by Wilbur Smith
Taita had shaken his head. ‘No, Demeter, how could even Eos have conjured up such intimate detail from so long ago? Lostris’s voice, the set of her eyes, the quirk of her lips when she smiled. How could Eos have copied them? Lostris has been in her sarcophagus these seventy years past. There can be no living traces of her for Eos to draw upon.’
‘Eos stole from your own memories of Lostris, and gave them back to you in their most convincing, compelling form.’
‘But even I had forgotten most of those details.’
‘It was you who averred that we forget nothing. Every detail remains. It requires only occult skills, such as Eos possesses, to retrieve it from the vaults of your mind, as you retrieved from me my memories of Eos, her voice as she uttered the incantation to fire.’
‘I cannot accept that it was not Lostris,’ Taita moaned softly.
‘That is because you do not want to accept it. Eos seeks to close your mind to reason. Think a moment how cunningly the image of the girl on the dolphin was woven into her evil schemes. While she lured and distracted you with false visions of a lost love, she sent her spectral serpent to destroy me. She used your dream as a distraction.’
Now, upon the escarpment of the delta, Taita was confronted with the vision again: the image of Lostris, once queen of Egypt, whose memory still ruled his heart. This time she seemed even more perfect.
He felt his resolve and reason wavering, and tried desperately to check himself. But he could not prevent himself looking into Lostris’s eyes.
They were filled with enchanted lights, all the tears and smiles of her lifetime in their depths.
‘I reject you!’ he told her, in a voice as cold and stern as he could muster. ‘You are not Lostris. You are not the woman I loved. You are the Great Lie. Get you hence into the darkness from which you sprang.’
At his words the sparkle in Lostris’s lovely eyes was replaced by a vast sorrow. ‘Darling Taita,’ she called to him softly. ‘I have existed without you through all the sterile and lonely years that we have been parted. Now, when you are in such mortal and spiritual danger, I have come far to be with you again. Together we can resist the evil that hovers over you.’
‘You blaspheme,’ he said. ‘You are Eos, the Lie, and I reject you. I am protected by the Truth. You cannot reach me. You cannot harm me.’
‘Oh, Taita.’ Lostris’s voice fell to a whisper. ‘You will destroy us both. I am in peril too.’ She seemed burdened by all the sorrows that had afflicted mankind since the beginning time. ‘Trust me, my darling. For both our sakes you must trust me. I am none other than the Lostris you loved and who loved you. You called to me across the ether. I heeded your call and I have come to you.’
Taita felt the foundations of the earth tremble beneath his feet but he steeled himself. ‘Out, cursed witch!’ he cried. ‘Be gone, foul minion of the Lie. I reject you and all your works. Plague me no more.’
‘No, Taita! You cannot do this,’ she pleaded. ‘We have been given this chance, this one chance. You must not refuse it.’
‘You are evil,’ he told her harshly. ‘You are an abomination from the void. Go back to your foul abode.’
Lostris moaned and her image receded. She faded in the same way that her star had often been eclipsed by the light of coming day. The last whisper of her voice came back to him from out of the night: ‘I have tasted death once, and now I must drink the bitter cup to the dregs. Farewell, Taita, whom I loved. If only you could have loved me more.’
Then she was gone and he sank on to his knees to let the waves of remorse and loss break over his head. When he had the strength to lift his head again, the sun had risen. Already it had climbed a hand’s span above the horizon. Windsmoke stood quietly beside him. She was dozing, but as soon as he stirred she threw up her head and turned her eyes on him. He was so reduced that he had to use a rock as a mounting platform to reach her back. He swayed there, almost losing his seat, as she started along the path towards the encampment.
Taita tried to order the jumble of emotions that filled his head. One salient fact emerged from his confusion: it was the manner in which Windsmoke had stood calmly, without the least sign of perturbation, during his encounter with the phantom Lostris. On every other occasion she had detected a manifestation of evil long before he had become aware of it himself. She had bolted when the moon was devoured, yet she had shown only mild interest in the wraith of Lostris and her phantom steed.
