Book Three

Descent

into the

Underworld

SEMERKET WANDERED, BEWILDERED AND speechless, through the ruined Egyptian temple. The roof had collapsed from the heat of the flames, and he had to crawl over heaps of brick and plaster. The colored mural pieces littering the floor caught his eye—the smile of a goddess, the green hand of Osiris clutching his scourge, wavy blue lines that had depicted the Nile…

The Babylonian civil police and their servants—all whose duty it was to make the ashes and blood go away—spoke to him as he passed. Their words sounded like the singsong clacking of alien birds. Semerket simply could not comprehend another Babylonian word at that moment. At the officials’ questions, he merely averted his eyes and kept walking through the ruins, deaf to everything but the scream in his head.

Fortunately, Shepak was there. The workers deferred to him, for they knew Shepak was a highly ranked Elamite officer. He barked questions at the witnesses, asking all the things that Semerket was too tired and heartsore to ask.

Leaving Shepak to deal with them, Semerket at last came to the little temple’s granite altar. Wildflowers were still standing upright in its vases, and its surface was slick with the black blood of sacrifice. But it was not a heifer or ewe that had been slaughtered on it. Three unmoving figures lay at the altar’s granite base, draped in shrouds: Senmut, Wia, and Aneku.

Who had been the first to die? Semerket wondered.

The wind suddenly gusted, lifting the shroud a little. A shaft of light happened to fall upon a frail, withered hand—Senmut’s hand, the old priest who had been too proud to beg for alms on the street. Semerket saw the deep cuts that ran across its palm, telling him that the priest had tried to fend off his assassin’s blade.

He pulled the thin cloth over the hand again, accidentally brushing his fingers against the priest’s flesh. Its coldness was a shock; even the fierce Babylonian sun could do nothing to kindle warmth in it.

When the wind once again lifted the shroud, Semerket turned away. He did not wish to see their bodies, did not want to remember his friends so torn and bloodied. He cursed himself for having forgotten to warn Aneku that such an attack might occur. Though such a warning would have done his friends little good, still he blamed himself.

Semerket was standing beside the bodies when Shepak found him. “I’ve questioned everyone who saw or heard the attack,” he announced. “It was a force of Isins who did it, about ten strong.”

Semerket raised his brows in surprise. “Isins again?” he remarked coldly. “And did they suddenly appear from nowhere to attack this little Egyptian temple, and did they vanish again just as quickly?”

Shepak ignored his bitter jest. “They came on foot, around midnight, yelling and cursing. They woke up the whole quarter, it seems. Plenty of witnesses saw them—not just the Egyptians from around the neighborhood, but Dark Heads, too.”

“Or thought they saw them,” Semerket murmured. He stood up, turning soberly to Shepak. “A favor…?”

“Of course. Anything.”

Semerket took some gold and silver rings from his belt and gave them to Shepak. “See that my friends’ bodies are taken to the House of Purification. The locals will know where one is. Give the priests this cash, and say that you want them to receive the best possible embalming.”

Shepak looked squeamish but he nodded, knowing how important such things were to Egyptians.

“While you’re there I want you to do something else.” Semerket swallowed, dropping his eyes.

Shepak’s expression now became apprehensive. “What?”

“Ask them to check their records for last winter. Find out if they embalmed a woman named Naia.”

Shepak, appalled, protested. “Don’t you think you’re the one to do that?” he said. “You can describe her for them. I can’t.”

“She was beautiful, tell them, just twenty-three years old. Her skin was the color of ash, and her eyes like the Nile at flood season.”

Because he could no longer speak, Semerket turned abruptly, heading down the stairs that led to the secret tunnel beneath the temple.

“Where are you going?” Shepak called after him.

There was no answer, for Semerket was already gone.

“I MUST SEE HER,” Semerket said, pushing against the gate.

The Syrian pushed back. “My lord, be reasonable. I told you Nidaba isn’t awake—”

Semerket suddenly threw all his strength against the gate. It flew back, striking the wall loudly. He stalked through the portal, into the gardens. The concierge ran up the outer stairs to the villa’s second floor, flinging terrified glances over his shoulder, as though Semerket were some barbarian intent on ravishing his mistress.

From the gardens, Semerket went into the courtyard and waited in the veranda. In the harsh sunlight, the flowering vines were scraggly. The silken cushions on the divans seemed faded and wine-stained. Without the dark and the soft glow of oil lamps, the villa resembled a dead wizard’s palace in some ancient folk tale, its magic withered away.

A short while later, Semerket heard a noise above him. A young man stood on the balustrade grimacing into the bright light and rubbing his eyes. The concierge held a fluttering tunic for the young man, which he donned while descending the stairs.

“Semerket?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

Semerket went to meet him in the courtyard. The youth was very pale and his chin was dusted blue-black with morning beard.

“I came to see Nidaba,” Semerket said firmly. “It’s important. Take me to her.”

The young man was momentarily shocked. With a stricken glance at the concierge, he brought his hands up to his face to hide his smirk. “Oh, dear,” he said, “I’d forgotten how Egyptians can be so naive about such things.”

Then Semerket saw the young man’s nails, lacquered in gold dust, while tiny lines at the corner of his eyes still held smudges of antimony. The dawn broke at last in Semerket’s frail mind.

“You’re Nidaba?” Semerket asked faintly.

The young man nodded, laughing softly. His low and sultry tenor convinced Semerket of the truth. No wonder Nidaba’s voice was so forceful, Semerket thought—a man’s lungs powered it.

“Surely you know,” Nidaba explained with a touch of defiance, “that Ishtar is male and female both—the god of war and the goddess of love together. I’ve dedicated my life to serving both their holy guises.”

Semerket nodded, a man of the world, though he was thinking, Sweet Osiris, is anything in Babylon truly what it seems to be?

“So,” Nidaba said, “since I’ve told you my secret, you must tell me the reason you’ve come to see me.”

“Some friends of mine were murdered last night.”

“Were they at the harbor?”

Semerket looked at Nidaba squarely. “How do you know about the harbor?”

Nidaba picked at an imaginary thread. “I heard something about it this morning. My concierge told me.”

“My friends were killed in the Egyptian temple,” Semerket said. “They’re saying that Isins were behind it.”

Nidaba eyes glittered. “I’m very sorry, but what can I do?”

“The same thing I asked you to do before: take me to the Heir of Isin. I want to question him myself about the attack.”

“Impossible. I told you before. I don’t even know him.”

“I think you do.” Semerket said nothing more, letting his black eyes bore into Nidaba’s.

“Haven’t you forgotten, Semerket? I’m forbidden to help any Egyptian.”

“No, I haven’t forgotten. And I know that it was Mother Mylitta who forbade it. I also know that she was here the other night—just as I know what was in those donkey sacks.”

Nidaba gave a start. Gone were the graceful movements and languid smiles.

“Now,” said Semerket evenly, leaning forward to speak in a low tone, “what would happen, do you think, if Kutir knew that the women of the gagu were sending the Isin rebels their gold, coated in melted bitumen?”

Nidaba gasped. “How did you find out they were sending it to them?”

“I saw the gold for myself. As for who it was being sent to, that was a guess—one you just confirmed.”

Nidaba had succumbed to the oldest trick in an investigator’s arsenal, and glared at Semerket. “The stars were right,” Nidaba said. “You really are a bastard.”

“HOW ARE WE GOING to get past the Elamite blockades?” Nidaba whispered to him.

“Just bat your lashes at them; that should do it.”

“I’m serious.”

Semerket explained that he possessed a pass from the king that should see them easily through any checkpoint.

“Well, aren’t we the fortunate ones,” sniffed Nidaba scathingly, no longer bothering to hide her loathing of the Elamites from him.

They walked down a narrow, crooked side street in the old part of the city. Nidaba, clad in all her finery, strolled with her usual grace—due, perhaps, to the jeweled clogs she had insisted on wearing. Freshly barbered and painted, she explained to him when he complained at how long her toilette took, that if she were going to be murdered, she certainly did not intend to die a frump.

The little street they traveled on ended abruptly at the grated entrance to a large cistern. When Semerket looked questioningly at her, Nidaba merely walked over to lean casually against the grate, idly scanning the rooftops and doorways. Semerket realized she looked to see if anyone watched them. Satisfied that no eyes were turned in their direction, Nidaba abruptly reached her hand through the grate’s bars. He heard a latch open.

“Hurry!” Nidaba hissed at him. She had lifted up the grate, something no ordinary woman could have done so effortlessly. “Get in!”

Semerket did not ask questions, just crawled under the opening. He braced his back against the grille so that Nidaba could join him. When they were both inside, she led him forward into the dark. They went about twenty paces before they found a curving stairway leading to a lower level.

Nidaba seized a torch from the wall, knowing just where to find it. She took a flint from her gilded leather sash and quickly lighted it. The torch threw the staircase into bright relief, allowing them to descend in safety. When they reached the lower level, a long tunnel loomed before them, beside which an underground canal gabbled softly.

