Wenaten pushed forward through the crowd. The stink of sweat, human refuse, sour milk, and vomit coated them, tinged with the heavy myrrh of Egyptian religion.
Once they found a place to stand comfortably, Cheftu peered through the crowd, wanting to glimpse the madman who so abused his people’s welfare.
Reclining on a golden couch, wearing only a kilt and the blue crown of warriors, was Pharaoh. He was stoop shouldered, lantern jawed, full lipped, potbellied, his skin burned black from the sun. As Cheftu watched, the king stirred, then sat up, as though to enfold the light.
Cheftu suffered his second great shock.
The man had a voice like an angel! As misshapen as his body seemed to be, as perverse as his ideologies, his voice was perfection. Commanding, strong, musical, the timbre was so exquisite, it was almost hard to discern the words.
When he did, Cheftu suffered his third and greatest shock: They were words he knew. They were words he’d read and copied time and again.
“Praise the Aten, my ka within me. The Aten is a great god, clothed with splendor and majesty. He is wrapped in light like a garment, sitting beneath the heavens as his tent. The beams of his house are on the waters in the sky. He rides in a chariot of clouds, lightning gives him flight. The four winds serve as his messengers, fire is his servant.”
Cheftu looked around at the faithful, swaying to the sound of Akhenaten’s voice, and understood why they were here. There was a charisma, a sense of depth, in the sound—even if the words were stolen.
“He set the columns of the earth into their foundations, unmovable. The Great Green was laid across it, waters raised above the cliffs. With one word, the waters fled the soil, at the roar of your voice, the River ran from the plains into the valley, to rest in fertility in the breast of the red and black lands.”
These words weren’t written for this place, where rain, lightning, and thunder were rare, almost nonexistent occurrences. Neither was it written for a flat land with no mountains, no columns of the earth; nor was it written for a people whose sole comprehension of a large body of water was a river, the Nile.
Change the words, the name of the god, Cheftu thought … and it is a psalm!
Pharaoh had stolen the Bible! Mon Dieu!
RAEMHAD FELT LIQUID DESIRE pool in her body the moment Akhenaten began to speak. As his words rolled over her, undeciphered and sensual, her legs grew wet with her lust. He gestured with his hands, long fingers that she longed to have explore her. His body writhed on the couch in the midst of his prayers, as though the sun’s rays were taking him as a man took a woman.
RaEm wanted him. Aye, he was Pharaoh. He had gotten girl children from his own girl children; he had no son. She had also learned that, unlike many of his predecessors, he refused to bed someone who was not a relative, for the seed of the Sun could not be cast on just any field.
RaEm had learned early that her beauty, whether it was in this body or another, had little to do with seduction. Men were a learned skill, and much practice had made RaEm a magus.
Pharaoh thought he had eyes only for those in his own family. He hadn’t counted on her.
He was the son of the Sun. Hatshepsut had declared herself the child of Amun-Ra, but it had been a political move. Now, RaEm knew Akhenaten truly was the offspring of the immortal orb. His voice was liquid fire, set to burn them all, awake them all. Consume them all.
As she stared into the sun, her thoughts grew more feverish. Light merged with light, and she swayed to the lilt of his voice, the throbbing penetration of it. She raised her hands in surrender, opening to him and the Aten, wanting to be one with them. A little moan escaped her lips. Around her she heard another. Then another. Akhenaten’s voice rose, deeper, stronger, more forceful. She no longer tried to smother her cries.
Unable to take the torture, she undid the clasp of her gown, felt the heat of the sun on her flat, naked breasts. Pinching her nipples, she offered herself to the sun, standing braced in the light.
A hand cupped her from behind, slipped beneath her dress. In the press of people she didn’t know, she didn’t look. In her mind it was Akhenaten, his long fingers on her, in her, his voice rippling across her back and neck, his tongue in her hair, her ear. The thousands of people moved as one now, swaying, throbbing, sweating to the heated rhythm of Pharaoh’s prayers.
Hands above his head, bare to his god, enlivened by the sunlight on his body, Akhenaten thrashed through his prayers, begging Aten for more mercy, asking for more wisdom, pleading for the pleasure of serving the sun. His final plea was a wild, low groan, drowned in the ecstatic cries of his people.
