by Andre Norton
The Royal Mother and the Royal Wife were borne through the halls in their carrying chairs. Once within the inner chamber where the priests had gathered, they dismissed the majority of their attendants, and it was the servants of the Jackal who drew across the doorway the woven curtains, closing the room.
Still through the fabric the scent of incense found its way, nor did the curtains deaden a low monotonous incantation, intoned with the intention to seal the seer from the world and enable him to open his eyes elsewhere. Rahotep had seen the process once before--in Semna--though at that time the results had been negative.
The seer would stare into the depths of the god’s bowl, while on the water that filled it floated a film of oil. Were Anubis willing, that film would form a picture--or some sign to be interpreted by His priests.
Sound and scent together were intended to dull the outer senses. The captain paced down the corridor, taking care to pause before each of his men to ensure that they were still alert. But he was before the door of the chamber when the chant ended abruptly and through a thick silence the tremulous voice of an old man mumbled. Rahotep could make out no separate words, but then there was a sudden, sharp exclamation, uttered by a woman.
Other voices were raised, and Rahotep could hear the anger in one, well controlled though it was. That was Tothotep! Then the calm tones he had heard pronouncing judgment, uttering decrees, brought silence again.
“So be it! What Re gives is also His to take away. But while I live, I shall do what I believe to be His will. Does a warrior in battle wrest away a comrade’s shield to cover his own body? Even the Hyksos do not so. Sekenenre shall live so that no man after his departure to the horizon can say: ‘This was no fit lord, but one who cowered in the sun, fearing the dark.’ Nothing is altered, nothing will be altered in my plans. I have spoken!”
When the priests of Anubis came forth, one of them led the seer, steering him by the arm, for the man tottered along as one who is blind, a pallor of shock drawing his face yet closer to the likeness of a corpse. Tothotep came last of all, and in the compression of his lips, the jerk with which he set straight his cloak of leopard skin, Rahotep read the extent of his anger.
It was by some evil chance that in that same moment the high priest fronted the captain almost squarely. And that which lay like coals of a smothered fire deep in his eyes was not good to see. Pen-Seti had been feared, but this man was greater than Pen-Seti, just as the emotion he aroused was more terror than fear. For what seemed a long moment ripped free from normal time, they stood face to face, and those dark eyes raked the younger man as if Tothotep were by some means transferring to this lesser object all his rage and frustration. Rahotep knew that no good would come from that meeting, chance though it was. Again he was plagued by the thought that he was being moved here and there, will-less, by those to whom he was only a mindless piece on a game board.
The high priest did not speak, nor did Rahotep as he stepped aside to let the other by, and then hurried on to answer a beckoning hand from the doorway. It was the same senior Lady of the Household who had escorted him to his first meeting with the queens. And now, adding to her orders to recall the carrying chairs, she said in a half whisper:
“When you are off duty, Captain, the Great Lady would speak with you. Come to the wall door.”
The incense was gone, the palace itself settled into the usual calm of the night, and then he was free. Almost timidly he rapped on that portal through which Pepinecht had ushered him. And within, the scribe waited, to lead him to the small hall.
But this time the two queens sat alone. There were no tables piled with feast dishes, no gaming board set out. He had an odd, fleeting impression that he was walking into the quarters of some commander in chief. A glance at that back wall, which had been cloaked with a rug on his first visit, showed him now a curtained door. As he “kissed dust” before the royal ladies, both the scribe and the lady of honor withdrew out of hearing.
“Captain.” The Royal Mother’s hands rested on the arms of her chair. Now they tightened their grip. “Is it yet known what has passed this night? There are ears, aye, and eyes, too, in the walls of Pharaoh’s house, and tongues to relay ill news quickly.”
“Royal Lady, if aught is known it has not come to my hearing!” He spoke the truth with all sincerity.
She watched him with the narrow-eyed intentness of a hawk. Then she glanced at her daughter, the Royal Wife. That younger face so mirrored the elder that it was uncanny. And in that short space when their eyes met, some silent message was exchanged.
“Listen well.” Teti-Sheri’s voice was only a fragile husk of a murmur. “This night He-Who-Speaks-for-Anubis brought his seer and it was foretold that if Pharaoh goes up against the Hyksos, then his time will be cut short and he will depart to the horizon--”
“Be it not so!”
She waved aside his shocked protest. “So must say all those who love Egypt, for Pharaoh plans to throw off the shackles of the invaders and do it now. The longer men lie in chains, the more they forget the sweetness of freedom. There are those who come in time to look upon their chains, their cages, as places of safety in an uncertain world.”
Unconsciously he nodded agreement, remembering speeches he had heard within the courts of Thebes.
“Therefore they will fasten upon such a dire foretelling--” She hesitated, visibly of two minds about proceeding.
And a flash of sudden and terrifying insight made him add, to his own horror, “Perhaps thinking to make it true by the efforts of man--”
The Royal Mother sat very still. On the wall the black shadow of her vulture headdress had a questing look. But the Royal Wife stirred, her hand half raised from her lap as if to ward off some blow. Then Teti-Sheri smiled, but there was nothing joyful in the curve of her lips.
