Place of Darkness lb-5

by Lauren Haney

  “Go to Pashed and tell him your master has come. He must send men to fill this shaft. The task must be completed before end of day.”

  “Yes, sir,” and the boy hurried away.

  Menna glanced at Bak-an apology of sorts, perhaps.

  Getting an affable nod in return, he turned away, soon to be swallowed by the tomb shaft. The priest promptly followed.

  Imen sat on his haunches at the rim, awaiting the order to bring them up. Bak knelt for a time beside the guard, watching the faint glow of Menna’s torch at the lower end of the shaft. He heard the murmur of voices below and smelled a hint of incense, but his thoughts were on tasks completed and others left to do. He rose to his feet and joined Kasaya, who sat with his back to the human-headed lion statue, out of reach of the wind.

  “Go summon Perenefer or Seked,” Bak said, “whoever can leave his men untended for an hour or so. I wish to learn what he thinks about the accidents and also look at the cliff that rises above the northern retaining wall. A portion broke away a few months ago, slaying one man and maiming others. I wish to know what made it fall.”

  The smell of incense was quickly swept away by the sharp, warm breeze. The leaves Kasaya had thrown aside after his morning meal played tag with the dust sporadically racing across the terrace. Not far away, a crew of workmen manhandled a column segment onto a sledge, the amount of effort required measured by how loud their overseer bellowed. Snatches of a workmen’s song were carried by the wind, the source impossible to locate.

  Kaemwaset’s apprentice returned with the men Pashed had sent to see the tomb properly closed: Perenefer, his crew of workmen, and two brickmasons. Three boys wearing yokes across their shoulders carried suspended on flat, square wooden trays the dry mudbricks that would be used to build the wall to seal off the tomb before the shaft was filled. The men huddled against various statues and column parts, keeping out of the wind as best they could while they waited for Kaemwaset to finish the necessary prayers. The long line of youths who had been carrying debris from north to south across the terrace swung eastward to bring the fill to the open shaft.

  A call from below sent Imen scrambling to his feet. He brought up the basket containing the priestly implements, and Kaemwaset followed. After shaking out a tangle in the rope, the guard beckoned the first of the two masons who would wall in the tomb and helped him descend into the shaft. The second mason attached the first tray to the rope and began to send the mudbricks down to his partner.

  “How did you find the tomb?” Bak asked, drawing the priest away from the many prying eyes and ears.

  “Just as it should be. You and Lieutenant Menna are to be applauded for keeping it safe through so many hours.”

  Bak responded with a wry smile. “Maybe the local tomb robbers fear a malign spirit.”

  “Malign spirit, Lieutenant?” The priest snorted. “Our sovereign was conceived by the lord Amon himself. Would any vile specter dare approach the memorial temple of one so beloved of the greatest of the gods?”

  “The men who toil here are convinced a malign spirit is responsible for the many accidents, and my Medjay saw it last night, walking through her temple and that of Nebhepetre Montuhotep.”

  “Bah! Such spirits are meant to frighten the poor and uneducated-as they’ve done here at Djeser Djeseru-but not the man of learning you so obviously are.”

  Bak relented, smiled. “I seek a man of flesh and blood, Kaemwaset. Probably more than one.”

  “I thank the lord Amon!” the priest said, openly relieved.

  “I’ve been summoned to purify the temple each time a man has died or suffered injury. In each case, I’ve been told of an accident that might’ve been brought about by a careless man or by worn or faulty equipment or, in a few cases, by the whims of the gods. I’ve found no evidence to the contrary, but I believe none of those reasons. Nor is a malign spirit an acceptable explanation.”

  Bak eyed the old man thoughtfully. “What are you trying to tell me, sir?”

  Kaemwaset glanced at the workmen and drew Bak a few steps farther away, as if a single overheard word would be of major import.

  “Our sovereign is a woman,” he said, speaking softly and intently, “a beautiful and talented woman who rules the land of Kemet with a firm yet beneficent hand. She has many enemies, foremost among them those who believe only a man can rule our land. Those individuals, I believe, are responsible for the many accidents, the rumors of a malign spirit.”

