THE GATES OFDARKNESS

HE AWOKE ON A PALLET OF SOFT DOWN. THE brightness of sun on whitewashed walls stabbed like knives in his head. Squinting, Semerket saw a room that was very neat, very orderly, except that there seemed to be two of everything—from his newly washed kilt and mantle, hanging from pegs in the wall, to the jug of water on the tiles beside him. It was a moment before he realized he was seeing double.

The sound of cheerful humming floated to him. A young woman knelt before a chest, not knowing he was awake. Semerket studied her as she withdrew a linen towel. If he concentrated very hard, he discovered, he could force his eyes to focus. The woman’s long black hair had a blue sheen, almost as blue as the strands of beads in her ears, glimmering like the wings of beetles.

“I know you,” he said aloud, surprised.

She looked over at him, smiling. “I am Keeya, and, yes, you know me, my lord. I serve your brother. He’ll be relieved to know you’re awake.”

He was in his brother’s house across the river in Eastern Thebes. “How long have I been here?”

“Three days.”

“Three—?”

“Lay your head down, my lord,” Keeya told him firmly. “The physician says you are not to move, not until the iris in your left eye is equal in size to the one in your right—though your eyes are so black, I can’t see how he tells the difference.”

“How did I get here?”

“Medjay Qar brought you. He says they found you high in the mountains of the Great Place, the morning after the terrible rains. A young prince stood beside you, he said, and called them over. When they reached you, the prince was gone. You were so still, he said, they thought you were dead. They don’t know how you managed to survive the terrible flood.”

Semerket brought his hand to his forehead and felt a bandage. “Where is Nenry?”

Keeya dropped her eyes sadly. “Alas, my lord, he is at the House of Purification. We are in mourning in this house.”

He sat up then, despite the girl’s admonitions. “My brother is dead?”

She put a finger to her lips. “No, my lord. Please lie back down or the physician will be very angry with you. Your lord brother has accompanied his wife’s body to the embalmers.”

“His wife?” Semerket wrinkled his brow, and pain shot down his face from his wound.

Keeya moistened the linen rag and brought it to his face. “An accident in the cellar,” the girl said, and there was an odd spark of satisfied reminiscence in her eye. Idly she brought a hand to her ear, lost in thought. Then she shook her head slightly, and her blue earrings sparkled in the light. “A knife,” Keeya said, her eyes hooded. “It was very sad.”

He sat up again to question the girl further, but the pain in his head was so great he could only wince and lie back on the pallet.

“Do you see why the physician says to remain quiet?” Keeya asked archly, drawing the blanket over him again. “And he is a very great physician—from the palace!—so you must do as he says. Really, you would not wish to go outside into Thebes today. It’s not a happy place.” She poured him a bowlful of water and held it to his lips.

“What do you mean?” he asked after he had swallowed. “What has happened?”

“Why, soldiers are everywhere! There have been so many arrests, they say, that the forecourt in Amun’s Great Temple has been turned into a prison just to accommodate them.”

The thing he had been unable to remember rose suddenly in his mind to smite him. The conspiracy!

“Pharaoh!” he said. “What has happened to him? Tell me!”

“Ah, my lord, it’s very tragic. Who would choose to live in such times? The stories they tell are unbelievable.”

“Just tell me, Keeya!”

“From what your brother says, His Majesty’s wives surrounded him in the harem. Queen Tiya took a dagger and…”

The pounding in Semerket’s skull overwhelmed him, and the sudden roar in his ears drowned out the serving girl’s words. He slipped again into unconsciousness.

 

WHEN SEMERKET NEXT WOKE, it was afternoon. His brother sat cross-legged on the floor next to him, dressed in the dark gray robes of mourning. Nenry seemed anything but mournful, for he was conversing in low but energetic tones with two scribes who wrote quickly as he spoke. When Nenry saw that his brother was awake, he dismissed the scribes with a gesture. They backed out of the room, bowing as they left. “Welcome back, Semerket,” he said.

“Who is Pharaoh now?” his brother asked.

The question seemed an odd one to Nenry, and he blinked. “Why, Ramses III, of course.”

Semerket gave a start. Had he dreamed the conversation with Keeya? “But your serving girl said… at least, I think she said…”

“He was wounded, Ketty. But he is still alive—and asking for you, by the way.” Nenry could not resist a smug grin.

“Me?”

“You’re a hero! The blackest conspiracy in the history of Egypt was thwarted because of you.”

Semerket dismissed his brother’s words. “Tiya and Pentwere…?”

“In custody—though Pentwere is trying to convince everyone that the conspiracy was all his mother’s idea. It won’t save him, though. Ramses is like a lion in his wrath.”

“And the rest of them… Paser… Pawero? Iroy?”

“All in the Djamet prison awaiting their trial—along with almost everyone whose name was on that list you found, together with their households. All yesterday and today, soldiers have been raiding their estates and taking their families and servants into custody. Over a thousand men and women, I’m told, all locked into Amun’s temple.”

The image of Naia rose in Semerket’s mind. She would be among the thousand, and probably terrified. “Nenry, you have to help me.” Semerket struggled to sit, though his head still pounded and again his vision became blurred. “I have to get Naia away from there, somehow—”

“Lie down, Ketty. Though I can’t have her released, I’ve seen that she and her child have their own cell, and that the temple cooks should prepare her meals. She’ll eat as well as the priests—which is to say better than Pharaoh.”

With a relieved sigh, Semerket lay back down. Then he turned alarmed eyes once again on his brother. “How is it you can give such orders? Are you trying to protect me—?” He stopped speaking when he saw the odd expression of wonder on his brother’s face.

“Ketty,” said Nenry, swallowing. “I’ve the most incredible piece of news…”

Semerket stared at him. Never had he seen his brother so rapturous. “Well?”

Nenry took a shaky breath. “Yesterday the vizier proclaimed me the new Mayor of Eastern Thebes.”

Semerket decided that he was hallucinating again and settled back down into the bedding to wait out his mind’s spasm. But when he opened his eyes again his brother was still sitting there with the same expression of wonderment on his face.

“I didn’t know you had another son to sell, Nenry.”