“What is this place?” Semerket asked in wonder. “A sewer?” It certainly did not smell like one, for though the air was dank, it was not foul.

Nidaba began to lead him forward. “It’s a sort of underground highway,” she whispered. “Babylon’s laced with them. A queen built these tunnels hundreds of years ago. She wanted to be able to rush her troops to any place in the city in case of riot.”

“Amazing,” Semerket said, awestruck by the engineering effort it must have taken to build them. Expensive glazed brick sheathed the tunnel’s surface. Over the centuries, however, a mare’s nest of spidery roots had grown down from the street above, snaking into the canal. It made their going very tricky, for the roots clutched at their feet as they passed.

“Why don’t the Elamites use these tunnels?”

“As I said, they’re very old. Not many people even know they exist.”

“But the Isins do,” he said, realizing just how their troops were able to come and go so quickly. It was magic, yes, but not the kind the Elamites believed in.

He and Nidaba reached a well of light that fell from a vertical shaft leading up to the street. They heard an Elamite captain distantly shouting orders to his men. Nidaba flashed a warning look at Semerket, putting her finger to her lips, and they continued forward in silence.

Semerket reflected how much easier it would have been for the Elamites to control Babylon had they known about these cisterns. But they had marched into the city with all the arrogance and conceit with which conquerors possessing superior forces are usually imbued, no doubt believing they could easily subdue such a corrupt and vitiated people as the Babylonians. If only the Elamites had taken a little time to do some reconnaissance, Semerket thought—or at least some cursory investigation into the city’s history—they might not now be fighting for their lives.

Such an odd people, these Babylonians, he thought. And the woman—man—walking beside him had turned out to be the oddest of them all. At that moment, Nidaba happened to glance over at him. “Why do you look at me like that?”

“I’d never have taken you for a freedom fighter.”

“Well, why should you? An Ishtaritu is only ever expected to be amusing, never brave or daring—or even patriotic.” There was bitterness in her lovely voice.

They had reached another cistern opening, and Nidaba cautioned Semerket again to be quiet. As the minutes passed and the dark grew even more stygian, he began to feel almost buried alive. He suddenly remembered the time when he had been locked inside a pharaoh’s tomb in the Great Place. A trickle of sweat snaked down his spine as the long-repressed panic came flooding back. Before it completely engulfed him, however, Nidaba stopped abruptly.

“We’re here,” she said.

They stood in front of another metal grille, chained and locked. They could go no further.

“Where are we?” he whispered.

“Beneath the Royal Quarter.”

He almost smiled. “You mean the Heir of Isin can be found only a few cubits below Kutir himself?” He marveled at both the irony and the daring.

“That’s right.”

Nidaba bent to run her fingertips near the base of the wall. She stood a moment later, holding a short copper spike in her hand. Nidaba tapped out a code on the grille. From deep inside the dark tunnel, Semerket heard the answering tones. Then a torchlight appeared from far away, carried in the hand of a tall, bearded man.

Semerket resisted the urge to flee, for in the gloom the man resembled nothing so much as one of hell’s demons coming to claim him. Dimly, he heard Nidaba introducing him as Pharaoh Ramses’ friend.

“No need to tell me who it is,” the man chortled. “We’ve already met!”

Shocked, Semerket recognized the man as one of those Isins he had met in Mari—the man who had first told him that Isins had never attacked the Elamite plantation. At that time, the man had not been particularly amiable. Now he smiled broadly in the torchlight and clamped his arm around Semerket’s shoulders as though he were an old friend.

“So you want to see the Heir? Well, it’s been a few days since you’ve had chance to talk together, eh? I imagine there’s a lot to catch up on.”

“Pardon?” Semerket asked. Had they confused him with someone else?

But the man was already heading down the tunnel with Nidaba at his side, and Semerket had to hurry after them. They came to the place where four of the cisterns, along with their attendant canals, emptied into one enormous arched cavern. Several levels deep, the place echoed from the roaring of water. He became gradually aware that hundreds of Isin soldiers camped there. As he looked down on them from above, they shot him suspicious glances.

Another abrupt twist in the tunnel, and he was shown into a small chamber lit by a number of oil lamps. After all the darkness, the lamplight temporarily dazzled him. All he could see were the silhouettes of several persons milling in the room.

Then he heard his guide’s gruff voice saying, “Here’s your Egyptian friend, lord.”

A silhouette advanced toward him, arms outstretched. Semerket felt himself embraced.

“So you found me at last, Semerket!” the figure said in perfect Egyptian, albeit in a flat, northern accent.

Semerket realized that, of course, he had indeed met this Heir of Isin before, the princeling raised in the court of Ramses III. His eyes adjusted to the glittering light at last.

Standing before him was his one-time slave, Marduk.

HIS FIRST REACTION WAS RAGE—more at himself for having been the stooge once again of duplicity perpetrated by his former servant.

“You abandoned me,” he snarled coldly at Marduk.

Marduk’s smile vanished.

“What did you expect?” he snarled back. “That I would lead you by the hand through the city, point out the sights? I had to meet up with my men, you fool!”

“How was I supposed to know that? You never told me who you were, what you were doing here—”

“I couldn’t tell you! If you had known I was the Heir, your own life would have been in danger.”

“A little help in finding my wife and friend, that’s all I wanted. And I had saved your life!”

“Haven’t I looked out for you? Didn’t I send those messages to you, warning you away from the garrison and the harbor?”

“How was I supposed to know who they came from?”

“I thought if anyone could figure it out, it’d be the great investigator from Egypt. Apparently, it was beyond your limited capabilities.”

“What hurts most is that you never trusted me enough to tell me who you really were.”

“I did trust you.”

“Oh, yes,” scoffed Semerket, “when you needed to sneak into the city, acting like some moron, drooling—”

“I had to get past the Elamites, Semerket. Surely, even you must realize that. They’d been alerted I might attempt to enter Babylon. And you have to admit, no one ever willingly looks at the simpleminded.”

Semerket regarded Marduk with exasperation. “I suppose that kind old master of yours back in Egypt was Ramses III?”

Marduk nodded. “He took me into his court to raise me out of harm’s way, as a favor to my father. When the Kassite kings were set to fall, he sent me back to claim my throne. Unfortunately, that’s also when the Elamites chose to invade.”

They stared at one another for a moment. Now that he had voiced all his resentments, Semerket had nothing else to say. “Well, anyway,” Semerket admitted grudgingly, “it’s good to see you again, Marduk. The truth is, I missed you.”

The tension in the small underground chamber evaporated. Marduk’s soldiers, who had retreated to watch the fracas from the outer tunnel, suddenly crowded back inside the room, relieved and laughing.

“Ah, Semerket, Semerket,” said Marduk, sitting down on a brick bench. “Tell me how you are, and how your investigation proceeds.”

Semerket winced to hear Marduk’s question, for there were painful things he had to ask his friend. He sat beside Marduk to tell his story. It never occurred to him that Marduk could become the next king of Babylon and that it might be better to stand in his presence; to Semerket, Marduk would always be the prisoner he had saved from the Elamites, his one-time slave. Marduk himself did not take offense, and listened intently while Semerket related the events of the previous week.

Semerket told Marduk how he had learned that Naia and Rami had been at the plantation where the Elamite prince and princess were attacked. Marduk was not unfamiliar with this; he only nodded, asking how it was that Kutir had seen fit to retain Semerket in locating his missing sister.

At this, Semerket spoke in Egyptian, informing his friend of Ramses’ urgent need for Bel-Marduk’s idol. Marduk had not known of Pharaoh’s sickness, and was shocked. He looked upon the fourth Ramses as his elder brother, Marduk insisted.

Semerket also told him of Queen Narunte’s hatred for her sister-in-law, Princess Pinikir, and how he himself had been attacked by someone he believed might have had some connection to her. This, also, was not a surprise to Marduk; it seemed that the Heir of Isin had a host of informants throughout the city who kept him aware of all that transpired, particularly if it concerned his Egyptian “master.”

Semerket fell silent now and bit his lip. His growing uneasiness was plain to see. Marduk laid his hand on Semerket’s arm, forcing him to look into his face. “What do you need to ask me, Semerket?”

Semerket had always been incapable of dissimulation, and decided to ask the dreaded question. “Marduk, did you order the massacre at the Egyptian temple? If you did, then you’re responsible for the deaths of three people I considered friends.”

Marduk gave a start. There was an angry stirring in the room. “Isins don’t attack civilian targets, Semerket,” he said in a cold voice, “particularly the houses of gods.”

“A rogue band, perhaps drunk—?”

“Impossible.”

Semerket reasoned that Marduk had nothing to gain by lying to him, and nodded. “I do believe you. But since your Isins didn’t do it, you must know that someone—some group—wants everyone to think you did. Just as they want everyone to believe that you attacked the plantation, as well.”

Before Marduk could react, the tall Isin from Mari stepped forward, bringing his face close to Semerket’s.

“I told you back in Mari we didn’t attack that damned farm! What is it with Egyptians, anyway? The other one tried to accuse us of the same thing!”

