They were two nomads who had found each other, two solitary serpents who twisted and coiled together until it was unclear where one ended and the other began. There, at the centre of the known world, two beleaguered souls converged and their burden of solitude was lifted.
Soon Thoth sank near the horizon and the stars began to disappear from the sky. Kiya buried her head into the space under Tahar’s arm, vowing never to forget how beautifully they had shone.
Ra came in a burst of light, despite how much Kiya wished him away. A memory of that morning of the grain raid rippled through her body, and she half expected to find a viper at her feet. An epiphany struck.
‘Tahar, whenever you save my life a serpent precedes you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The day of the raid, a viper appeared on my foot before you captured me.’
‘But I captured you. I did not save your life.’ Tahar tilted onto his side and gazed at her quizzically.
‘You did save my life,’ Kiya said. ‘Or did you not notice the arrows that flew past me just before you lifted me onto Meemoo?’
‘Ah, the arrows...I did see those.’
‘I was a fool to resist you.’
‘Indeed you were. But thanks to my formidable strength, you were not able to.’ Tahar flashed Kiya a self-assured grin.
‘I believe you saved me even before that moment,’ said Kiya.
‘How so?’
‘You waved your headdress upon the bluff that day, just before the Sun God rose.’
Tahar lifted a brow. ‘How did you know that was me?’
‘I guessed,’ said Kiya, smiling. ‘Your warning caused a stir amongst the workers. It scared the viper that had coiled around my ankle.’
Tahar reached his arm down her body and circled her ankle with his hand. ‘This ankle?’ He dived beneath the headdress and kissed it.
‘You saved me a second time after I was bitten by the asp,’ Kiya said, enjoying the softness of his lips upon her skin.
‘I will own to that without protest,’ was Tahar’s muffled response. ‘And now I am obliged to kiss your inner thigh.’
He moved his lips upon her skin softly, almost imperceptibly, causing her whole body to shiver.
‘The third serpent appeared only days ago,’ she pronounced.
‘It did?’ asked Tahar, emerging from under the headdress.
‘Aye. It was a golden cobra, rising from the base of King Khufu’s crown on the day of my wedding. Khufu was the third serpent.’
‘Khufu himself was the serpent?’
‘And you saved me from him.’
Tahar shook his head. ‘But how did I save you, dear woman, if I am the reason the King condemned you to death?’
‘You saved me because if you had not appeared I would have wed the King and my life would have ended.’
Tahar lay back and stared at the sky. ‘You would have become a great queen. I dare say your life would have begun.’
‘A life of lies and manipulations—a prison of pomp and power. No life worth living.’
Tahar pulled her atop him and placed a dozen soft kisses on each of her fingertips. ‘I do not believe in prophesies, but I will admit that in this case your mother may have been right. Three serpents did try to take your life. And the third almost succeeded.’
‘Almost,’ said Kiya triumphantly, ‘but not quite.’ She touched her lips to his.
The Sun God moved higher in the sky. They kissed until his rays poured over them and tiny beads of sweat began to form upon their skin.
‘We must be on our way soon,’ Kiya said. ‘If Imhoter made it through the night he will be arriving presently.’
Kiya cringed. If he had made it.
She stood and gazed out at the workers’ village but could not discern any movement in the harbour or adjacent river. If Imhoter was coming for them he was moving in the shadows, invisible even from above. She fixed her gaze southward, where small rivulets of smoke twisted upwards from Memphis and the palace’s strong walls glowed white in the morning light. Neither victor nor vanquished could be seen; the city looked almost serene.
Tahar lay upon his back, gazing up at Kiya’s naked body, now drenched in Ra’s light. ‘If I am to pass into the next world on this day, let this be the last thing I remember.’
Kiya reached out and offered her hand. Today they would discover if Imhoter had survived, and if they would survive, too. And yet Kiya was content. She looked into Tahar’s eyes. It had all been worth it.
But they could not delay any longer: they needed to descend. Kiya placed her silk dress over her head while Tahar fashioned his headdress into a taut loincloth around his middle.
‘You are so beautiful in that dress,’ said Tahar. ‘I have never seen anyone more beautiful.’
Kiya felt a tear of gratitude find its path down her cheek. ‘You are kind. You have always been so kind to me,’ she said.
It was cool and dark inside the tomb once more. To Kiya, the air felt thicker than it had yesterday, the enclosed space more suffocating.
As they began their downward trek her mind raced. What if Imhoter had been taken? What if the Libu and Nubian raiders—or the King himself—had deemed Imhoter too great a threat to allow the holy man to live? Imhoter’s demise would surely spell doom for Kiya and Tahar, though as they descended the tunnel, Kiya could only think of Imhoter himself, whom she had grown to love like a father. She could not bear the thought of opening the door of the Pyramid and not seeing his kind, wrinkled face, his mysterious eyes staring back at her.
‘It was dark like this where I was imprisoned,’ Kiya said absently, trying to calm her worried mind. ‘I could not discern whether it was day or night.’
‘You were taken to the prison after we parted?’ asked Tahar.
‘Nay, I was kept in the basement of the Royal Harem—in a storage room guarded by a barred metal door.’
