Murder at the God's Gate

by Lynda S. Robinson

  They both glanced at the boxes full of ingots.

  “So that the source of the gold and stones can never be discovered,” Tutankhamun said.

  “Yes, majesty.”

  “You see that I’ve taken your advice. Both Ay and Horemheb said you were right, but I did so want to feed Parenefer to the crocodiles.”

  “Thy majesty needs time and peace in which to gain experience.”

  “I’d rather have revenge.”

  Meren turned away from the brilliant piles of loot to face the king. “Revenge might cost you your throne.”

  “Ay said you would say that.” Tutankhamun lowered his gaze to the floor. He cleared his throat.

  “Um. I haven’t had a chance to tell you that Maya has remembered that it was from Tanefer that he first heard the rumors of Horemheb’s treason.”

  “I thought it might be so, majesty.”

  Tutankhamun looked away. “And while you were gone chasing Ahiram, Tanefer kept reflecting upon the past, about how greatly you suffered at the hands of my brother, how Akhenaten had your father killed and tortured you.” His voice faded and he gave Meren a look of appeal.

  “I see, majesty.”

  “Do you?”

  Meren heard the distress and pain in those two words. All at once he realized he’d just received for the second time something unheard-of in Egypt, a pharaoh’s apology. Just as suddenly, his spirits lifted, and he smiled for the first time since Tanefer’s death.

  “Yes, majesty, I do.”

  He nearly jumped back when Tutankhamun gave a joyful whoop, dashed at him, and gripped his wrist. Although startled at the contact, Meren returned the gesture, gripping the boy’s wrist, warrior to warrior.

  “I’ve missed you,” the king said.

  “I have longed for thy majesty’s presence as well.”

  Tutankhamun dropped his arm and peered into Meren’s face. “You look weary.”

  “I’m well, divine one.”

  “I don’t think so. Ay says you aren’t sleeping.”

  Meren cursed Ay’s inquisitive and interfering nature, which caused the king to laugh.

  “Now that I see you, I agree with him,” the king said. “Once we’re certain we’ve purged ourselves of traitors at court, you will go to the country and rest.”

  “But, majesty, there is much to do.”

  “And Kysen will go with you to see that you abide by my orders.”

  “There’s no need,” Meren began.

  “There is a need,” Tutankhamun said. “Because my majesty declares it to be so. Now go home and rest. Ay says you’ve been working since before sunrise, and it’s almost dusk. You must recover your full strength.”

  As Meren stepped down from the dais, a suspicion snaked into his thoughts, and he turned back to the king. “You want me to recover so that I’ll take you on a raid.”

  “You did say I needed experience. Now that we have a truce with Parenefer, I have the time and freedom to get it. And those bandits are still plundering villages to the south.”

  “I knew it. Majesty, thou art shrewd and full of guile, like the cobra.”

  Tutankhamun walked over to him, folded his arms over his chest, and smiled. “I’m apprenticed to a master skilled in shrewdness and guile. How could I be otherwise?”

  Meren shook his head as the king gave him a parting smile and left the audience chamber through a door behind the dais. Meren left the way he had come, and outside found Kysen coming toward him, flanked by Abu and Reia.

  “Horemheb has just sent three of Tanefer’s officers into the desert.”

  Nothing else had to be said. Criminals had been sent into the desert since before the time of the god-kings who built the pyramids. Meren wondered if Horemheb would be merciful and allow the men to kill themselves rather than be staked out in the sun and elements to die slowly. It was a matter in which he couldn’t interfere. Meren fell into step beside his son.

  “You’re ready to go home?” Kysen asked.

  “Yes.”

  Kysen gave him a worried glance. “You saw the king?”

  “Yes. I’m to rest.”

  “Good.”

  Meren heard a relieved sigh and knew that Kysen had understood him. It wouldn’t do to discuss the king’s repentance in the palace.

  “I’m to rest so that I’ll be well enough to take the divine one on a raid as soon as I’m fit.”

  Kysen’s steps faltered, and he gave Meren a chagrined look. “Oh, no.”