Perhaps it was the omnipresent sound of rushing water from the nearby canal that prevented Semerket from hearing clearly, for it was a moment before he comprehended what the man had said.

“What other one?”

Marduk turned to nod to a soldier waiting in the doorway. The man walked swiftly down the outer hallway, the echoes of his boots receding with him.

“Now,” said Marduk, when they heard footsteps again approaching the chamber, “you’ll see how I take care of you, Semerket. When you told me the story of how the plantation was attacked by Isins, I put some men on it back in Mari. We were able to discover a few things, one of which should interest you exceedingly—”

A small commotion at the door interrupted Marduk. The soldier had returned, and the milling Isin warriors moved clumsily aside to allow him into the room. Semerket noticed that a second person followed the soldier.

Semerket blinked. He rose to his feet slowly, staring.

He’s no longer a boy, Semerket thought. He’s lost his adolescent reediness, and his shoulders are broader.

“Rami?” he said at last, so quietly that he might have mouthed the name.

The boy stared at him, his expression unreadable. Semerket had been largely responsible for Rami’s banishment from Egypt, having uncovered his parents’ complicity in rifling the tombs within the Great Place. Though he had managed to save Rami from the executioner, getting him exiled instead, the lad had blamed him for having destroyed the life he had known. Semerket was therefore unsure what kind of welcome he would receive from the young man.

Perhaps Rami had not altogether grown up, for his face suddenly crumpled like any child’s when he recognized Semerket, and he flung himself into Semerket’s arms. “I knew you’d come,” he said in Egyptian. “Naia told me you would.”

At the sound of his wife’s name, Semerket’s chest thudded. Rami alone knew the truth of what had happened that night. But the boy was clearly in too vulnerable a state to answer any questions about it; and perhaps, too, for the first time in his life, Semerket did not want to know the answers.

“Of course I came,” Semerket said. “I’m the one who got you into this, didn’t I?” He extracted himself from Rami’s grasp, gazing at him at arm’s length. The lad was emaciated, pale, with dark circles ringing his eyes. Semerket saw the boy stagger slightly; clearly, Rami had not recovered and would need the services of a good physician quickly.

“Rami, I know an Egyptian doctor here in Babylon,” Semerket said. “I’m going to have him brought here.”

Before he could finish, Rami grew even paler, and put his hand up to his ear. “I’m sorry…sometimes when I stand for too long—”

Rami’s eyes began to quiver, then rolled upward into their sockets. Without another sound, he fell to the floor.

“I MUST OPEN YOUR SKULL,” Kem-weset said to Rami.

At Semerket’s request, Marduk had sent a man through the tunnels to fetch the physician. When he arrived, Kem-weset evinced no surprise to find Semerket surrounded by Isin rebels, as well as a male Ishtaritu, for he had long before accepted that Semerket was a Follower of Set, allied to danger, chaos, and trouble. Rami, meanwhile, had regained consciousness in the interval between his collapse and the physician’s appearance, and resisted Kem-weset’s first attempts to examine him. He was well, the boy insisted. All he needed was sleep. Rami tried to shake off the physician’s hands that continued to press gently on his skull, but then he cried out sharply.

Kem-weset withdrew a razor from his medicine chest and carefully shaved away the hair over the boy’s left ear. Even Semerket could see that though the skin had healed, the skull was no longer rounded at the area, but indented. Kem-weset said that he must perform the surgery immediately.

“No!” was Rami’s instant response.

Kem-weset spoke calmly. “Then you won’t get well. Your attacks will become more frequent, until finally you will die from them.”

“I’ll die from the operation!”

“Quite possibly,” Kem-weset agreed. “But you also have one chance in three of surviving. If I do nothing, you have no chance at all.”

“It’ll hurt!”

“I have drugs to calm the pain. You’ll feel very little.”

In the end, Rami had to agree to the treatment. Kem-weset then shaved his head entirely and applied a numbing salve to the area where he would cut. The physician called for wine.

“Is that wise?” asked Semerket, alarmed. “Surely your hands will be steadier without it?”

“It’s for Rami, you idiot,” answered Kem-weset shortly. “I’ll mix the poppy paste into it.”

The wine was brought, and Kem-weset spooned a thick, viscous brown substance into it, stirring until it was completely dissolved. Following the custom of centuries, just as he had done for Semerket, Kem-weset wrote out a prayer of supplication on a strip of papyrus and ran it through the liquid. The glyphs melted, the inks bled away, and Kem-weset brought the bowl to Rami’s lips.

“Drink it all down,” he commanded.

Kem-weset beckoned Semerket to join him at the corner of the room, and spoke to him in a low tone. “If you have anything to ask him, Semerket, you’d best ask now.”

Semerket shook his head. “If these are to be his last moments, I’d rather not torment him with useless questions. There are more important things.” But he was saying to himself, Coward!

Kem-weset gruffly patted his arm. He returned to his box of instruments and asked one of the Isins to bring a flame in which to purify them. He also asked Semerket for a silver piece, though he did not say what it was for. Semerket did not ask. Marduk offered up his own mattress, helping Semerket carry Rami into another small room, where they laid the boy upon it. Every oil lamp in the cistern was collected from the soldiers and brought there, until the area was bright as day.

Rami attempted to lie quietly while the drug worked its magic, but it was apparent that the sedative was having the opposite effect on him than the one intended. “Semerket,” he said anxiously, “Semerket, my Day of Pain has come, hasn’t it?”

“Of course it hasn’t,” came his automatic reply.

“I heard what the old man told you, that you’d better ask me about Naia, now, while I’m still alive.”

“There’s no need. It can wait,” replied Semerket, too quickly. “Tomorrow, perhaps, when you’re well enough.” When I can bear it, he was thinking.

But the boy was not listening. Once he began to speak, his words poured out in a torrent of confession and self-reproach. “I know I’ll die today,” he said in a quivery voice. “I think I only lived long enough so I could ask for your forgiveness…because you loved her so much.”

Fear began blowing coldly into Semerket’s soul. He knew that he could not let Rami die in such torment, and tried to keep the fright from his voice when he answered. “What is it, then, Rami? What do you need to tell me?”

Rami’s eyes grew wide. “Semerket, it was because of me that Naia died! It was my fault!”

Semerket stared. So there it was, he thought; the confirmation that Naia was well and truly dead. Strange to feel nothing. In fact, he felt only a relief to hear the words at last spoken aloud. No more hope. Everything gone; finished at last. Oddly, it was an unexpectedly pleasant feeling, an almost buoyant sensation of complete and utter emptiness.

“I’m sure it wasn’t,” Semerket said tonelessly.

The boy began to ramble. “No! I should have saved her! I could have, if I’d only known what they were saying. But it’s such a difficult language—even Naia had trouble with it. When we were at the ambassador’s, it didn’t matter. Everybody spoke Egyptian there. But Naia said we must learn the language—Babylon was our home now—but I was too stupid—”

If anything, the drug was making the boy more fretful. Semerket canted his head to see if Kem-weset was nearby, but the old physician was pounding at something in the corridor. Semerket swabbed Rami’s sweaty forehead with a damp cloth. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“We were happy at the embassy.” Rami ignored him, and his rush of words came even more quickly. “But when Prince Mayatum came, everything changed. Why? We hadn’t done anything! Why did Menef send us away?”

Semerket’s raised his head slowly. “Who came to the embassy?”

The boy writhed in sudden pain, and he gasped the name. “Prince Mayatum!”

Semerket sat back on his heels, stunned. He put his hand to the wall to steady himself. Prince Mayatum had been in Babylon? But why should he travel all the way to Babylon just to see Menef? For what purpose? The alliance between Egypt and Babylon had existed for hundreds of years; there was no need to send any royal personage here. Then he remembered Mayatum’s own words that day so long before in Djamet Temple. The prince had told Semerket that he had only then returned from a trip to meet with Egypt’s Asian allies. It would have been a simple thing for the prince to make a secret journey into Babylon at that time. Semerket shook his head, forcing down the terrible suspicion that was fast rising in him.

“Do you know why he came here, Rami?”

As his spasm of pain subsided, Rami shook his head slightly. “No…no. I only know that Naia and I were chosen to serve him at the feast that night. Out of all the servants, Menef chose us.”

Menef again! Always Menef at the root of every nasty little evil in this wretched city!

“All during the banquet, the prince kept looking at Naia, making comments about you, about what a hero you were to Egypt. But it sounded like an insult, the way he said it. She got so nervous she spilled her tray all over him.” The boy spoke with increasing difficulty, for the medicine was drying his mouth. Semerket soaked the rag in a jar of water and squeezed a few drops between Rami’s lips.

“Then what happened?”

“Next day, we were sent away to the Elamite plantation. But Naia went to Menef, before we left. She told him that we didn’t want to go. Menef hit her across the face. Said we had no choice, that he could do what he wanted with us.”

Semerket’s voice went flat. “He struck her?”

