Slayer of Gods

by Lynda S. Robinson

  “She died there.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  Anath turned to him, her tilted eyes full of concern. “You know what happened?”

  “I think so,” Meren said, his mind drawn back to a day eleven years earlier.

  The reception of the viceroy of Kush rivaled any of the great court ceremonies at Horizon of the Aten. In the Riverside Palace a gathering of courtiers awaited the great royal wife, Meren and Ay among them. There was to be a grand procession like that held at Akhenaten’s jubilee, with Nubians bearing tribute—gold, ivory, incense, slaves, cattle, and exotic animals. Meren could hear the distant roar of lions and trumpet of elephants.

  Everyone wore elaborate court dress—razor-pleated, transparent linen overrobes, heavy gold broad collars weighed down by turquoise, malachite, and lapis lazuli; long, intricately plaited wigs surmounted by diadems of electrum, gold, and silver; ceremonial daggers, scimitars, and staffs of office. The air blossomed with scents like balanos oil mixed with myrrh and resin, cardamom, sweet rush, honey, and galbanum. And hushed voices floating on the heavy scents, exchanging whispers and veiled meanings.

  Meren waited beside his mentor, his shoulders aching with the added burden of gold draped on them. Lost in reflection, he was missing his wife Sit-Hathor and his daughters. The loneliness followed him like his shadow soul. Then trumpets blared, sending everyone to their knees. Meren lifted his gaze from the floor tiles when the doors from the royal suite swung open to reveal the queen. No, pharaoh.

  He blinked rapidly at the strange sight. Nefertiti, now King Neferneferuaten, stood in the doorway in regal isolation. The double crown rested like a heavy tower on her head, and her hair had been gathered close so that the base of the lowest crown concealed it. She wore a false beard of gold strapped to her fragile chin and carried the crook and flail scepters. The sight of a woman in those crowns and that golden beard, their first since Akhenaten declared her king, caused something never heard at the appearance of an Egyptian monarch—grumbling. It began in the silence of their obeisance and grew as Nefertiti remained framed by the high vault of the doors.

  Meren had lowered his gaze, but at the quiet, rolling thunder of the courtiers he looked up at the great royal wife. Nefertiti still hadn’t moved. Her gaunt features seemed plastered like the mask of an embalmed one, pale and painted. Then Meren saw a bright flush suffuse her skin, and she licked her lips. Nefertiti whispered something, and a waiting woman handed her a golden cup. The queen-king drained it, but as she handed it back to her lady she sagged and placed her hand over her eyes.

  The grumbling tone of the courtiers changed, shifted to curiosity, and several of them conferred among themselves. But no one approached Nefertiti. Meren glanced at Ay, whose gaze was fixed on his daughter. When she began to gasp for breath, he sprang out of his stillness with Meren at his side. They reached her in time to catch her as she swayed. She cried out, flailing as if blind, and fell with Ay supporting her full weight. The crowns fell from her head, and would have touched the floor had Meren not caught them. He lunged forward, grabbed them, and ended up on his knees.

  A great furor exploded around him. Ay vanished with his daughter, and the nobles dispersed in panic, leaving Meren in an empty space for a moment. Then someone grabbed his arm and hauled him upright. Dazed at the experience of touching the sacred crowns of Egypt, Meren clutched them to his body and faced Thanuro, the Aten priest of Nefertiti. He deftly relieved Meren of his burden.

  “Swift thinking, Lord Meren. Pharaoh will be pleased.”

  “She’s ill,” Meren blurted out.

  “I didn’t mean the great royal wife,” Thanuro said with oiled smoothness. “His majesty, living in truth, the sole one, Akhenaten. He will be pleased.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Without another word Thanuro glided over to the two cowering priests who held the gold boxes in which the crowns were kept. He placed each in its container, motioned to the priest, and sailed quickly out of the hall with his assistants and their royal burdens. And as he left he passed Prince Usermontu standing by an archway, leaning against the threshold, surveying the confusion with a slight smile.

  Meren shook his head at the vision still clinging to his heart, of Thanuro, of Usermontu. That Thanuro had been unaffected by Nefertiti’s collapse was understandable; he was Akhenaten’s man. Usermontu had held a high position in the queen’s household, and he’d smiled. How undiplomatic.