  “What do they hope to gain? She isn’t one who gives up easily. She’d never send the workmen home and let the temple languish, incomplete as it is today.”

  “Of course not. It will be built-no matter what the obstacles.”

  “I’ve heard of no similar problems at other locations where she’s set men to toil: the mansion of the lord Amon, the shrine of the lady Pakhet, the quarries at Abu or Khenu or Wawat. .”

  “Djeser Djeseru will have special significance. By causing trouble here, they think to discredit her, to make her look weak in the eyes of the people, to make her look less than what she is: daughter of the lord Amon himself.”

  Kaemwaset paused-for effect, Bak suspected. “You see, young man, upon the walls of this temple will be depicted the tale of her divine conception.”

  Later, after Menna and the masons returned to the surface, while Kaemwaset was mumbling additional prayers and performing further libations, Bak thought over the theory the old priest had offered. It sounded good, believable, but he suspected it owed more to necessity than reality. A tale created by Maatkare Hatshepsut’s followers within the mansion of the lord Amon. A tale designed to take advantage of a series of events for which they had no explanation.

  Pashed arrived to make sure the tomb shaft was properly closed. Their duty completed, Kaemwaset and his apprentice returned to Waset. Lieutenant Menna strode away, saying he must inspect the guards who stood watch night and day at other burial places near the valley. He left Imen on duty with instructions to remain until the shaft was filled.

  Bak waited at the top with Pashed, watching baskets of debris being lowered to Perenefer and the workmen whose duty it was to fill the horizontal shaft.

  Kasaya finally returned with Seked, Perenefer’s brother.

  Leaving the Medjay behind with the architect to see the sepulcher fully closed, Bak and the foreman set off across the terrace.

  “Kames told me of the cliff that fell above the northern retaining wall and of the havoc it wreaked,” Bak explained. “I wish to see for myself the landscape above the wall.”

  Seked gave him a probing look. “You think the fall not a natural one, sir?”

  “I don’t know-and we may never learn the cause. The accident happened some months ago and the site may’ve changed.”

  “It’s not rained since,” Seked said thoughtfully, “but rocks fall all the time. You can see for yourself how they’ve formed the slope at the base of the cliff. The bigger the fall, as that one was, the more rocks come down over a longer period of time.”

  “You’ve no hope we’ll find signs of man or beast? Or malign spirit?”

  The foreman smiled. “Your Medjay told me that’s what you seek.”

  “You look skeptical.”

  Bak stopped ten or so paces from the partially completed retaining wall to study the incline up which they meant to climb. Their presence silenced the men toiling on the wall, who peered around, curious as to their purpose. Other men, cutting away the slope at the end of the wall, forming a fairly smooth surface against which the builders would lay courses of stone, eyed them with no less interest. As Seked had said, the slope was covered with rocks, some broken into chunks and others pulverized by their fall, and looked treacherous to climb but by no means impossible. The gusting wind sent dust racing across the slope in spurts, pelting the men below.

  “Let me put it this way, sir. If I see a light in the dead of night and it comes my way, I step aside lest a man bump into me, and at the same time I mutter an incantation to pr
otect myself from I know not what.”

  Bak burst into laughter. He had heard few men speak with so gifted a tongue, and certainly none at Djeser Djeseru. The men building the wall and those cutting away the slope smiled tentatively at each other, trying to share a jest they had not heard.

  Sobering, Bak strode to the end of the cut and began to climb the untouched slope. A puff of wind drove dirt around him, forcing him to turn his back momentarily. “How long had you known Montu?”

  “I’d toiled at his feet since I was a callow youth.” Seked, keeping up step for step, expelled a cynical laugh. “I may as well open my heart to you, sir, for I’m a poor liar and will in the end give myself away. I couldn’t stand the sight of him in the beginning, and I shed no tears the day his body was found.”

  “Strong words, Seked.”

  “He was a man of no principals, fonder of himself than of the lord Amon or of any other god. When younger and less self-satisfied than in his later years, he would without qualm work a man to death if he thought to gain a smile from one loftier than he.”