RaEm’s thighs shook so strongly that she barely caught herself before hitting the ground. Around her people were falling to the temple floor. She was exhausted, sweating, and completely sated, more so than ever before in her life.
Pharaoh lay like Osiris, still, arms crossing his chest, his erection reaching toward the sun. RaEm had never seen a more beautiful sight. She needed to be with him, she needed to touch him, to have him touch her.
She needed to become his family; she needed to have this man.
She would.
RaEm walked home at dusk with Wenaten. He was strangely quiet; Cheftu was also silent. “Tell me more of Smenkhare?” RaEm asked.
“No one knows,” Wenaten said.
“About?” she prompted.
“More about Smenkhare, save he—”
“Or she,” she said, ignoring Cheftu’s glance.
“Or she,” Wenaten said, “comes from Kush.”
“When will Smenkhare arrive?”
“He comes directly here, so perhaps a week. Maybe more or less.” They walked the rest of the way to the palace in silence. RaEm didn’t notice her surroundings, save to see that Akhenaten had broken Ma’at in art. The figures no longer stood in pure profile, with their faces and bodies perfection. Instead they looked … natural, though everyone’s face and appearance was like that of her beloved Akhenaten. What magic was this?
Cheftu disappeared into a room, and RaEm pulled Wenaten aside, running her hands over his scrawny shoulders, smiling at him from beneath her lashes. A week, RaEm thought. In ten days can I claim this destiny? “Where would I get a really strong blade?” she asked.
“Why would you need a blade, safely here with Cheftu and me?”
“You know how weak Cheftu is,” she said confidingly. “He is the greatest fop alive. Not anything like you.” Wenaten squinted at her, not exactly the response she’d hoped for. “Therefore, as a woman alone, it is of great concern to me.” She caressed him on the arm as she spoke.
“You aren’t alone,” he said, placing his hand over hers on his arm. RaEm felt a moment of panic, then relaxed.
“You have a wife, a family, responsibilities,” she said. “And I, aii, I am not cut out to be anything save first wife.”
“Most wives wouldn’t care for that,” Wenaten said slowly. Thank the gods, RaEm thought. “You see my confusion? No matter how strong and clever you are, it wouldn’t work, alas.” She looked away, her face pinched with just enough sorrow at the missed opportunity of taking Wenaten to her couch. “Therefore I must be brave. So where can I get a blade?”
“You aren’t alone, because there are soldiers everywhere,” Wenaten said. “That is what I meant. Everywhere. You probably can’t walk through the garden without stumbling on one.”
RaEm wanted to strike him, the dense man. Had he been playing with her? She crossed her arms over her chest. “Where can I get a blade?”
Wenaten shrugged, then referred her to a smithy in the Pelesti quarter. “The Pelesti are the only ones with iron,” he said. “But nothing cuts better. Straight through leather, wool, any manner of protection. Bronze doesn’t even dull it.”
She thanked him, though her words were said to his back since he just walked off. The idiot, she thought, slipping into her room. But he would be a useful idiot; he knew the court, the nobles. She’d have to work on him more, learn about this st
range country where even the language sounded a bit different from the Egypt she’d known. Once the door was closed behind her, RaEm bellowed for slaves. She needed a bath, food, and clothing, in that order.
He couldn’t resist her; no one ever had.
Cheftu lay on his couch, exhausted but unable to sleep. RaEm was up to something, but he didn’t know what and didn’t have the energy to ponder the perversions of her mind right now.
What had he seen this afternoon?
Pharaoh leading his people in the mass climax simply by reading to them the words of the 104th Psalm? Where had Pharaoh gotten it? Were the words of David, the author of the Psalms, not original? Had David reworked an old Egyptian hymn? Was it blasphemy even to think such a thing? When was David in relation to this time period? Impossible; David was God’s favorite—he couldn’t be a thief. Pharaoh must have stolen the words, though where had he gotten them? Cheftu’s thoughts had chased each other almost into sleep, when he sat up with a jolt.
He was alone. He could ask the stones! Stumbling from the couch, he walked to the window, letting moonlight shine onto the Urim and Thummim. His hands were trembling as he asked the question most pressing in his mind. “Is Chloe safe?”