  Meren slapped Kysen on the back as they threaded their way through courtiers, servants, and government officials.

  “It seems not even treason or murder at the god’s gate will prevent pharaoh from becoming a true warrior.”

  Kysen snorted. “And what if the golden one is killed on this raid?”

  “That’s what you and I must guard against.”

  He listened to his son grumble, and he almost smiled. It wasn’t but a few years ago that Kysen had been just as eager to test himself as pharaoh. The memory of youth was short. No doubt Kysen had forgotten his near-fatal initiation into warfare. Meren hadn’t. He’d nearly lost his son to a dirty knife thrown by a thieving nomad.

  What he needed was respite from restless youth and court intrigue. He would obey pharaoh and retire for a few weeks to the country. Surely he would find refuge there.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Lord Meren Mysteries

  Chapter 1

  Year Five of the Reign of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun

  Kysen hadn’t wanted to come to the ghost ridden and deserted city of heretics. But what son of Egypt would dare refuse the wish of the living god, the Son of the Sun, Tutankhamun? He walked to the railing of the barge that had brought him to Horizon of Aten, leaned over the water, and listened to the slap of waves against the side of the vessel. The scribe who was taking down his letter stopped writing and waited patiently, rush pen twirling in his fingers. When Kysen failed to return, he shifted uneasily.

  “Is something wrong, lord?”

  “No … no, I don’t think so. Did you hear anything?”

  “No, lord.”

  “I thought I heard … I’m sure it’s nothing.” Since coming here he’d been on edge, certain that renegades, outlaws, or some chance intruder would penetrate the isolation so vital to their task.

  Before him along the east bank of the Nile stretched a city once filled with courtiers, government officials, servants, and royalty. Its carefully planned avenues, so different from the snarled and twisted streets of older cities, were now empty—empty and silent. Even the men on the five barges moored in a line beside them were quiet.

  Kysen brushed his hand over his brow. “It was nothing.”

  The scribe remained seated, awaiting orders. He was one of Meren’s. He would wait all night if Kysen ordered it.

  The sun was setting, but there was still enough light to see the tiny figures of infantrymen standing guard on the cliffs to the east. Kysen glanced over his shoulder, and movement caught his eye. A charioteer drove over the rocky surface of the western desert, the first of a long, widely spaced line of vehicles that patrolled the environs of the city.

  Inhabitants of nearby villages had been evicted, as had the royal mortuary priests and necropolis guards. Akhenaten’s capital city was truly abandoned now, except for pharaoh’s soldiers and the fleet of barges, freighters, and service ships. The whole of it had been Meren’s idea.

  The ships’ crews were in fact royal sailors, the passengers royal agents assigned by the king and his advisers. Traveling in a group designed to look like a flotilla on an expedition to the south, Kysen and his companions affected to be traders of the temple estates of Ra. Traders of the temples, royal institutions, and great households plied the waters of the Nile and markets of Egypt, dealing in commodities both rare and abundant; Kysen’s cargo was rare indeed.

  After criminals had desecrated the tomb of Tutankhamun’s heretic brother, the Pharaoh Akhenaten, the king had asked him to
witness the secret removal of the bodies of Akhenaten and his queen, mother, and daughters from their houses of eternity. He was to aid in the execution of a plan to keep their bodies safe until new tombs could be provided, a task better suited to great generals and priests. Yet pharaoh had chosen him, and a few others whose faces weren’t well known, for this sacred effort. It was almost finished.

  Some of the grain and fine limestone on board had been put ashore to make way for the intended cargo. Kysen watched a pair of sailors carry a load of grain suspended from a pole on their shoulders. Timing their steps, they crossed the gangplank and stepped onto the bank.

  Others on deck rearranged bags on top of a long, tarp-covered mound. The outer layer of this mound consisted of grain, precious Tura limestone, and natron. Had this expedition been real, the ships would have returned from the south carrying gold, incense trees, leopard skins, and, sitting on the mast, baboons. Catching his lower lip between his teeth, Kysen tried not to think of what lay beneath the tarps and ropes.