  “Did your brother feel as you do?”

  “If the truth be told, not a man at Djeser Djeseru felt otherwise. If he’d not been slain openly, as he was, he’d soon have met with a fatal accident.”

  “Which would’ve been blamed upon the malign spirit.”

  Seked’s smile was grim. “Cannot a spirit enter a man’s heart, sir? Cannot the malignancy fester and grow?”

  Bak climbed on in silence, taking care where he placed his feet. The earth and stones that had most recently fallen were loose and unstable, sliding easily down a slope made hard by time and weather. Spurts of dust forced them to close their eyes, hiding the surface from view when every step counted, leaving no choice but to pause until the wind died down.

  If Montu had been destined to die in a contrived accident, he wondered, why had the slayer taken his life openly? Why risk an investigation into his death when an accident would go unexamined? Then again, he had been meant to vanish, with no one knowing where he had gone. True, a search would have been made, but how thorough a search and for how long was anyone’s guess.

  “Do you have a specific reason for disliking Montu so, or has the feeling grown through the years?”

  The foreman’s mouth tightened to a thin, stubborn line.

  “Speak up, Seked. You’ve told me the worst already, why hold back now?”

  Seked stopped to face Bak. The slope was steep and he stood as if sideways on a stairway, one foot higher than the other. “I’ll tell you the truth, for I’m an honest man, but you must lay blame on neither my brother nor I. We wanted him dead, but we didn’t slay him.”

  “Come,” Bak said, climbing ahead. “The cliff will keep us safe from the wind.”

  A gust of dirt-laden air spurred Seked on. “Several years ago, while toiling at the mansion of the lord Amon, Montu bumped into a scaffold, causing it to fall. I was struck as it collapsed and knocked senseless, my forehead sliced open.”

  He touched the scar with the tips of his fingers. “When Perenefer tried to aid me, to take me to a physician, Montu accused him of turning his back on his duty. Perenefer carried me off anyway. Montu sent a guard after him, and he, too, helped carry me to the physician. The two of them together saved my life.”

  He let out a low, bitter laugh. “Montu pressed the issue, charging them both with desertion. They were sent together far away to the turquoise mines as punishment. The guard died. My brother survived.”

  Bak climbed the last few paces to the cliff face. As if smiled upon by the gods, the air was still and hot, protected from the wind by the tall vertical columns of rock. “How did Perenefer manage to come back as a foreman? Was his so-called crime forgiven and forgotten?”

  “The officer in charge of the mines recognized his competence and ability. He saw to his early release and found the task for him here.”

  “Did not Montu recognize the two of you? Identical twins are not easy to forget, and the scar on your forehead would be a unique reminder.”

  Seked’s voice grew harsh, angry. “Montu acted as if the accident was of no consequence, as if the guard’s death and Perenefer’s imprisonment were insignificant, a passing occurrence.”

  A man asking to be slain, Bak thought.

  He walked a couple steps down the slope and turned around to look up the cliff face. A high wall of golden stone, made irregular by tower-like protuberances and the crevices between them, by niches and slabs of rock that looked ready to come tumbling down. Weathered by wind and sun, heat and cold, by the infrequent torrential rainstorms that drowned anything in their path.

  A scattering of sand peppered his head and shoulders. He looked upward, thinking a falcon might have a nest above them. Several rasping sounds followed, and stones large and small began to fall. Thoughts of a bird fled and his muscles bunched, ready for flight. A sharp crack rent the air, followed by the quick rumble of tumbling stones. Recognizing the sound, knowing it for what it was, he yelled a warning to the men below. Grabbing Seked’s arm, he shoved him across the hill. Stones rained down upon them.

  Chapter Seven

  The silence brought Bak to his senses.

  He hoisted his shoulders off the slope and shook his head to clear it. The rockfall had stopped. The valley was still, all movement arrested, speech hushed. The cloud of dust rising around him and from rock and debris that had fallen to the terrace was torn asunder by a gust of wind. A man below began to curse; another prayed to the lord Re and to the sanctified Djeserkare Amonhotep and his mother Ahmose Nefertari.