But Rami ignored the question. “I didn’t like it at the plantation,” he said, “couldn’t understand anyone. But Naia and the princess got along. Naia found out the reason why she’d come to Babylon…a secret reason…”

“What was the secret, Rami? Did she tell you?”

Rami shook his head. His eyelids were drooping.

“Rami!” Semerket’s voice cracked like whip. “Tell me what happened that night!”

Rami grimaced as if he had been struck. He screwed up his face, trying to remember. “An old woman came there after sundown, telling us that…that something was in the sky…blood…a warning, she said.”

Mother Mylitta. Semerket could see her tall figure in his mind, banging on the plantation gates, demanding entry. He closed his eyes, deliberately forcing his ka up and out of his body. As Rami continued to speak, it left the underground world, rising to the streets above, plunging through the avenues and out the Ishtar Gate. Soon it was soaring over the hilltops and wheat fields, heading to the north, gliding effortlessly past the river levees.

Semerket was at the plantation now, its walls rising abruptly before him. The guards were closing the gates against the night and Naia was there—she was carrying a basket of laundry into the house. As always in his nightmares, he tried to call out to her, but his voice was wedged in his throat.

He gripped Rami’s shoulder.

“And Mother Mylitta has just arrived,” he said softly into Rami’s ear, prompting him, “she’s come through the gate. Where are you, Rami?”

“Outside, in the kitchens, with the cook…”

Semerket’s eyelids flickered. He tried to open them, but his ka was gone and would not return. Semerket was once again on his plain of nightmares.

“Where were you when the old woman came, Rami?”

“In the kitchens, helping the cook prepare the meal. Then he sent me upstairs to the garden, to help serve it with Naia. The old woman was already there. She was waving her arms about and pointing to a star in the sky. I thought she was crazy, but Naia told me she was a kind of sorceress, that she’d seen a great evil coming from Egypt to attack us.”

So far, Rami’s story was consistent with the one that Mylitta had told him. “Go on, Rami. What happened next?”

“Everyone turned to look at Naia and me, since we were the only Egyptians. But the woman asked us questions—”

“What kind of questions?”

“When we were born—the date, what time it was, where…”

“Go on.”

“She said that we weren’t the evil ones, and that we were all to go with her to Babylon. She said she could protect us there.”

According to Rami, however, the prince did not trust Mylitta, believing instead that she intended to lure him and his wife into a Dark Head trap. He had guards enough at the plantation to protect them, he told her, and would allow neither his wife nor his servants to come with her. Knowing that her trip to the plantation had been in vain, Mother Mylitta departed.

“We kept all the bonfires burning that night,” said Rami. “But everything was quiet as usual. The prince told us that the old woman was insane, and that we should be laughing at her. But we were frightened, all the servants were.”

“Where was Naia during this, Rami?”

“She was upstairs with Princess Pinikir. The princess was scared, too, so Naia came to the kitchens to make her a sleeping brew. I remember she told me that the princess was distressed.”

As the hours wore on and nothing happened, Rami said, jangling nerves became calmer at the plantation. The cook heated some wine for the guards and the boy delivered it to the watchtower. He climbed the ladder to distribute the clay cups among the men, taking a moment to look out into the blackness beyond the walls. Across the plain, Rami believed he saw the movement of the swift-flowing Euphrates in the starlight. But he suddenly realized that the river was in fact behind the estate, to the west. Thinking that he had only imagined the movement in the dark, Rami climbed down to the courtyard.

When he was on the ground, he turned to look back at the watchtower.

“But something was wrong! The guards were suddenly falling over—arrows had struck them!”

Everything happened then in extreme, exaggerated slowness, he told Semerket. Not until one of the soldiers in the tower fell upon the tocsin bell, not until he heard the man’s dying gasps, did Rami’s tongue loosen enough so he could yell an alarm—

“Help! Assassins!” he called. “Help!”

Prince Nugash was in the courtyard and heard Rami screaming. By then the raiders were throwing grappling hooks over the wall. Nugash turned in time to see the shadowy figures of men appearing over the ramparts. The raiders’ heads were swathed in black cloths, Rami said, so everyone knew it was the Isins who attacked them.

“Prince Nugash rushed up to one of them, with a battle-ax in his hand, but their archers got him first. Then they drove a lance through him, to make sure he was dead. All that time, I just stood there. I couldn’t move!”

The Isins rounded up all the servants and tied them together in the courtyard. Rami stood rooted to the ground, hidden in the shadows, still holding his tray. No one noticed him. When everyone had left the houses, the marauders pitched torches into the buildings. They caught fire quickly, for their reed roofs became instant tinder.

“That’s when I thought about Naia. I remember saying her name aloud,” Rami said, looking up at Semerket. “I should have been searching for her. I could have saved her if I hadn’t been so stupid!”

“That’s when you saw her coming out of the house,” Semerket said, his eyes closed, remembering the image from his own nightmares. “That’s when she came into the courtyard.”

Rami nodded. “I saw her in the doorway, with fire raging behind her. I knew it was Naia, because she was wearing the scarf you gave her—the blue one with the stars.”

“What happened? She was in the doorway, and—”

“They surrounded her, kept her apart from the others.” The boy was weeping now, unabashedly, and he thrashed about on the mattress, so that Semerket had to grip his arm to quiet him.

“They were on horseback,” Rami said. “One of them, the leader I think, rode over to her. The fire was so loud, like a furnace roaring, but I heard him to say to her, ‘You’re the Egyptian woman? You’re Naia?’ ”

“Those were his words, Rami? His exact words?”

“I heard him say it! Naia didn’t answer. I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell that she was looking up at him. Then I saw her nod her head. And that’s when he took his lance and drove it through her! I saw it happen! He killed her!”

In the underground chamber, Rami brought his hands up to his face, covering his tear-stained cheeks. “I remember running at him, then. I dropped the tray and I ran toward the man on horseback. I screamed at him, yelling curses at him. The horse reared up and the man fell to the ground. Then I was on top of him—strangling him, hitting his face. I kept trying to get his black hood off him so I could see what he looked like. Even if they killed me, I wanted to come back to haunt him. Then the hood came off, just like that. Right into my hands. And I saw—I’ll never forget—”

“What, Rami? What won’t you forget?”

“His face, like a skeleton’s, with awful yellow teeth and that mark at his eye.”

Semerket exhaled. “Was it an asp…so small it could have been a tear?”

Rami nodded, looking at him wide-eyed.

“That’s when they struck you.”

“I don’t remember when it happened, except that my head exploded. I know that I fell on top of the man. ‘Get him off me!’ he kept screaming. ‘Get him off me!’ And the funny thing is…”

Rami’s voice was barely audible now, and his words were slurring together. Semerket laid his ear against Rami’s lips.

“What was it, Rami? What was so funny?”

“…I could understand everything they said…all of a sudden, I could speak Babylonian…”

“No, Rami,” said Semerket. “You understood them because they were speaking Egyptian.”

RAMI WAS SUFFICIENTLY DRUGGED that Kem-weset felt it safe to begin the surgery. But the old physician was adamant that Rami was not to move by so much as a fraction. “You two will need to hold his arms,” Kem-weset said to Semerket and Marduk.

Though Semerket was averse to the task, at least he had been schooled in the House of Purification and was fairly inured to the cutting and stitching of flesh. Marduk, on the other hand, instantly paled and instead ordered one of his men to Rami’s side. But the man fell to his knees, weeping in fear. It was sacrilegious to open a body with a knife, he said, contrary to the will of the gods—this from a warrior who had probably disemboweled hundreds on the battlefield.

Marduk was about to order that lots be drawn, when a low voice came from outside the room. “I’ll do it,” said Nidaba, pushing her way past the warriors and approaching the mattress. Semerket made sure to take the side where the incision would be made, sparing her the sight of the wound. She sank to the floor and took Rami’s head onto her lap. Her gold-tipped fingers gripped his skull tightly.

Kem-weset then demanded that the Isins bring forth a blood-stauncher. The Isins looked at one another in bewilderment, for they had never heard of such a person. Muttering to himself about the backwardness of such people, Kem-weset took his scalpel and made a cut across his thigh. The blood ran freely down his leg.

“Let your men be brought here in single file,” Kem-weset said to Marduk. “Quickly now, before it clots.”

At least twenty soldiers passed into the chamber before Kem-weset found his blood-stauncher, a young Isin man who had once been a farmer. When he approached the old physician, the wound on Kem-weset’s thigh instantly stopped its flow.

“This is the man!” Kem-weset declared. “Bring him into the room.”

The Isin warriors became alarmed and stared at the farmer as if he were suddenly revealed to be a demon. Kem-weset patiently explained that the Egyptians, being more advanced, had long known of the existence of staunchers—and that approximately one in every ten persons possessed the power to stop the flow of blood by their mere presence.

“Of course, these persons rarely know they possess the talent,” he explained, as he beckoned the farmer into the chamber, placing him near Rami’s head.

Kem-weset was ready to begin. Quickly, he made the incision, a half circle around the indentation above Rami’s ear. The boy groaned, but did not wake. Carefully, Kem-weset peeled the flesh up to expose the bone. Blood oozed from the cut, spilling across Nidaba’s lap. She made no sound, and her expression remained stoic.