Nenry did not sputter his usual protests, nor did his face fill with its usual tics and grimaces. “My son is playing in my courtyard at this moment, Ketty,” he said with calm dignity. “His adoption by Iroy has been invalidated. I became mayor because of my ‘exemplary courage’ in helping to put down the rebellion. Anyway, I was Paser’s scribe and knew about ruling the city. It made sense to everyone.”

“You’re a widower, too, I hear.”

“Y-yes…” Nenry said, and Semerket was relieved to see his brother’s face fill again with its customary grimaces. “Merytra, er, had an accident in the cellar. Terrible. Blood everywhere. Poor thing.”

“A knife was involved, Keeya said.”

“Yes—the servants were the only witnesses to her… clumsiness.” Nenry could not long endure his brother’s black gaze, and he wailed, “She would have been put to death anyway, Ketty! For colluding with her uncle and the queen. At least I’m spared any scandal at the start of my term.”

“I understand, Nenry.”

And Nenry truly did see understanding in the black depths of Semerket’s eyes, even approval. After that, Nenry eagerly told his brother of his night at Djamet.

The night of the rains, he told Semerket, Paser and Iroy had come to the temple and replaced all the guards at every gate with men loyal only to them. “Luckily,” said Nenry, “I had already arrived with Yousef and the beggar army. I went back into the barracks to rouse the soldiers against the conspirators, but what I saw there—” Nenry shuddered, remembering.

“What did you see?”

“It was like something out of an old folk tale of wizards and bewitched palaces. On every barracks door, Iroy had scrawled symbols of bewitchment in human blood—how he got it, the gods alone know. He had strewn amulets and charms everywhere. When I opened the doors, I tell you, brother, it was the eeriest thing I’d ever seen. All the men were dormant. They couldn’t move, could barely even breathe, though there wasn’t a mark on their bodies. Who would believe that magic could be so powerful?”

Semerket remembered the terrible dreams that Tiya had sent and how perilously close to death they had brought him. He swallowed. “Go on,” he said.

Before Nenry could continue, however, they were interrupted by Keeya. Gravely she led a physician into the room, followed by three of his servants. Semerket noticed how the young woman fleetingly touched his brother on the shoulder as she left, how Nenry’s face flushed with pleasure when she did. He suddenly knew the truth between them, the thing that Nenry was too shy to mention. Thebes would have an intelligent and kindly first lady, he thought.

“Good afternoon, sirs,” the physician said, scanning Semerket critically. “I shall be glad to report to Pharaoh that our patient has revived.”

Semerket was surprised to see by his insignia that the man was actually one of Pharaoh’s own doctors. The servants placed the physician’s box of instruments and medicines beside the pallet. The physician sat next to Semerket, cross-legged. He snapped his fingers and a servant handed him a stick. The doctor held it in front of Semerket’s face, commanding him to stare at it as he moved it up, down, and sideways.

“Have you experienced any pain in your head?”

“No.”

“Any double vision?”

“No.”

The physician regarded Semerket doubtfully. “Please, Lord Mayor,” he said, “I have interrupted your tale—do continue.” He began to undo the dressing on Semerket’s head.

Nenry again took up his narrative. “At any rate, Yousef and I knew that we would have to fight our way into the temple if we were to save Pharaoh. Yousef gave the command soon after the Sekhmet garrison came, so that they barely had time to settle in.

“I tell you, Semerket, I could hardly believe it myself.” He laughed raggedly, remembering. “A beggar who only a moment before had been dying of leprosy—to see him suddenly leap forward to stave in a guard’s skull—or the beggar woman who without warning thrust a dagger into a soldier’s throat—nothing could have been more surprising to the soldiers.”

Nenry told how he had slipped through the mêlée to run through the temple crying that there was a riot in the courtyard. All the Sekhmet guards deserted the palace doors, and came streaming to the temple’s entrance.

“It was a scene out of hell,” said Nenry, “the rains streaming down, blood on the tiles everywhere. But then, from out of the dark, another army appeared from the south. We all stopped fighting then, even the Sekhmet guards. We just looked at each other—we didn’t know who these men were. But then we saw old Vizier Toh borne in his chair, with Qar riding beside him. We knew that the old man had come to save us. The moment he had received the crown prince’s message he had embarked with his men to Djamet, Qar told me later. From then on, it was a fight from room to room throughout the temple.”

As they suspected, Prince Pentwere and a couple of his warriors had gone looking for the crown prince, swords drawn, fighting their way to where his offices were. What they did not expect to find was the giant Yousef and his brawniest warriors waiting for them. A scuffle ensued in which a disbelieving Pentwere and his men were taken prisoner. Pent-were’s showy swordsmanship may have dazzled the crowds on festival days, but it was no match for the underhanded tactics of Yousef’s men.

Nenry himself stormed up to the harem with his own contingent of beggars. “It was just as I’d seen in the barracks,” Semerket’s brother said. “All the guards were bewitched, frozen stock-still at their posts, not even aware that we had come into the hall. We broke open the doors—not one of them moved to stop us. Tiya had bewitched them all so that they would not come to Pharaoh’s aid.”

The physician at this point emitted a gentle cough. “If I may continue from here, Lord Mayor?” he asked. “Pharaoh himself told me what had happened prior to being rescued. Perhaps you care to hear his story?”

“Please,” said Nenry in such a regal tone that Semerket rolled his eyes.

The physician was making a poultice of honey and herbs for the new dressing, and continued to work while he spoke. “His Majesty was taking his ease in the harem, as was his habit in the evenings,” he said. “I believe he was listening to one of his wives playing a harp. At some point, the commotion of the battle came to him from below. He rose from his couch then, to speak with his guards—but was surprised when his wives clung to him, preventing him from leaving. They were afraid for their lives, they said, and he must protect them. It dawned on him—gradually, he said, not suddenly—that his wives were actually forcibly holding him there. They clung to his arms so he couldn’t move, and encircled his legs with their bodies to prevent him from walking. He wasn’t so much fearful, he said, as irritable—which, if you know him, is His Majesty’s usual reaction to anything unpleasant.

