Meren examined the shallow marks made in the creamy dust. A group of at least seven chariots, not a caravan of pack animals and drivers on foot—Ahiram. The tracks had to be fresh, or the wind would have obliterated them. No one left the road and headed into the desert at night unless forced. Had Ahiram lost his wits, or had his courage failed? He might have seen bandits coming at him. Or was he meeting someone?
“Follow the tracks,” Meren ordered.
He jumped into his chariot again, and Abu slapped the reins on the backs of their team. To either side of them, his men spread out. Whips cracking, they headed away from the Red Sea road.
If they didn’t find Ahiram soon, they would have to stop for fear of losing his trail in darkness. They were going at a trot now. Meren was about to call a halt when a sound floated to him on the night breeze. He knew that sound, that high-pitched, wordless blare—part scream, part ching of metal against metal—the sound of distant battle.
He glanced at Abu, then turned and shouted an order, sweeping his arm out, over his head and in the direction of the sound. A war cry went up from the charioteers, and the company burst into a gallop that took them over the crest of a hill. Halfway between the hill and the horizon he spotted the skirmish.
A group of men crouched behind overturned chariots and dead horses fought off what appeared to be bandits. As Meren and his company sped toward them, the attackers broke off Some clambered into abandoned chariots, while a few vaulted onto the backs of horses that had escaped harness and fought the animals until they launched into a gallop. Others waited long enough to release a volley of arrows.
Meren reached over the side of the chariot for his shield, shouting a warning. He heard the angry buzz of arrows. Hefting his shield so that it covered Abu and himself, he gripped the chariot with his free arm.
Three missiles hit the shield before he risked a look. The attackers had broken off and were retreating. Around him he saw charioteers releasing a return volley at those still within range, while their drivers aimed their chariots at the enemy. With the ease of years, he grabbed his own bow, strung it, and let off an arrow.
Like all charioteers, he’d been trained to fire while being rattled by a charging chariot. He released quickly, hearing the flat, thwacking sound of the bow. The arrow shot up in a low arc and stabbed into the chest of a bandit who had lingered too long. Meren put the bow back in its case and grabbed his scimitar, but by the time they arrived at the scene, the last of the robbers had vanished.
Meren bolted from his chariot before it stopped. No one was left standing, so he signaled to his men to pursue the bandits. Two chariots remained behind. With Abu at his side, Meren walked from body to body. Most of the victims seemed to be Ahiram’s guards.
There was one unarmed man, a servant by the roughness of his dress, no doubt one of those Ahiram’s porter had mentioned. Meren walked by the servant’s body. He pointed to a wounded horse. One of the charioteers drew a short sword.
Meren turned away from the sight, only to come upon the cloaked body of a bandit. He was about to pass it by when his thoroughness made him stoop and pull the cloak. The body rolled over; the edges of the cloak fell back.
The bandit had died of an arrow in his neck. He wore his hair in plaits bound by leather thongs, and, unlike an Egyptian, he had a beard that had been twisted into complex, curling ringlets. But what disturbed Meren was his body armor, a shift of bronze scales. He knelt and studied the short sword that had fallen beside the man’s hip. Then he lifted the bandit’s right arm. The right wrist was thicker than the left, the right forearm heavier of muscle and crisscrossed with scars.
Rising, Meren rubbed his chin. He heard a moan and whirled to face what he’d thought was another dead man. As he drew close he recognized the familiar short figure lying facedown next to an overturned chariot. He knelt beside Ahiram and turned him on his back. Face, curly hair, and pointed beard coated with dust and blood, Ahiram gasped and clenched his stomach. His other arm was supported in a sling. Meren tried to pry the man’s hand from a bleeding wound in his gut, but Ahiram’s eyes flew open, the whites standing out against his dark skin.
“Mer-en.” Ahiram struggled to breathe, and his bloodied hand clutched Meren’s arm. “Be wary. He’ll betray you too.”
“Who will? Did you kill Qenamun?”
Ahiram was staring up at him, his breath coming after long pauses.
Meren put his hand over Ahiram’s. “Did you kill him? Why did you flee?”
