Shrewd observer: dangerous. “No, Your Majesty, I am not.” Methos glanced about. “Your pardon, King Apophis, but is this really for… all to hear?”
“No!” Khyan snapped. “No! Brother, we must talk in private!”
Apophis might have been about to say something else, but Methos saw him pause and glance at Khyan, once again with almost gentle eyes, the eyes, Methos thought, of someone used to making allowances for this one soul in all the world.
“So be it,” the king said. “All of you: Out.”
It took some time before the hall was empty of all but the requisite—and presumably incorruptible—guards. Methos waited with his face fixed in a mask of utter calm, wishing for either a chair or a cool drink. Not likely to get either. Not yet.
“Now,” King Apophis said. “Speak, and speak honestly. Who are you and why are you here?”
“Your Majesty, I have already told you my name: Methos. And it is true, I am no Egyptian. Equally true that I came to this land out of no darker motive than curiosity.”
“Came? From where?”
“Most recently Albion, King Apophis.”
Blankness.
So now, a narrow worldview: Canaan, Egypt, not much more. A useful fact? “That is a cold, damp land,” Methos hurried on with a dismissive wave of a hand; one did not point out royal shortcomings to a king. “And so I set sail for a warmer place.”
“Sailed where? Where did you stop, Methos?” Khyan cut in. “Before you reached Egypt. Crete? Did you visit Crete?”
His brother gave him a sharp, warning glance, but added, “Well? Did you visit Crete?”
His tone was just too casual to be credible. Crete, Methos thought, wondering. A quick flash of memory: the mother of Kamose and Ahmose… the royal widow whom he’d not yet met since she’d been off in the south, keeping a military watch on the Nubians… her name was Ahhotep, and she was partly of—yes, of Minoan blood, from the Cretan royal line!
Very useful! But not to be brought to bear just yet.
“No, King Apophis,” Methos said truthfully, “I did not. The ship’s master, the captain of the Levantine vessel Western Bird, will confirm that fact, if you wish: Albion, Malta, Egypt.
“As for why I am here: I appreciate power, and I appreciate efficiency. Neither of which I found in Thebes.”
The king snorted. “In other words, you wish to change sides. Why should I trust someone who has already betrayed his allies?”
“Not my allies,” Methos said darkly. “Never my allies. King Apophis, I found myself in Thebes through mere mischance, and had to bide my time till I could also find a safe way out again. And now I am, indeed, out of there, and quite willing to bargain for a more… useful position here at a true king’s court.”
“Bargain.”
“Concerning matters Egyptian and…” he paused just long enough to make the king tense slightly, then finished, “Minoan.” Oh yes, that struck a nerve! Uneasy about Crete, aren’t we? And I think I can guess why. However… “Ah,” Methos added with beautifully feigned regret, “but a king’s schedule is always so very full! Surely I cannot take up too much of your time now.”
“Never fear. We will talk, later.”
Did I hear hot irons in your voice? But Methos said cheerfully, “Excellent. I have a great deal of information that I’m certain you’ll find useful.”
“Oh, I’m certain that you do,” the king agreed. “And I do plan to hear it all.”
He laughed as though making a pleasantry, but there wasn’t the slightest trace of humor in his voice. But Methos’s experiences had included a good many encounters with rulers; he’d been expecting some attempt at royal intimidation just about now. Prepared, he merely smiled, in a way he had practiced over the centuries. A world of dark mystery and even darker cruelty was in that smile.
And Methos saw from Apophis’s slightest of starts that it was the king who had just been disconcerted.
He really does wonder if I wield magic. Easy now, though. Push a snake too hard, and it strikes.
He quickly let the cold smile warm into a more harmless one, and saw Apophis relax. “So be it,” the king snapped. “Brother, see that your guest is given food and lodging.”
“Your” guest, is it? Not “our”? Here on royal sufferance, am I?
Good enough. Safe enough.
For now.
Chapter Twelve
Egypt, Avaris: Reign of King Apophis, 1573 B.C.
