as a square of almost unbearable brightness.

  “Look at his buildings, Commander,” he said. The light had all but swallowed him; he was only a blur, and his voice, quiet and calm, seemed to be the voice of the light. “In all the monuments of his reign, nowhere will you see Akhenaten shown bashing in a foe's skull. A small thing, perhaps, but it's something to keep in mind. Akhenaten led campaigns into Kush. Three, in fact. And while he wasn't Thutmose the Great, he performed creditably. But he had better things to record than bashing skulls. You have seen his tomb, Commander. And you have seen his city. Were they the work of an evil man?”

  Khonsu did not answer. He made his way toward the tomb entrance, but he paused to gaze at the children again before following Nebamun into the softening light of late afternoon. “What happened to them?” he asked.

  Nebamun looked back at the tomb entrance with a smile. “Meketaten died,” he said. “She you saw depicted here. Her three youngest full sisters were struck down by the plague that had ravaged Mitanni. And then his mother the queen Tiy died as well. He lived three years beyond their deaths, and he was buried here.”

  “This tomb's empty: where is he now?”

  “He's buried somewhere in Thebes,” Neba
mun answered. “Tutankhaten commanded that the tomb be opened and the bodies moved. And so they were.”

  “And Neb-Aten?”

  Lord Nebamun's odd smile was back. “He survived his uncle by some six years,” he said. “He died within three weeks of his father. It is said that he died of a broken heart.”

  There was nothing more to say. Khonsu looked back at the tomb. “Shouldn't we close it up?” he asked.

  Lord Nebamun looked up from untying the horses' hobbles. “Why?” he asked. “All that had any value was moved. There's nothing there now but shadows and memories that mean nothing to most people who come.”

  XVII

  The city lay quiet beneath Khonsu's gaze; faint glow of light here and there spoke of someone still wakeful. The horses stamped and pulled at their bits, tasting the increased force of the western breeze. The moon, nearly full, bathed the landscape with silver. A long bank of clouds rolled slowly eastward; fitful flashes of light sparked along its underside.

  “You say he headed north,” Seti repeated.

  “Yes,” said Khonsu. He had been waiting afoot by the ruined northern gateway of the city as arranged, watching the slow approach of the line of clouds, when the horse-thief had passed him. “He was cloaked and hooded, driving two of my horses, harnessed to a war chariot.”

  He fell silent, remembering how the driver had passed through the gate, reined in and paused for a long moment, the hand upon the reins flexing slowly as though the driver were weighing matters in his mind. Had he seen Khonsu? The man had shaken the reins after another pause and vanished among the cliffs and valleys forming the northern barrier of the city. Seti had arrived shortly after.

  Seti frowned toward the hills. “We can follow him. You have patrolled near here. How's the terrain?”

  “Riddled with paths,” said Khonsu. “Some are too narrow to accommodate a chariot and a team of horses.”

  Seti gathered the reins and turned the horses. “We'll follow this road to where it meets one of those pathways,” he said, turning the horses. “We'll see what we find.”