He heard a long, gurgling intake of breath. Meren swore; he’d heard that sound too many times. He wasn’t surprised when the life vanished from Ahiram’s eyes and his body relaxed.
Meren stood and moved away, his gaze raking over the dead man, taking in the loose, torn robe of dark brown. Ahiram had changed from an Egyptian kilt to the wool clothing of an Asiatic, as had his companions. The attackers had robbed their quarry of jewels and weapons. Little was left to inspect. Ahiram was barefoot; had they even taken the sandals of the dead?
Meren was contemplating the strange chance that the man he’d been chasing had come upon bandits, when the sun dipped below the horizon. A last burst of fiery light glinted off the gold foil on a sandal lying upside down a few paces from Ahiram’s body. Meren stared at it, still intent on who the attackers could have been. Then he blinked and strode toward the sandal. Holding a torch in one hand, Abu joined him.
“The bodies have been looted,” Abu said as Meren slowly picked up the sandal. “But I think most are officers who served under Ahiram. Shall we make camp for the night, lord?”
Meren didn’t answer. He turned the sandal over and ran his fingers across its surface—wood overlaid with a marquetry veneer of bark, leather, and gold foil. Expensive. Prince’s sandals.
He was about to toss it away, but hesitated. Something about it seemed too familiar. Holding it nearer the torchlight, he examined the design on the sole. Two captives, an Asiatic and a Nubian, were bound with stems of Egyptian lotus and papyrus. Above and below the figures were groups of bows.
This device, the representation of Egypt’s traditional enemies, meant that the wearer trod his foes underfoot. Few men wore such a device. It was usually reserved for royalty, but not for foreign princes like Ahiram. With growing alarm, Meren searched his memory for the last time he’d seen this sandal.
It was too large to be the king’s, and most of pharaoh’s footwear was gold. Some of it resembled this one, but none bore the lozenge pattern in red-and-gold foil on the strap across the instep. But Meren had seen this sandal once, long ago. He closed his eyes and strained for the memory, one he had deliberately thrust into the darkness of his ka.
He had been in a cell, enduring whippings ordered by Akhenaten because he wasn’t a believer in pharaoh’s chosen god, the sun disk Aten. He was on his stomach, his cheek pressed to the packed earth of the floor. The air stirred, and he opened his eyes to see a foot beneath the hem of transparent linen, a foot encased in this gilded sandal. A foot that trod upon the enemies of Egypt—that of the ruler of the Two Lands.
“Bloody demons and everlasting fire,” Meren murmured.
“My lord?”
Meren grabbed Abu’s arm and pulled him farther away from the others. He thrust the sandal at Abu, who examined it.
“This isn’t Prince Ahiram’s.”
Abu was looking at him now, wary and alert. “Yes, lord?”
“The last time I saw this sandal, it was on the foot of the old king.”
“But …”
They stared at each other, each thinking back over five years. Akhenaten had died without warning, a victim of one of the plagues that had swept the kingdom out of Palestine, Syria, and the kingdoms of the Tigris and Euphrates. That is what the court knew. That is what Ay had told Meren. Akhenaten had been struck down shortly after naming Tutankhamun’s older brother, Smenkhare, coregent so that he could share the burdens of governing with a younger man.
The whole of the Two Lands had grieved—if not
deeply or long. And then Akhenaten had been buried, contrary to tradition, in a tomb east of his heretic capital rather than on the west bank of the Nile, soon to be followed by one of his daughters and the young Smenkhare as well. The crown of Egypt had gone to the sole male heir, the youngest of the three brothers, Tutankhamun. Meren might have believed that Akhenaten’s death had been caused by the plague if he hadn’t seen the results of the real sickness in Smenkhare. Akhenaten’s death had been much more sudden, with no fever, no lingering, nothing.
But the kingdom needed stability, not strife caused by suspicions of regicide. Tutankhamun, a child of nine, had needed his support, his vigilance, his protection. So he attended the burial of Akhenaten, king of Egypt, and watched the priests and attendants pack away all pharaoh’s possessions in rich caskets and boxes. These had been placed in the tomb Akhenaten had designed for himself but never completed.