‘There could not have been evil in them,’ he began to convince himself. ‘Did Lostris speak the truth? Did she come as my ally and friend to protect me? Have I destroyed both of us?’ The pain was too much to bear. He pulled Windsmoke’s head round and drove her into a full gallop back towards the delta. He checked her only when they burst out on to the rim of the escarpment, and swung down from her back on the exact spot at which Lostris had vanished.
‘Lostris!’ he shouted to the sky. ‘Forgive me! I was mistaken! I know now that you spoke the truth. Verily and indeed you are Lostris. Come back to me, my love! Come back!’ But she was gone and the echoes mocked him: ‘Come back … back … back…’
They were so close to the holy city of Thebes that Taita ordered Meren to continue the night march even after the sun had risen. Lit by its slanting early rays the little caravan descended the escarpment and struck out across the flat alluvial plain towards the walls of the city. The plain was desolate. No green thing grew upon it.
The black earth was baked hard as brick and split with deep cracks by the furnace heat of the sun. The peasant farmers had abandoned their stricken fields and their huts stood derelict, the palm-leaf thatching falling in clumps from the rafters, the unplastered walls crumbling. The bones of the kine that had died of famine littered the fields like patches of white daisies. A whirlwind swayed and wove an erratic dance across the empty lands, spinning a column of dust and dry dhurra leaves high into the cloudless sky. The sun smote down upon the parched land like the blows of a battleaxe upon a brazen shield.
The men and animals of the caravan were as insignificant in this sullen landscape as a child’s toys. They reached the river and halted involuntarily upon the bank, caught up in horrified fascination. Even Demeter dismounted from his palanquin, and hobbled down to join Taita and Meren. At this point the riverbed was four hundred yards wide.
In a normal season of low Nile the mighty stream filled it from side to side, a torrent of grey, silt-laden waters, so deep and powerful that the surface was riven by shining eddies and dimpled with spinning vortices.
At the season of high water the Nile could not be contained. She burst over her banks and flooded the fields. The mud and sediment dropped by her waters was so rich that they sustained three successive crops during a single growing season.
But there had been no inundation for seven years and the river was a grotesque travesty of its former mighty self. It had been reduced to a string of shallow stinking pools strung out along its bed. Their surface was stirred only by the struggles of dying fish, and the languid movements of the few surviving crocodiles. A frothy red scum covered the water, like congealing blood.
‘What causes the river to bleed?’ Meren asked. ‘Is it a curse?’
‘It seems to me that it is caused by a bloom of poisonous algae,’ Taita said, and Demeter agreed.
‘It is indeed algae, but I have no doubt that it is unnatural, inflicted on Egypt by the same baleful influence as stopped the flow of the waters.’
The blood-coloured pools were separated from each other by the exposed banks of black mud, which were littered with stranded rubbish and sewage from the city, roots and driftwood, the wreckage of abandoned rivercraft and the bloated carcasses of birds and animals. The only living things that frequented the open sandbanks were strange squat creatures that hopped and crawled clumsily on grotesque webbed feet over the mud. They struggled ferociously among themselves for possession of the carcasses, ripping them apart, then gulping the chunks of rotting flesh. Taita was uncertain of th
e creatures’ nature until Meren muttered, in deep disgust, ‘They are as the caravan master described them to me.
Giant toads!’ He hawked, then spat out the taste and stench that clogged his throat. ‘Is there no end to the abominations that have descended upon Egypt?’
Taita realized then that it was the sheer size of the amphibians that had puzzled him. They were enormous. Across the back they were as wide as bush pigs, and they stood almost as tall as jackals when they raised themselves on their long back legs to their full height.
‘There are human cadavers lying on the mud,’ Meren exclaimed. He pointed to a tiny body that lay below them. ‘There’s a dead infant.’
‘It seems that the citizens of Thebes are so far gone in apathy that they no longer bury their dead but cast them into the river.’ Demeter shook his head sorrowfully.
As they watched, one of the toads seized the child’s arm and, with a dozen shakes of its head, tore it loose from the shoulder joint. Then it threw the tiny limb high. As it dropped the toad gaped, caught and swallowed it.