As he obediently followed Khyan out of the audience hall, Methos released a silent, wary sigh. Gods, he could really use a drink right now, maybe some of that decent beer the Egyptians brewed. Yes, and some nice, friendly, and above all harmless drinking companions wouldn’t be such a bad idea, either! Such dangerous games as the one he’d just been playing with King Apophis could be entertaining, but they were not easy.
And the games are going to continue later today or tomorrow, whenever Apophis decides he’s made me wait long enough. Soften up the mysterious stranger a bit.
I don’t weaken quite so easily.
But… oh, I would welcome that beer, yes, and a peaceful inn around it!
Khyan, not noticing his “guest’s” sudden pensiveness, led Methos down a new corridor, then out into a central courtyard bright with sunlight in clear imitation of the Egyptian style. Unlike the Egyptians, though, the Hyksos apparently didn’t waste time on any pretty little ponds full of fragrant water lilies—which wasn’t to say that the courtyard wasn’t… ornamented. Methos paused in spite of himself at the realization that the “fruit” one tree bore was actually a neatly arranged hanging display of skulls.
How charming. But then, I used to know some Easterntribesmen a few centuries back who drank from their enemies’ skulls.
Come to think of it, I didn’t care for those folks, either.
“There,” Khyan said suddenly.
Now what? “There, Prince Khyan?”
“Do you see that bloodstain?”
No. “Your Highness?”
“That is where I slew a demon, I myself. They said afterward that it was only a steward, but I knew better; demons can transform themselves into any likeness.”
“Of… course.”
“I knew that you would understand! There!”
Methos bit back what would have been a suicidal sigh of impatience. “There?”
“That is the doorway to where you shall lodge.”
Let it not be a storage shed, you royal lunatic, or, for that matter, a prison cell.
But it was nothing more or less than a room, clean enough, with a bed in the Egyptian style.
No Tiaa, though, more’s the pity. A little softness wouldn’t be amiss in this place.
Guards in plenty, though, patrolling ostentatiously about just outside. Well, that was hardly surprising; he wasn’t exactly a trusted visitor. Yet.
Or maybe ever.
They did feed him, eventually, and give him something to drink as well, there was that: decent fish and freshly baked bread and, yes, a credible flagon of beer. And there was plenty of oil for the room’s one lamp. No one bolted the door on him, either.
But Methos slept very little and very lightly that night.
At last, toward dawn, he gave up slumber altogether and lay staring thoughtfully into space. What if…
Swinging his feet over the side of the bed, he drew out the amulet of Pharaoh Merneferre Ay.
A shame to damage it after all these years. But better it than me!
Methos, like a good many other travelers crossing and recrossing the Mediterranean, had picked up a few phrases of the Minoan language, even of the written language, the court language.
A pity I don’t have a better tool for this, but…
Drawing his sword, he used its point to incise certain Minoan characters onto the back of the amulet, working them into the soft gold with delicate care, swearing a bit under his breath…
There. He sat back to study his handiwork, deciding, after a moment, Good enough.
Very good, in fact. One might even say, downright seditious.
All there was to do now was wait.
The morning brought not the immediate resumption of hostilities in the form of questioning that he had expected, but, unexpectedly, an invitation to worship. King Apophis, Methos learned from a servant, made offerings to Set in the royal chapel every day.
“Invitation,” of course, Methos thought, yawning over the Hyksos equivalent of breakfast—reasonably fresh bread and weak beer—meant, “Attend or regret it!” A blatantly transparent test, naturally, since no Egyptian would dare openly worship so perilous a deity.
I am not an Egyptian, Methos thought, these are not my gods, and I have more immediate problems than whether or not a deity of the desert waste actually exists and would bother to be interested in me.
Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t subject to a purely superstitious thrill of worry as he entered the chapel. But nothing eerie happened—Of course nothing eerie happened! Methos chided himself—and the ceremony consisted of nothing more alarming than some rote chanting, in which Methos prudently took part, and an offering, of all unlikely things for a desert deity, of garlands.
