by Wilbur Smith
Under Taita’s instruction Nefer had plucked the feathers from one wing of each bird, so that they were no longer able to fly. Then they had selected a spot close to the base of the cliff and the spring, but exposed enough to make the birds clearly visible from the sky above. They tethered the pigeons by the leg with a thread of horsetail hair and a wooden peg driven into the hard earth. Then they had spread the gossamer net above them, and supported it on stalks of dried elephant grass, which would snap and collapse under the stoop of the godbird.
“Stretch the net gently,” Taita had shown him, “not too tight, nor again too slack. It must catch in the bird’s beak and his talons and tangle him so that he cannot struggle and damage himself before we can free him.”
When all was set up to Taita’s satisfaction, they began the long wait. Soon the pigeons had become accustomed to their captivity, and pecked greedily at the handfuls of dhurra millet that Nefer scattered for them. Then they sunned and dusted themselves contentedly under the silken net. One day succeeded the next hot, sun-riven day, and still they waited.
In the cool of the evening they brought in the pigeons, furled the net, and then they hunted for food. Taita climbed to the top of the cliff where he sat cross-legged on the edge, overlooking the long valley. Nefer waited in ambush below, never in the same place, so that the game were always surprised when they came to drink at the spring. From his vantage-point Taita wove his spell of enticement, which seldom failed to seduce the dainty gazelle within fair shot of where Nefer lay with his arrow nocked and bow held at draw. Every evening they grilled gazelle steaks over the fire at the entrance to the cave.
The cave had been Taita’s retreat during all the years after the death of Queen Lostris when he had lived here as a hermit. It was his place of power. Although Nefer was a novice, and had no deep understanding of the old man’s mystical skills, he could not doubt them, for every day they were demonstrated to him.
They had been at Gebel Nagara for many days before Nefer began to understand that they had not come here to find the godbird alone: this interlude was an extension of the training and instruction Taita had lavished upon him from as far back as Nefer’s young memory stretched. Even the long hours of waiting beside the decoys was a lesson in itself. Taita was teaching him control over his body and being, teaching him to open doors within his mind, teaching him to look inward, to listen to the silence and hear whispers to which others were deaf.
Once he had been conditioned to the silence, Nefer was more amenable to the deeper wisdom and learning that Taita had to impart. They sat together in the desert night, under the swirling patterns of the stars that were eternal but ephemeral as the winds and the currents of the oceans, and Taita described to him wonders that seemed to have no explanation but could only be perceived by an opening and extension of the mind. He sensed that he stood merely on the shadowy periphery of this mystical knowledge, but he felt growing inside him a great hunger for more.
One morning when Nefer left the cave in the gray light before dawn, he saw a huddle of dark, silent figures sitting out in the desert beyond the spring of Gebel Nagara. He went to tell Taita, and the old man nodded. “They have been waiting all night.” He spread a woolen cloak over his shoulders and went out to them.
When they recognized Taita’s gaunt figure in the half-light they burst into wails of supplication. They were people of the desert tribes and they had brought children to him, children stricken by the Yellow Flowers, hot with fever and covered with the terrible sores of the disease.
Taita ministered to them, while they remained camped beyond the spring. None of the children died, and after ten days the tribe brought gifts of millet, salt and tanned hides, which they left at the entrance to the cave. Then they were gone into the wilderness. After that there came others, suffering from disease and wounds inflicted by men and beasts. Taita went out to all of them, and turned none away. Nefer worked beside him and learned much from what he saw and heard.
No matter if there were the sick and ailing Bedouin to care for, or food to be gathered or instruction or learning to be imparted, each morning they set out the decoys under the silken net and waited beside them.
Perhaps they had fallen under the calming influence of Taita, for the once-wild pigeons became docile and quiescent as chickens. They allowed themselves to be handled without any sign of fear, and uttered soft throaty coos as their legs were secured to the pegs. Then they settled and fluffed up their feathers.