“Where is that stauncher?” Kem-weset asked crossly.

The man had backed unseen into the corner of the room. Marduk dragged him into position, and the blood stopped its flow.

“Stay there!” Marduk growled.

Kem-weset took up a chisel and mallet, and began hammering at Rami’s skull. Finally, the physician inserted a bore into the wound. A few taps of the mallet, a twist, and he pulled away a neat plug of bone, exposing the pinkish-gray brain inside. It pulsed in the lamplight, and even Semerket noticed the black blood and fragment of bone that pressed against it.

“Now,” said Kem-weset, “all I must do is remove this chip—like so—and tweeze away the bits of old blood. Yes…there!” Deftly, Kem-weset inserted the flattened disc of polished silver he had fashioned from the piece that Semerket had given him, then sealed it with mastic.

“They say the brain’s a worthless organ,” said Kem-weset as he threaded a needle with lamb’s sinew. “But see what this minuscule piece of bone was able to do to the poor lad?” He held the fragment in the lamplight, where it glistened bloodily for all to see. With gasps and curses, the Isin warriors sharply averted their eyes. But Kem-weset continued his discourse, fascinated. “What it tells me is that the brain must be good for something,” he said. “Don’t you agree?”

When no one answered him, Kem-weset shrugged and began stitching up the flap of skin. Then he made a paste of honey and herbs, lathering it onto a bandage, and pressed it against the wound. Finally, he wrapped a cloth tightly around Rami’s head.

It was not until Kem-weset rose to his feet, saying, “I’ll have that wine now,” that everyone realized the surgery was over. A collective sigh of relief sounded through the room.

Semerket found that he was drenched in sweat, that his forehead blazed with pain. The headache that had threatened to overtake him all day had at last arrived. He did not mention it to Kem-weset, however, lest the physician in his enthusiasm suggest a second surgery.

“When will you know if the boy will live?” Semerket asked him.

“The next ten measures of the water clock are critical,” replied the physician. “If he develops a fever, he will die.”

Ten hours. He could not wait ten hours. He would go mad in this tomblike place. He needed to walk, to wander, to breathe fresh air. And then he knew what he needed more than anything else in the world at that particular moment; a demon had taken possession of him, thirsting with a demon’s ferociousness—he needed wine.

“I must leave,” Semerket said abruptly. “I’ll come back later. I have business in the city.”

Kem-weset reassured him that he would stay with the boy until they knew his fate, one way or another.

Without a word to even Marduk or Nidaba, Semerket had already turned on heel and started to sprint down the tunnels. Marduk called out, saying that if he waited he would send a man with Semerket to lead him out. But Semerket would not wait. Even when Nidaba called after him, offering to take him back through the cisterns herself—even then he ran.

Possessing no torch, he had no idea where he went. He simply kept running forward, tripping over the roots and broken tiles, sometimes falling. A faint light appeared in the distance, seeping down from a cistern grate, and he ran to it. He found a curving stairway and climbed, coming upon the grate at its far end. It took him a moment to figure out its latch, but he was finally able to lunge into the Babylonian twilight after a few moments, gasping.

Semerket leaned against a wall. The street was unfamiliar to him. As always, he attempted to orient himself to Etemenanki, but the angle of the buildings in the area prevented a clear view of the tower. At the end of the street, however, he saw the pediment of the Ishtar Temple. He knew he was near the Egyptian Quarter. From deep within the cistern he heard Nidaba faintly calling to him. But he was unable to face her—anyone—and began to run.

“WINE,” he said. “Red.”

“Going to drink it this time?” the wineseller asked, his disdain for Semerket as marked as ever.

“What’s it to you whether I drink or not?” The black jets in Semerket’s eyes flashed dangerously.

The wineseller swallowed his impertinent retort; there was something about Semerket that night that reminded him of a coiled serpent. Best not to tease it into striking.

Semerket sat at the rear of the tavern, away from the lantern light. Though the Elamites patrolled the city, enforcing the curfew where they could, they ignored the Egyptian Quarter. Semerket had known instinctively that this tavern, where he had first met Kem-weset, would continue to serve wine regardless of riot, upheaval, or war.

“Planning on staying long?” the wineseller asked.

“What’s it to you?”

“No reason, no reason—just making conversation.”

“Bring me the wine.”

The wineseller shrugged and went back to where his wine jars were stacked. Semerket watched him as he poured out a bowl. The seller caught the eye of his servant, a sheep-faced youth who collected the empty bowls strewn about the disordered place. The wineseller whispered into the boy’s ear, then nodded in the direction of Semerket.

“He’s telling him to charge me double,” Semerket thought morosely. He dropped his eyes, past caring, for his body throbbed with fatigue and grief. The bowl was set before him. It was not the servant who put it there, but the wineseller himself. Semerket looked around in dim surprise, and noticed that the serving boy was gone. Pulling out a gold piece from his belt, he flipped it into the air. “Keep the wine coming,” he said shortly.

The wineseller caught the ring in his fist. He saluted Semerket smartly, and returned to his jars.

Semerket brought the bowl to his lips and the red flowed into his throat. For a whole year he had not tasted wine, save for the cup that Kem-weset had forced into him, mixed with medicines. On the Theban docks, when Naia had sailed away from Egypt forever, he had solemnly promised her that he would never again drink it. She had placed her son in his arms, saying that if Semerket ever tasted wine again, then her child could not thrive and she would grieve for them both.

For an entire year, he had kept his promise.

But Naia was dead. Gone from him forever. Surely that invalidated his pledge.

A paroxysm of grief shook him, starting from his stomach where the wine lay cold and sour, refusing to do its work. He called for another bowl. It was delivered. Then another. It was doing nothing for him, this wine. What kind of piss did they serve here? Rage suddenly blazed through him, and he hurled the bowl across the room.

“I still feel!” he shouted. “Bring me another bowl!”

“Why don’t I just bring you a jar of my very finest?” the wineseller suggested from across the room.

The establishment’s very finest tasted suspiciously like the wine he had been drinking all along. By the end of the jar, however, he didn’t care, for it had finally succeeded in calming his roiling mind. Now he could take out the terrible revelations that Rami’s confession had stirred; he had the courage to examine them at last.

He stared into the distance, allowing the spectre of Prince Mayatum to appear before him. Semerket finally acknowledged to himself the thought he had been trying to keep at bay, that the prince had come to Babylon not for any diplomatic discussions, nor for pleasure.

The prince had come simply to arrange the murder of Naia and Rami.

It seemed almost a ridiculous thing to admit. Semerket could not comprehend why the prince had gone to such lengths to strike at him. Semerket was a nobody, beneath his notice. Mayatum and his brothers were princes of the blood, tracing their lineage to the great god Amun himself, while Semerket was only a generation from the peasantry.

Self-effacing, willfully naive, Semerket had always considered himself scarcely worth the attention of even ordinary people. That was why, when Naia had approached him, seeking him out above all the other youths who trailed in her wake, he had lost his heart to her.

Then he remembered something else and his tears dried.

Menef had struck her!

Icy wrath surged through his body, and the thought came upon him succinctly—I will kill him. Tonight. Before the dawn arrives, I will drive the life out of him.

His rage was not directed at the ambassador’s bodyguard, the Asp, the one who had impaled Naia on his lance. No, the Asp was an animal, scarcely human, who gloried in pain and suffering. Semerket had known it the moment he had seen him, with his ghoul’s smile and yellow teeth. Why expect an animal to be something other than what its nature compelled it to be? No, it was Menef who said, “Fetch!” and it was Menef who said, “Kill!” and the animal went just as willingly to either task.

He was convinced now that Menef had been a member of Queen Tiya’s foul conspiracy. Prince Mayatum’s secret visit to Babylon proved it. The remnants of the terrible cabal were alive, Semerket realized, and their sinister hand had reached all the way into Mesopotamia to take their revenge upon him. He had been the one who foiled their ambitions, who had also been the author of their subsequent humiliations, testifying at the trials against them. How stupid he had been to consider their conspiracy dead and forgotten! Though the queen had mysteriously disappeared, rumored to be the victim of her husband’s secret revenge, as long as her remaining sons were still alive, how could it ever be over? By killing Naia they had sought the most vicious and painful way possible to kill him as well.

Well, he was not dead yet.

He would go that very night to Kutir, to make his accusations against them. They had caused the massacre at the plantation, to make Rami’s and Naia’s murder look like the work of Isin terrorists. But he shook his head, uncomfortable with the logic. Was it not strange that so many had to die because of some distant Egyptian quarrel—that a massacre of more than thirty Mesopotamians was perpetrated just to kill two ordinary Egyptians?

He looked at the empty wine jar in front of him. Perhaps another would help him reason out why so many had to die at the same time. Semerket raised his head to call again to the wineseller, but discovered that a group of men had quietly stolen around him.