All of them were sickened by the spectacle. They mounted and went on along the bank until they reached the outer walls of the city. The area outside was crowded with makeshift shelters, erected by the dispossessed peasant farmers, by the widows and orphans, by the sick and dying, and by all the other victims of the catastrophe. They huddled together under the roughly thatched roofs of the open-sided hovels. All were emaciated and apathetic. Taita saw one young mother holding her infant to shrivelled empty dugs, but the child was too weak anyway to suck, and flies crawled into its eyes and nostrils. The mother stared back at them hopelessly.
‘Let me give her food for her baby.’ Meren began to dismount, but Demeter stopped him.
‘If you show these miserable creatures food, they will riot.’
When they rode on, Meren looked back sadly and guiltily.
‘Demeter is right,’ Taita told him softly. ‘We cannot save a few starvelings among such multitudes. We must save the kingdom of Egypt, not a handful of her people.’
Taita and Meren picked out a camp site well away from the unfortunates.
Taita called Demeter’s foreman aside and pointed it out to him.
‘Make certain that your master is comfortable and guard him well. Then build a fence of dried thornbush to protect the camp and keep out thieves and scavengers. Find water and fodder for the animals. Remain here until I have arranged more suitable quarters for us.’
He turned to Meren. ‘I am going into the city to the palace of Pharaoh. Stay with Demeter.’ He kicked his heels into the mare’s flanks and headed for the main gates. The guards looked down on him from the tower as he rode through, but did not challenge him. The streets were almost deserted. The few people he saw were as pale and starving as the beggars outside the walls. They scurried away at his approach.
A sickly stench hung over the city: the odour of death and suffering.
The captain of the palace guards recognized Taita, and ran to open the side gate for him, saluting respectfully as he entered the precincts.
‘One of my men will take your horse to the stables, Magus. The royal grooms will care for it.’
‘Is Pharaoh in residence?’ Taita asked, as he dismounted.
‘He is here.’
‘Take me to him,’ Taita ordered. The captain hurried to obey, and led him into the labyrinth of passages and halls. They passed through courtyards that had once been lovely with lawns, banks of flowers and tinkling fountains of limpid water, then on through halls and cloisters that in former times had sounded merrily to the laughter and singing of noble ladies and lords, of tumblers, troubadours and dancing slave girls.
Now the rooms were deserted, the gardens were brown and dead and the fountains had run dry. The heavy silence was disturbed only by the sound of their footsteps on the stone paving.
At last they reached the antechamber of the royal audience hall.
In the opposite wall there was a closed door. The captain knocked upon it with the butt of his spear, and it was opened almost immediately by a slave. Taita looked beyond him. On the floor of rose-coloured marble slabs a corpulent eunuch in a short linen skirt sat cross-legged at a low desk stacked with papyrus scrolls and writing tablets. Taita recognized him at once. He was Pharaoh’s senior chamberlain. It had been on Taita’s recommendation that he was selected for such an illustrious position.
‘Ramram, my old friend,’ Taita greeted him. Ramram jumped to his feet with surprising alacrity for such a large person, and hurried to embrace Taita. All the eunuchs in Pharaoh’s service were bound by strong fraternal ties.
‘Taita, you have been gone from Thebes for far too long.’ He drew Taita into his private bureau. ‘Pharaoh is in council with his generals so I cannot disturb him, but I will take you to him the moment he is free. He would want me to do that. However, this gives us a chance to talk. How long have you been gone? It must be many years.’
‘It is seven. Since last we met I have journeyed to strange lands.’
‘Then there is much that I must tell you about what has befallen us in your absence. Sadly, very little is good.’
They settled down on cushions facing each other, and at the chamberlain’s bidding a slave served them bowls of sherbet that had been cooled in earthenware jugs.
‘Tell me first, how fares His Majesty?’ Taita demanded anxiously.