On the twentieth morning of their stay, Nefer took up his position over the decoys. As always, even without looking directly at Taita, Nefer was deeply aware of his presence. The old man’s eyes were closed and he, like the pigeons, seemed to be dozing in the sunlight. His skin was criss-crossed with innumerable fine wrinkles and dappled with age spots. It seemed so delicate that it might tear as easily as the finest papyrus parchment. His face was hairless, no trace of beard or eyebrows; only fine lashes, colorless as glass, surrounded his eyes. Nefer had heard his father say that neutering had left Taita’s face beardless and little marked by the passage of time, but he was certain that there were more esoteric reasons for his longevity and the persistence of his strength and life-force. In vivid contrast to his other features, Taita’s hair was dense and strong as that of a healthy young woman, but bright burnished silver in color. Taita was proud of it and kept it washed and groomed in a thick plait down his back. Despite his learning and age, the old Magus was not inured to vanity.
This little touch of humanity heightened Nefer’s love for him to the point where it stabbed his chest with a strength that was almost painful. He wished that there was some way in which he could express it, but he knew that Taita already understood, for Taita knew everything.
He reached out surreptitiously to touch the old man’s arm as he slept, but suddenly Taita’s eyes opened, focused and aware. Nefer knew that he had not been asleep at all, but that all his powers had been concentrated on bringing in the godbird to the decoys. He knew that, in some way, his wandering thoughts and his movement had affected the outcome of the old man’s efforts, for he sensed Taita’s disapproval as clearly as if it had been spoken.
Chastened, he composed himself, and brought his mind and body under control again in the manner that Taita had taught him. It was like passing through a secret doorway into the place of power. The time passed swiftly, without being counted or grudged. The sun climbed to its zenith and seemed to hang there for a long while. Suddenly Nefer was blessed with a marvelous sense of prescience. It was almost as if he, too, hung above the world and saw everything happening below him. He saw Taita and himself sitting beside the well of Gebel Nagara, and the desert stretching away around them. He saw the river that contained the desert like a mighty barrier and marked out the boundaries of this very Egypt. He saw the cities and the kingdoms, the lands divided under the double crown, great armies in array, the machinations of evil men and the striving and sacrifice of the just and good. In that moment he was aware of his destiny with an intensity that almost overwhelmed and crushed his courage.
In that same moment he knew that his godbird would come on this day, for he was ready to receive it at last.
“The bird is here!”
The words were so clear that, for an instant, Nefer thought Taita had spoken, but then he realized his lips had not moved. Taita had placed the thought in Nefer’s mind in the mysterious manner that Nefer could neither fathom nor explain. He did not doubt that it was so, but in the next instant it was confirmed by the wild fluttering of the decoy pigeons who had sensed the menace in the air above them.
Nefer made no move to show that he had heard and understood. He did not turn his head or lift his eyes to the sky. He dared not look upward lest he alarm the bird, or incur the wrath of Taita. But he was aware with every fiber of his being.
The royal falcon was such a rare creature that few men had ever seen it in the wild. For the previous thousand years the huntsmen of every pharaoh had sought out the birds, had tr
apped and netted them and to fill the royal mews had even lifted their young from the nest before they were fledged. Possession of the birds was proof that Pharaoh had the divine approval of the god Horus to reign in this very Egypt.
The falcon was the alter ego of the god: statues and depictions of him showed him with the falcon head. Pharaoh was a god himself and so might capture, own and hunt the bird, but any other man did so on pain of death.
Now the bird was here. His very own bird. Taita seemed to have conjured it out of heaven itself. Nefer felt his heart held in a suffocating grip of excitement and the breath in his lungs seized up so that he thought his chest might burst. But still he dared not turn his head to the sky.
Then he heard the falcon. Its cry was a faint lament, almost lost in the immensity of sky and desert, but it thrilled Nefer to the core, as though the god had spoken directly to him. Seconds later the falcon called again, directly overhead, its voice shriller and more savage.
