Two hundred cubits short of the river, Teppy fell. He didn’t want his brother to notice, so he tried to pull himself up in a hurry and fell again.
“I don’t want to run anymore!” Teppy cried out. “Why do we have to run?”
In tears, he lay helpless on the ground. Tuthmosis rushed over and, like so many times before, placed his brother’s arm around his neck and lifted him off the ground.
As he carried Teppy, he leaned in to his brother’s ear. “Hold your head high. You are a prince,” he said, and throughout the rest of the path to the river, Teppy held his head as high as the proudest of royalty.
ONCE THEY REACHED THE SHORE, Tuthmosis and Teppy pulled off their cloaks and kilts and immersed themselves in the cool waters of the river. It was Egypt’s sole life sustainer, the flood of Isis’s tears of sorrow over the death of her husband, the ancient god Osiris. The river kept the people from perishing due to starvation—the one retreat from the enclosure of the stone walls of the palace and the heat of the searing desert sun.
The boys swam and bathed in silence until Teppy spoke.
“In my dream, I can run fast and tall like you. My legs are strong like an ostrich, and I never fall.”
“That’s good, but when you dream you must also learn to erase every fear or doubt in your mind and believe with all your heart that there’s a sharpened spear on the ground before you. If you truly believe it, one will appear for you as it did for me.”
“And what did you do with it?”
Tuthmosis chuckled. “What do you think I did with it? I used the spear to slay the beast, and he has never appeared in my dreams again.”
Teppy was amazed at his brother. “I wish I was just as brave.”
“You’ll dream again, little brother, and this time you’ll be brave and kill the Amun beast. I’ll show you how to use the spear to do it.” He swam up close to Teppy. “But, first—”
Tuthmosis grinned before he flailed his arms and splashed water across Teppy’s face. The boy shrieked and laughed as he tried to splash back, but Tuthmosis’s arms were longer and faster. Their faces dripped with river water, and they were drowning in laughter until they heard their father’s familiar shout.
“Tuthmosis!”
Amenhotep ambled angrily toward them trailed by his royal guards, and the boys’ smiles disappeared. The pharaoh stopped right at the shoreline, exasperated. His sudden appearance made Teppy nervous, but Tuthmosis was unshaken. Then again, their father was not directing his stern gaze at Tuthmosis; he directed it at Teppy.
“Whose plan was it to defy my rules? Was it you Teppy?” said Amenhotep.
Before Teppy could speak the first word of his confession, Tuthmosis cut him off. “No, it was not him. My brother is innocent. It was me, Father. I wanted to cool off from the heat. I forced him to come.”
Teppy trembled, guilt-ridden that his brother had taken the blame. However, when Tuthmosis flashed him a wink at the very moment their father looked away, it calmed him.
“You were warned not to go into the river, were you not, Tuthmosis?” asked Amenhotep.
Tuthmosis waved his hand dismissively at his father. “The river is fine.”
“The waters are infested with crocodiles, and where are the guards to protect you?” Amenhotep snapped.
Tuthmosis shook his head at Amenhotep and in a blatant act of rebelliousness, submerged himself in the river. Teppy watched his father swallow his anger at Tuthmosis by looking at the ground and grinding his teeth. A moment later Tuthmosis came up for air. “I’m not afraid of a stupid crocodile, Father. I would welcome the pleasure of killing it right here in the river with my bare hands. The Aten god protects me.”
“Tuthmosis, you are the high priest of Amun. You have responsibilities to the temple.”
“What about my responsibility to my own brother? Three times a day you make me go to that place and suffer. The Amun priests don’t want me in their temple, Father, they treat me like dung.”
“You belong there. You were divinely appointed.”
“Appointed by you, and they despise me for it. Obviously, there’s nothing divine about your appointments,” said Tuthmosis.
Teppy could never speak that way to his father—if ever he had, he would be punished severely for it, even if his mother tried to intercede. He never understood why his father found it so easy to punish him while just as easily forgiving Tuthmosis. No matter how much Teppy tried to please his father, or how much he tried to show his love for him, Amenhotep never loved him as much as he loved Tuthmosis.