One hurdle safely jumped, he thought, eyeing the king eyeing him, and bowed.
Apophis almost smiled. “And now, my brother’s friend, we shall continue our conversation.”
“Of course we shall,” Methos retorted as though delighted. Always keep your hosts off balance. “Where would you like to begin?”
Later—much later—Methos stood alone with King Apophis in a private chamber (though, of course, guards lurked just outside). Or rather, he stood, alone, while Apophis sat. Feet and throat weary, and doing his best to hide his uneasiness about being unarmed while another Immortal was somewhere in the area, Methos kept determinedly to his act of “I am absolutely charming,” even if the king, by now, was not.
“… and so, in summation,” he continued, not quite watching Apophis, “the new pharaoh is a hot-tempered young man with little military skill.” Save for what he learned in the field, but that, oh King, you need not know. “His brother is barely out of boyhood and poses no immediate threat.” Save for his cleverness and calculating mind, but again, you need not know that. “There seems to be little rivalry between the brothers, nothing on which to build, but of course I, as an outsider, could hardly be an accurate judge of that.”
“Of course,” Apophis echoed dryly. “And their army?”
Methos gave a contemptuous little laugh. “And what army would that be, oh king? When I left them, they had a cavalry consisting of exactly four chariots, all Hyksos- issue, the adequate but not remarkable bronze weaponry I am sure your spies have already described to you, and bows that have perhaps half the range of your own. Again, as you doubtless already know.” All true, all items in the process of being altered—which, I sincerely hope, you do not already know.
Apophis grunted noncommittally.
“In brief, oh king,” Methos continued, “they have no more standing army than ever.” Yet. “Pharaoh Kamose, if it came to it, might be able to mount a hundred men able to wield weapons with any professional skill, no more than that.” Again, yet.
King Apophis leaned forward in his chair, eyes predatory. “These are all pretty details, Methos, but surface ones only. Any spy, as you say, could have told me as much. Give me something more. Something I can use. Something,” he added, not quite in warning, “that says to me, ’This man is useful, this man is telling me the truth.’”
Methos smiled ever so slightly. “King Apophis, if I tell you all that I know, what’s left to keep you from killing me?”
“Clever,” the king acknowledged. “I warn you, I am not very fond of clever men.”
“Ah, but a clever man knows where he stands. It is far safer, King Apophis, to be beside the throne than on it.”
“So now!” the king exclaimed, eyebrows raised. “Do you think so high?”
“Not as high as the throne, I repeat. As you say, I am far too clever to want that burden.”
“But you do think to be my advisor?”
“Not without giving you good reason to see my worth.”
“Go on. You still amuse me. Don’t worry,” the king added, “you’ll know when you do not.”
Methos ignored that. “Oh king, I ask you this: Who is the mother of Pharaoh Kamose and his brother prince?”
“What nonsense is this?”
“Who is their mother?” Do you really not know or remember? Or are you testing me again? “Her name is Ahhotep, as of course you know, oh king.”
“Of course.”
“And Ahhotep, as is no secret, is of two lineages: Egyptian and Minoan.”
Apophis tensed. “What are you saying? They could not have formed an alliance! Kamose could never have sent a message as far as Crete!”
“No?” Methos asked. “Ah, of course not. The Hyksos are mighty warriors, well able to stop the fish in the Nile or the bird in the sky. Particularly,” he added lightly, “the bird in the sky.”
“But the Egyptians have no carrier birds!”
“No, of course not. King Apophis says it, so it must be so.”
“Guard your tongue!”
Methos met Apophis’s glare without blinking. “Ah, but the king did command the truth from me. And would I dare to lie, now, with my life at stake?”
For what seemed an unbearably long time, he held the king’s stare, projecting with all his will nothing but utter sincerity.
“No,” the king muttered at last. “No, you would not. But proof—”
“Your pardon, King Apophis, but I have proof.”