  He would never forget his first sight of the most precious of all their cargo, lying in the royal tomb, bereft of outer shrines and draperies. Urged on by the commander of the expedition, he had stepped into the wavering torchlight as master craftsmen strained and grunted to lift a heavy weight. Into his vision emerged a wall of gold. Then Kysen realized why the craftsmen were straining so hard. The heretic’s innermost coffin wasn’t of wood overlaid with gold foil like the outer ones—it was of solid gold. He hadn’t slept through a night since.

  He was only the son of an artisan, of such humble origin that he would never have dared look into the eyes of pharaoh. It didn’t matter that Lord Meren, pharaoh’s most trusted confidential inquiry agent, had adopted him. Deep in his bones, to the innermost recesses of his ka, his soul, he was still a carpenter’s unwanted son. And to look upon the body of a pharaoh in a coffin of gold made him want to sink to the dirt and hide his face in fear. He hadn’t, though, for that would have disgraced his adopted father and his new, noble lineage.

  So now he awaited the arrival of that golden coffin in the form of a man. A special place had been reserved for it inside the hollow mounds lined with the dismantled outer coffins of the king and the Great Royal Wife, Nefertiti. The queen had already been gently shoved into place. Other family members would be concealed on the accompanying barges, to be hidden in out-of-the-way places assigned by the vizier Ay. There they would await the preparation of eternal houses in the royal burying grounds at Thebes. At the moment Kysen was waiting for Nentowaref, called Nento.

  Nento posed as the chief overseer of the expedition, head of the so-called traders of Ra. His real titles were numerous, as Kysen had discovered to his regret. Nento was most proud of the simple appellation Royal Scribe, but he also loved to be called Scribe of the Royal Treasury, Overseer of the Seal, Overseer of the Magazines of the Temple of Amunhotep III, and Bearer of Floral Offerings to Ra. His most important duty on this expedition was to serve as a makeshift priestly guardian to their royal charges.

  Kysen couldn’t remember any more of the honors Nento kept repeating to him. When they’d first set out, Kysen had thought Nento officious and suspected him of condescending to a youth of common blood. Then he realized that Nento was trying to impress him—because of Meren. Nento had many titles, but none of them included that of Friend of the King.

  Leaning on the railing of the barge, Kysen gazed down the road that led from the quay to the city. He heard a low rumbling sound before he saw them. Slowly, their paces matching the beat of a drum, a line of men and oxen rolled a sledge over logs toward the barge. The cargo was padded with linen to protect it and disguise its true shape. It was covered by tarps lashed with ropes. Ahead of the sledge, glancing back every third step, rode Nento in a chariot manned by a driver. Nento couldn’t drive a chariot without tripping both horses. Charioteers rode on all sides of the group around the sledge.

  His eyes darting to the cliffs that formed an arched backdrop around the city, Kysen checked once more for a soldier out of place, a suspicious movement. He swept his gaze over the rooftops of the city, then across the river and over fields and the encroaching desert. Nothing but charioteers and infantry. What was he doing? More experienced men than he manned strategic posts and scanned the horizon for just such clues. All at once it seemed as if a stone slab lifted from his chest. He sucked in a long, deep breath.

  He could envision the scene in the eastern desert now taking place, the disguised priests of the royal Theban necropolis huddled around the restored blockage of the royal tomb shaft, the application of thick plaster, an arm moving in wide, swirling circles. Then at last, and forever, a seal pressed into white dampness, the seal of the heretic royal cemetery. It would never be used again.

  Soon the mortuary priests and guards would return to Horizon of Aten. Sacred rituals would resume. Patrols would sweep the desert, watching ceaselessly for intruders. Kysen wondered how long they would keep vigil over empty tombs.

  Sighing, he walked back to the scribe and lowered himself to a camp stool beside the man. “Very well, we can begin.”

  He’d already accomplished the frightening task of actually addressing a letter to pharaoh. Writing to Meren would be easy. That is, it would be easy if he didn’t have to disguise the real contents of the message.

  “The usual salutation,” Kysen said.

