The Forest of Myrrh (Imhotep Book 3)

by Jerry Dubs

  Akila moaned in her sleep and seemed to try to raise her head.

  Hapu glanced at Meryt. Imhotep’s wife was asleep, her eyes closed, her mouth was set in a contented smile. Hapu adored Meryt; everyone who knew her adored her. Hetephernebti was serene because she believed that Re watched over her every breath. King Djoser had been free of cares because he had believed that he was a god.

  But Meryt was different.

  She believed in the gods – she had been a wbt-priestess in the temple of Re when Imhotep had met her – but she never depended on them. She had amulets and statuettes, but she seemed to treat them as ornaments rather than sources of power. Instead of living with hope, she lived with acceptance, immersed in life, not in dreams.

  She saw each person and each breath as unique and irreplaceable. Each moment in the flow of her life was lived and cherished. She seemed, Hapu thought, to be as much of the Two Lands as the great river, as the deserts that stretched beyond sight, as the eternal arch of Nut’s cerulean sky.

  No, she is living, Hapu thought. She is the swirl of the river, the rustle of reeds, the flutter of an owl’s night wings, the warm air sweeping from the sand, the wavering heat from a cook fire. She is the Two Lands, she has no desire for the eternal Field of Reeds, but she will embody that world as well.

  “Hapu?” Imhotep said from the doorway behind her, startling Hapu from her thoughts. She looked quickly back at the meter.

  “There are two symbols to go,” she said.

  “How long has Akila been unconscious?” he asked, speaking unknowingly in English.

  “I don’t know that word,” Hapu said, irritated at his intrusion and frightened because Imhotep sounded worried.

  “Asleep,” he said in the ancient tongue, walking quickly to her side and looking at the dial. He touched Akila’s forehead. She felt cold to him, but he told himself that his hands were warm, the blood rushing from anxiety.

  “For three measures,” Hapu said.

  “No,” Imhotep said. “She shouldn’t be unconscious, not that soon.” He leaned closer to the flow meter. He flicked it with his fingertip. “Is it moving regularly? Has it hesitated? Is it stuck?”

  He looked back at Akila.

  “Stop it,” he said firmly, taking in Akila’s pallor and the light bead of sweat that had formed along her upper lip.

  “We are not at the right symbol,” Hapu said.

  Imhotep breathed deeply and looked at Akila, then at Meryt, then once more at the meter. He imagined Akila’s life draining from her, passing in front his eyes as the blood drained her spirit away.

  “Stop it, now!” he demanded, bending to Akila and putting his hand on the needle.

  Hapu pushed him aside.

  “Akila said the meter must reach the symbol called two-oh,” she said. “Otherwise Meryt will die.” She turned her back on Imhotep and watched the meter, silently praying to Re and to Horus and to Isis, always Isis. The image of jackal-headed Anubis seemed to lurk behind her thoughts and she squeezed her eyes shut to banish the image.

  Opening her eyes she looked again at the meter. The white lines on the face of the meter changed, the straight line becoming the curve that Akila called “two.” The circle with a straight line on the right side changed to a large circle – the symbol now matched the one Akila had drawn.

  With sure, quick hands, Hapu turned the dial on the flow meter, stopping the flow. Then she moved to Meryt to extract the needle.

  “Please ... ” she heard Imhotep whisper, and she wondered which of the gods he didn’t believe in he was praying to now.

  In her own world now, Hapu moved with intense concentration, each movement steady and concise. She bandaged Meryt’s arm and then moved to Akila. Raising the transfusion tube high, she opened the flow valve and allowed Akila’s blood to retreat from the tube into Akila's arm. Hapu had been told to do the reverse, draining the tube into Meryt, but Imhotep’s anxiety persuaded her to return the blood instead to Akila.

  As she knelt by Akila, she heard Imhotep sit beside Meryt, speaking to her in the language of his childhood. She didn’t understand the words he said, but she heard the love in the sounds.

  Death in the Desert

  Re touched the western horizon, nearing Duat, the gateway to the realm of Osiris.

  Hardedef paused from tethering the train of donkeys and watched as Re’s yellow boat changed to orange. Soon it would become the color of blood. He closed his eyes and prayed that the god would prevail against the serpent Apep and emerge tomorrow in a blaze of glory.