Teppy quickly forgot about his grievances when creases formed on his father’s face. Amenhotep doubled over, grasping his jaw. His guards rushed toward him, but he waved them away.
“What’s wrong? Are you all right?” asked Tuthmosis.
“My son, please, come out of the water.”
Tuthmosis waded onto shore and approached him. Amenhotep stood up straight but moved with difficulty.
“You are so much like your mother, always challenging me.”
“Not her. I’m actually more like you. No one is more stubborn than you father.”
Amenhotep forced a smile and motioned for Tuthmosis to come closer. He silently obeyed.
Teppy studied the interaction between his brother and father standing next to each other. Their faces were similar, but he shared no resemblance to either of them. While his face was narrow with a prominent nose, thick lips, and protruding chin, Tuthmosis’s round face and pinched nose looked identical to their father’s. It was surely the reason why his father loved his brother so much, so all Teppy would have to do to change this is to alter his face to appear more like them.
“It is written that you must fulfill your term as the high priest of Amun before you can become my co-ruler. Do you understand?” Amenhotep asked Tuthmosis in a weakened voice.
“I’m a far better warrior than I could ever be a priest,” Tuthmosis remarked.
“Tuthmosis, do you understand?” his father repeated.
Tuthmosis was reluctant to answer. He despised being the high priest. Teppy didn’t quite know why, except that the leopard-skin cloak that his brother had to wear smelled awful.
“I’ll fulfill my term to the Amun god as you wish, but in my heart, I serve the Aten,” said Tuthmosis relenting.
Amenhotep kissed him on the forehead. Jealousy stirred in Teppy. He waved at his father to get his attention.
“Good morning, Father,” he said to him with a smile. Amenhotep glanced at him but addressed Tuthmosis instead. “Take him back to the palace and make your way to the temple,” said Amenhotep, grasping his jaw again as he tried to contain the pain. He trudged back to his chariot with his guards, moaning with every step.
Teppy melted at the sight of his brother looking down at him in pity. It only affirmed what he had always felt—he wasn’t worthy of acceptance by his father, and like it had been since his birth, he would forever be invisible to him.
CHAPTER 3
Amenhotep cringed in pain as Ay struggled to fasten his armor breastplate around his bloated torso.
“Stop! I can’t continue with this!” he demanded. “Administer the cure now!”
For the healing properties of the cure to be effective, it needed to be administered by a priest. A former Amun priest such as Ay was sufficient enough for the task. Amenhotep waited with bated breath as Ay retrieved a poppy plant he had hidden away in a pouch inside his garment. With a razor, he made an incision in the pod. A milky-white latex oozed from the capsule. Amenhotep opened his eager mouth wide so that Ay could squeeze every drop of the opium cure into it.
Watching them silently, Queen Ty stood at the entrance of Amenhotep’s bedchamber dressed in a translucent, fine-pleated linen garment, adorned with semi-precious stones of turquoise, carnelian, and lapis-lazuli—the hair of the gods, as she called it.
She wore an ornate black wig, woven with gold and jewels. Shiny solid-gold jewelry hung from her neck and wrists, and her face was embel
lished with heavy makeup. Though the queen was adept at presenting herself extravagantly, her physical beauty had faded with age.
Ay closed the pouch the moment he saw her, bowed, and left the room. Amenhotep fastidiously put on the rest of his armor, purposefully not giving his wife the attention she craved.
“Why the war garments?”
Amenhotep didn’t answer. He fastened the last buckle of his armor, grabbed his spear and shield, and shuffled away. Queen Ty followed him out of his bedchamber and down the winding palace corridor. “You’re traveling to Nubia, aren’t you?”
Amenhotep refused to acknowledge her.
“This was not the appointed time. Where is Tuthmosis?” she asked, the desperation rising in her voice. “Answer me!”
He turned and looked her in the eye. “He’s in the temple of Amun, where he should be.”