  “What happened?” Seked mumbled. He touched a thin line of red trickling down the side of his face and stared at his fingers, puzzled. “What happened?”

  “Rocks fell from the cliff, causing a slide.” Bak rolled half around, sat up, looked at the scene below. No! he wanted to shout. No! But the words caught in his throat.

  The end of the northern retaining wall where the men had been working had taken the brunt of the rock slide. Rocks large and small, stone rubble and sand, had flowed over and buried the ramp on which they had been standing. The mound stood taller than the completed, undamaged portion of the wall and ran a third of the way across the terrace. The lower colonnade where Kames and his stonemasons had been toiling was blessedly free of rubble, having been spared a second, devastating blow.

  The slide was not directly below, but slightly to the east.

  Bak remembered running diagonally across the slope with Seked, dirt and stones falling all around, the foreman below yelling and frantic workmen shouting.

  “The lord Amon smiled upon us this day,” he said, the fer-vor of his voice equaling that of his prayer for the men he felt sure had been trapped beneath the rubble.

  In the distance, a man yelled. Others took up the call, their shouts horrified, filled with fear, a terrible sense of urgency.

  Men ran toward the retaining wall from all across Djeser Djeseru, leaving behind small tools and equipment, bringing levers and mallets and sledges, objects they would need to save men they knew. Men they toiled beside day after day, dwelt with every night. Men whose food they shared, whose jokes and gossip they enjoyed. Men they loved or disliked.

  Friends, acquaintances, close or distant kin. Boys dumped the dirt from their baskets and ran to help fathers, uncles, older brothers.

  Bak looked closer at his companion, saw scratches and cuts, but no sign of broken bones. “Are you all right?” he asked, thinking of rocks that had struck his own head, and how addled Seked looked.

  A man below moaned, and low sobs somewhere farther away mingled with a cry for help.

  Seked registered the sounds. His eyes darted toward the pile of rubble. He shook his upper body like a great patriar-chal baboon and scrambled to his feet. “Men are hurt, injured, maybe dying. We must move that mound.”

  “Let’s go!”

  They raced together down the slope. Loose rocks and debris slid and rattled beneath their feet, half carr
ying them to the bottom. Reaching the terrace ahead of everyone else, they quickly found the foreman, lying prone at the edge of the slide, a bleeding gash in his hair. His breast rose and fell, his eyes fluttered, but he remained senseless.

  “I’ll take his place,” Seked said. “His men will need guidance.”

  Twenty or more workmen scattered around the mound, men who had run for their lives, slowly, shakily lifted themselves off the terrace, cut, bruised, and trembling but otherwise unharmed. One man approached the slide with dragging feet, staring upward as if expecting the cliff face to fall a second time. Another was on his knees, head bent to the earth and covered by his hands, muttering to himself. Yet another, trying to rise, cried out in pain when he rested his weight on an injured wrist. As they all began to comprehend what had happened, as they realized that many of their fellows had been buried alive or dead, they shrugged off hurt, fear, and the shame of having run and threw themselves upon the mound, tearing at it with their bare hands.

  Pashed and Kasaya were among the first to reach the scene from farther afield. Studying the catastrophe with a pale, shocked face, the architect began to shout orders. He broke the arriving men into crews, ordered Seked and the other foremen to take charge, assigned each of them sections of the mound to keep them from treading on each other’s feet. He sent a boy racing off to summon a physician, and pointed out a place well out of the way where the injured should be taken. He organized the effort so those digging away the mound would not want for water, the injured would not go untended, the terrace would be cleared by day’s end.

  With many anxious hands to help, rocks were moved, sand and debris carried away, men released from certain death. No man shirked his duty. Artists, sculptors, stonemasons, ordinary workmen toiled side by side beneath foremen they knew only by sight. Word spread to the neighboring farms and villages, and their men came to help.

  The usual chatter was missing, the good humor and laughter absent. Finding a man alive with no serious injuries was cause for a quick drink of water and a grim smile. Finding a man with a crushed or broken limb brought forth angry curses and lent a greater urgency to the digging. Finding a man dead made the survivors sick at heart.