“It wasn’t until Tiya approached him that he realized something was very wrong indeed. She was carrying the books of forbidden magic that she’d taken from the House of Life, and was chanting a spell from its scroll. She showed him a waxen doll and Pharaoh, horrified, saw that it was of himself. Tiya told him that it contained fingernail clippings and hairs from his body, and even his seed that his wives collected after he had coupled with him—”

The brothers stared at the physician, aghast.

“Yes,” the physician nodded. “Tiya had compelled every one of his southern wives to join the conspiracy—not that they needed much urging. They had planned his demise for months, they informed him. They had written secret letters to their brothers and fathers, who were the army generals and captains of the south, saying to rise against Pharaoh. Oh, gentlemen, the women were very well organized! But by then your brother and his men were at the door, causing some of the wives to panic. Pharaoh managed to wrench himself free and stagger to the door just as it fell open. But even when Tiya saw that all was lost, she was determined to kill her husband. She took out a knife and stabbed Pharaoh along his abdomen…”

“Yes! I saw it happen,” agreed Nenry. “Thank the gods it was only a scratch. After all her planning and evil-doing, she failed in the end.”

The physician wrapped Semerket’s head tightly with a fresh bandage. He coughed in a rather embarrassed fashion, dropping his voice so that his servants could not hear him. “Forgive me, Lord Mayor, but I’m afraid that Queen Tiya accomplished exactly what she sought to do.”

The brothers looked at the doctor then as if they had not heard him correctly. “Beg pardon?” said Nenry.

The royal physician barked a command to his attendants; they withdrew from the room to wait in the courtyard. “What I tell you, gentlemen,” the physician whispered, “is a state secret—though it can’t remain one for very long.”

Semerket, feeling chill, spoke harshly. “Well?”

It was a moment before the physician spoke again. “What you must know is this: When I examined Pharaoh’s wound that night, it seemed nothing very severe. I bandaged it as I would any other superficial cut. But when I changed the bandage again yesterday, the wound had enlarged and was even putrefying. Nothing seemed to stanch the flow of blood at the site. Suspecting the worst, I demanded at once to see Queen Tiya, who by then was in Djamet’s prison. She admitted her final evil to me—the knife’s blade had been coated with venom from the pyramid adder, Egypt’s most toxic serpent. No one has ever survived its bite. It may take weeks for the victim to die, but die he will and so will Pharaoh.”

The men found it difficult to look at one another after such devastating news. Semerket swallowed, asking in a small voice, “Does he know?”

The physician nodded. “And that is why you must get well, Semerket—why you must tell me the truth about your condition. Ramses calls for you daily. Your name is his only comfort, he says, for you are the only one among all his subjects who truly loved him. You saved his throne, and his heir is safe because of you. He wants to thank you in person, before…”

“Thank me?” Semerket asked, stunned. “But he’s lost his life because of me. If I had only discovered the truth a single day earlier…!”

“But Pharaoh certainly doesn’t believe that,” the physician said incredulously. “He’ll make you a rich man, exalt you above all others— you have only to name your reward.”

But Semerket shook his head. “No,” he said. “I want nothing. I deserve nothing. I’ve failed.”

 

“YOU CANNOT REFUSE Pharaoh’s gifts.”

Two days had passed and Semerket still could not stand without dizziness. Now he was bowing his head before Vizier Toh, who had come to see him in his sickbed.

“Pharaoh is generous,” Semerket said, “but I cannot accept his gifts. I have done nothing to deserve them.”

A look of exasperation crossed the vizier’s rubbery features. “I will not argue with you,” he said testily. “I will keep the gold he has sent you at my estate, against the time when you will want it—as you inevitably will.”

“Great Lord!” protested Semerket. “I have no need for such riches. I would feel a hypocrite to accept them.”

“It is not your needs I am thinking of,” Toh lashed out at him. Seizing his staff of office, he rose from his chair to stand over Semerket. Semerket felt the old man’s rheumy gaze boring into his neck.

“You must understand, Semerket,” he said firmly, though his voice was softer, “that it is Pharaoh’s needs I am considering, not yours. My friend—the companion of my youth—is dying. He needs to demonstrate his gratitude to you in any way you will let him. You cannot be so cruel as to refuse him.”

Toh’s words moved Semerket to shame. “If the king truly wishes to reward me—”

“He does.”

“Then wait until I have at last completed the task that you set me so long ago—to find the murderer of the priestess named Hetephras.”

Silence fell in the room.

“You have two days, you stubborn man,” Toh said, sighing.

“I will need only one.”

“And then, by the little brass balls of Horus, you will appear before Pharaoh—and you will be grateful for whatever he gives you—or I myself will cast you into prison alongside the conspirators. I don’t care if you’re a hero or not. Pharaoh will not be disappointed—not anymore.”

 

SEMERKET STOOD WITH Qar in the cellar of the house that had belonged to Paneb. The two men watched, silent, while a squad of Medjays cleared away the sacks of grain, the fetid jars of beer, and all the other trash that Paneb had so determinedly heaped against the cellar’s mud-brick wall.

Semerket had known, always, that some terrible thing would be found behind the tangle of hurled belongings and moldy foodstuffs. He had sensed it when he explored the cellar that night so long before, together with the cat Sukis. At the thought of the little beast, he felt his skin prickle—he suddenly remembered that it had been she who had led him to the cellar, where she had stood atop the pile of trash, mewing. Semerket put his hand to the bandage on his forehead. Sukis… why should he feel so despondent over the death of a cat, when so many people had died?

“Semerket—are you all right?” Qar asked, putting his hand on his friend’s shoulder to steady him. “Do you need to sit?”

Semerket shook his head.

Only a few of the original Medjays who had guarded the Great Place were still on duty. All the others had perished in the flood. Qar was now promoted to captain, a reward for his loyalty to Pharaoh. The new Medjays who labored in the cellar had been hastily conscripted from units throughout Thebes. But their duties would no longer include the policing of the tomb-makers; Vizier Toh had permanently assigned an army regiment to the Great Place. From that time forward, the tomb-makers would be forever overseen by them, never again left unguarded.