“You swore our son would join you in the Nubian battle.”
“Tuthmosis will serve as high priest at the temple until the Montu god chooses him for war,” he replied.
“Exactly when will that happen? After one of your mistresses becomes pregnant with a male child to take his place?”
Amenhotep walked out of the palace and down the steps to an ornate war chariot equipped for the most powerful ruler in the known world. Six uniformed Egyptian guards on horseback awaited him. Queen Ty strode after Amenhotep, close on his heels.
“He’s a prince. The people need to see him as a victorious warrior. Please, let him go with you. It would make him so happy.”
“I’ve made my decision,” Amenhotep snarled back at her. “Tuthmosis will service the temple of Amun.”
“A prince serves Egypt and should stand alongside his father in war!”
Her outburst had no effect on him. Amenhotep stepped into his war chariot that was amply suited for one driver and three passengers and turned back to the queen. “When the gods call for Tuthmosis to ride with me into battle, that’s the day it will occur, not a moment sooner. For your own well-being, do not speak to me of this again.”
He lifted his hand in the air, and Amenhotep and his guards dashed south toward the kingdom of Kush. Queen Ty scurried up the palace stairs and into her brother’s chamber, desperate for his help.
THE TEMPLE OF AMUN contained the sanctuary where the Amun god resided. The structure was built of white sandstone worked with gold, and its floors were purified in silver. The doorways and thirty-cubit-tall columns were made of electrum, an amber-colored alloy of silver and gold. Colorful banners hung from cedar poles perched atop red granite pedestals. No sunlight could penetrate the imposing darkness of the interior of the temple.
Tuthmosis was completing his duties as high priest there when twelve Amun priests entered. Their heads were clean-shaven, and they were all dressed in the same flaxen-hued robes. The priests knelt around an altar side-by-side and chanted as seven other priests entered, carrying burning incense. These seven priests encircled the shrine’s doors.
Tuthmosis stepped up in his leopard-skin cloak and lit the torch of the shrine. He then broke the clay seal off the doors with his fist, knelt, lifted both hands in the air, and recited the Opening incantation:
“The gates of heaven open. The gates of earth are undone.”
The massive doors of the shrine opened to an inner sanctuary. A gilded silver statuette of the Amun god—a soldier with a ram’s head—sat on the altar. This represented the despicable god that desired to control his life. Unable to conceal his contempt for it, Tuthmosis stepped inside, waited for the doors to close, and when he could see that no one was there in the inner sanctuary with him, he then stepped up to the statuette and spat in its face. It was the first time he had acted on the impulse. Satisfied, he continued on with the ceremonial “Feeding of the Gods,” as was the duty of the high priest, by pouring out a blood-colored wine from the sacred vase into the first of seven bowls that surrounded the statuette.
Before he could fill the second bowl, a black mamba leapt out of it and slithered onto the floor.
Tuthmosis was so startled that he fell backward and dropped the vase, which shattered into tiny pieces. He glanced around the room searching for the snake, but it had disappeared. As he stood, all eyes were on him. Two Amun priests, the identical twins Sia and Neper, the leaders of the Amun priesthood, observed him intently from the entrance. They were bald and had shaved their bodies to be completely hairless; they had even shaved off their eyebrows and eyelashes. They were the Lector priests, the most powerful of all the priests in Thebes, distinguished by the pure white floor-length robes they wore.
“It was an accident,” Tuthmosis murmured.
The priests did not respond.
“I underestimated how heavy the vase would be,” Tuthmosis tried again.
The twins seemed unconvinced.
Amenhotep had taught his son that the twin priests wielded a superior form of magic that extended beyond this world into the afterlife. But Tuthmosis believed what was written in the scrolls of the former pharaohs of Egypt. Twins were an abomination. Only those who come from a line of immoral descendants could read each other’s thoughts and finish each other’s words as they could do. Was it possible they were reading his thoughts? Could they tell when he was lying to them? Or worse, did they witness him spit on the Amun statue?
It was when he turned to leave the inner sanctuary that the twins spoke.