  He paused while the scribe wrote “Tjerkerma,” the name Kysen had adopted for this journey, Meren’s name and titles, then “year five” followed by the month and the day in the waning season of Drought.

  He cleared his throat. “Tjerkerma greets his lord, Meren, in life, prosperity, and health, in the favor of Amun, King of the Gods, of Ptah, of Toth, and all the gods and goddesses. May they bestow upon you love, cleverness, and favor.” It had taken him years to master the formal letter-writing style.

  “See! I am about to embark from the place, Refuge of Maat, upon the morn with good speed. All is in readiness. The cargo is disposed as you ordered. The traders sail to their appointed destinations.”

  In this prearranged phraseology, he let his father know that the royal family and their burial furniture would embark in the morning. With raised sails they would float south from Horizon of Aten in the direction of Thebes, and the journey would be a slow one. On this journey they would have to pass Thinis, ancient seat of his father’s family, and Abydos, sacred city of the god Osiris. As he continued to dictate the letter, his guts began to twist like cobras in a basket.

  He hated Meren’s plan. Oh, not all of it. Only the part that risked his father’s life, for that was what the effect of this design would be. Not three weeks earlier Meren had almost been killed. He wasn’t fully recovered either from wounds received while thwarting the rebellion of one of his closest friends or grief at the friend’s death. Yet in a few days he was going to do something that might place him in as great a danger as any he’d faced while tracking down that traitor.

  His father was supposed to be resting in the country. Upon hearing of Meren’s plan to go to the family seat, the estate of Baht, Kysen had tried to dissuade him. He knew Meren’s family; visiting them wasn’t the way to gain peace and solace, especially while dealing with this new, added burden. It exasperated Kysen that Meren still thought he would be able to rest when his plans came to fruition. No doubt he would continue to think so until the demons of chaos struck, as they were sure to do when he was dealing with the secrets of god kings.

  Dawn had long given way to the furnace of early morning by the time Meren finished his correspondence. He left the cool shelter of the palace at the royal way station to brave the sun and the west wind that scoured its way across the valley. There were many such mooring places along the Nile, kept in readiness for times when pharaoh, his family, or favored friends might need to seek refuge during the long journey up- or downriver. This one was half a day’s sail from his country home.

  Followed by a pair of charioteers, Meren walked up the long ramp beside t
he palace. It led to a high brick platform on which his traveling household had set up their tents. A flight of stairs brought him to the walk on top of the defensive wall. Few sentries stood guard. He was going home to rest and wasn’t on official duty. The walls had swarmed with guards a few days ago, when pharaoh passed on his way to Memphis.

  As he gazed out at his ship, Wings of Horus, Meren furrowed his brow and rubbed the sun-disk scar on his inner wrist. Pharaoh had promised to confine himself to military exercises in the practice grounds near the Sphinx. Meren could only pray to the gods that no bandits chose to raid any nearby villages while the king was in the capital. If only the golden one hadn’t asked Kysen to be his unofficial witness to the arrangements at Horizon of Aten. Meren had counted on his son’s presence among the king’s war band to distract Tutankhamun from his obsession with acquiring real battle experience.

  Shaking his head, he drew his gaze back to the long, sleek lines of his ship. Painted black, with lines of red and gold, it outsailed every other craft on the river. Only a few ships in the king’s fleet could match it. Not long ago, Wings of Horus had sped him on his way in pursuit of a traitor. Soon it would take him home. Already most of his household had removed there, including Nebamun, his physician, and Remi, Kysen’s son. His aide, Abu, was in charge at his house in Thebes. As Meren indulged in a moment’s admiration of his ship, another slid past it going north with the current, in the direction of Memphis.

  Meren squinted at the vessel and motioned to the charioteers behind him. “Reia, Iry, isn’t that Lord Paser’s yacht?”

  The two young charioteers joined him in peering at the slow-moving craft.

  “Yellow with a green deck,” Reia said.

  Iry nodded. “Aye, lord, it’s the same one we saw yesterday.”

  “And the day before,” Meren said. He folded his arms over his chest. “Hmmm.”