A day before, the bodies of Neferhotep and Hunro had been recovered. Qar had ordered the corpses, which were damaged almost beyond recognition, taken to the House of Purification. Though he could have prevented it, he allowed Neferhotep to be mummified. As Qar told Semerket—he did his duty, but was no lion. As for Hunro, Semerket himself had volunteered to provide a tomb for her afterlife. He had no wish to see her buried next to a man whom she had so detested and who had engineered her terrible death.

Another division of soldiers labored in the Great Place, attempting to recover as much of the stolen treasure as possible. But the wild river that had washed through the canyons of the Great Place like a gigantic purge had scattered the gold far through the ravines and gullies. Even the furtive tomb of the accursed Amen-meses had been flooded, being built so low into the mountain. What desecrators from other times had overlooked, the sands, rock, and grit that had broken through its weakened doors destroyed. The gesso coating on the limestone had peeled away to mix with the churning waters, congealing like rock around the treasure that remained. Months would be needed to recover it all.

But for now, the Medjays had finally removed the last bit of trash from Paneb’s cellar. Qar and Semerket stared at the brick wall that had been revealed.

Semerket began tapping at the bricks, pushing on them to see if any of them could be dislodged. Qar did the same, and for many minutes they worked in silence.

“Here, Semerket!” said Qar. He had found a loose brick at the wall’s farthest corner. Carefully he drew it out. Semerket brought a candle near. The flame’s light revealed a large niche that extended almost a cubit into the earth beyond.

And there it was, just as he had known it would be: a long object wrapped in a cloth. Qar gingerly removed it from its hiding place and handed it over to Semerket.

It was a moment before Semerket could find the strength to uncover it. Because his legs and hands were shaking, Semerket was forced to sit down on the nearby stairs. The gash in his forehead throbbed. Breathing deeply, summoning his resolve, he at last unwrapped the object.

He stared for a moment.

Semerket abruptly laid the thing down, and thrust himself into the room’s corner, bringing up bile. Qar went upstairs, returning with a jug of water, and Semerket rinsed his mouth.

He looked at Qar sideways, and nodded. “I’ll see them now,” he said.

Paneb and Rami, tired but wary, faced Semerket and Qar in the village kitchens. They had been brought at Qar’s command from the Medjays’ jail, where all the village elders were crowded together. He had brought the two of them, father and son, to these kitchens because he could not endure Khepura’s continuous weeping and wailing in the jail cell.

Semerket spoke to the point, without greeting. “Who first came to Neferhotep with the idea of robbing the tombs? Was it Pentwere, Paser? Who?”

Despite the fact that he had lost everything, Paneb was still all dissimulation. “You make no sense, Semerket, as always,” he said, eyes indignant.

“What had they promised the tomb-makers? Gold, treasure? Freedom to leave the village—what?” His voice became harsh. “It must have been something worthwhile, Paneb, to have killed Hetephras over it.”

Paneb’s head snapped up, startled. “She was my beloved aunt!” he said automatically. “How can you accuse me of… A foreigner or vagrant—”

Semerket reached for the object he had found in Paneb’s cellar, and unwrapped it. It was an axe from the Hittite nation. Into its haft of carved citrus wood was fitted a blade of rarest blue metal, the hardest known on earth. Yet the blade was nevertheless damaged, for a chip was missing from its lethally sharp edge.

“Do you want to tell us about this weapon, Master Foreman?” Semerket asked softly.

At the sight of it, Paneb buried his face in his arms, shaking his head.

“What about you, Rami?”

The boy looked in horror at the axe, and then turned pleading eyes on the foreman. “Paneb—?”

“Leave him alone!” Paneb shouted, rising to his feet, his chains ringing. His face was ravaged by anguish. “He and I know nothing—nothing!”

Paneb fell silent when Semerket brought out a tiny wedge of blue-black metal from his sash. Holding the Hittite axe’s blade so that Paneb could see, he fitted the two pieces together so that not even the faintest trace of light shone between them.

Paneb stared. “Where…?”

“A gift from Hetephras,” Semerket explained. “From the House of Purification. The Ripper Up found it when he pulled her brain from her skull with a hook.”

Paneb’s eyes rolled into his forehead and he began to teeter on his feet, as though he would faint. His breath came in large gulps.

Semerket and Qar caught him, staggering beneath his weight, and placed him in a heap against the wall.

“Get him some wine,” said Semerket.

Qar brought a jug from the storeroom and held it to Paneb’s lips. It was a moment before the vapors hit him. He recoiled a bit, stiffening, but then drank gratefully.

“Do you want to know what I think happened?” Semerket asked gently. Paneb only looked away.

“She was murdered on the first morning of the Osiris Festival, correct? At dawn, she had to make the offerings at the shrine. It’s a hard walk from here—I know; I’ve walked it. Rami was supposed to accompany her. Isn’t that true?”

“Y-yes,” the boy muttered. “But I overslept that morning. She left without me.”

“She left without you, yes, but you hadn’t overslept. In fact, you were somewhere else entirely. Would you like to tell me where?”

His low voice and genuine compassion seemed to confound the boy. The resentment in Rami’s eyes slowly dissipated. He only shook his head and stared at the ground.

Sighing, Semerket began to speak once again. “There was no moon the night before—I checked the records. Earlier that evening you had robbed a tomb, one that was located near the path that Hetephras would take. You must have been late in leaving it, if I’m guessing correctly? But you never expected her to actually show up—not with Rami in the tomb beside you.”

Semerket saw that Paneb’s face was growing ruddier by the moment, and that tears were welling in his eyes.

“Say that I’m wrong!” challenged Semerket harshly.

But father and son remained silent, heads bowed in shame.

“Hetephras discovered you. It’s as simple as that. And you killed her. Your ‘beloved aunt’ got in your way, and you cut her down. She was murdered by the man she had taken in as a child. You had no more thought for her than for a dog. With a couple of blows from your axe it was done, over.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Paneb said harshly. Rami cradled his head in his hands. Qar and Semerket stared at one another. Qar looked suddenly old, thought Semerket. His own head throbbed and he could only imagine what kind of ancient mummy he himself resembled.

“Tell me what it was like…”

Paneb shook his head.

“If you won’t save yourself,” Semerket said, staring straight into the foreman’s gold eyes, “will you not save your son here?”

Their eyes met. Semerket nodded, a promise. With a great sigh, Paneb regarded Semerket with both loathing and respect. “All right,” he said.