  “Usermontu again,” Anath said. “He was there when she collapsed? He could have used the steward to get rid of Nefertiti. I told you it was worth coming here.”

  “Perhaps. But knowing Usermontu might have wanted the queen dead, knowing that he had the opportunity to cause her death, these things aren’t enough.”

  “But you just said Usermontu was there,” Anath protested.

  “So was Lord Pendua. Dilalu was somewhere nearby. He had reason to fear Nefertiti as well. And there’s Thanuro. He was in a position to carry out this plot, although I can’t think why he’d do it.”

  “But of all whom you suspect, Usermontu is the most vicious, and he knew Nefertiti would prevent him from rising any higher in the king’s favor.” Khufu snaked himself around Anath’s ankles, and she bent to stroke his head. She continued. “Everyone thought she had the plague, even the queen herself. You say that after a few days she insisted upon being moved here, away from pharaoh and the children. The steward and the cook came with her. So did Usermontu. Five days after that she was dead.”

  Meren smiled bitterly. “They were careful not to hurry her death. Ay stayed by her side until the end, and I brought messages back and forth from the king. Akhenaten wanted to be here, but the ministers protested that he would expose himself to the plague demons that haunted Nefertiti.”

  Anath nodded, and they both studied the facade of the North Palace. Behind the high pylon gates lay a small palace with a sunken garden. Cool, green, and intimate, it had been a place of refuge for Nefertiti. Meren hoped that the surroundings had been a comfort to her as she struggled for life.

  “We must go,” Meren said. He guided the chariot south, toward the central city.

  In a short time they rode alongside the pylon gates of the Great Aten Temple. The vast carvings on the ramparts depicted Akhenaten and Nefertiti worshipping the sun disk. Meren kept his gaze fixed on the road rather than look at the gigantic figure of the king with its elongated facial features, hollow shoulders, and slanting eyes. The exaggeration upon which Akhenaten had insisted mocked the harmony that art should bring to existence.

  Whenever Meren gazed upon Akhenaten’s reliefs he experienced the same unsettled foreboding. It was as if the chaos Akhenaten brought to Egypt took form in his art and spread distortion, perversion, and imbalance. Worst of all was looking at the king’s eyes. Against the pure white background paint those slanting eyes absorbed light and produced a gleaming darkness, chaos, and madness. It didn’t help that the eye on the pylon gate was as large as Meren’s head.

  He was glad when they left the temple behind and passed under the Royal Bridge. Meren guided the chariot around the Great Palace complex and down to the docks where Kenro, Dedi, and Bek waited for them. Each bore a box or document case, indicating that their search had yielded more than Anath and Meren’s. After everyone boarded Wings of Horus, Meren held a meeting under the deckhouse awning.

  Kenro spoke for the scribes. “We gathered everything that might have significance, lord, but we’re not finished.”

  “We should stay until the task is complete,” Anath said. She was lying on a couch beneath the awning while a sailor fanned her.

  “Kenro and the others will stay here to continue the work,” Meren replied. “I must go to Syene. An old friend is expecting me. Go on, Kenro.”

  The scribe held up two halves of a torn papyrus scroll. “This is from the King’s House magazines. It’s a list of ration increases during the period before and just after the queen died. The lord will see why we kept it.” He handed i
t to Meren.

  Meren read down the list of dates, names, and amounts of grain, olive oil, lamp oil, natron, and other commodities. He found the names and titles of Prince Usermontu and Thanuro. Usermontu’s rations had been increased by half shortly after Nefertiti died; Thanuro’s had been doubled. Lord Pendua had received the right to a daily allowance of lamp oil from the Aten temple, a lucrative grant.

  Akhenaten had dispensed largesse to his minions far more frequently than other pharaohs. Meren had always suspected it was the king’s way of keeping his followers dependent and loyal. If one did away with the sacred underpinnings of kingship, one must replace them with something. Riches seemed a practical alternative. Meren glanced at the other amounts on the scroll. The increases given to the suspects were much larger than those given to most of the king’s servants.

  Kenro produced a clay tablet covered with the wedge-shaped script of the Asiatics. “This is a letter from the king of Assyria promising to send a pair of thoroughbreds to Prince Usermontu.”

  “Usermontu was a friend of the king of Assyria?” Anath asked.