Rough hands suddenly pulled him to his feet. “Whoa there, my lord!” a harsh voice came to him, loud enough for all to hear. “It seems you’ve drunk a wee bit too much tonight—as usual. Don’t want you to go making a spectacle of yourself again, eh? You might fall into the wrong hands!”

The Asp leered at him. Semerket whirled around to see the other man who gripped his shoulder; the young man’s face was very familiar and he strained to remember who it was. Then he knew—it was the guard from the embassy, the one to whom he had given the new spear.

“What’re you doing here?” Semerket mumbled to him. “I thought we were friends…”

The young man glanced fearfully at the Asp, and his grip on Semerket’s arm became tighter. “Come along quietly now, sir,” he urged.

But that was precisely what Semerket would not do. He struggled, cursing, shrieking for help, but none in the shop made a move to aid him. He was just another obstreperous drunk to them, fortunate to have people who cared enough to rescue him before he passed out. As they dragged him from the wineshop into the dark street, Semerket saw the Asp toss a couple of gold pieces to the wineseller and his serving boy. He suddenly knew where the boy had disappeared to that evening: he had been sent to fetch the Asp.

In the empty streets, Semerket’s screams caromed off the brick walls of the shuttered buildings. He saw heads peeping at him from over the balustrades, and he shrieked up to them for help. But they quickly withdrew into the shadows; in times of war, no one willingly went into the dark to aid a stranger.

In his hysteria, Semerket noticed that he and his captors were skirting the Processional Way, heading in the direction of the royal quarter. Surely there must be Elamite soldiers on the avenues, he thought, and craned his neck to see. But the dark was by now so pervasive that he could not even see the faces of his captors.

“I know it was you who attacked the plantation,” he hissed in the direction of the Asp.

“We suspected as much,” came the indifferent answer.

“Kutir knows,” Semerket lied. “I told him.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Even now his men are searching for you.”

“No, they aren’t.”

“How do you know? Where do you think I’ve been all day? I’ve been at the palace! I told Kutir everything—how it was you who dressed up as Isins and killed his brother-in-law. I showed him the Egyptian arrow I found!”

“Did you, now? I’m curious to learn, then, what Ambassador Menef had to say. He’s been at the court all day, too, you see. Did you have an opportunity to chat?”

Semerket cursed inwardly at his slip, but continued to hurl his accusations into the dark “I told him that it was you who attacked the Egyptian temple, that you thought my wife was there—”

“No. We knew your wife wasn’t there.”

The Asp and his men came to a halt. The man’s ghastly yellow smile lit up the dark as he drew close to Semerket. “We knew your wife was dead, you see. Because I’m the one who killed her. My only regret is I hadn’t the time to rape her first, for she seemed a tasty little morsel.” His jeering laughter filled the street.

Semerket hung between the two men that held him, dead-eyed. He suddenly hawked up deeply and spat in the Asp’s face. Though the man’s frozen rictus of a smile remained unchanged, Semerket saw his eyes become lethal.

“Hand me that spear, will you?” the Asp said calmly to the young embassy guard. “Nice,” he said when he held it in his hands. “Good weight. Expensive.”

The guard merely swallowed, saying nothing.

Semerket knew he was going to be impaled, just as Naia had been, and closed his eyes. He braced himself for the terrible thrust. Instead of freezing metal in his guts, it was his head that erupted in a blaze of golden sparks. The Asp had struck him with the butt-end of the spear. A metallic taste filled Semerket’s mouth, and a pitiless black overtook him. The last sense to go was his hearing.

“There,” the Asp said. “That ought to shut him up for a while.”

THEY WERE STILL carrying him when he wakened. Hearing the loud echo of his captors’ footsteps, he thought that he was once again in the cisterns beneath the city. But there was no accompanying sound of running water, and through the slits of his eyes he saw no roots snaking along the footpaths and up the walls. Torches lit the long hallway at regular intervals, telling him that the place was inhabited.

His head ached and his mouth tasted of blood, but he was no longer drunk; either the Asp’s blow or sheer terror had driven the wine fumes from him. Semerket decided that if he continued to lie motionless in their grip, a dead weight, the men would have to lay him down eventually. The moment they did, he would spring away.

The men stopped at a doorway. Semerket tensed. This was where he would have to make his move. But he heard a bolt drawn and then a heavy door pulled open.

They had brought him to some sort of cell, he realized. Semerket was simultaneously relieved and fearful; it meant that they were not going to execute him immediately, yet it precluded any attempt at flight. The men carried him inside, dropping him roughly onto the brick floor. From the movement of light through his closed eyelids, he sensed that they had brought a torch into the room with them.

When he felt rough hands begin to remove his clothes, he surrendered all pretense at unconsciousness. Semerket yelled loudly, striking out at them, and rolled away from their grasp.

“He’s awake!” one of the guards shouted.

“Ah, good,” said the Asp from outside the cell. “That should make it all the more interesting for him.”

Without much difficulty, the Asp’s men caught him again and continued to strip off his garments. All the while, he noticed, they glanced nervously over their shoulders to the rear of the cell. At last he was quite naked, for they had removed even his sandals. They shoved him roughly against the wall and backed out of the room, holding their swords in front of them to foil any attempt to rush past them.

The last to leave was the young guard to whom he had given the spear. The lad said nothing, but his glance was peculiarly intense. He looked from Semerket to the wall, indicating with his eyes that Semerket should look up as well. Semerket moved his head to see that the guard had left the torch in its socket.

What was the lad getting at? Semerket thought. So what if he could see the cell where he was imprisoned? Of what value was that?

As the guards closed the door, he threw himself upon it, pushing at it, pounding, but he heard only its bolt slide into place. Then a small grilled window set high in the door opened, and a pair of dark brown eyes stared at him—the Asp’s.

“Let me out of here,” Semerket pleaded. “I have gold. I’ll make you rich.”

“I’ve gold enough,” the Asp said. His indifference was chilling; how many people had offered him gold to spare their lives? It was hopeless, anyway, Semerket thought, suffering, not gold, was what the Asp relished.

Semerket heard the sound of approaching footsteps from down the hallway. The high whinny of Menef’s voice reached him. “Is he in there?”

“He’s there,” replied the Asp.

“Let me see!”

The ambassador was so short that he had to struggle to put his eyes to the grille.

“You’ll answer to Pharaoh for this, Menef! You’ll be lucky if you’re not burned to death for it! I know you were part of Tiya’s conspiracy—”

Menef turned unconcernedly to the unseen Asp. “I told you that Aneku would burble everything to him.”

“Does it matter?” murmured the Asp. “She can’t talk anymore.”

Semerket pounded on the door in rage. “When I get out of here, Menef, I’ll tell Kutir you ordered the attack on the plantation, that your own men did it—”

The ambassador interrupted nonchalantly. “But I didn’t order it, Semerket.”

Semerket fell silent. Even at that moment of extremity, his mind sought to solve the puzzle. Another person suddenly pushed Menef away from the grille. A pair of familiar silver eyes took the place of the ambassador’s.

“I ordered it,” said the heavily accented voice. This time, however, the queen’s voice was not slurry from beer. “Surely you had guessed by now.”

Semerket shook his head slowly.

Narunte’s laugh was a vulgar cackle. “And my husband thought you were such a brilliant investigator!” Behind her, Menef tittered immoderately.

“But why?” Semerket asked faintly.

Narunte sighed, rolling her demon’s eyes, and spoke in an indulgent tone. “Because Nugash and Pinikir had been sent to undermine my husband. Shutruk, his own father, had sent them—he could not have a son who outshone him. Not even his own blood could compete with that monster. Well, I couldn’t have that. I wouldn’t.”

Was that what Rami meant when he said that Naia had known Pinikir’s secret reason for coming to Babylon?

“Menef and I put our heads together,” the queen continued, “and came up with a perfect solution to both our problems. We could eliminate all our enemies at once, and make everyone think that the Isins had done it.” Her voice grew petulant. “It was a perfect plan—perfect! Until you came here. You even foiled the assassin we sent against you. Did you kill him, Semerket?”

“Yes.”

He saw her silver eyes darken. “He was my kinsman. The Asp said he had seen your followers do it.”

“I was there that night, Semerket,” said the Asp.

So he had been the second man!

Menef’s voice behind the door was solicitous. “Don’t fret, Majesty. In a few moments, Semerket will die and the king will never know about any of this. Your kinsman will be avenged. You’ve nothing more to worry about.”

Semerket pounded on the door. “Pharaoh will scour this country looking for me, Menef!”

“Alas, Semerket, you’ll have disappeared. As completely and utterly as anyone can disappear. There won’t even be a fingernail left to identify you.”

In the hallway, a bronze stirrup hung from a chain. The last thing Semerket saw before they closed the grated window was the Asp reaching for it, his death’s-head smile etched on his face.

“Goodbye, Semerket,” he heard Menef’s faint voice from behind the thick door. “We’d stay and watch, but the king will be wondering where we are. Mustn’t keep royalty waiting, you know.” There was a pause. “Pull the lever,” Menef said. Semerket heard the fading echoes of their footsteps as they walked swiftly away.