Semerket leaned forward. “Tell me first, Paneb—what could the old lady have seen that morning?” he asked. “Why did you have to kill her? She was blind.”

“I—I was in a panic. We’d just come out of the tomb, to find her there. She just kept saying, over and over again, ‘I see you! I know who you are!’ Who could tell what she really saw, what she meant? All the men were looking to me to do something.” He swallowed tightly. “I had a Horus mask in my hands, I remember, from the tomb. I went to her and raised my axe. It was the only thing I could think of doing to silence her. But when I raised it, she looked up at me as if it were the happiest moment of her life. I almost couldn’t do it then. But…” Paneb wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“And then you cast her body into the Nile,” Semerket prompted.

Paneb nodded his head, breathing heavily to fight back more tears. “We thought if the crocodiles would take her, she’d go directly to heaven. That’s what the priests say, anyway.” He wiped at his nose. “Then we heard that her body had been found on the eastern side of the river. Even that was a blessing, we told each other, because then Paser would find a way to cover it up.” He raised his head and stared at Semerket. “But then you came to the village.”

“Yes,” Semerket said bitterly. “Sent to make a hash of everything. I was a drunk, who couldn’t even find his own backside. ‘A vagrant or a foreigner did it,’ you all said.”

Paneb nodded. “If everyone told you the same story, we thought, you’d go away to look for a make-believe stranger. It was Neferhotep’s idea.”

“Did they get to him first? Was it Nef who brought up the idea of robbing the tombs?”

Paneb’s face became flushed with anger, and he nodded. “Yes. He said we could help build a new era in Egypt, get our empire back. We’d all be made into nobles, he promised, with estates. The queen had promised him—and we believed it.”

“But you two fell out. I heard you fighting that day in Hetephras’s tomb. You almost killed him then, didn’t you?”

Paneb again nodded. “Because he kept pushing. Every tomb was to be the last one, he said, but it never was. Nef told us that Queen Tiya was protecting us through her spells and enchantments. But when Hetephras died, it changed everything. I didn’t believe him anymore. I began to hate him, for what he’d brought upon our village, for what I was forced to do. We were artists—we didn’t need titles or riches. That was his dream, not ours.”

Semerket looked at Rami then. “Did you take your mother’s jewels, as Amenhoteb’s oracle said?”

Rami nodded unwillingly.

“Why?”

“Because Neferhotep and Khepura came to me the night before. They said my mother was a… that she was a bad woman, and that everyone would know she was one because you had convinced her to tell the authorities how she got the jewels. I knew where they were hidden.”

Semerket sighed, once again sorry for the role he had played in Hunro’s sad life. “Where are the jewels now?”

The boy shook his head. “I don’t know. I gave them to my fa— to Neferhotep.”

That was all Semerket asked. At his gesture, Qar took them once again to the Medjay jail. Semerket was left alone in the kitchens to consider what they had said.

It was all a terrible family tragedy, he thought—two of them, in fact. One lone murder of a minor priestess in the desert had destroyed a family of artists, and another family living in a palace. In the end, family was the center of everything that was both good and bad in this world, he thought.

Before he left the village, Semerket went a final time to Hetephras’s home to retrieve the body of her cat, Sukis. He had promised the old lady’s spirit—promised himself, really—that the animal would be mummified and laid beside the old priestess in her tomb. But when he searched the house, the cat’s body was missing. He found the cloth that he had wrapped Sukis in after she died—but no corpse. Puzzled, he sat upon the stone bench and wadded the cloth in his hands. From its folds a small metallic object of bright silver clattered to the ground.

It was a small figure of a god. He stared at it. The thing was so small it fit in the palm of his hand, an image of a boy—a prince. On the side of his head was a braided side lock, while his lips were twisted into a mischievous smile. The cartouche at his feet bore the single name of “Khons.”

Semerket remembered how the nieces of the weaver Yunet had told him that the moon god Khons was Hetephras’s special patron, the god whom she most adored. In addition to the moon, Khons was also the god of time—and of games. And he looked remarkably like the prince whom Semerket had met in the desert, on his very first foray into the Great Place. “God-skin,” he had told Semerket, “is made there.” It had been the first indication of what the solution to the priestess’s murder might be. He was the lad who had pointed out Hetephras’s battered wig to the Medjays… and the one who had pulled him to safety from the raging torrent.

Semerket fled quickly from Hetephras’s house. All the way back to Eastern Thebes he said nothing, nor did he speak a word to anyone at his brother’s home that entire evening. He simply kept looking at the tiny silver figure, shaking his head and shivering.

 

“HAVE YOU CONSIDERED what your reward will be, Truth-Teller?”

Keeping his word to Toh, Semerket had returned to Djamet to meet with Pharaoh Ramses III. They met on a palace terrace overlooking the Nile. Ramses reclined on a couch, his midsection tightly bandaged. On one side of him stood the crown prince; on the other was Vizier Toh. The usual throng of courtiers and servants was kept far away that day.

Since the rains, spring had appeared quickly in Egypt. The hills and cliffs around Djamet were brushed with the bright tints of wildflowers, while the fields next to the river were hazed with a faint fringe of green, emmer wheat thrusting up in the good black earth. Though it was the season for life renewed, on that terrace in Djamet Temple it was death that made a home. Pharaoh’s bandages were soaked with his blood, and his breathing was labored.

“I have considered it, Majesty.”

“Then you will allow me to reward you?”

“Your Majesty, I will.”

“Name it then.”

Semerket took a breath and began. “There are three prisoners, family members of the conspirators, that I beg you to pardon—the wife and child of Nakht, the steward of your harem, and the boy Rami, son of the tomb-maker Paneb.”

“Never.” The word cut like a knife. Semerket instantly sensed the old man’s righteous, unquenchable wrath against those who had betrayed him. “I will never forgive them. Never.”

Semerket dropped his head. “You said to name what I want, and I have.”

A terrible silence reigned.

“Is he always so pig-headed?” muttered Pharaoh at last, looking askance at his vizier.

“I’ve found it’s easier to ask the Nile to flow backward, Your Majesty,” Toh sighed, “than to ask such a man as this to change his mind.”

