by Diana Wilder
The boat echoed with questions: Was there a fire? What could be burning in this stretch of desert land? And, as the smudge seemed to spread and draw closer, the crew began to feel a touch of increased heat.
They were was entering the eastward turn that would bring them straight to Akhet-Aten and the answers to Khonsu's questions. He turned his eyes from the shadow and gazed westward toward the sinking sun as the boat turned east. A shout from the bow lookout coming at the moment a blast of heat smote his back, tore his gaze away and brought it back south.
“There's fire ahead!” the lookout shouted.
Khonsu stared. The river lay open and straight before them, but where the city of Akhet-Aten should have gleamed in the sun within its cup of brilliant, green fields, a, black shadow, shifting with the wind, filled their view from bank to bank.
Hapu had been frowning at the spreading stain of darkness. “What do you see?” he demanded of the lookout.
“I can see flames,” the man replied from his perch atop the mast. “Flames and more smoke!”
“Sekhmet's teeth!” Hapu exclaimed. “It's directly ahead of us!”
“The city's ablaze!” Khonsu cried. “But how–? The gods save us! Look!”
A bank of smoke was billowing across the water toward them. Khonsu watched its advance; even with the wind straining against it, the smoke was reaching out to them with tendrils of darkness and blistering heat.
“No one can pass through that and keep his lungs filled with air!” Khonsu said. “Whatever may have happened at Akhet-Aten, it's now no place for a living man! Furl the sails! Put the boat about and pull hard!”
When they hesitated he said, “Do as I tell you! There's a cove north of here. The smoke and the heat is following the river, where the ground is low. We'll be safe enough if we can climb the cliffs.”
“Hard about!” shouted Hapu.
The rowers to port backed water while those to starboard pulled hard, spinning the boat as neatly as though it were the axis of a circle. Once facing north, they set their backs into the oars and raced downriver.
Hapu was staring at the smoke. “What happened?” he demanded. “No one can be in that city and live!”
“It was being evacuated,” Khonsu said. “I had thought it would be later, but... Set the bow into the shore. There's a path scaling the cliffs that'll bring us to the main road between Asyut and Khebet. Hurry!” He turned to Hapu and said, “We'll join His Grace's force. I think I know where they're heading.” And then he frowned at the darkness shrouding Akhet-Aten, his mind caught by the memory of a dream of death and treachery.
** ** **
Huni wiped at his streaming eyes with the back of his hand. Nothing had gone quite as he had expected. He had boarded his private ship and sailed south with his handful of picked men, expecting to finally obtain answers to the doubts that had returned to trouble him after almost three decades of profitable, placid living untroubled by questions of conscience or pain.
The past is shaped at each moment by what is done in the present. He had taken hold of the present with both hands and shaped it to his own advantage with a fine, even a ruthless, disregard for all that had gone before. Past life, past regrets, betrayals arising from expediency, all those had vanished in the splendid present as inexorably as motes of sand scattered before the wind. Whenever the tides of his memory had cast up some battered emotion from long past years, he had taken comfort from that thought. And yet—
And yet, recently, he had had a recurring dream, a dream of silence and light, filled with a strange sense of vertigo. He was trying to climb the smooth side of a wind-sculpted dune beneath a hot, unmoving sun. His life depended on his success in scaling the dune.
His feet burned and ached with effort, his breath came in swift, shallow gasps, but his motion was nightmarishly slow. The sands were as soft and formless as water, and each time, just as he approached the crest of the dune, he felt it move and shift beneath his feet like the negligently powerful motion of a hippopotamus heaving itself from the water. The sides of the dune curved upward like the crest of a wave, curling up and over to crash down upon him, burying him in all the motes of sand the winds had once scattered before him. And in the moment when the wave of sand was poised to crush him as he floundered, choking, stretching out his hands for help, he glimpsed the white, set face of Neb-Aten as it had been the last time he had seen him alive, just before he had turned and run to his chariot, to go careering off northward. That had been the moment that had led to Huni's present wealth, and he did not regret it. Indeed, if the choice were to be made again, he would have lived through it and all the following ones once more.