  “Don’t fret, Hardedef,” Auibre said, startling Hardedef as he clapped the boy on his shoulder. “Re always wins. He’ll rise tomorrow and we’ll feel his heat on our backs all day. And the day after that and the day after that.”

  Hardedef squeezed his eyes shut and offered Re another prayer, adding a request for the god to forgive his uncle.

  Hardedef was thirteen years old and this was his first trip with the caravan of traders. His uncle had brought him along as much to watch his own son as to learn the trade.

  They had left Waset several weeks ago, following the river’s flow north until they had reached Coptos. There they had turned east into the red desert to follow a dried river bed to Quseir, a city that boasted twelve wells and seventy date palm trees.

  There they had rested while their boats were readied and then they crossed the water, a trip Hardedef never wanted to repeat.

  The boat had rocked, the donkeys had nervously stamped on the curved planks of the small boats and the men had told tales of monsters beneath the water, casting their eyes at Hardedef to see if the boy was frightened.

  He had tried to maintain a calm smile, but his stomach had suddenly felt full of writhing snakes and his eyes, moving from face to face, couldn’t focus.

  “Over the side, boy, not in the boat,” his uncle had shouted, laughing as he pushed him dangerously close to the edge of the boat.

  Hardedef had fallen to his knees and clutched the side of the boat. Suddenly everything he had ever eaten forced its way up his throat and out of his mouth. And then, miraculously, it happened again and again until, exhausted, Hardedef fell on the deck of the boat, oblivious to the laughter of the other traders.

  “Look at this, Hardedef,” his uncle said now as they left the tethered donkeys. He spread his arms toward the north. Hardedef looked but saw nothing but red sand and rocks and a few birds riding desert updrafts.

  “You don’t see it,” Auibre laughed. “Try closing your eyes, boy, perhaps you’ll see better. Here’s what I see. I see us guiding our donkeys laden with gold and papyrus, linen and grain.” He nodded toward their train of donkeys. “And then I see us returning with cedar for the king, jewels for the queen, perfumes, strange animals, perhaps some lapis lazuli – a rock that is as blue as Nut’s belly. We get those back to Waset and then, my boy, we’ll be wealthy. All the food you can eat, fine linens, a house with a garden.”

  Hardedef squinted into the red distance, but all he saw was heat, emptiness and a pair of black-silhouetted birds circling in the sky.

  “How long?” he asked.

  “Forty days,” his uncle answered.

  Hardedef nodded.

  “And forty days back.”

  “Oh,” the boy said.

  Auibre laughed and slapped Hardedef’s back. “You’ll still be a young man when we return, Hardedef. Soon a wealthy young man.”

  Hardedef swallowed and looked into the distance again. The birds were circling lower, watching something below them in the distant desert.

  - 0 -

  Drifting across the camp, Shu’s warm breath washed against the dead camp fires, but the breeze brushed dark embers, the red glow having turned a dull orange and then blinked into smoke. Hardedef slept, dreaming of rocks made from the belly of Nut. He imagined the sky turning into blue boulders that fell to the ground. He could hear the shouts of people dodging the falling sky and then the shouts turned louder and he recognized one of the voices as h
is uncle’s.

  Opening his eyes and sitting up, he saw dark figures moving. He heard grunts and shouts and the braying of the caravan’s donkeys.

  As Hardedef got to his feet he heard Auibre shout, “Stop, you bastards. You spawn of Seth, dung of crocodiles!”

  Following his uncle’s voice, Hardedef ran toward the tethered donkeys. He saw now that there were men there untying the animals. Auibre was among them, pulling at them telling them to stop. Other men from the caravan joined him and now the strangers raised their arms and Hardedef saw that some of them were holding thick clubs and others held short knives.

  Four-year-old Merkha, Auibre’s son, ran toward his father. Hardedef swooped down and grabbed him. “Daddy,” the boy cried.

  “Shhh,” Hardedef said, holding the child and looking toward the fight. There were two bodies on the ground, one of them Auibre, Hardedef thought, and the other merchants were on their knees, their heads bowed in surrender.