“The illusion you saw of the snake—” said Sia.
“Is a premonition of what is to come,” Neper finished.
Tuthmosis pondered their foreboding message as he stepped out into the outer sanctuary where he continued his duties of feeding the god he so vehemently despised.
AY DARTED PAST THE MUSICIANS into the entrance of the temple so that he wouldn’t have to hear them playing their instruments. All music reminded him of the love he had lost. His wife, a flautist who had enchanted him with her ability to play beautiful melodies, had died six seasons before, thrown from her horse. Ay and his two young daughters were devastated and miserable without her. Ay searched for a new wife and mother to his children and found Teyla, an older woman who had no children of her own.
After Teyla and Ay married, Mundi and Sete, who had become withdrawn and mute because of the death of their mother, were speaking again. But Ay now despised the joviality of music and Amun’s temple grounds were thick with harpists, lutenists, and flautists playing ritualistic melodies, musicians whose eyes had been singed shut with burning hot coals, so that the Horus god would reward their blindness with a total command of their musical instruments.
Once inside, Ay stopped in front of the ablution tank and washed his arms, hands and face. He spotted Tuthmosis exiting the inner sanctuary from across the room. On an urgent mission from the queen, he hurried up to him and whispered her message into his ear. Tuthmosis’s eyes widened at the news, and the boy quickly undressed out of his leopard-skinned cloak and left the temple.
When Ay returned to the ablution tank to wash again, the twin priests, Sia and Neper, approached him from opposite sides.
“You now speak for the pharaoh?” Sia asked.
“No one speaks for the pharaoh. I am his manservant,” said Ay.
Neper dropped a satchel at Ay’s feet. Lapis-lazuli stones spilled out on the floor. “Then you should advise your master—”
“To give his petty stipend to the Aten priests.” Sia finished his brother’s thought.
“But if he wants the blessings of Amun—” Neper continued.
“Then he must give us a respectable tribute that’s worthy of the highest of all the gods,” said Sia.
There was no difference in the sound of the twins’ voices, both were identically soft-spoken, and the timbre was hollow and raspy. Every word they said, no matter how harsh or benign, exuded authority. Ay crouched down on the floor and collected the stones one by one into the satchel trying not to appear intimidated. “The pharaoh says the war with Nubia will yield an abundance of gold and ivory for the temple of
Amun,” he said.
“Really? The pharaoh promises many things, but if this one does not occur as he says—” Neper warned.
“Then we will cease our prayers and offerings to Amun on the pharaoh’s behalf,” Sia concluded.
Taken aback by this threat, Ay looked up at the priests. “That is unnecessary. The pharaoh’s word is honorable.”
“We will see,” said Sia.
Ay placed the last lapis-lazuli stone in the satchel and walked away. Though he still bore the appearance of an Amun priest himself—a shaved head and a tall, thin, and frail body, Ay never cared for piety. He had abandoned his loyalty to the priesthood the moment of his appointment as manservant to the pharaoh, a service of its own divine calling.
OUTSIDE THE PALACE, another royal chariot awaited. This one was smaller, with room for only a driver and one passenger. Tuthmosis ran to the chariot and smiled at his mother who stood there waiting for him.
“I’ve dreamt of this day for so long, Mother,” Tuthmosis said as he fastened the leather strap of his copper war helmet under his chin.
“So have I, my son,” replied Queen Ty eagerly assisting him to put on his gear.
It had been an easy decision for Ty to defy her husband and tell her son of the campaign in Nubia. Her position as queen and chief wife to Amenhotep would be surely sealed by a son that was known as a warrior at the side of his father. Any queen who had given birth to such an heir would be revered by the people of Egypt as the divine mother who had birthed a god.
“Be brave and courageous and return your father home safely to me,” she added.
Tuthmosis kissed his mother’s cheek. “I’ll be his right hand. No harm will come to him, I promise.”
Tuthmosis mounted his chariot. “When you see me again, Egypt will have its victory. Tell my little brother I’ll be back for him.”
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