The crown prince stepped forward hurriedly and knelt before his father. “May I remind my father that I am alive because of this man’s intervention. I would ask Pharaoh to at least know the reasons for his request.”

“Well?” growled the king, sitting back down on his couch. “Speak them.”

Semerket took a breath and began, silently asking the gods to free his tongue. “In exchange for his confession,” he said, “I promised Foreman Paneb that I would save his son.”

“This Paneb,” said Pharaoh, slowly. “Not only was he the killer of the priestess, but he was also the foreman of the team that rifled so many tombs. A strange candidate for such a favor.”

Semerket raised his head. “It is in memory of the boy’s mother that I also ask. Hunro was my only friend among the tomb-makers. She, too, died at the hands of the conspirators, Your Majesty, because she helped me.”

“Hmmph. What about this other woman, then—this wife of Nakht? Why do you plead for her?”

“I was once married to her, Great King.”

The pharaoh snorted. “And she left you for that traitor? Then she is guilty of the crime of bad taste, deserving nothing less than death!”

“She wanted children, Pharaoh. I could give her none. The fault was mine.”

He saw Pharaoh’s eye begin to harden.

“I still love her, Your Majesty,” he added, “more than my life. Even when she went to live in another man’s house, I could not stop loving her.”

There was a terrible silence. Semerket’s head ached from the strain of speaking so many words, and he fell again into obeisance, resting his forehead on the cool tiles. The pharaoh stared at him, like an eagle stares at a hare.

“This is my judgment,” Pharaoh said at last.

Instantly a nearby scribe took up a stylus and wax tablet.

“Naia, the wife of the traitor Nakht, and Rami, the son of the traitor Paneb, are spared execution.”

Semerket’s breath gusted from him in relief. “Thank you, Great King!”

“Do not thank me so soon, Semerket. I am not yet finished.” He turned again to the scribe, directing him to continue writing. “They will be exiled, never again to step foot in Egypt or drink from the waters of the Nile. They will be sent as indentured servants to Babylon, and there live out their days.”

“Pharaoh—!” protested Semerket.

“Do not ask any more for them, Semerket. My gratitude has limits.”

“What—what, then, of Naia’s child?”

“Let her take the child with her if she wants, or let her give it away. I care nothing for infants. Now go and bid your farewells to this Naia of yours, and the lad, too; a ship carrying our new ambassador leaves for Babylon this very day.”

A spasm of pain gripped Pharaoh, and he grimaced, clutching his side. The crown prince called sharply for a physician, and courtiers began to scramble about like alarmed ants. During the fracas, Semerket slunk away.

Once Semerket had departed the terrace, the crown prince hurried to him. They stood at the top of the stairs that led into the main room of the palace. “Don’t blame my father overmuch, Semerket.”

Semerket shook his head. He was still in shock, unable to speak.

“Though he doesn’t say it,” the prince continued, “this business has truly shaken him. He had convinced himself he was beloved, you see. Then to find out that everything he believed in was a lie—well, that is why he needs you in his last days. You risked your life to save his, and it comforts him to have you near. Please come back. You remind my father that he counts for something in at least one person’s heart.”

“But Pharaoh is loved…”

“A pharaoh is feared. He is worshipped. Adored. But loved? Semerket, I am under no illusions; the red and white crowns are far more wonderful things to see than to wear.” Prince Ramses laid his hand upon Semerket’s shoulder. “You and I will talk together in the days ahead; I do not forget my friends.”

Semerket bowed until the crown prince had returned to his father, then went downstairs into the main room of the palace. To his surprise, he spied the immensely tall Yousef, lieutenant to the King of the Beggars, standing amid a group of his fellows at a far wall. They all were clad in their best, most outlandish garments, cadged undoubtedly from many a Theban noble’s waste heap. The beggars waited in front of a niche that held a silver vase filled with glorious new lilies. Almost hidden in the beggars’ midst was a miniature chariot drawn by a ram.

The Beggar King was clean, for once. Semerket was forced to admit that legless as he was, the king exuded a regal air that many blood-born nobles might envy. When he saw Semerket approaching, he hailed his ally gleefully, flicking the reins against his ram’s backside and driving to where Semerket stood.

“Semerket, savior of the kingdom! Man of the hour! Friend of kings!”

Semerket scowled at his compliments. “I can’t believe you’re here, Majesty. Have you become respectable at last?”

“My brother the pharaoh himself commands me to attend him. At one time or another,” he smirked nonchalantly, “everyone wishes to meet me in person. They say he will even request a favor of me.”

“What sort of favor?”

The Beggar King shrugged.

“Pharaoh and his advisors are being very mysterious,” said Yousef.

“But of course I shall grant it, whatever Pharaoh asks,” said the Beggar King. “We are brother sovereigns, after all.”

At that moment the palace chamberlain came to murmur to the king that he and his company were awaited on the terrace. With their joyful farewells ringing in his ears, Semerket headed again for the temple pylons. From the corner of his eye he noticed that the vase of silver in the niche was missing.

Ah well, Semerket thought—it’s none of my concern. He had sadder things to think about; he was going to the prison at Amun’s Great Temple, to tell Naia that Egypt was no longer her home.

 

SEMERKET STOOD AT the docks. It was noon. Rami, hands bound behind him, stood at his side. A fast river transport in the royal harbor made ready to depart for the north, and last-minute crates and bales were being stowed on its decks. It was a new ship of shallow draft but wide beam, constructed in the manner of Phoenician vessels, with a keel and ribs. This meant that the ship was capable of voyaging not only upon the river, but also out on the salt seas beyond—something most Egyptians in their keelless boats dreaded.

The new ambassador to Babylon had already gone aboard, along with his gifts for Babylon’s king. As they waited for Naia to be delivered to them, Semerket looked over at Rami. Though he affected an adolescent’s disdain, Semerket could tell he was terrified, and that he probably blamed Semerket for his misery. The lad had lost everything because of the man beside him—his home, his parents, even the girl he was to have married.

“Rami,” Semerket said, “I’m sorry how everything turned out. I wanted you to live in my brother’s house with me, in Thebes.”

“You?” the lad spat. “I’d rather live with hyenas.”