With a great rasping of chain, the sound of moving machinery came to him from the floor above. Wheels were turning, latches falling into place, hidden doors springing open. From behind him, in the cell itself, he heard another noise, and turned swiftly to look. A small portal in the far wall opened. He had not noticed it before, for it was located close to the floor, in the shadows. Two other doors were beside it, but they remained closed.

A slight movement in the portal’s black recess caught his eye. Something was crawling forward into the light. A rat, Semerket thought. Yet the thing was not gray, as a rat would be, but gleamed iridescently as if it were made of metal. He looked closer. It skittered forward. Its flat, shiny eyes shone in the flickering torchlight, and mandibles moved in its head. Then its long back broke apart. As two wings sprouted, the thing lifted from the ground, and the giant black beetle flew straight at him.

With a shout of terror, Semerket realized where he was…

SEMERKET POUNDED ON the chamber’s door, scratching at the wood with his nails, screaming for help. He felt the thing hit his back. Searing pain radiated from the nape of his neck. The beetle had sunk its mandibles into his flesh and clung there, already feasting. Its legs wrapped obscenely around the contours of his shoulders, so that it pressed against him in an almost intimate way. Semerket’s mouth filled with bile.

He reached behind to pry it away. The beetle made a hissing noise, and he felt it move across his back to avoid his hands. He could not reach it. Swiftly, he turned and rammed himself against the brick wall. There was a satisfying crunch, and the beetle fell to the floor, writhing, legs and mandibles still working spasmodically.

Other beetles were beginning to emerge from the portal, equal in size to the monster he had just killed. He saw them begin to twitch and quiver as they sought to break open their carapaces and stretch their wings. Though he could barely stand to touch it, he kicked the dying insect over to where the others teemed. They fell on their cousin, swarming over it, devouring it. Even at the opposite end of the chamber, he heard the awful sounds of their jaws working in unison.

He pounded on the doors again, screaming, “Help! Somebody! Please! Open the door!”

Semerket pressed his ear to the wood to ascertain if anyone in the corridor moved, but the only thing he heard was another clanging movement from the hidden mechanism above. He turned, gasping, and saw the second portal open across the chamber.

The scorpion emerged slowly, creeping warily into the light, keeping near the door while it studied the chamber. Semerket saw it raise its forearm, and heard the clack of its pincer, as big as an infant’s fist. Even in his primal state of horror, he stopped to gape at the thing.

Semerket remembered those scorpions he had seen by the river at Mari, and almost laughed aloud to think that he had once thought them large. The creature he now faced was easily the size of his foot, and its lethal sting curled up over its back like a miniature scimitar.

Semerket remembered the desert nomads telling him that the larger scorpions possessed the least-toxic venom; it was the sting of the smaller ones that caused the greatest numbers of deaths, and the most agony. But Shepak had told him that these insects in the chamber had reached their grotesque size from a steady diet of human flesh; for all he knew this could be one of the smaller specimens grown large.

He heard the dry skittering of countless others of its kin trying to wedge themselves out from the portal. But the giant scorpion did not move, and the others behind it could not enter the chamber; the first scorpion seemed to be taking Semerket’s measure before attacking him. Fortunately, it sensed that easier prey was nearby, and it turned, rushing with a blur of legs to the beetle’s carcass. The beetles that feasted on it fled backward, giving the scorpion ample room to dine alone. It was clear which was the dominant insect in the chamber—so far. Semerket watched, sickened, as its claws delicately sheared off pieces of the dead beetle, bringing them to its mouth where its jaws worked busily.

Other scorpions and beetles boiled out from their hidden lairs. Semerket again pounded on the door, screaming. The insects began to venture near him, and he lunged threateningly at them. He was gratified to see them retreat, but only for a moment.

Sweet Isis, what was he to do?

Then, as though Isis herself had sent the thought, he suddenly remembered the young guard.

The torch!

Now he knew why the boy had looked so intently at it before he left—and Semerket called down all the gods’ blessings on the lad, who had left it there for his defense. Kind lad, intelligent lad—sweet and wonderful lad—!

In one leap, Semerket had the torch in his hand.

He brought it low in a wide circle in front of him. To his relief, the insects clambered away, hysterically piling atop one another, some even attempting to crawl back into their portals. Savagely, he held the torch to them, gleefully watching as they shriveled and died. Even the stench of their bursting carcasses was like perfume to him.

Semerket heard the overhead mechanism stir itself again, and this time maggots and grubs poured out from the third and final portal—fat squirming things the color of mucus and the size of a man’s thumb. These were the things that were supposed to cleanse his carcass of all the shreds the others had left behind. He burned them as they spilled from the portal, glorying in the sounds their shriveling bodies made, like tiny shrieks as they withered into nothing.

He actually might survive this, he thought.

But the hope was dashed as soon as it was born, when he saw the torch begin to sputter, going dim for a moment.

Oh, Sweet Isis, no! He could not run short of fuel—not now! Please, please, he begged the torch soundlessly, trying to shake more melted wax from its cone into the flame. But its light was irretrievably dying, and the chamber was becoming dim.

Once again he banged on the door, screaming. The torch in his hand gutted and flared, plunging the chamber into total darkness, then lighting it up again. To his horror, he saw the insects begin to peek from their portals once more. Their flat, unblinking eyes reflected the momentary bursts of light. Antennae moved, tasting the air, seeking his smell.

Semerket sank to the floor, his back against the door, and he wept in despair. He had faced death many times, but always at the hands of humans—not like this, engulfed by thousands of tearing jaws and ripping pincers. Worse, at the end of it there would be nothing left of his body. His ka would be doomed to wander the earth forever, looking for it, never able to rest in the eons ahead. Menef had even stolen his eternal life from him…

The chamber echoed with his sobs. The torch sputtered for a final time and died. Not long now, he thought. He began to mouth the ritual prayer for the dead. “Osiris, who made me,” he began, “raise my arms up again, fill my lungs with your breath. Let me stand at your side…”

From across the chamber he heard scratching movements coming nearer.

He inhaled raggedly, rushing to complete his prayer. “In the fields of Iaru…” But terror had burgled the prayer from his memory. “In the fields of Iaru…” he kept whimpering, “of Iaru…”

Semerket closed his eyes. He held his hands over his ears to shut out the sounds of the skittering, advancing insects. He braced himself for their onslaught…

Then the world fell out from behind him.

With his hands to his ears, he had not heard the door’s latch unbolted. Before he even realized what was happening, arms were reaching in to drag him swiftly from the cell. He was dimly aware that the chamber door was being slammed shut, and a moment later, he heard the noise of a thousand chitinous bodies hitting the back of it at full force. Then he was looking up from the floor at the inverted face of Shepak hovering over him.

“Semerket!” Shepak whispered. “Thank the gods! You’re not hurt?”

He could not speak. He could not move. He was thinking, I’ve died, I’ve passed through the gates of darkness—and this is what heaven looks like.

SEMERKET COULD NOT rise from the floor. He was only able to lie on the bricks, staring upward.

“How did you know I was here?”

“Your servants found me,” Shepak said.

Servants? Semerket craned his neck. The brothers Kuri and Galzu, his two Dark Head spies, bent their heads in greeting. He was shocked to see Nidaba as well, standing apart from the rest.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said languidly. “I’m not your servant.”

“But how did you find me here? How did you know?”

“We had you in sight most of the day, my lord,” said Galzu, wheezing. “Didn’t we promise you that we would? I confess, though, we lost you after you left this lady’s house. You both seemed to disappear suddenly at the end of a street. Luckily, around sunset, we checked the wineshop—merely as a last resort, you know—and saw you there.”

“I had followed you from…” Nidaba turned away, eyeing Shepak, her Elamite enemy, and bit her lip; she could hardly mention the cisterns to him. “I followed you to the Egyptian Quarter. It took me a while to find where you had gone, but then I heard your shouts. I saw those men surrounding you.”

“We knew you were in trouble,” said Kuri. “The lady here joined us, then, when she saw that we were also following you. She was most concerned, and wanted us all to attack the men. We convinced her that such a job was hardly fit for a woman. The lady hid here in the corridors while we went to fetch Colonel Shepak from the garrison.”

Semerket blinked, interrupting them dazedly. “But where is ‘here’? Where am I?” he asked.

“The palace dungeon, Semerket,” Nidaba told him.

The dungeon. Of course; that’s why Queen Narunte had been there. And if they were in the dungeon, then—

Shepak interrupted his fevered thoughts. “When I got here, this lady was trying to rip the door from its hinges. I daresay she would have done it, too.” He looked at Nidaba admiringly. “I’ve never seen a woman so brave—or so strong.”

Despite the fact that Shepak was the hated invader, Nidaba dimpled prettily.

Under the full force of Nidaba’s gaze, Shepak had to swallow before he spoke again. “I must tell you, Semerket,” he said, “we didn’t know what we’d find in there.”