Necropolis officials had sealed the tomb for eternity after the funeral. Time passed. The old gods of Egypt clamored for restoration and repair of the damage wrought upon them by the heretic king. The decision was made to abandon the parvenu capital and return to the royal city of Thebes.
The court quit the heretic city, leaving a skeletal staff in charge of the royal tombs in which were buried the fanatical Akhenaten, his incomparable queen Nefertiti, and several of their daughters. And it was there, in the deserted capital, deep underground in the royal tomb, that this sandal should have been.
“The king’s sandal,” Abu said in a whisper.
Meren’s thoughts were leaping ahead, searching for explanations. “You know what I’m speaking of. We both know the virulence of the hatred borne for Akhenaten. So many had their livings taken, their lives ruined. Ahiram’s own father died because of Akhenaten.”
Abu shivered as he looked at the sandal. “He had the names of the gods stricken from their temples and brought the wrath of Amun down upon all our heads. Plagues, famine—”
“The wrath of Amun!” Meren stared at Abu.
“Lord,” Abu said, “are you saying—”
“Don’t speak of it,” Meren snapped. He thrust the sandal at Abu. “Put that somewhere out of sight and say nothing of it to anyone. Not to anyone. We’re leaving.”
“But, lord, the others haven’t returned.”
“Abu, look at that bandit. He’s no peasant criminal. He’s a warrior who hasn’t taken much care to conceal himself. Leave one man to wait for the others. They’re to bring any prisoners to the docks. We’re going back to the ship at once.”
“At night?”
Meren wasn’t listening. He turned and raced back to his chariot. Abu ran after him and jumped in as Meren slapped the reins across the horses’ backs. While Abu shouted instructions at the men still at the skirmish site, Meren turned the chariot in the direction of the desert road they’d abandoned.
Abu nearly fell out of the vehicle when it bounced over a stone. He landed on his knees and clutched at the sides of the chariot.
“Where are we going, lord?”
“To a place I thought I’d never see again,” Meren said as he pulled the reins to the right to guide the team south. “To a place of great beauty, and of death—Horizon of Aten.”
Chapter 14
Six days later, at dawn, Meren drove his chariot up a side valley of the royal wadi outside the heretic’s city of the sun disk, called Horizon of Aten. Charioteers, priests, and guards followed him at a trot, their faces contorted more from fear than from exertion. Meren stopped at the entrance to Akhenaten’s tomb, a hole guarded by four men who stood gawking while he threw his reins at a puffing priest.
He didn’t expect to see anything, but he strode past the sentries anyway and down a series of steps, into darkness. The chief mortuary priest followed him inside, fumbling with a lamp. Meren waited, his whip slapping against his thigh as the man lit the wick. Then he turned and resumed his descent.
After a few steps, he came up against the blank face of a wall over which plaster had been smeared. The seal impressions of the necropolis. Tracing the impressions of a recumbent jackal over nine captives, and the cartouche of Akhenaten. None had been broken. The impressions were as clear as the day he’d watched them being pressed into the wet plaster.
“You—you see, lord,” said the mortuary priest. “Untouched. I am most diligent, er …”
Without a word, Meren turned and ascended the steps. The entrance to Akhenaten’s tomb faced east and the rising sun, his god. Meren blinked as he emerged from the tomb and surveyed the valley and the surrounding hills. Pharaoh’s tomb lay at the end of a long passage that descended into the hillside. A foot track led up the side of the hill.
His appearance was greeted with a sudden silence from the men who waited outside. Abu separated himself from a group of anxious priests as Meren went to his team of horses.
No one spoke until Abu asked, “All is well, lord?”
Meren whispered to his mare and let her nuzzle his cheek. “The seals are unbroken, but that means nothing. We’ll see what’s behind the hill.” His ka knew he was too late.
Leaving the chariots, Meren and his men scaled the slopes above the tomb until they came out of the wadi. Stones clattered down the side of a hill as their feet slipped on the uneven surface. Meren looked across the expanse of rock and scrub—deserted, lifeless, with no sign of robbers or of excavation. Behind him the sun was climbing rapidly as charioteers spread out in a line to either side of him and surveyed the expanse of wasteland that stretched to the horizon.
Meren shook his head. “We may have to open the tomb.”