For a while you did, thought Semerket, but he did not say it. Firmly he placed his hand on Rami’s shoulder, looking deeply into his eyes. “Anyway, I’m sorry,” he said. “Truly.”

The boy said nothing, dropping his gold eyes sullenly, and went quickly aboard the ship. He would not stand any longer beside Semerket.

In despair, Semerket gazed down the wide avenue that bordered the wharves. In the distance he saw Naia walking in the company of temple guards. The baby squirmed in her arms, made fretful by the noises and sharp smells of the docks. He embraced them both when she arrived, without speaking, and they stood together for endless moments, saying nothing, oblivious to all and everything around them.

All too soon the impatient captain yelled to them from the deck that Naia was to come aboard instantly. Semerket snarled an epithet in his direction.

“We can’t put it off any longer, my love,” Naia said. She was robed in a simple sheath of mourning gray, and wore a head scarf of the same plain material. She should have been dressed as a queen, thought Semerket bitterly, not a servant.

“I will come for you,” he said to her, taking her free hand.

“You cannot.”

“I will. You know I’ll do it.”

“Oh, Ketty, why do you always make things harder than they need to be? Let us say goodbye here in Thebes, and forever. Put me out of your mind.”

“I won’t. I can’t.”

She was suddenly very angry. “You are a cruel man!” she said in a wail.

The child began to wail too, and Semerket stood looking helplessly at them both. “How can you say that, when you know I love you so?”

Naia looked at Semerket, and there was a strange light in her eye. She kissed the child desperately then, as if she would crush the baby to her. “What I need to take with me now,” she told him, “is the knowledge that you are not suffering. You don’t know how much I need it. It will be the only thing to give me strength to endure—the next thing I must do.”

He did not like her strange tone, nor the odd, determined glint in her eyes. Before he could speak his fears, however, she abruptly thrust the child into his arms.

“Take him,” she said.

When Semerket could only stare, she cried again, harshly, “Take him!”

Semerket was shocked into taking the now-squalling Huni, and held him to his chest. He could not speak, for again his tongue was lifeless in his mouth.

“I want him raised as an Egyptian, by the best man I have ever known and ever will. He is our son, Semerket—remember that. Though Nakht fathered him, the gods gave us a child in the only way they could. It doesn’t matter how we got him—he is ours. I bore him, and now you must rear him.”

“Naia!” He was aghast.

“That’s why you must be happy here in Egypt for me. For if you are not—if you mope and pine for me, and drink yourself sodden—I will know our son cannot be happy. Can you do that for me?”

He forced himself to nod.

The captain yelled at them again, threatening to send down guards to forcibly drag Naia aboard. Reluctantly, Semerket and Naia moved to the gangplank.

Semerket looked at her helplessly. “Naia… the only thing I can think of now is that flower you saw, after we were first married, in the eastern deserts. Do you remember it?”

“The strange purple flower, high on that cliff. Yes, I remember. I joked that I wanted it for my garden.”

He was weeping now, unabashedly. People on the docks stared. “I could have climbed that cliff. Why didn’t I?”

“Oh, Ketty—it doesn’t matter.”

“Every day since I met you, I’ve looked for your face in all the women I see. None of them is alive to me—only you are alive. But I know now I’ll never see your face again, anywhere.”

With a cry she turned away and hurried on board, not once looking back at her husband and child. The crew was quick to drag the dripping anchor stone to the ship’s deck, and the rowers thrust their oars into the Nile. The ship turned, bow heading to the north, and the river god caught the vessel in his arms and gently pushed it forward. The rowers changed positions, and dipped their oars again. The ship increased its speed, and sailed swiftly past the docks and into the center of the river.

Semerket, with his child in his arms, watched as it disappeared in the bend of the river. But even when he could no longer see the tip of its mast, he did not move. He was thinking, instead, how perverse the gods were. Where once he had despaired of ever having a son, he now had Naia’s.

And he was the unhappiest man in Egypt.

 

QUEEN TIYA OPENED her eyes and saw the old man at the cell’s door.

“Toh!” she said in surprise.

“Greetings, lady,” the vizier said. “The pharaoh in his mercy has decreed that you are to live.”

“I don’t believe it.” She had no modesty. “Why should he show me mercy now when all my life he has humiliated and bedeviled me?”

“Who knows? Perhaps he grows sentimental in his old age, lady. He has sent this wine to you as a gesture of his goodwill. Will you drink some?”

“No doubt it is poisoned.”

“If you think so, then I will drink some with you.” He poured a bowlful.

“You drink first, old man!” she commanded.

Toh raised the bowl to his lips and took a sip.

“All the way down!”

The vizier of Egypt continued to drink until there was no more. He poured out a second bowl.

Tiya seized the bowl and drank greedily. “That’s fine stuff,” she said. “I’ve only had water since they put me in here, and brackish at that. Not even beer.”

Toh smiled and took his leave, telling her that she should be prepared to move from her cell. When he had returned to his chambers, he put a feather down his throat to vomit up the wine, along with the oil he had swallowed earlier to prevent the powerful sleeping herb from taking effect.

When she awoke, Tiya was no longer in the chilly cell in Djamet’s dungeon. She gazed around the unfamiliar room, at its barbarous friezes and strange colors. The queen lay on a flat, hard table, with no pallet beneath her. When she tried to rise, she found that she was quite naked, and that her arms and legs were strapped tightly to the table.

A strange animal sound came to her through the gloom. Twisting her head, she saw that a ram had made the bleating noise. Strangely, it was reined to a miniature chariot. Craning her neck to see, she found herself staring into what appeared to be the red eyes of a man—a horrible legless creature with a crown of battered acanthus leaves on his head. Tiya uttered a small cry.

“We are honored, madam,” the legless thing said, “to entertain you today in my kingdom!”

With a snap of his fingers, four other men drew forward, dressed only in scant loincloths. At that moment Tiya saw the braziers of charcoal that were placed nearby, each containing a set of hooks and knives, all glowing a bright orange.

“May I now introduce you, madam, to the finest surgeon in Thebes?” asked the king gallantly. “Cripple Maker, meet Lady Tiya.”