Fighting down the urge to reveal it with a magician’s flourish, Methos showed the king the amulet of Merneferre Ay—the amulet with that telltale, if false, Minoan inscription. As he’d expected, Apophis couldn’t read it, but the king certainly did recognize that, one, the amulet was genuinely royal Egyptian, and two, the inscription was genuinely Minoan.
He glanced sharply up at Methos. “Where did you get this?”
“From the Egyptian royal court,” Methos answered, quite truthfully. That it had been a now-long-vanished Egyptian court was immaterial. “The inscription was never meant for my eyes, of course.”
“And do you know what it says?”
“King Apophis, as I mentioned, if I tell you all I know—”
“I will not kill you,” the king said impatiently. “Not as long as you remain useful. Now tell me what it says.”
Methos read, slowly as though being careful to get the words right, “‘It shall be done, our lands united, the foe crushed between us.’”
Apophis said nothing to him, but called for a scholar, who read the inscription and told his king, “That is, indeed, what is written here.”
“Interesting,” Apophis said shortly, and meant a great deal more than that. “No,” the king added to Methos, “I shall not kill you. You may yet prove very useful, indeed.”
Methos bowed, hiding a faint, triumphant smile. So, King Apophis, may you!
But he had not lived this long by being careless or, for that matter, cocky. Yes, he had won this particular fight, but it was merely the opening sortie.
He knew perfectly well that the rest of the war remained.
Chapter Thirteen
Egypt, Avaris: Reign of King Apophis, 1573 B.C.
Methos had entered the audience chamber escorted by guards, and he left it escorted by guards, back into the dazzling brightness of the central courtyard.
But the soldiers suddenly drew back—as did Methos a second later, as he found himself facing without warning both the urgent alert of another Immortal’s presence and said Immortal’s sword point.
“Prince Khyan!”
For a wild instant, he saw himself already dead, stabbed through by the madman before he could move, and his head removed. But Khyan backed off with a laugh, saluting him with the sword.
“Come!” the prince cried. “Come and duel w
ith me!”
I really don’t want to duel with you, thank you very much, not with someone who might forget in a moment that we’re only playing.
And so Methos smiled and gestured to himself. “As you see, I am unarmed.”
“You, or you, give him a sword! Yes, or let him go and retrieve his own!”
“Ah no, Prince Khyan,” Methos interjected apologetically. “It isn’t that I don’t want to duel with you.” Hah. “But you are a prince, trained as a prince, and I—I am no one! You are surely so fine a swordsman that your very skill would make me far too envious to continue.”
Any more sweetness and I may be ill.
But Khyan seemed to accept it all at face value. With a solemn nod, he turned to one of the guards. “You then! Come!”
The guard, having no choice about it, grimly followed Khyan out into the center of the courtyard. Under the tree with the skulls, Methos noted. Fitting.
As Khyan closed with the guard, Methos, slyly watching to be sure the other guards were growing engrossed in the duel, slipped subtly toward his room until he had reached it and could snatch up his sword and belt it about his waist. Just in case.
Feeling a little less naked, he stood in the doorway, watching the duel, lips pursed in a silent whistle. Madman or not, Khyan was a fine swordsman, downright alarmingly fine, quick on his feet and lightning fast with his reflexes. The guard, handicapped by trying not to harm the prince, was at a definite disadvantage.
And then, quite suddenly, he was dead. Khyan, eyes savage, brought his sword sweeping across in a powerful slash that sent the guard’s head flying off. It rolled almost to where Methos stood, its eyes and mouth wide as though in utter astonishment that such a silly thing could happen.
As the body fell, spouting blood, Khyan whirled and whirled again, saying to them all, but mostly to Methos, “You saw? You saw? He tried to kill me! I had to defend myself!”
The guards were surely going to protest, or at least show their horror—
But no, they showed not even the politic acceptance Methos might have expected. They were… joking. Jesting about their late comrade’s poor skills and how he would at least make a decent offering to Set. Survival instincts? Possibly. They had to be grateful they weren’t the ones lying dead. But there was a certain indifference to their eyes and voices…
The Captive Soul Page 9