  “No,” Meren said. “Lesser kings often send gifts to men they think might influence pharaoh.”

  “There are more tablets, lord, but I haven’t had time to translate them,” Kenro said. “I did find one from the prince of Byblos promising to extend his hospitality to pharaoh’s retiring servant, Thanuro.”

  “Hardly of interest,” Anath said with a yawn. “I’m going back to my ship to wash off this road dust.”

  Bek handed Kenro several sheets of torn papyrus.

  “Oh, and we did find these.” Kenro leafed through the sheets. “A report on the audit of the queen’s household after her death, conducted by the steward Wah, a transfer of that Asiatic estate to the priest in year sixteen, a letter from the queen to the prince of Byblos regarding a missing shipment of gold she sent to him.”

  With another yawn Anath held out her hand to Meren. “Excellent work. Your servants are to be commended, Lord Meren, but I fear I grow weary and must rest.”

  Meren conducted Anath off the ship and returned to his scribes. “So, we know Thanuro was well-rewarded for his service to pharaoh. Too bad he died. He would have been an excellent witness, and it doesn’t seem we’re going to find anything useful among all this litter.”

  “Perhaps there’s information in some of the records we haven’t examined, lord.” Kenro indicated the boxes and document cases lying on the deck.

  “Keep looking. I’m sailing in the morning, and I’ll come back for you on my way back to Memphis.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  Meren dismissed the scribes and retired to the deckhouse. It had been fitted with embroidered wall hangings, colorful woven mats, and a folding camp bed. A feather-stuffed mattress rested on the bed with soft linen sheets covering it. Meren’s body servant, Zar, was waiting for him with cool water and washing cloths. Meren bathed and dressed in a fresh kilt before going outside to compose letters to pharaoh and Kysen. Each was a report on his progress, not that there was much of it. Meren regretted allowing Anath to convince him to make this side trip. His presence hadn’t been necessary.

  But then you wouldn’t have been with her at the Riverside Palace. Meren felt his lips stretch into a smile. Stop that. Your men will catch you wearing the grin of a fool and know everything. Clearing his throat, Meren dipped his rush pen in the black inkwell on his scribe’s palette and began to write his report to pharaoh. By sunset he’d finished. He had a meal with the ship’s captain, a heavy one that comprised spicy fish soup, roasted heron, salad greens in oil, fresh bread, and date cakes. They shared thick black beer flavored with dates, and when his eyelids grew heavy he retired to his bed.

  He drifted off to sleep and plunged into an erotic dream in which Anath straddled him, her uptilted eyes laughing. Groaning, Meren tried to turn over, but a great weight pinned him. His eyes flew open, and he stared up at the laughing eyes from his dream.

  “The Eyes of Pharaoh shouldn’t sleep,” Anath said as she straddled his hips. She shrugged out of a transparent shift, bent over him, and snaked her tongue into his mouth. “Terrible demons lurk in the shadows waiting to pounce.”

  Meren allowed her to kiss him, but pulled free to say, “It’s late, and we have to sail in the morning.”

  “Unless you’re going to row this ship with the sailors, I don’t see a difficulty,” Anath replied.

  When Meren opened his mouth to argue she covered it with her fingers. “No one refuses the Eyes of Babylon.”

  Meren gasped as she touched him.

  “Certainly not me,” he said, and he stopped arguing.

  Chapter 8

  Kysen lounged on the roof of Golden House, his expression carefully pleasant, his attitude one of amused attention as Bener told Zulaya tales about her sisters and Kysen’s son, Remi. Beneath his calm facade he was furious and couldn’t wait to flay Bener with his tongue the moment they were alone. He hadn’t intended to make this man a familiar, but Bener hadn’t consulted him. She’d welcomed their unexpected guest as if he were a personal friend when Kysen had brought him home. Then she’d launched into an imitation of a grand lady, mistress of a noble house, and invited Zulaya to the evening meal.

  Having discussed Kysen’s purchases, Zulaya had been persuaded to spend time in Meren’s private garden, one of the most luxurious in the Two Lands. Kysen conducted his guest down the avenue of pomegranate trees that led to the refuge, all the while keeping their conversation innocuous. They discussed the cost of ebony and the amount of time it would take to receive a shipment of cedar from Byblos. When the tour of the garden led them to the arbor covered with grapevines Zulaya talked about the merits of Syrian wine.