“Open—lord, are you certain?” Abu asked.
Glancing at his aide, Meren heard him mutter a charm against demons and desert monsters. He returned to his survey of the desert.
“Do you think I want to do it? I tell you I’ve seen that sandal—”
He stopped as he noticed a shadow, a long one that seemed to grow from behind an irregularity in the desert floor. He started walking, then picked up speed until he was running.
“Lord, wait!”
Abu pounded after him, as did his men. He raced around a large rock and came to a halt. Abu careened to a stop beside him. They both stared down at the shadow, thrown by a wide, almost flat stone that wasn’t large enough to hide the hole underneath completely. Meren held up his hand as several men crowded around him, and they stepped back. He examined the ground around the hole, but there wasn’t enough dirt to take footprints.
“Move it,” Meren said.
Abu and two other men shoved the stone aside to reveal a shaft. It descended at an angle, east, in the direction of the tomb. Meren looked from Abu to the other charioteers who stood around the entrance, taking in their set, taut features. Then he glanced past them to find several mortuary priests stumbling toward them.
“Have you found something, lord?” panted the chief priest.
The charioteers stepped aside to reveal the shaft.
The priest shrieked, while a cry went up among his assistants.
“Silence!” Meren bellowed. He had never seen a priest quiver like a startled hound. “You,” he said to the chief priest, “find one of your staff who’s slim enough to fit into this shaft and send him in. Also send to the temple for laborers. The tomb will have to be opened.”
The priest stared at him, jaw set adrift by horror.
“Don’t gape at me. Obey!”
While priests scrambled back to the royal valley, Meren nodded in their direction and spoke to Abu.
“I’m going to leave men here to make sure none of them flees. This tunnel couldn’t have been dug without some in the mortuary temple collaborating, especially guards. Before we leave, we’ll bring the chariots around and search to the west, but we’re going to have a difficult time finding looters.”
“Why, lord?”
Meren gazed down into the dark shaft. “Because I suspect Ahiram sent most of what was stolen out of Egypt when he began to lose his courage weeks ago. And b
ecause some of them are already dead. Someone killed them a few days ago near the Red Sea road before I could find them and question them. And now I’m left wondering why a prince like Ahiram would rob the grave of a king.”
Over a fortnight after he left, Meren walked into the reception hall of his house in Thebes. He was so weary that he hardly noticed when the porter took his chariot whip. In the half-light cast by alabaster lamps he could see Kysen coming toward him. Behind him he heard Abu murmuring instructions to servants. He leaned on a slim column and pressed his forehead to it.
“Father?”
He straightened and smiled at Kysen. “A long journey. I passed Baht and couldn’t even stop to see your sisters.”
Kysen studied his face, then dismissed the servants. Abu vanished without being told, and Meren followed his son through the house and out onto the loggia that overlooked the pleasure pool. Moonlight cast a spray of silver across the water. He sank onto a couch with a sigh while Kysen poured a cup of wine and handed it to him. His eyes felt as dry as the floor of a desert valley.
“You look like fiends of the netherworld have been feasting on your ka,” Kysen said as he dropped to a cushion on the floor beside the couch.
“I think they may have.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I found Ahiram. He’s dead.”
He told the story of finding Ahiram and the royal sandal.
“So you went to the tomb.”
Meren didn’t answer at once. A maid appeared with a tray of food, but he waved her away, and they were left alone. Someone’s pet baboon screeched, and he heard a heron’s call as it flew overhead toward the river. Meren lifted his cup and drank until it was empty before he continued.
“Akhenaten’s tomb has been desecrated.” He didn’t want to go on.
Kysen swore under his breath and then swallowed. “By Ahiram?” He made a sign against evil.
Meren could hear the startled disbelief in Kysen’s voice.
“Ahiram,” he said. “The looting must have taken place weeks ago, because he was wearing the king’s sandals. No doubt he had his men bring some of the riches to him in Thebes where he could make use of them. But we found none of it at his house, which makes me think he’s hidden it somewhere. He’d hired mercenaries and bribed a few guards and priests. I left some of my men in charge at Horizon of Aten until pharaoh can send a commission there, and soldiers to search for the looters and their spoils.”
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