“A few seconds more and you wouldn’t have found anything,” Semerket answered. Shakily, he sat up. It was then that he noticed he was still naked. Hastily, he covered himself with his hands, looking askance at Nidaba; but Nidaba was staring only at Shepak. And Shepak, he noticed, was staring back.

“Did they happen to leave my clothes behind?” Semerket asked plaintively.

Shepak and Nidaba joined Kuri and Galzu to search the dim hallway. They found his garments on top of a nearby midden. So sure were his captors of his imminent demise, they hadn’t even bothered to hide them. Shepak and Nidaba helped him dress, for his limbs were still so rubbery that he could barely manage the task. As he donned his clothes, he told his four friends of what he had learned—that Menef and the Asp had been responsible for the raid on the plantation, as well as the Egyptian temple, and that the queen had assisted them in their crimes.

When he had clothed himself at last, they huddled together, conferring in whispers. “We’ll go to the garrison and put a guard around you,” said Shepak. “Then we’ll ask for an audience with the king. You’ll have to tell him what you know.”

“No,” said Semerket after a moment. “Not yet. There’s something else I must do here first, one final task.”

“But what?” asked a puzzled Shepak. “You’ve solved the riddle—at least enough to tell Kutir who the culprits were. What else is there?”

“If we’re truly in the palace dungeon, then we must be near the burial vaults…?”

Nidaba and the Dark Heads looked at him quizzically, but it took only a fraction of time for Shepak to comprehend what he meant. Semerket saw the Elamite’s face slam shut. “No,” Shepak said.

“I must.”

“I told you before—it’s sacrilege!”

“Shepak, listen to me. Naia’s body is in one of those jars. I know it now. The last possible thing I can do for her is to take her back with me to Egypt. My one comfort is to know that we’ll be able to lie together in our tomb.”

Shepak remained obstinate. “How would you like it if we were to come to Egypt and sift through your dead? You need a priest to recite the proper prayers and spells before you can go inside a crypt. It isn’t just a tomb to us—it’s the underworld itself. Ghosts and demons lurk there!”

Before Semerket could reply, Nidaba delicately coughed, interjecting in a small voice, “I’m a priest.” She shot an alarmed glance at Shepak. “Er, priestess. I serve Ishtar.”

Semerket looked at Shepak, silently pleading for his consent.

With a resigned curse, Shepak seized a nearby torch from its sconce.

THERE WERE ACTUALLY several floors to the palace cellar. Over the generations the Babylonian kings had been forced to dig ever deeper into the fine river soil, creating chambers in which to store the detritus of their reigns—unwanted gifts of tribute, old furniture, tattered hangings. Statues from faraway lands, outlandishly formed and bizarrely colored, emerged from the darkness, caught in the passing light of Shepak’s torch. They seemed, indeed, to lunge forward when the light caught them, like the underworld demons Shepak feared.

They came to a pair of immense copper-plated doors, set into a blood-red wall. Nidaba began to chant a prayer in her loveliest voice, while Galzu came forward with his knife to dig out the lead that had been poured, molten, into the crack between the doors. Only when Nidaba stopped her chanting and indicated that he could, did Shepak pull them open.

The first thing Semerket noticed was the overwhelming smell of honey, overlaid by the sweeter smell of rot. Semerket placed a tentative foot inside the crypt. Nidaba’s prayers must have been effective, for no demons or ghosts rose to do battle with him. With a nod to the others, Semerket reached for the torch that Shepak held.

“I’m coming with you,” Shepak said.

“You don’t have to.”

“You’ll need someone to hold the torch for you.”

Semerket nodded, grateful for the company.

“I’m coming, too,” Nidaba said. “I must say the Prayer for the Dead over the jars you unseal.”

Shepak shook his head in wonder to see such courage in so delicate a creature. Leaving Kuri and Galzu to guard the crypt’s entrance, the three walked silently forward. To Semerket’s eyes, the place looked like one of the huge river warehouses in Thebes, with thousands of clay jars filled with grain or olives. But these jars held a different treasure—the preserved corpses of Babylonian kings, their wives and nobles, families and servants.

Semerket had no idea how he was ever to find Naia in them. But Shepak said they would locate Kutir’s brother-in-law in the far end of the crypt, where the most recent chambers had been dug. As they walked further into the crypt, Semerket noted that each jar was inscribed with the name of the entombed, together with the clay seal of the king or queen they had served. Semerket was surprised by the fact that king and servant alike were buried in exactly the same kind of jar. In Babylonia, kings were not gods as they were in Egypt; in death, all were equal before an unforgiving and indifferent heaven.

As they penetrated into the most distant reaches of the crypt, the jars were newer-looking, not covered with the dust of centuries. The honey smelled fresher, too. Soon the jars became pristine in their newness, shiny with brown glaze, and the honey was still sticky on their sides.

“Here they are,” whispered Shepak.

Shepak pointed to the seal on the jar in front of him. It was Kutir’s seal, and the name below it said that the body within belonged to Nugash, the husband of Princess Pinikir. To Semerket’s dismay, many of the jars bore only the words “servant of Nugash” or “servant of Pinikir.” As there had been no one left alive to identify the servants, Shepak explained, there had been no record of their names. Semerket groaned aloud. It meant that he must search every jar reading “Servant of Pinikir.” He counted them—there were at least six such jars in the row before him, perhaps more behind.

He went to the first jar that bore the inscription. Nidaba, white-lipped, came forward to say a prayer to the jar’s inhabitant, begging their forgiveness. At its conclusion, she nodded to Semerket. His hands were trembling as he smashed the jar’s seal of dried clay. The moment he did, the foul stench of putrefaction flooded the room.

Shepak brought the torch nearer so Semerket could look inside. It was worse than he thought—a foamy scum of rot was on top of the honey. The Babylonians did not remove the soft inner organs as the Egyptians did; all the gases and liquids of corruption had therefore been released, to rise and pool at the top of the jar.

Semerket felt his stomach twisting, and a sour taste rose again in the back of his throat. Firmly, he willed his nausea away; he simply could not give in to it now. Holding his breath, he fiercely plunged his hand into the viscous mess. He closed his eyes, reaching further, until he felt his hand brush against a nose, and then an ear.

He gasped, took another quick breath, and held it. Moving his hand slowly through the thick honey, he reached for the woman’s floating hair and pulled. The weight of the body was much heavier than he had imagined, for the honey did not want to release it so easily. Suddenly the scalp tore loose from the skull, and he stumbled backward.

Semerket stood in the middle of the crypt, clutching a wad of dripping hair in his hand. Shepak’s face was a mask of horror, and Nidaba made a strange noise, turning away. Semerket looked down at the gooey mess. The hair was white; the woman had been elderly.

Naia was not in that jar.

He and Nidaba went to the next jar. Again, a prayer was intoned, and again he broke the jar’s seal. Once more, the fetid, sour odor rose in his nostrils. He plunged his hand once more into the mess; this time, however, he reached down further than the corpse’s head, hoping to snag an arm. Semerket was surprised when he felt a piece of cloth, wrapped around the body’s shoulders; for some reason, he had assumed the dead would be buried in the nude. His job became a bit simpler by this discovery, for a robe or mantle would be far easier to grasp than a slippery piece of flesh.

Bracing himself against the side of the jar, he pulled on the cloth. Slowly the body rose; finally, the top of the head emerged. This time the color of its streaming hair was black, and he strained to lift the rest of the body into the light.

“Bring the torch closer,” he panted.

Shepak moved the torch, angling it toward the face. Both of them winced to see it. Even with the natural slackening the features had undergone, Semerket could not remember ever having seen a picture of such affecting and hideous agony. The woman had suffered massive burns, and one side of her face was gone. The features that remained were horribly distorted; her torn mouth a hideous grimace.

But the woman was not Naia.

Semerket let the body slip back again into the dark, golden ooze, where it settled slowly. Honey drizzled across the tiles from his arm as he went to the next jar. He did not know how much more of this horrific gruesomeness he could endure. But when he broke the seal, he knew his search was over.

There, floating at the top of the jar, fouled by putrefaction, was Naia’s mantle. It was the one he had given her on the Theban docks, as she was about to set sail for Babylonia. It had been the color of the Egyptian sky, embroidered in five-pointed stars of gold thread.

Tears ran down his face as he reached his arm into the jar. Sobs began to wrench from him. Shepak had to look away, seeing his friend so grief-stricken. Nidaba dropped her head to stare at the tiles. Within the thick honey, Semerket felt his fingers move across his beloved’s features, reaching to the lips that he used to kiss so fondly, to the nose, over the closed eyes fringed in black lashes. Summoning all of his resolve, he reached for the yoke of her rough servant’s dress and gently lifted her into the light.

Her head emerged, the honey streaming over her domed forehead, black hair glued to her narrow skull. The honey had altered her lovely dark features, however, for her skin seemed bleached of all color…

Then Semerket looked again.

“That isn’t Naia,” he whispered.

Both Nidaba and Shepak jerked their heads to see.

“Why, no,” Shepak said, after a moment, and his voice was faint with shock. “That’s Princess Pinikir.”