  “Your travels take you across vast distances,” Kysen said, hoping to begin his questioning without being detected. “Such interminable journeying must become wearisome. I hope you’re comfortable in Memphis.”

  “Indeed, most honored lord,” Zulaya said as he touched a grape leaf.

  Having failed to elicit where the man was staying in the city, Kysen tried again. “Is there one place in which you remain for long? To rest, that is?”

  “I am fortunate to have a house in Byblos,” Zulaya said.

  “But you’re half Egyptian, I hear.”

  Zulaya turned to smile at him. “Yes, lord. My mother was Egyptian, but of humble stock. My father came from Babylon, a trader in wool and fine ceramic wares. He came to Egypt with a caravan one year, and returned with my mother. They built a house near the ziggurat, and prospered under the benevolence of the goddess Ishtar.”

  “So you spent your youth in Babylon.” Kysen walked with his guest toward one of the pavilions.

  “I lived there until I finished school, but then I traveled with my father.” Zulaya kept pace with Kysen, and his robe whipped about his ankles as the north breeze picked up. “I confess I prefer the excitement of the journey to remaining always in one place, seeing the same sights endlessly.”

  He paused as they reached the pavilion and glanced around the garden with its orchard, its forest of acacias, willows, perseas, and tamarisks. “However, to remain in this place…” He gave Kysen a rueful glance. “I thought that the weight of years would change me, and such beauty as this is tempting, but eventually I would long for the sight of the sea you call the Great Green. I hunger to see the endless line where the water meets the azure sky.”

  Kysen nodded and directed his steps along the edge of the largest of the reflection pools where a talapia fish darted between the papyrus reeds. “Then I wonder that you bothered to purchase land in Egypt.”

  “A desire to own a small portion of my mother’s birth land,” Zulaya said. “It’s a small estate near the town of Hebenu.”

  “Ah, not far from Horizon of the Aten.”

  Zulaya wrinkled his forehead. “Yes,” he said slowly, “but there is little to be said for it now that pharaoh lives here.”

  “My father said it was glorious in the
days of the heretic.”

  “It must have been,” the merchant said in an offhand manner.

  Kysen stopped and met Zulaya’s passive gaze. “I would have thought you’d seen it often, since so much trade shifted there after the city was established.”

  “Those were days of great unrest among the kingdoms in Syria and Canaan. My caravans met raiders at every mountain pass, and I was preoccupied with the task of protecting them. I never went farther than the delta after year four of that reign.” Zulaya gave him a wry look. “I almost lost my fortune at least three times, to bandits under the protection of worthless city chiefs.”

  “But the gods protected you,” Kysen said as he headed out of the garden.

  “I sacrificed to them many times a day for several years.”

  After they returned to the house, servants swept Zulaya away to be bathed and perfumed. By the time the sun set Bener had taken charge of them and led the way to the roof where the smell of roasting meat greeted them. By now Kysen had been in Zulaya’s company for several hours, during which he’d assessed the man.

  The merchant was a strange mixture of foreign and familiar. He dressed expensively and wore jewels of Asiatic and Egyptian origin. Gold bracelets encircled his arms, each engraved with Babylonian motifs—rosettes, bees, and dogs, the symbol of the goddess Gula. Yet from Zulaya’s neck hung an Egyptian pectoral necklace bearing the symbol of the moon, a hollow rectangle of gold beads into which had been mounted an electrum moon disk floating on the crescent new moon.

  The mixture of Egyptian and Asiatic went deeper than ornamentation, however. Zulaya had the long, narrow head of an Egyptian, as well as a slight stature, but his hair curled in ringlets rather than waves, a more Asiatic trait. Kysen hadn’t noticed his accent when they first met, but now he could detect it by the slightly more guttural sound to his speech. Beyond the physical, Kysen had marked Zulaya’s assured manner. Kysen had puzzled over this easy demeanor since meeting the man, until he realized that Zulaya moved among the trappings of nobility as if he belonged there. He didn’t gawk at Meren’s ebony and gold furnishings, at the luxurious garden filled with priceless myrrh and frankincense shrubs, at the house that was nearly as large as a palace.