“N-o-w.”
Now? Did that mean she hadn’t been before? Did it mean she wouldn’t be in the future?
“Where is she?”
“W-i-t-h D-a-g-o-n.”
Dagon? Who was Dagon? Was there a man in court named Dagon? Was he a god? A priest? A country? A ship? “How do I get to her?”
“D-o-n-o-t-w-a-t-c-h-t-h-e-i-d-o-l!”
The idol? “What idol?” Cheftu asked, but the stones lay motionless, mute. Frustrated and exhausted, he put them away. Obviously they had answered all they could, or would, for the day. He’d try again tomorrow.
Tomorrow yielded no answers, or rather, the same answers. Cheftu gritted his teeth as he went through his day. He asked Wenaten if he knew anyone named Dagon. “Sounds like a foreigner to me,” Wenaten blustered. Then he edged around questions concerning RaEm. Cheftu recognized the signs: Wenaten was entranced with the time-traveling priestess. Consequently he was no longer trustworthy.
Cheftu should know, since once he had been that bewitched. He’d neglected his responsibilities and ignored his head, listening only to his heart, his lust. When RaEm smiled, it was as if the door to all potential for pleasure cracked open, allowing a glimpse into anything a man could desire.
He’d been a fool. Only Hatshepsut, with her understanding of her friend RaEm and her sympathy for Cheftu—and her irritation at his sloppy execution of his duties—had communicated to him what RaEm was truly like. He’d ignored his liege, only to have his ego trampled, his heart bruised, and his soul screaming “Fool!”
Then he’d listened to Hat. “RaEm is a crocodile,” she’d said. “A crocodile has no knowledge of a world outside what it sees. It is not a family animal, nor does it care for the continuation of its dynasty. Its concerns are its belly, its comfort, and nothing else has any significance.” Hat had sipped from a golden goblet. “RaEm is a great priestess because her needs are synonymous with HatHor’s. She will do anything necessary, even take a life, to maintain her comfort.”
“I wanted her to be comfortable,” Cheftu had protested. “I would build her a house, on the Nile—” He had fallen silent when Hat raised her hand.
“Comfort for RaEm means not only the ease of her flesh, but a constant source of new conquests.”
Cheftu had stiffened. RaEm had gone off with a new “conquest” while a household of guests awaited their marriage ceremony.
“A crocodile,” Hat had said, “is interested only in live bait, fresh blood. After the initial kill, the crocodile loses interest. She wants fresher meat.” Hat’s dark eyes had met his. “One man will never sate RaEm. She must consume what she can, then leave his husk behind her as she moves toward the next, aii, kill, shall we say?”
Cheftu’s amour propre was bent; it hurt worse that RaEm hadn’t even paused in her behavior, that he was that insignificant to her. Then he’d realized that while his self-respect was wounded, his heart hadn’t been fully engaged.
“You were lucky to escape,” Hat had said. “The gods smiled on you.” She had set down her goblet and motioned for a slave. “Now be a man, a lord of Egypt, and do as your liege demands. Forget this woman!” Then she had assigned him to the court of Mitanni, to do just that.
Now, however, he recognized the same glazed, crazed look in Wenaten’s eyes. The expression that said he would do anything, tell any lie, go to any length, for a smile for RaEm. How was it that she did this to men? After she’d left Cheftu, he’d watched her work her way through the ranks of the army and the court. She was an enchantress, as deadly as any Circe, leaving a swath of broken hearts and mangled men behind her.
She was up to something now. He knew it. He especially knew it when Wenaten coldly refused to answer his questions, denying help to Cheftu in any way. The stones were silent, his host was abrupt. Chloe was not in danger now, but who knew when that circumstance would change? What did the words of the stones mean? “Don’t watch the idol?” What idol? How would that help him protect Chloe, get him to her side? Have faith, he admonished himself. Le bon Dieu had never failed them. Never.
As the days and weeks passed he didn’t see RaEm or Wenaten. Cheftu attended Aten’s worship services along with the rest of the populace. He was almost frantic with concern for Chloe, but at a loss as to what to do. Time was moving too fast and too slowly at the same time. The inactivity was about to drive him mad, but his terror of doing something wrong was even stronger.