“A pleasure, great lady.” The man’s sickly syrupy voice made her recoil more than the cruel instruments he held in his hands.

“She was a queen of Egypt once,” the Beggar King said. “But that was not enough for her. So today she is given a new kingdom to rule— mine. Make of her your finest creation, for the queen of the beggars deserves the very best. But mind that you do not kill her in your zeal, for the pharaoh has promised that she may live. And he is a man who keeps his word.”

Tiya’s famed voice of many strings rose up in a crescendo of short, sharp screams.

 

PHARAOH GRIMACED as he rose from his couch and clutched his side. Irritably he waved away the slave who would have assisted him. He pulled aside his hand, and revealed that his freshly changed bandages were again soaked in blood.

Already he wears his mummy wrappings, Semerket thought to himself. As the crown prince had requested, he had returned again to Pharaoh’s side, leaving Huni in his brother’s house in the care of Keeya. Semerket shuddered to see the blood, and dropped his eyes to prevent Pharaoh from reading his mind. But it was too late; the king had seen him staring.

“Yes,” Pharaoh said. “My wife has won her battle.”

“A hundred years,” Semerket muttered the ritual phrase automatically.

“A hundred!” The old ruler’s laugh was sharp. “I would give all I have for one.”

With difficulty he walked the length of the terrace to gaze at Eastern Thebes across the river. Semerket followed at a discreet distance, avoiding the drops of blood that trailed Ramses. The fires in the city’s hearths gleamed like facets in a thousand rubies. The entire horizon was aglow with them.

“Do you remember the Egypt of my father, Semerket?” The old man’s hand shook as he reached out, as if to clasp the rubies to him. They shimmered just outside his touch, and the hand fell slowly back. Still, the fingers clenched and unclenched, unused to not holding what they sought.

Semerket kept his silence. In his mind Pharaoh was addressing a contemporary. What good would it do to remind an old man of his age? Ramses was not much interested in Semerket’s reply, in any case. The words poured from him in pained gasps, a confession. A valedictory.

“Egypt was cast adrift. Every man was a law to himself. Anyone could murder whomever they chose, high and low. So many years of misrule and discord before him… generations of civil wars. My father took up the red and white crowns that had fallen in the dust. But he was an old man when he became Pharaoh. The gods gave him only two years. Then it was my turn.” He pointed to the black mass of the distant temples. “I found the gates of Karnak stripped of their plate and jewels. Amun’s barque had even sunk in the Sacred Lake, it was so rotten. This was my inheritance.”

Pharaoh stared into the night, the hard, bitter line of his profile limned by torchlight.

“My father had given Egypt back its government. I vowed to give it back its place among nations. And I was young, and strong as the Buchis bull. It was sunrise in Egypt, I told the people.”

Ramses pulled a kerchief from his pectoral and wiped at the flecks of spittle at his mouth. In the flame’s light, Semerket saw the tinge of pink. Pharaoh saw it, too, and quickly closed his hand around the cloth. “And for a while I thought I had succeeded. Yet I was forced to marry Tiya, to assuage the pride of these ludicrous, arrogant southerners. I had to promise to make her firstborn my heir. It seemed that only I saw the evil in them both. I should have had her quietly killed, but I felt sorry for Pentwere. He was so attached to her. And what real harm could she do, I thought. She was only a woman, after all. And then the other children came.” He looked at Semerket with bitter irony. “Though I am worshipped as a god, Semerket, I am Egypt’s biggest fool.”

For the only time in his life Semerket wished that fulsome words of flattery and praise could bubble spontaneously to his lips, words of reassurance and hope, empty though they might be; for the only time in his life Semerket wished he was his own brother.

But his tongue was a block of wood in his head as always. So unused to saying any words but those of the stark truth, his throat actually hurt from the effort to find sweet and temperate ones, full of comfort and lies. In the end, Semerket could only reach out to the old man in a gesture of fleeting spontaneity. He wished to draw him near, so that Pharaoh’s pain might be eased. But the majesty of Pharaoh overwhelmed him. How to comfort a living god? Semerket’s hand stopped, only to fall uselessly to his side.

Ramses regarded Semerket with grim amusement. But then he was seized with another abrupt spasm of pain. He dropped to one knee. Semerket caught him, and led him to a bench where he could regain his breath, holding him as the spasm slowly subsided. Pharaoh’s bandages were now soaked completely in red.

It was Pharaoh who moved away first, sitting up straight and dignified on the bench beside Semerket. After a time, the king spoke again. His voice seemed strengthened.

“For a while it seemed I had succeeded in my dreams for Egypt. I planted the entire land with trees and greenery and I let the people sit in their shade. A woman of Egypt could travel freely wherever she wanted, and no one molested her, not even foreigners. I sent to Lebanon for cedar to repair the sacred barque. I replated the temple doors. I built new… or so I thought.”

Then Pharaoh turned and regarded Semerket with an expression of absolute bitterness.

“And then in this Year of the Hyenas you came into our lives. You were the one, Semerket—the terrible truth-teller—who opened all our eyes at last. Until you came, everyone thought the rams’ horns blew paeans of praise for me. But you told us it was a dirge they played instead. Thanks to you, I realize now it was not a triumph I led—but a funeral procession.” His breath came in gasps at the end.

Pharaoh and Semerket watched through the long evening together, saying nothing, as one by one the fires of Egypt’s hearths went out.

“I wish…” Semerket began, and stopped.

Irritation again lit Pharaoh’s eye. “Yes? What is it you wish for? Everyone wants something from me in the end. Well, gold chains I have offered you in plenty. These you have all refused. What could you possibly want, I wonder?”

Semerket dropped his head. “I wish that it had not been me.”

The living god of Egypt was startled, and for an instant his face became a shattered mask of woe. He collected himself swiftly.

“Nonsense. It was the fate the gods gave you… and me.” Though he spoke crisply, Pharaoh reached out tentatively and draped an old, sinewy arm across Semerket’s shoulders. It was an arm unaccustomed to such familiarity and it lay there stiff and immobile.

Feeling Pharaoh lean on him, a great dullness fell upon Semerket’s heart. As he gazed out into the blackness of Thebes it seemed to him that Egypt had been plunged into an eternal night.