And yet in the dream Neb-Aten fixed him with a gaze that cut through all the layers of self-justification and lay bare the quivering core of guilt he had not quite been able to kill.
Where is the message?
The voice was the same one he had known and even once loved during his youth. There was no condemnation, only the question, but the words would send Huni spinning into wakefulness in his sweat-drenched bed time and again, until he had finally summoned the priests and the sorcerers and demanded that they put a stop to the evil dreams.
And then the messages had begun, driving all peace and complacency from Huni's mind.
He was ill-used, persecuted. Had he not taken an intolerable situation and turned it to his best advantage? How could anyone blame him for that? How could anyone blame him now for what had happened in the distant past? People were given choices at various times in their lives, and it was not his fault they made foolish or even fatal ones.
He had a chance to end the messages once and for all and exorcise the ghost that had plagued him over the past year, turned his well-ordered life into hell and sent his son to the brink of death. But the task was proving more difficult than he would ever have expected.
His ship had sailed into smoke and heat. The crew, blinded and choking, had run her aground and scrambled to safety. Huni had paused only long enough to dip a cloth in the river and wring it out, tying it over his nose and mouth, signaling his guards to do the same before making his way up to the cliff top. The crew had been lost in the smoke; he had heard them choking, but time had been precious, and he had pressed on.
Once he had gained the top of the cliffs, it was easy to get his bearings. The city was perhaps two leagues to the south, and he was only a league from the place where he had been given the message almost thirty years before.
He opened the fragile, tattered papyrus given to him by the commander of the guard force headquartered at the city, and scanned the words written there:
It is time to make an end. You have one last chance to discharge your duty. You were given a message to deliver by one whom you once loved as a father. He awaits you at the spot where you met him all those years ago. If you fail this time you will surely die.
The spot where you met him all those years ago. Huni nodded and folded the message away. It would not take long to reach that spot. And not much longer to make an end.
** ** **
Neb-Aten tethered his horses and gazed down at the burning city. The flames were billowing outward without any apparent change from earlier that day, the heat still beat in breathless, brassy waves across the wastelands surrounding the city. The fire was spreading; the central portion of Akhet-Aten was being consumed, the palaces that had sheltered him in his youth, the gardens that had offered shade and coolness, the temples in which he had witnessed his uncle's magnificence. All were being swept away in a golden tide of flame, as though the sun were swallowing them.
He turned his back on the city and gazed with narrowed eyes toward the twisting passages carved into the hillsides. He caught motion near their crest. Six men, moving cautiously.
He smiled and limbered his bow. The quiver of arrows between his shoulders was satisfyingly solid and heavy.
Not much longer now.
** ** **
Huni moved closer to the tomb entrance. Old, hal
f-forgotten training came to his mind; he kept well to one side, edging along the walls of rock until he reached the doorway.
He motioned to two of his men. “Go in there and see what there is to see.” He watched as they obeyed. “What do you find?” he called after a moment.”
“A rich tomb, my lord!” came the cry.
“No one in there, then?”
“No one, my lord!”
“Then come out,” Huni said. “There'll be time for other matters later.” He saw them emerge, nodded, and climbed the steep track back to the crest of the hill.
The other three were standing by the chariots where he had left them, gazing at the glare of Akhet-Aten's death throes. They turned when they heard him approach.
“Nothing, my lord?” Djedi asked.
“Nothing,” Huni replied.
“Maybe it was a prank,” said Amenmose.
“No prank,” Huni said. He frowned and stared down the track toward the tomb. “Paneb!” he called. “Kheruef! Get over here! Now!”
The only sound was the distant hiss of the flames. Huni's frown became a scowl. “Go after them, Huy,” he said. “Tell them to stir their stumps! We haven't got all night!”
“At once, my lord!” Huy said, and hurried down the path.
“Akhet-Aten's engulfed,” said Amenmose, turning back to the burning city. “It's like a sandstorm made of fire. Who would have thought there would be enough to burn there?”
