Huy’s heart gave a painful lurch and began to race. He had first heard those words from Ramose, High Priest of Ra, in the temple where he had attended school as a child. They had stayed with him, accusing him of his failures, reminding him of his duty to Atum on the many occasions when he would have given away his ka itself rather than live one more day in the creator-god’s invisible chains. Here, sweating and trembling in this dreadful place, Anubis’s animal, inhuman tones in his ears, those words seemed to hold the sum of every nightmare Huy had suffered.
“What lives here?” he whispered.
“You know,” Anubis replied. “The Aten and its monstrous son live here. Oh, cry for Egypt, all you gods! Weep for the destiny that has overcome her!” His baying subsided into a series of shrill barks.
Huy would have turned and run from him, but all at once the music started to change, and at the same time two shadowy forms began to appear before the large offering table. They gained solidity quickly, a man and a woman standing together facing Huy, and immediately he recognized Tiye. She was dressed in an ankle-length sheath of many starched pleats. Her shoulders were covered by a short cape, also pleated. She was smothered in jewels, but Huy noticed them only briefly. His gaze was drawn first to her crown, a tall, ornate thing with the horns of Hathor rising to encompass a great golden disc set over a Queen’s vulture headdress. Not one but two royal uraei curved upward from her forehead, each creature also crowned with a row of small discs. His eyes travelled to her face, and as he stared at it the glorious music changed. The drums fell silent. The voice began a lament, a dirge that filled the temple with harsh sorrow. Tiye stared straight ahead. Those beautiful eyes had become wrinkled and hooded with age. Deep grooves to either side of the painted mouth pulled it down harshly, giving her an air of permanent dissatisfaction. Her expression was imperious, almost cruel, and bore the stamp of some dark knowledge.
Distressed, Huy looked away, only to find his eyes lighting on her companion. He appeared to be younger than she, but his deformities made a conclusion difficult. His chin and jawline seemed malformed. His lips, hennaed a bright orange, were too large, his shoulders too rounded over a shallow chest. His soft belly hung over the belt of his white kilt, which was of such a fine quality that through it Huy could see the outline of wide, almost feminine thighs. A blue and white striped bag wig covered his head, and from its rim rose one uraeus, the vulture Lady of Dread and the cobra Lady of Flame.
“Behold the King of Egypt and his spouse, the Empress Tiye,” Anubis said loudly. “Behold the inevitability of consequence. Do they not make a handsome couple?” Huy could not look at them anymore. Heartsick, he turned his back on the apparitions, if apparitions they were. The alien yellow eyes of the jackal god met his, and for the first time Huy read sympathy in them.
“Where are we, Anubis?” he asked. “Who is that … that misshapen creature, and why is Tiye his wife, his Queen? You say Empress. What does that mean? Must I tell the child whose hand I know I’m holding that one day she will be in subjection to …” He could not finish. The music rose to a discordant clash of noise and ended. The air was uncomfortably dry and hot in Huy’s nostrils, and the top of his head was burning. It seemed to him that for a henti he watched the god breathing slowly, the black male chest hung with gold rising and falling, before the long jackal snout opened and Anubis sighed.
“We are in the temple of the great city that will be built by that King,” he answered. “It will be the most glorious city ever seen in Egypt, and the most cursed. Famine and ruination will follow its construction, until this country shrinks from a great empire to the prey of greedy foreigners.”
“Empire?” Huy croaked out the word. Already he felt the weight of the responsibility he knew the god would lay across his shoulders.
Anubis bared his pointed teeth, a feral grin devoid of humour. “Amunhotep, the son you love but did not father, will pile land and riches at Amun’s feet in token of Egypt’s prosperity,” he answered. “Already he plans great things. Atum loves him and will bless him, Huy. Tiye will make him a good wife and a very capable Queen. As for you, take care. Two tasks are left to you. One is to finally solve the meaning of the Book of Thoth. The other is to make what you have seen here a lie, a tenuous mirage dissolving away as those in your care are guided along a different route. The abomination must not be allowed to live. Do you understand?”
“Unless you tell me who he is, I will not know what to do!”
“The only significant choices made in Egypt from now on are yours, and you will indeed know what to do. Use your gift. Stop running away from the Book of Thoth. In time you will know whom you have witnessed today. Meanwhile, go home.”