He was standing on the step to Wenaten’s palace home when the door was wrenched open before him. Chaos greeted his gaze: barbers stood at attention, brandishing the tools of their trade; slaves, draped with gold jewelry, held pressed kilts at the ready; women were shrieking for baths, for cosmetics. In the middle stood Wenaten, his shoulders stooped, wringing his hands.
One glance and Cheftu knew that Wenaten had just realized he’d been deceived by RaEm.
“Pharaoh has agreed to see the ambassador!” the housekeeper said breathlessly. “Lady RaEm is missing, I fear.”
Cheftu’s eyes narrowed. “For how long?”
“I do not know how long he—”
“How long has RaEm been missing?” Cheftu clarified. The woman shrugged. “Almost a week?”
Cheftu pushed through the slaves, the barbers, and the frantic women. He put a hand on Wenaten’s arm. “What happened?”
“She’s taken everything,” he whispered. “She took my wife’s jewelry, she took my family’s funerary objects, the ones we’d had made before I left.” His tone was dazed, his gaze flat.
She’s done worse to better men than you, Cheftu thought. He refrained from saying anything. “We go to court?”
“Aye, aye. Pharaoh will see us now.”
Perhaps this was his chance to see Chloe? Was she there, in the power of someone named Dagon? A foreigner? An envoy? “I will escort you,” Cheftu said.
Wenaten, still distracted, agreed, allowing Cheftu to take charge of getting everything ready for the presentation.
He was waiting with Wenaten by the time Pharaoh sent a chariot for them. They boarded the vehicle, crammed in behind the driver. Wenaten held on to his wig as they moved up the boulevard.
The ambassador fretted that he hadn’t seen his family in two years. He’d not even seen his own father’s tomb, for the man had died while he was at sea. Now RaEm had stolen the most valuable things that went into it. Wenaten trembled at the thought of telling his wife her jewelry had been stolen. Cheftu murmured his condolences, wondering who might bear the name Dagon.
The Great State Palace’s audience chamber was open to the sun’s rays, too, the rays of the Aten. Each little hand pounded on those assembled. Almost every country was represented in Akhenaten’s court. Mutterings confirmed that some of these envoys had been waiting for years to meet with Pharaoh. So
me had been forbidden to return home without Egyptian escort. Wenaten was right; the empire was slipping away.
The walls of the palace were strange for Egypt. No representations of Pharaoh vanquishing sand crossers, or reigning with the gods. Instead Pharaoh cavorted with his children, his head misshapen, his body curved and full hipped like a woman’s. He even had breasts!
Cheftu had to hide his amused surprise when he noticed that most of the courtiers wore padding beneath their kilts to affect Akhenaten’s body shape. Flabby bellies hung over long kilts, and stubby false beards imitated Pharaoh’s lantern-jawed face. Headclothes were padded to copy Akhenaten’s elongated head. The women were emaciated, their breasts flattened to resemble Pharaoh’s, their hips draped to resemble the king’s, wearing the “Kushite” short wig. Which was which? Men and women were hard to discern. The Egyptian court, male and female, looked like misfits.
All to match the leading misfit, Pharaoh. “All hail he who speaks to the Aten, he who praises the Aten, he who is one with the Aten, the most high, most glorious Akhenaten!” the chamberlain cried. Every head touched the floor in obeisance, Cheftu’s included.
“Rise, rise.” Akhenaten’s voice had the power to melt bones. His were the tones of a siren. Listening would be the path to self-destruction, with no remorse. “Speak your business so I can continue the business of praise.”
An older man, his kilt and headcloth painfully dated, stood. “My Majesty, I have received more cries from Canaan. The lion Labayu is dead, they say, but a new cub has risen to take his place. They fear—”
“What have they to fear when the Aten loves us and dwells with us? What is fear next to the heat, the power, of the Aten?” Pharaoh’s voice was so calming, so melodious, that his insane drivel on the matter of international defense seemed reasonable. Except to an envoy whose people were going to die. Soon.
“My Majesty—”
“Embracing the Aten, melting into his power, the glory of his fire, is the only way battles will truly be won.”
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