“There's plenty to burn,” Huni said. “And plenty to loot. It's a waste.”
“I wonder who ordered it,” said Djedi.
Huni did not comment. His eyes, wide and somehow unseeing were focused on the flames. A scream behind him made him whip round with a hand on his knife.
“My lord!”
“Huy,” Djedi said.
“What is it?” shouted Amenmose.
“They're–they're dead?”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Huni.
Huy appeared at the head of the track, winded and white. “Dead!” he panted. “Dead in the track, just at that doorway!”
“How–” Huni began. The words died as Amenmose offered two broken arrow shafts. The fletching was gray, tipped in red, and blood channels had been carved into the shafts. They were red and wet to the eye, with the distant flames casting an even redder light upon them. Huni took them from Huy, inspected them more closely, and looked up.
“How was it done?” Huni demanded. “Damn it, I know these passes! No one could have gone past us!”
“But they're dead!” Djedi breathed. “Someone got through!”
“I'll kill that murderer!” Huni said through his teeth.
A voice echoed from the high-walled canyons, repeating more and more faintly. Huy, Amenmose and Djedi drew closer together, fingering their knives.
Where is the message?
It seemed to Huni that his nightmares were coming true. He threw the broken arrows to the ground and raised his fist. “There is no message!” he screamed. “I had none to bring!”
But the voice came again and again, fainter and fainter in the twilight. Where is the message? Where is the message? Where is the message... The message... Message...
“Let's get away from here!” Djedi said through chattering teeth. “I'm not about to fight a kheft!”
Huni's rising anger steadied his voice. “That's no demon!” he said, taking the arrow from his belt. The firm, cool feel of its shaft in his hands was reassuringly solid and mortal. “Demons don't shoot arrows! This came from a man's bow, and I am going to find the man and kill him!”
LIII
“His Grace told me you'd probably return this evening,” Karoya said. Khonsu's escort had managed to scale the cliffs in a grueling race with the smoke and heat that had left them all sweat-drenched, panting and filthy on the crest of the cliff. Though the effort had exhausted them, Khonsu had not dared to remain near the fumes and blistering heat. He had commanded they go eastward to safety, away from the river.
His force had overtaken Nebamun's expedition just after sundown. He had identified himself and been brought to Karoya, who had been standing near a string of tethered horses and speaking quietly with Neb-Iry. Karoya greeted him, lifted his eyebrows at Hapu, who grinned back at him, and gave orders that Hapu and his men be fed. And then he had sat down with Khonsu apart from the rest to give his report of the day's events.
“So you went all the way to Khebet and back,” Karoya said. “Was Huni glad to hear the city is being destroyed?”
“I didn't know His Grace had it planned,” said Khonsu. “We saw a shadow as we headed south, but it wasn't until the turn of the river, north of Akhet-Aten, that we knew what was happening. You should see the smoke pouring along the riverbed! And it's starting to rise toward the top of the cliffs! You were wise to get above it!”
“That bad, eh?” Karoya said. “Hm. I wouldn't have expected it, but General Seti certainly did, since it was he who sent us up to the cliff road. Come to that, His Grace must have known, too, because he sent the ships south to Asyut. It's a pity Huni didn't know. He'd have thought he'd returned to his youth. He was here once before when they were tearing the place down under Prince Nakht's direction.”
Khonsu frowned. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“He came here just before Prince Nakht killed himself. Father Neferhotep told me.” Karoya saw Khonsu's blank expression and shrugged. “You remember. He's the priest at Sumneh, whom I questioned when we were looking into Ptahemhat's doings just before Paser was killed. He told me Huni was Neb-Aten's batman-”
“His batman?” Khonsu interrupted. “In the army?”
“Yes,” said Karoya. “Neb-Aten was a Commander of One Thousand, and he appointed Huni, who had grown up in his father's house with him, to be his aide.”
“Thoth's beak!” Khonsu exclaimed. “Hapu said Huni had been in the army. But I thought— I don't know what I thought.” He looked up at Karoya. “Finish what you were saying.”