He raised one black palm in front of Huy’s face, and Huy had time to see that relentless sunlight sparking on the god’s rings before he found himself hunched on a stool in his office and soaked in sweat, his fingers twined around those of the girl in the chair and the lamp guttering on the desk behind her. At once pain seized him. He doubled over with a groan, feeling Tiye’s hand leave his.
“Paneb, I need more poppy at once,” he managed. “Find Tetiankh.” He heard the scribe leave his place and walk across to the door, closing it quietly behind him. Even so, the sound sent waves of agony pulsing through Huy’s head. Slowly he forced himself to straighten and meet Tiye’s worried eyes.
“Everyone knows that the Seeing makes you ill,” she said, “but like this? What can I do?”
“Pass me the water on the desk.” Swiftly she did so, rising and pouring from the pitcher then resuming her seat and watching him carefully as he drained the cup. Huy could smell the odour from his damp body hanging in the room, foul and acrid. It must be offensive to inhale, but the girl gave no sign that it was repulsing her. Taking the cup from him, she refilled it. Once more he drank, then crouched over it, holding it against his chest, feeling each rapid thud of his heartbeat echo in his head. “The vision was long,” he said to reassure her. “Thus the pain is severe. But it will abate, Lady Tiye. Poppy and sleep will drive it away. Let me take the drug and then I will tell you what I can.”
They waited in silence, Huy with his eyes closed. Presently the door opened and Tetiankh’s light step came close. Gently the cup was removed and replaced by a vial. Huy emptied it, handed it back to his body servant, and forced his eyes to open. “Thank you, Tetiankh. I don’t want to, but I’d better go to the bathhouse before I lie down. Wait for me outside in the passage.”
The concern had left the girl’s face. She sat with hands loosely folded in her white lap, her expression politely noncommittal, but beneath her good manners Huy sensed a wary eagerness. Paneb had returned and was quietly settling himself once more by Huy’s knee. The opium had already begun to dull the worst of Huy’s misery and he was able to smile across at Tiye. “You need not be disappointed by what I shall tell you,” he began. “Anubis showed me something wonderful in your future, Lady Tiye. Unfortunately, I feel that I must speak of it to your father before I give it to you.”
At once the dark brows came together over those blue eyes. “You saw my death? But no. You said ‘something wonderful,’ but something that Father needs to hear before me.” She leaned forward, peering sharply into his face. “The god showed you the man I’m to marry, didn’t he, Great Seer? Nothing else would be important enough to take to Father first. I’m right, aren’t I?”
“My apologies, Lady. I can tell you nothing at this time.” Huy turned to Paneb. “Write a request to the noble Yuya for an audience on my behalf,” he ordered. “Do it at once and Tiye can carry it home with her.” The scribe reached for his papyrus scraper and Huy eased carefully back to the girl. Any movement meant pain. “Be patient,” he said to her, “and you will be glad you waited. Ask my steward to summon your escort, and forgive me, Lady Tiye, both for withholding my vision from you and for neglecting to reverence you. I am not well enough.” It was a dismissal.
Tiye sighed, nodded, and came to her feet. “Patience is very d
ifficult for me to learn, Great Seer. Nevertheless, out of respect for you, I shall wait without pouting.” Putting out her arms, she bowed from the waist, an obeisance usually accorded all royalty but the King himself. Huy was surprised and touched. Paneb was already standing at the desk holding a candle flame to the base of a stick of red wax. Expertly he sealed the thin scroll, waited a moment for the wax to solidify, then handed it to Tiye with a bow. She snatched it and went out.
Huy waved his scribe back down. “Take a dictation, and keep this and all future records of my visions safely away from the usual business of each day, Paneb. What passes on these occasions must be entirely private.” He wanted nothing more than to curl up on the floor and close his eyes, but Paneb’s brush was busy for a very long time.
5
THREE DAYS LATER, word came to the palace that Yey was dead. The King and Mutemwia ordered a full seventy days of mourning for the man who had been revered as God’s Father, an honorific held by many trusted ministers, Master of the Horse, His Majesty’s Lieutenant-Commander of Chariotry, Chief Instructor of the King in Martial Arts, and, last but definitely not least, Chief of the Rekhit, the highest nobles of the realm. Only the most urgent matters were dealt with in the palace, and the King’s officials and foreign ambassadors spent the time visiting one another, catching up with unimportant and therefore neglected correspondence, and being leisurely carried through Mennofer’s crowded streets.