“Tuya may take joy in the new Hawk; his wits are not dull. Think so, kinsman, but also keep those same thoughts locked within your head. A warning to a soldier in time is as good as an extra company at his back. Take care, and again I say to you, take care! You and your archers stand outside the old patterns of our life. For that very reason you may be able to better fulfill your duty and see that our Lord departs not before his time--”
“There is this also.” For the first time Ah-Hetpe spoke. “Because you are from afar, there will be those quick to blame you in preference to friends or kinsmen should aught go wrong. And it may be that no saving hand can be held out to avert disaster--”
He had it now! All his formless and vague fears came into sharp focus. To the queens, he and his men, without local ties and uncorrupt, might be salvation in face of a palace plot. To any plotters the Nubian company would be convenient scapegoats. He must indeed walk blindfolded a path in a crocodile swamp. Something of that realization must have been visible in his face, for Teti-Sheri smiled again, but not with the icy remoteness he had seen earlier.
“Serve us for but a little time, Captain. When our lord goes up against the Hyksos, and he will lead out after the Blessing of the Waters, then their chance will be past. And if they strike, their serpent fangs will only close upon stone.”
But that was a promise that held but small comfort, Rahotep decided bleakly, as he sat on a stool in his quarters, gazing a little absently at Kheti whom he had summoned for a conference he did not know just how to begin. He might have known that his foster brother had already gathered some of the threads of the tangle into his capable hands, for the other spoke first.
“The jackal has barked to some purpose tonight, brother. Already tongues wag concerning a warning.”
“Aye. And that I have had doubly. We must be truly on guard until after the Blessing of the Waters--”
What more he might have added was not to be said. Nakh-hof, second in command of the guard, stood in the doorway. His face in the lamplight was greenish beneath the brown, oily drops that ran down his cheeks, and he held himself erect with an effort.
“Captain!” His voice was a half cry of pain.
“A bad sickness has struck. Half the guard cannot leave their sleeping mats. Take your men and cover the chamber of Pharaoh until I can send you relief!”
On their way from one corridor to the next Kheti spoke hurriedly to Rahotep.
“A sickness which strikes so speedily and fastens upon the men of the inner guard is indeed an odd one. Mayhap one who barks is concerned.”
That it was a sickness and a grave one was manifest, Rahotep discovered when he posted his men in place of those who had, for the most part, to be carried away by their comrades. He hoped that the warning he gave secretly to each archer would be enough to keep the men alert and ready for trouble.
The night wore on, and it began to seem that he might have been unduly suspicious. It was less than half an hour by the great water clock before the Pharaoh would be aroused for the dawn greeting of Amon-Re when a cry broke from the inner chamber.
Rahotep raced down the corridor reaching the curtains just as the door guard burst through them. He bumped against that archer, for the room beyond was almost completely dark and the man had paused inside to get his bearings. In the corner where the Pharaoh’s bed stood half concealed under a canopy, there was a struggle going on, and Rahotep leaped for the disturbance, shouting at the same time for a light.
He threw himself on a tangle of fighting men, his hands slipped on flesh that had been thickly oiled. Then they met hairy skin, an animal’s pointed ear! Pharaoh was fighting for his life against some monstrosity that mounted a beast’s head on a human body!
The captain struck out with his fists, blindly, with all the strength he could muster. Something grunted as a light flared in the doorway. The monster wriggled toward the corner. Rahotep took a step forward in pursuit and came down on one knee as his foot caught under a second body. He groped and his fingers closed about metal.
A torch had been brought in behind him by Nakh-hof who had somehow miraculously recovered from his severe illness. As its smoking radiance was swung under the bed canopy, all the crowding guard could see clearly. Rahotep knelt by Sekenenre. The Pharaoh was moaning faintly, and in his upper breast a dagger had been thrust, a dagger whose hilt was now in Rahotep’s hold. Save for those who had just entered, the room was empty. To these witnesses he was an assassin caught in the act!
Chapter 10: SLAVES OF ANUBIS
Rahotep pressed his forehead tight to the unyielding stone of the wall against which he lay. Something in that small, self-imposed pain helped to clear a path through the fever haze that imprisoned his body, a path for ill-assorted, broken thoughts and half memories. He was shut in this box of utter black, as if his abused body had been sealed, while still living, into the sarcophagus of a tomb. Yet--his breath caught in the half-sob of a child who has wept himself into exhaustion--for Rahotep, son of Ptahhotep and the Lady Tuya, there would be no tomb, save one the river crocodiles would grant. His would be a long time in dying, and afterwards there would come total oblivion instead of any afterlife. Or would the Judges of the Dead be more merciful than those of the living?
Much of what had happened since Nakh-hof had come upon him with the unconscious Pharaoh, the assassin’s weapon in his hand, was mercifully a blur. He had been brutally flogged and questioned through that flogging. When he found no one would listen to his story or his protestations of innocence, that they sought only for a confession of guilt, he had kept silence to the end.