“There isn't much to finish,” Karoya said. “Huni accompanied Neb-Aten here the day before Nakht killed himself. It was while Nakht was supervising the abandonment of the city. Neb-Aten arrived at Sumneh at night. He sent Huni on to Akhet-Aten with a message for his father. Neferhotep says he spent the next day pacing, not hidden away, but still furtively, as though he thought he should be hiding. According to Neferhotep, when Huni came back later, Neb-Aten questioned him almost desperately.”
Karoya paused for a moment. “It's odd,” he said. “Father Neferhotep told me that while Huni acted grieved when he delivered his message, he smiled when Neb-Aten turned away and went hurrying off to travel north along the cliffside track, the one they say they see his ghost on. Huni stood and watched him, and when he was well out of sight he went into Akhet-Aten once again. Neferhotep thinks he had one last conversation with Prince Nakht among the tombs. The next Neferhotep knew, Prince Nakht was dead, and so was Neb-Aten three weeks later. Of that threesome, only Huni was left. Neferhotep had thought him dead, but he surfaced maybe two years later as Mayor of Khebet. Odd, I must say. I wonder if he thinks of it.”
“Who told you this, again?” Khonsu demanded.
“It was Father Neferhotep, the priest at Sumneh,” Karoya said patiently. “He told me over cakes and beer while I was looking into Ptahemhat's doings during the time between Paser's death and his return to the city. Remember how we suspected he had found a girl in one of the outlying towns?” He saw Khonsu's expression for the first time. “What's amiss?” he asked. “Have I done something wrong?”
“You?” Khonsu repeated, climbing to his feet. “No, not you! Me! This is beyond any– Listen, Karoya: where's His Grace? I must speak with him at once!”
“His Grace isn't here,” Karoya said.
Khonsu stared down at him. “What do you mean?” he demanded. A thought occurred to him, and he seized upon it. “Did he continue to Asyut, maybe?”
“I don't think so,” Karoya said. “He hasn't had any d
ealings with Asyut since we came to Akhet-Aten, aside from sending courteous messages to the Governor of the Nome and sending the ships away there this morning. No, he stayed behind at the city. He said he had some unfinished business. Said he'd be joining us shortly.”
“And has he joined you?”
“Not that I saw,” Karoya said. “And I'd given orders that all arrivals be reported to me right away.”
Khonsu clenched his fists and stared at the distant glow of the burning city, hearing in his memory Hapu's description of Huni's escort. “Oh, Neb-Aten!” he groaned. “What are you doing?”
“You're starting to talk to ghosts, just like Huni,” said Karoya. “Neb-Aten's dead, and you know it!”
“I'm not so sure!” Khonsu said. A flash of fire made his eyes sharpen for a moment. “If I'd only known sooner! All those dreams of Horus and Set! He is Horus! I should have guessed it!” He paled as he remembered his dream of the night before. “And there's to be treachery!”
Karoya was staring at him. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Khonsu said. “But it's up to me to make certain it stays that way!” He thought for a quick moment and turned to Neb-Iry. “Find Blackwing and harness him for riding,” he commanded.
“Where are you going?” Karoya demanded, scrambling to his feet.
“I'll ride northeast along the river,” Khonsu replied.
“But you'll be going through the worst of the heat!” Karoya objected.
“Night's falling,” Khonsu said. “It's already cooler. I'll stay on the cliff road at any rate. That will shield me from the worst of it. But as for you: I want you to find General Seti and tell him what I'm doing. Tell him to send a force along the high road and wait for me near Prince Nakht's tomb.”
“Near his tomb?” Karoya repeated.
“He knows where it is,” Khonsu said grimly. “And have him bring Sennefer and all his supplies, if he's here with you. He may be needed before the night is out!”
Neb-Iry returned leading Blackwing. The stallion was wide-eyed and sidling with nervousness. Khonsu took the reins, paused to calm the horse, then vaulted astride the stallion and turned him north.