Huy had received no reply from Yuya regarding his request for a meeting, and did not expect one until Yey’s Beautification in the House of the Dead was completed and his funeral was over. It had taken Huy two days to recover from the long and detailed Seeing he had given Tiye. During that time he rested in Tetiankh’s care, sleeping and eating, expecting the summons from either Amunhotep or his royal Mother that in fact did not come until the second week of the mourning period. By then the month of Pharmuthi was well advanced, the days were pleasantly warm, the nights cool, and Egypt was bursting forth in renewed life everywhere. Huy had dictated a detailed letter to his old friend Methen, priest to Khenti-kheti, totem of his natal town. It contained everything Huy had seen relating to Tiye’s future and begged Methen to make the short journey south to see him. Huy had given the scroll to his new herald Ba-en-Ra with strict instructions to place it in no other hands but the priest’s. No one must catch a hint of what it contained until Huy had had an opportunity to discuss the vision with the Queen and Yuya. He divided the things Anubis had shown him into two distinct parts, the first of which was full of promise. Examining everything he knew and had experienced of Tiye, Huy grew convinced that she could very well make an excellent Queen for Amunhotep and for the country. She was as yet too young for anything more than a legal agreement between her family and the Horus Throne, and it would be necessary to supervise her education closely, not to mention sequester her in the harem, but Huy sensed very strongly that beneath the girl’s capricious self-will there lay a raw intellect and an early ability for discernment that, if properly nurtured and disciplined, would result in a woman worthy to walk beside a King.
He did his best to shy away from the second vision. The memory of it filled him with foreboding. The malformed King beside the figure of a Tiye whose face held only a harsh ruthlessness, the sense of dereliction emanating from the Disc with hands and imbuing the vast building from whence Ma’at had fled with the aura of hopelessness, the merciless onslaught of the sun, stirred a grief in Huy that was greater than his horror. Why grief he did not know, unless it was to see the bright child whose hand he had been holding become something coldly implacable. He had Seen for Amunhotep when the King was a baby. The vision had been a happy one, promising him great wealth and power in a storm of sun-fired gold dust that made him chuckle with delight, but Huy did not remember any assurance of long life for the little Prince. Was Tiye to outlive him, then, and remain a Queen beside this monstrous stranger who would bring a curse upon Egypt? Were there to be no royal sons for Amunhotep? The riddle would be meaningless until the future solved it, and Huy left it aside.
The god’s rebuke regarding Huy’s neglect of his work on the Book of Thoth struck home, but with mild despair Huy acknowledged that without further direction he was at a standstill. He knew the Book by heart, every word, every profound concept. He had spent years puzzling over it. He had become convinced that it was not complete, that somewhere lay the ending that would reveal its ultimate meaning, but he had no idea where to look for it. Atum had breathed life into his lifeless corpse and had given him the gift of Scrying in exchange for his agreement to read and understand the Book Atum had dictated to his scribe, the mighty ibis god Thoth, at the dawn of creation. The Book was contained on forty-two scrolls, half of which lay in Ra’s temple at Iunu and half in Thoth’s temple at Khmun. Huy had read them all. So had Imhotep, architect, Seer, healer, still worshipped as a god himself although he had been beautified uncounted hentis ago. Huy had begun to believe that Imhotep had deciphered the Book, had written the commentary with each scroll that Huy had found so useful, and had hidden the very last of the Book for some reason, doubtless wise, of his own. So much had happened that had driven Huy’s duty to the Book into the far corners of his mind. Anubis had warned him to bring it forward, but how, Huy thought in despair, am I supposed to take up my search again when the King may quite rightly command every moment of my time?
A reply to his letter arrived from Methen. Huy, inspecting the seal into which Khenti-kheti’s benign likeness had been pressed, saw with relief that it had not been broken. Cracking it, he unrolled the papyrus and recognized the priest’s own writing. Methen had answered the account of Huy’s visions in his own hand. “Atum has shown you a terrible thing,” Methen wrote.