There was one moment he remembered with brutal clarity, when his own captain’s flail had been broken ceremoniously across his battered face before the assembled guard. And he had another memory picture of his archers, stripped of their arms and proud insignia, being herded away to the slave compounds, the unconscious Kheti, who had resisted injustice to the end, being dragged along in their midst. After that he had awakened here. Though where he was he did not know, or greatly care any more.
He moved a swollen tongue between torn lips in a vain quest for moisture. Water! A picture of a scummy pool in a dying stream on the Kush border haunted him. He longed for that water. Green with weed, evil-smelling, thick with insects though it was, he desired it avidly. But though he lay in a cell that was dank and chill, there was no water. Perhaps he had already been condemned and was walled in here for all time, shut in with a curse that would imprison his spirit with his moldering body. He had heard dark tales of such punishments. And surely no greater crime could be charged against any man than that of raising a dagger to the Son of Re!
There came periods in which he escaped the dark, the cold, the pain, and ran with the Scouts once more in the open wastelands, or climbed down the cliff to the ledge where Horus had guided him to find the leopard cub. Then once more he would awaken to the cell and the hopeless present.
He was shackled by an ankle ring, he discovered. And the chain leading from that ring was fastened to a bolt set in the stone of the wall. But the mere fact that he was so chained destroyed his worst fear. Had he indeed been walled up and forgotten, they would not have bothered to shackle him. And so, heartened by that one small fact among all his fears and forebodings, Rahotep began to explore his quarters with his outstretched arms.
Pain came at the slightest movement of his flayed shoulders, but he persisted, driven by an inner core of stubbornness.
His groping hands found no break in the walls about him on three sides. The length of the chain--though he lay full length on his belly and stretched out his arms to their fullest extent beyond his head--prevented him from locating the fourth. But his questing led him to a jar and a plate.
Gasping with eagerness, he pulled the jar to him slowly, fearing to spill even a drop of the precious liquid he could hear sloshing in its depths. He drank sparingly of the musty water. But with every sip he swallowed he believed he could feel new energy flowing into him. The plate held a three-cornered loaf of coarse bread, the husks of grain rasping in the stuff--common slave fare. He ate part of it slowly, wincing at the pain in his lips, choking upon the bites he forced down. But he did not eat it all, though his middle pinched with hunger. There was no sign he might be given other supplies. Best make this last as long as possible. Rahotep sat up straight, not daring to touch his lacerated back to the wall, and chewed carefully.
The food had strengthened him in the belief that he was not to be left there forever. And putting the horrors of the immediate past to the back of his mind, the captain began considering what could be done here and now to help himself. His body was bare of any clothing. Even his throat amulet had been taken from him. He had no possible weapon and he was chained.
Chained! His fingers went to that ring on his ankle, moved along the links to the ring that anchored him to the wall. That had been set deep in the mortar where four blocks met. He tugged at it, already knowing that it would require more than Kheti’s strength to loosen it. But mortar--
Once more he groped on the floor, found the plate on which the bread had rested. It was, to the touch, a rough thing of baked clay. But it might be a tool of sorts. At any rate he would not sit in the dark making no effort at all, awaiting death with a broken spirit!
Deliberately Rahotep broke the plate, and was left with two jagged, pointed shards. With one of these he began what he knew was an impossible task, picking with that fragile, crumbling clay point at the stone-hard stuff in which the ring was set. He might as well attempt to drain the Nile with his cupped hands, something within him commented bitterly. But he kept on, though the clay powdered away with every stroke.
There was no night or day, no hours to be marked in the dark. He could have been there for a longer or a shorter time than he guessed. Sleep came. Rahotep drank sparingly of the water when he awoke, stiff and sore, and ate a mouthful or two of the bread. Neither supply had been replenished, and he congratulated himself on the foresight of rationing what he had found.
The last fragment of the broken plate was powder and his fingertips were raw with rubbing the most infinitesimal bits back and forth around the ring. He thought he could feel a slight indentati
on there, but it was all lost effort. And now he sat quietly, cradling in his hand the one remaining bite of bread.
He was raising that to his lips when there was a burst of blinding light above the level of his head. His hands over his eyes in instinctive protection, Rahotep flattened against the wall where his chain was fastened. He had been so long in solitary darkness that he first did not understand the promise of those sounds from overhead. Sluggishly they fitted into a pattern in his ears, began to make a measure of sense.
“Lord Rahotep--?” There was a familiar slur softening that urgent call. Then a second voice, pitched low, but with the carrying snap of an officer, brushed aside the first inquiry.
“Rahotep! Brother!”
The captain pulled a name out of his memory, said it aloud in that husky whisper that seemed all that was left to him for a voice.
“Kheti!”
“Aye, brother, Kheti. Hold that torch lower, fool! Nay, after I am through this hole--not before!”
A body squeezed with some effort through the square opening some eight feet up on the far wall, hung for a moment by the hands, and then dropped to the floor. Rahotep’s eyes still smarted in the light from the torch extended through the wall hole, but he forced himself to look about the stone cell that had held him--for how long?
“I am chained--” His husky whisper echoed oddly from the bare walls.
Kheti was already down on one knee examining the links and the ring to which they were fastened. He gave a test jerk to the fetters and then shook his head, turning his attention to the ring about the captain’s ankle.