  As Hardedef backed away, behind the dead campfires and into a darker night beyond, he saw the leader of the bandits raise a club over the head of one of the kneeling merchants. The club crashed down and Hardedef gasped, then quickly clamped a hand over his cousin’s mouth.

  He turned and ran from the slaughter.

  Summoned

  Bata’s shaved head was beaded with sweat.

  Pacing outside Imhotep’s house, his bare feet scuffing the sandy dirt path, Bata was trying to burn off anxiety while the outlander woman Imhotep had summoned from his time gave her own blood to save Meryt.

  “The fewer people in the room the better for Meryt,” Imhotep had told him. And so Bata had left the house, clenched his powerful hands into fists and walked, taming his feet that wanted to run back into the house.

  Five years ago Bata had fled with Meryt and little Maya when Imhotep had been entombed. They had lived in exile in the land of Ta-Seti where he had guarded them as he had guarded young Prince Teti so many years ago. Although he had left the king’s service when he had joined Imhotep’s household, he was still a soldier, still strong, still able to wield a spear or club or knife.

  He believed that he had earned the right to give his life for Meryt.

  But Imhotep had insisted that Akila give her blood. Not because he favored her more, he had sworn, but because it was best for Meryt.

  And Bata trusted Imhotep. More than trusting him, he loved him. He loved him as a brother, as a friend and, yes, he told himself, as a god. And, secretly, he knew that he would have loved him in another way, but Imhotep had been devoted to Meryt alone.

  His head down, his thoughts as scattered as a herd of gazelle chased by a desert lion, he didn’t hear the runners approaching.

  “Bata, I must see Imhotep,” a voice said, startling Bata from his thoughts.

  Bata looked up. It was Kewab, captain of King Huni’s house guards accompanied by four soldiers. They were all bathed in sweat, their kilts wrinkled and dirty, their muscled chests heaving from having run from the docks.

  Bata shook his head. “He is in surgery,” he said using the English word Imhotep used when he was with a patient and wanted to be left alone.

  “Bata,” Kewab said patiently but firmly, not used to being turned aside, “I don’t want to see Imhotep, King Huni wants to see him. I don’t think he cares if he is in whatever you said he was in.”

  “It is with Meryt,” Bata said.

  “Meryt is still alive?” Kewab said, astonished. Despite Imhotep’s attempt to keep the encounter with Merneith secret, stories of it had spread quickly throughout the Two Lands. Bata knew that he was to blame. But how could one keep such a secret? His master had turned a stone wall into a doorway and cast Merneith through it and into a darkness beyond the Two Lands.

  Bata jutted his chin at Kewab. “Do you think Imhotep would let his hemet die?”

  Then he grew silent as he remembered the death of Imhotep’s son, Tjau. The boy, barely a man, had been stabbed to death before Imhotep’s eyes. And then Imhotep had been entombed alive and Bata had fled with Meryt and Maya. It had been a time of despair. But now Imhotep had returned and, Bata thought, all will be well, as it was during the glorious years when Djoser had been king and Imhotep had raised the majestic mountain of stone for the king’s tomb.

  Kewab came closer to Bata.

  “Have you heard the news from Iunu?” he asked. Before Bata could answer, Kewab told him, “Hetephernebti is dead.”

  Reflexively, Bata looked to the west, where beyond the horizon, farther than any living man had ever traveled, lay the Field of Eternal Reeds. Hetephernebti will be there, reunited with her brother and her daughter, he thought. She must be happy.

  “I will tell Imhotep,” Bata said.

  “That is why King Huni must speak with Imhotep,” Kewab said. He leaned even closer. Bata could see now that Kewab’s eyes were wide with excitement and with hidden knowledge.

  “What is it?’ Bata asked, the excitement catching.

  Tilting his head downward so that his soldiers couldn’t hear, Kewab said, “King Huni believes that someone killed Hetephernebti.”

  As Bata started to repeat the words, Kewab held up a hand to silence him. “It is a great secret, Bata. I shouldn’t have told you. I was to speak only to Imhotep. Now, please get him.”

  Bata shook his head in disbelief. No one would lay a hand on the Voice of Re. And Hetephernebti was the sister of Djoser, a god himself. There had to be a mistake.