“I fear you will be saddened when you see him. His cares weigh heavily upon him. Most of his days are spent in council with his ministers, the commanders of his army and the governors of all the nomes. He sends his envoys to every foreign country to buy grain and food to feed the starving population. He orders the digging of new wells to find sweet water to replace the foul red effluent of the river.’ Ramram sighed and took a deep swig from his sherbet bowl.
‘The Medes and Sumerians, the sea people, the Libyans and all our other enemies are aware of our plight,’ he continued. ‘They believe our fortunes are waning, and that we can no longer defend ourselves, so they muster their armies. As you know, our vassal states and satraps have always grudged the tribute they have been forced to pay Pharaoh. Many see in our misfortunes an opportunity to break away from us, so they enter into treasonable alliances. A multitude of foes gathers at our borders. With our resources so grievously depleted, Pharaoh must still find men and stores to build up and reinforce his regiments. He stretches himself and his empire to breaking point.’
‘Any lesser monarch could not have survived these tribulations,’ Taita said.
‘Nefer Seti is a great monarch. But he, like the rest of us lesser beings, is aware in his heart that the gods no longer smile upon Egypt. None of his efforts will succeed until he can regain their divine favour. He has ordered the priesthood in every temple throughout the land to render ceaseless prayer. He himself makes sacrifice three times a day. Although he has tried his own strength to its limit he spends half of each night, when he should be resting, in devout prayer and communion with his fellow deities.’
Tears filled the chamberlain’s eyes. He wiped them away with a square of linen. ‘This has been his life for the last seven years, during the failure of the mother river and the plagues that have beset us. It would have destroyed any lesser ruler. Nefer Seti is a god, but he has the heart and compassion of a man. It has changed and aged him.’
‘I am indeed cast down by this news. But, tell me, how fares the queen and her children?’
‘Here, too, the news is gloomy. The plagues have treated them unkindly. Queen Mintaka was struck down and lay for many weeks on the verge of death. She has now recovered, but is still much weakened. Not all of the royal children were so fortunate. Prince Khaba and his little sister Unas lie side by side in the royal mausoleum. The plague carried them away. The other children have survived, but—’
Ramram broke off as a slave entered, bowing respectfully, and whispered in the chamberlain’s ear. Ramram nodded and waved him away, then turned back to Taita. ‘The conclave
has ended. I will go to Pharaoh and tell him of your arrival.’ He hoisted himself to his feet and waddled to the back of the room. There, he touched a carved figure on the panel, which turned under his fingers. A section of the wall slid aside, and Ramram disappeared into the opening. He was not gone long before a shout of surprise and pleasure echoed from the corridor beyond the secret door. Immediately it was followed by rapid footsteps and there was another shout: ‘Tata, where are you?’ It was Pharaoh’s nickname for him.
‘Majesty, I am here.’
‘You have neglected me too long,’ Pharaoh accused him, as he burst through the doorway and paused to stare at Taita. ‘Yes, it is truly you. I thought you might continue to flout my many summonings.’
Nefer Seti wore only open sandals below a linen skirt that covered his knees. His upper body was bare. His chest was broad and deep, his belly flat and rippling with muscle. His arms were sculpted by long practice with bow and sword. His torso was that of a warrior trained to perfection.
‘Pharaoh. I salute you. I am your humble slave, as I have always been.’
Nefer Seti stepped forward and took him in a powerful embrace. ‘No talk of slaves or slavery when teacher and pupil come together,’ he declared. ‘My heart overflows with joy to see you again.’ He held him at arm’s length and studied his face. ‘By the grace of Horus, you have not aged a single day.’
‘Nor have you, Majesty.’ His tone was sincere, and Nefer Seti laughed.
‘Although it is a lie, I accept your flattery as kindness to an old friend.’
Nefer had set aside his formal horsehair wig, and his skin was devoid of paint, so Taita was able to study his features. Nefer’s close-cropped hair was grizzled, and the crown of his skull was bald. His face was etched with the passage of time: there were deep lines at the corners of his mouth, and a cobweb of wrinkles surrounded his dark eyes, which were weary. His cheeks were hollow, and his skin had an unhealthy pallor.