Now the pigeons were wild with terror, leaping against the thongs that secured them to the pegs, beating their wings with such violence that they shed feathers and the downdraft of air raised a pale cloud of dust around them.
High overhead Nefer heard the falcon begin its stoop on the decoys, with the wind singing over its wings in a rising note. He knew that at last it was safe to raise his head, for all the falcon’s attention would be focused on its prey.
He looked up and saw the bird drop against the aching blue of the desert sky. It was a thing of divine beauty. Its wings were folded back, like half-sheathed blades, and its head was thrust forward. The strength and power of the creature made Nefer gasp aloud. He had seen other falcons of this breed in his father’s mews, but never before like this in all its wild grace and majesty. Miraculously the falcon seemed to swell in size, and its colors grew more intense as it fell toward where he sat.
The curved beak was a lovely deep yellow with a tip sharp and black as obsidian. The eyes were fiercest gold with tear-like markings in the inner corners, the throat was creamy and dappled like ermine, the wings were russet and black, and the whole creature was so exquisite in every detail that he never doubted it was an incarnation of the god. He wanted to possess it with a longing he had never imagined possible.
He braced himself for the moment of impact when the falcon would strike the silken net and ensnare itself in the voluminous folds. Beside him he felt Taita do the same. They would rush forward together.
Then something happened that he could not believe was possible. The falcon was fully committed to its stoop, the velocity of its dive was such that nothing could have stopped it but the impact of the strike into the pigeons’ soft-feathered bodies. But, against all probability, the falcon flared out. Its wings changed their profile and for an instant the wind-force threatened to rip away the pinions at their juncture with its body. The air shrieked over the spread feathers and the falcon had changed direction, was hurtling aloft once more, using its own momentum to arc up into the sky until in seconds it was only a black speck against the blue. Its cry sounded once more in the air, plaintive and remote, and then it was gone.
“He refused!” Nefer whispered. “Why, Taita, why?”
“The ways of the gods are not for us to fathom.” Although he had been still for all those hours, Taita stood up with the lithe movement of a trained athlete.
“Will he not return?” Nefer asked. “He was my bird. I felt it in my heart. He was my bird. He must return.”
“He is part of the godhead,” Taita said softly. “He is not part of the natural order of things.”
“But why did he refuse? There must be some reason,” Nefer insisted.
Taita did not reply immediately, but went to release the pigeons. After all this time their wing feathers had grown again, but as he freed their legs from the horsehair fetters they made no attempt to escape. One fluttered up and perched on his shoulder. Gently Taita took it in both hands and threw it aloft. Only then did it fly up the cliff face to its roost on the high ledge.
He watched it go, then turned and walked back to the entrance of the cave. Nefer followed him slowly, his heart and legs leaden with disappointment. In the gloom of the cave Taita seated himself on the stone ledge below the back wall, and leaned forward to build up the smoky fire of thorn branches and horse dung until it burst into flames. Heavily, filled with foreboding, Nefer took up his accustomed place opposite him.
They were both silent for a long while, Nefer containing himself, although his disappointment at the loss of the falcon was a torment as intense as if he had thrust his hand into flames. He knew that Taita would only speak again when he was ready. At last Taita sighed, and said softly, almost sadly, “I must work the Mazes of Ammon Ra.”
Nefer was startled. He had not expected that. In all their time together Nefer had only seen him work the Mazes twice before. He knew that the self-induced trance of divination was a little death that drained and exhausted the old man. He would only undertake the dreaded journey into the supernatural when no other course was open to him.
Nefer kept silent, and watched in awe as Taita went through the ritual of preparing the Mazes. First he crushed the herbs with a pestle in a mortar of carved alabaster, and measured them into a clay pot. Then he poured boiling water from the copper kettle over them. The steam that rose in a cloud was so pungent it made Nefer’s eyes water.