Anubis warns you that you must on no account allow what you Saw to come to pass. At present it makes no sense. It’s a mirage that appears to have no foundation, but we both remember the Osiris-King Amunhotep the Second and his son Thothmes, our last Pharaoh, and how they fabricated Thothmes’ dream of the great sphinx he had dug out of the sand before Osiris Khufu’s resting place in order to disinherit the rightful heir, our own King’s blood-uncle newly returned from exile. Both of them gave Amun no respect. Their adoration went to the heat of Ra and more specifically to the light of the Aten-disc. May Amun grant you wisdom in the coming years, dear friend! Our young King loves you. So does his illustrious Mother. Keep a reverence for Egypt’s mightiest deity alive in them. I miss you and pray daily for your health and safety. By my own hand, Methen, Priest to Khenti-kheti of Hut-herib, this twenty-first day of Pharmuthi, Year One of the King.
Huy handed the scroll to Amunmose. “Burn it,” he ordered, “and have my litter-bearers rounded up. It’s time I spent a day with Heby and Iupia.”
Amunmose scuttled away and Huy went to his bedchamber for clean linen. The room no longer smelled of jasmine. Other blooms filled the gardens with their scents and the surface of the pools rocked gently under a weight of fragrant water lilies and delicate pink lotuses. As Huy opened his door, a tiny green lizard darted across the ceiling where Nut stretched out her star-spangled body, and disappeared through one of the clerestory windows high up in the wall. Huy had seen it before, diligently eating flies above his couch. “We should name that creature,” he said to Tetiankh, who was opening one of Huy’s tiring chests. “He does good work and I rather like him.” Tetiankh raised his eyebrows. He made no reply.
Huy was summoned to the King’s private quarters before the end of Pharmuthi. Escorted as usual by Perti and a couple of soldiers, he presented himself before the massive cedar doors to be warmly greeted by Chief Steward Nubti and ushered inside. Amunhotep was pacing to and fro before his closed Amun shrine, his arms folded across the gold lying on his chest, his feet bare. When he saw Huy, he hurried to embrace him. “Uncle Huy! It’s been weeks since we met! I thought that since we are all in mourning for Yey I might as well fill the time with some dictation. You brought your palette?”
Huy had in fact
snatched it up as an afterthought on his way out; it was as well to be prepared. Enveloped in the aroma of rosemary, Amunhotep’s favourite perfume, he felt a rush of renewed affection for this young man who had been a part of his life for so long.
“I have, Majesty.” He smiled, stepping away and bowing. “I’ve missed you also. Are you well?”
Amunhotep made a face. “My health is excellent as always, and although I loved Yey very much, I’m getting bored. I can’t take my chariot out or even feast with my friends. I’ve done my duty and visited Yuya and Thuyu. I even miss my studies!” He grinned and waved at the table laden with sweetmeats and wine. “Let’s nibble on shat cakes and share the news. Have you any?”
Yes I do, and I wish I could tell you about it, Huy thought as he took the chair Amunhotep had indicated. He shook his head. “I have enlarged my staff, and before the Master of Chariotry died I entertained my family. Nothing more.”
Amunhotep flung himself into the chair opposite Huy. At once Nubti clicked his fingers and a servant glided up to fill the waiting goblets. The King drank with relish, dabbing his hennaed mouth on the piece of spotless linen offered to him.
“You seem carefree in spite of your enforced aimlessness, Majesty,” Huy ventured. “It does me good to see you this way. It reminds me of so many happy days spent with you and Anhur on my estate, when you were a little boy.”
“I miss that time, Uncle.” Amunhotep leaned forward, pushing the pastries to and fro. “Being the King sometimes makes me lonely, in spite of the Queen my Mother’s companionship. Here.” He handed Huy a tart. “This one has almonds on it. A rare treat.”
Obediently, Huy took it. The taste of the precious nuts reminded him of his first meal at the school in Ra’s temple at Iunu. Those days came flooding back, together with a sudden and brilliant vision of the sacred Ished Tree beneath whose ancient branches he had sat to read the Book of Thoth. Of course the King had no inkling of the unwanted direction Huy’s mind was leading him, but it was as though Atum himself was putting the words in Amunhotep’s mouth when the King said, “Ra’s High Priest still cultivates the almond tree one of his predecessors planted in the temple garden. Apparently it’s very temperamental and hard to coax into producing these delectable things, but I receive a small sackful every Mesore, at the end of the harvest season.” He was busy picking the nuts from every pastry and audibly crunching them. “There are more if you want them, Uncle,” he added apologetically. “Would you like beer?”
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