‘But how did you escape?’
‘Iset, one of the King’s concubines, visited me there. At Imhoter’s behest, she delivered me a heel of bread.’ Kiya thought of the poisoned wine, but did not mention it. ‘The bread contained a metal rod. Did Imhoter not tell you of this ploy while you were locked away together?’
‘He said only that he held hope for your arrival,’ said Tahar.
‘The holy man reveals little,’ said Kiya, walking slowly downwards. ‘He surrounds himself in mystery.’
‘That is true. But how did you manage to break out of the room with only a small metal rod?’ asked Tahar.
‘There is a stream that runs through the cell. It is guarded by small metal bars. I used the rod to bend the bars enough to squeeze through them. I followed the stream until I was released into the King’s Shallows.’
‘And the Shallows led to the River?’
‘Aye, though I had to squeeze through another barrier before I reached it.’
‘How did you squeeze?’
‘What do you mean, how did I squeeze?’ Kiya asked, confused.
‘Would you say it was...like a serpent?’
‘I suppose...’ said Kiya.
They walked on in silence for several moments. Her mother’s words filtered into her mind. Beware the three serpents. Each will try to take your life. The third will succeed, unless you become like. That was all she had said. It had never occurred to Kiya that that had been all she had meant to say. Like what? Kiya had always wondered, but now her mother’s last message rang perfectly clear.
Like a serpent.
A serpent was what she had needed to become, and she had. She had squeezed and swum and slunk her way out of the Shallows. Her silken dress shimmering like a second skin, she had slithered onto the docks and stolen her way to the slaves’ quarters where Tahar and Imhoter had waited, holding out hope that she could do it, that she could make it.
‘That is it. That is the meaning of the prophesy,’ she said, and her words echoed in the tunnel like prayers.
‘Perhaps some illusions are not false.’
‘It was not just an illusion,’ said Kiya. ‘I did not tell you this, but my mother spoke that prophesy to me the day she died. I was quite young. I scarcely remembered it until the day of the raid.’
Tahar was quiet. After several moments he spoke again. ‘It is hard to lose a parent in one’s youth. I lost my father as a boy.’
‘You did? How?’
‘You must tell me first how you lost your mother,’ Tahar said lightly. ‘Terms of trade.’
Tahar’s body was following so closely behind hers that she could feel its warmth. She knew that if she were to stumble upon any stone he would be there to catch her.
‘The story may seem to you fantastical,’ Kiya warned.
‘I will never doubt you again,’ said Tahar.
Kiya described her mother’s place in the late King’s harem. She explained her mother’s special magic, her ability to tell tales, and the love she’d given to Kiya so grandly and fiercely. Kiya recounted the day of the raid on the harem and how she had found herself, at the age of seven, alone and hungry on the streets of Memphis.
‘Then you are the daughter of a king,’ said Tahar in wonder. ‘You are noble.’
‘It was my mother who was truly noble, for she refused to be taken alive,’ Kiya said proudly, though she knew the statement was not entirely true. In a sense her mother had begun to kill herself long before the raiders had invaded the harem. It had not been milk of goat that had filled the vials from which her mother had drunk so greedily.
What pain had Kiya’s mother suffered that she should fall under the spell of the dangerous tonic? What terrible trauma had she endured that she would leave her beloved daughter alone in the world, without putting up so much as a fight? It was a mystery that Kiya feared she would never solve. Besides, she liked this version of her mother—the noble concubine.
‘Now tell me of you, Tahar. What of your homeland? Terms of trade.’
As they spiralled ever downward Tahar filled the empty tunnel with his words. He spoke of a land beyond Kiya’s imagination—a place of endless plains rich with grasses that nourished goats, sheep and cattle, and strong, passionate people who travelled with their herds. He described a sky so thick with clouds that they blocked Ra’s rays, where freezing rain floated down from the sky and blanketed the land in an ashen white cloak.
Tahar described his intrepid father and his cautious mother, and the terrible storm that had left him an orphan at the edge of the desert. He told her of the kindness of the Meshwesh Libu, and the wonder he had felt as he’d discovered the desert for himself.
‘The people who live in a place often do not see it,’ explained Tahar. ‘It is sometimes only the foreigner who can truly grasp its beauty.’
Kiya thought of the endless mounds of amber sand they had traversed. The Big Sandy was desolate and deadly, but to Kiya’s eyes it had also been beautiful—an ocean of gentle, undulating waves frozen in time. Tahar was right. If the Big Sandy had seemed a marvel, how might the steppes of Tahar’s homeland seem?
‘I should like to discover your homeland for myself,’ said Kiya.
‘I should like to rediscover it with you.’
They had arrived at the end of the tunnel. They passed through the hidden entrance and resettled the secret stone. Together, they kicked their feet in the dust of the flat staging area and studied a splinter of sunlight that had entered via a crack at the entrance. What lay beyond that crack was their salvation...or perhaps their death.
‘Whether in this life or the next,’ said Tahar, ‘let us make the journey together.’
He pulled Kiya into his arms and gave her a long, deep kiss. Then he pushed back the stone.