  - 0 -

  Holding Meryt’s hand in his left hand and Akila’s in his right, Imhotep sat cross-legged on the floor focusing his awareness, trying to measure the warmth of their hands, imagining that they were responding to the soft squeezes he gave them every few moments.

  Sensing movement, he looked to the linen-covered doorway. A hand pulled the edge of the curtain aside and Bata’s eyes appeared in the narrow gap between the cloth and the wall.

  “They haven’t awakened,” Imhotep said more loudly than he needed, hoping that the sound of his voice would rouse Akila or Meryt. Behind him Hapu bent over Akila’s head, dabbing her forehead with a damp cloth. She and Imhotep had decided to focus on waking Akila because she would have the medical knowledge to know how to revive Meryt.

  “There is a messenger from King Huni,” Bata said.

  Imhotep shook his head. “Not now, Bata,” he said, an edge of anger in his voice.

  “He insists,” Bata said.

  Imhotep started to answer angrily, then stopped himself. More than a friend, Bata ran the household and was smart and strong and perceptive. He knew Imhotep’s devotion to Meryt. He would, Imhotep realized, not have interrupted unless he had been forced.

  Imhotep closed his eyes as a shadowy fear crept into his heart.

  Then he gave Meryt’s and Akila’s hands a last squeeze and uncrossed his legs. Unasked, Bata slipped into the room and extended his hands to help Imhotep to his feet. Although he was not yet fifty, Imhotep had suffered greatly when he had been entombed. He had escaped death in the buried pyramid, but he had returned to the Two Lands with less vigor and strength.

  Imhotep grunted lightly as he got to his feet. Then he arched his back and stifled a moan. Then turning to Hapu, he said, “Please get me immediately if they wake.”

  “All will be well, Lord Imhotep,” Hapu said with more confidence than she felt. “Akila said so.”

  Imhotep nodded and turned to the doorway.

  “What has happened?” he asked Bata softly as they pushed aside the linen.

  - 0 -

  Kewab was standing with crossed arms just outside the doorway of Imhotep’s home. He was used to waiting on King Huni and he knew that Imhotep was highly regarded by the king. So he would wait. For now.

  When Imhotep emerged from his house, Kewab almost gasped. He had seen Imhotep years ago when his father had taken him to the dedication of the tomb of King Djoser. Kewab remembered the king’s vizier as an energetic man, vitality radiating from his body that seemed too slight for his head
. Yet would he not need such a large head, he had thought, for Imhotep had learned healing from the gods, he had studied at the feet of Thoth. It was whispered that, like King Djoser, Imhotep was himself a god.

  But the man who emerged from the house seemed almost broken. His shoulders seemed more narrow and the skin was drawn tight across the bones. He walked with a halting gait, favoring his right leg, and his face was drawn and worn.

  If he had seen him on the road, if he hadn’t known who he was, Kewab would have dismissed Imhotep as a common worker.

  And then Imhotep raised his eyes to look at Kewab. The soldier was struck with sadness and with fear. Imhotep’s eyes were haunted specters, eaters of light. Kewab was sure that in that quick glance Imhotep had searched his ka, examined his past, weighed his worth, and seen his future.

  “Yes?” Imhotep said, his voice impatient but polite.

  Kewab resisted the urge to drop to his knees and bow his head, yet he couldn’t meet Imhotep’s eyes.

  “King Huni ... ” he started to say ‘demands,’ but stuttered for a moment and said, “requests that you come to Waset, Lord Imhotep.”

  “I can’t go; my wife needs me here,” Imhotep said, starting to turn.

  If it had been another man, Kewab would have put his hand on him to stop him. He glanced at Bata for a clue, but Bata’s face was impassive, waiting and watching.

  “Lord Imhotep,” Kewab said, trying for the voice he used to command his troops.

  Imhotep stopped turning and looked at him.

  “King Huni needs you to come to Waset.”

  “I need to be with my wife.”

  Kewab forced himself to meet Imhotep’s eyes. “Lord Imhotep, Hetephernebti has died.”

  Imhotep digested the news with a slow blink and then said, “Hetephernebti was a great woman and I am sorry that she is no longer with us, but my wife is. And she needs me.” He turned and straightened his shoulders. “Tell King Huni that my duty is to my wife. I will travel to Waset when Meryt is able to accompany me.”