While the mixture cooled, Taita brought the tanned leather bag that contained the Mazes from its hiding-place at the back of the cave. Sitting over the fire, he poured the ivory discs into one hand and rubbed them gently between his fingers as he began to chant the incantation to Ammon Ra.
The Mazes comprised ten ivory discs, which Taita had carved. Ten was the mystical number of the greatest potency. Each carving depicted one of the ten symbols of power, and was a miniature work of art. As he sang he fondled the discs so that they clicked between his fingers. Between each verse of the invocation, he blew on the discs to endow them with his life force. When they had taken on the warmth of his own body he passed them to Nefer.
“Hold them and breathe upon them,” he urged, and while Nefer obeyed these instructions, Taita began to sway in rhythm to the magical verses he was reciting. Slowly his eyes seemed to glaze over as he retreated into the secret places in his mind. He was already in the trance when Nefer stacked the Mazes in two piles in front of him.
Then with one finger Nefer tested the temperature of the infusion in the clay pot as Taita had taught him. When it was cool enough not to scald the mouth, he knelt before the old man and with both hands offered it to him.
Taita drank it to the last drop, and in the firelight his face turned white as building chalk from the quarry at Aswan. For a while longer he kept up the chant, but slowly his voice dropped to a whisper, then descended into silence. The only sound was his hoarse breathing as he succumbed to the drug and the trance. He subsided onto the floor of the cave, and lay curled like a sleeping cat beside the fire.
Nefer covered him with his woolen shawl, and stayed beside him until he started to twitch and groan, and the sweat streamed down his face. His eyes opened and rolled back in their sockets until only the whites glared blindly into the dark shadows of the cave.
Nefer knew there was nothing he could do for the old man now. He had journeyed far into the shadowy places where Nefer could not reach him, and he could no longer bear the terrible distress and suffering that the Mazes inflicted upon the Magus. Quietly he stood up, fetched his bow and quiver from the back of the cave and stooped to see out through the entrance. Across the hills the sun was low and yellow in the dust haze. He climbed the western dunes, and when he reached the top and looked out across the valleys he felt so strongly his disappointment at the lost bird, his concern for Taita in his agony of divination and his sense of foreboding at what Taita would discover in his trance that he was seized by the urge to run, to escape as though from some dreadful predator. He bounded away down the face of the dune, the sand cascading and hissing be
neath his feet. He felt tears of terror brim in his eyes and stream down his cheeks in the wind, and he ran until the sweat poured down his flanks, his chest heaved and the sun was on the horizon. Then at last he turned back toward Gebel Nagara and covered the last mile in darkness.
Taita was still curled under the shawl beside the fire, but he was sleeping more easily now. Nefer lay down beside him, and after a while he, too, fell into a sleep that was restless with dreams and haunted by nightmares.
When he awoke dawn was glimmering at the entrance to the cave. Taita was sitting at the fire, grilling gazelle cutlets on the coals. He still looked pale and sick, but he skewered one on the point of his bronze dagger and offered it to Nefer. The boy was suddenly ravenous, and he sat up and gnawed on the bone. When he had devoured the third portion of sweet tender meat he spoke for the first time. “What did you see, Tata?” he asked. “Why did the godbird refuse?”
“It was obscured,” Taita told him, and Nefer knew that the omen had been unpropitious, that Taita was protecting him from it.
They ate in silence for a while, but now Nefer hardly tasted the food and at last he said softly, “You have freed the decoys. How can we set the net tomorrow?”
“The godbird will not come to Gebel Nagara again,” said Taita simply.
“Then am I never to be Pharaoh in my father’s place?” Nefer asked.
There was deep anguish in his voice, so Taita softened his answer. “We will have to take your bird from the nest.”
“We do not know where to find the godbird.” Nefer had stopped eating. He stared at Taita with pitiful appeal.
The old man inclined his head in affirmation. “I know where the nest is. It was revealed in the Mazes. But you must eat to keep up your strength. We will leave before first light tomorrow. It is a long journey to the site.”