“To war, I say! And to the ladies!”
The conversation turned toward the town’s famed beauties and the local brothels. The carpenters bought their hilarious new friend more drinks.
Ahsha went to a different tavern every night. He made a great many contacts, but kept the conversation casual, throwing out Captain Kenzor’s name from time to time.
It finally netted him some valuable information: the liaison officer had just returned to Hattusa.
A talk with the general’s right-hand man would save him a great deal of time. He had to locate Kenzor, find a way to approach him, reel him in. Suddenly, Ahsha had an idea.
When he went home, he brought with him a dress, a cloak, and some sandals.
“For me?” Arinna asked tremulously.
“Is there another woman in my life?”
“They look so expensive!”
“I bargained.”
She reached out to finger the fine cloth.
“Not yet!”
“But when?”
“I’m planning a special evening when I can take my time admiring you. Give me a while to work out the details.”
“Whatever you say.”
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him fervently.
“You know, you look just fine to me wearing nothing at all . . .”
The farther south the royal flagship sailed, the younger Setau felt. As he held Lotus close, he was once again dazzled by the sight of Nubia, bathed in a light so pure that the Nile, reflecting it, seemed like a heavenly ribbon of blue.
With his hatchet, Setau had made a forked stick to capture a cobra or two, milking their venom into a copper flask. The lovely Lotus, bare-breasted and wearing only the briefest of skirts that fluttered in the breeze, took deep gulps of her native land’s scented air.
Ramses steered the ship himself. With an expert crew, he kept to a swift and accurate course.
At mealtimes, the captain took over. In the central cabin, Ramses, Setau, and Lotus lunched on dried beef, tangy greens, and honeyed papyrus roots mixed with sweet onions.
“You’re a true friend, Majesty,” Setau acknowledged. “Bringing us on this trip is a wonderful reward.”
“I can use your talents, and your wife’s, too.”
“We’re out of touch in our palace laboratory, but we’ve been hearing unpleasant rumors. Is Egypt as close to war as everyone claims?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to leave Pi-Ramses in these troubled times?”
“My first priority is to save Nefertari.”
“I wasn’t much more help than Dr. Pariamaku,” Setau said glumly.
“You’re looking for a miracle cure in Nubia, aren’t you?” asked Lotus.
“From what I read in the library at the House of Life, there’s one to be found here. A stone blessed by the goddess Hathor, hidden away in a secret spot.”
“Any idea where?”
“All the text says is ‘In the heart of Nubia, in a creek with golden sands, where the mountain cleaves and comes together.’”
“A creek . . . that must mean a backwater of the Nile.”
“We have to find it fast,” said Ramses. We’ve bought Nefertari a little time with the help of Sekhmet and her rest cure at the temple of Hathor. But we haven’t broken the spell. Our only real hope is this magic stone.”
Lotus looked into the distance. “You love Nubia, and it loves you back,” she said. “Speak to this country and it will answer you.”
All at once a pelican appeared above the royal vessel. The magnificent bird with its broad wingspan was one of the incarnations of Osiris, the god who returned from the dead.
FORTY-FOUR
Captain Kenzor was in his cups.
Three days’ leave in the capital meant the chance to forget the rigors of military life in a wild blur of carousing. Tall, strapping, and husky-voiced, Kenzor had nothing but scorn for women, considering them only in terms of his own pleasure.
When he was drunk, Kenzor’s sex drive was always heightened. Now, under the influence of a particularly heady wine, his need was pressing. He lurched out of the tavern toward the nearest brothel.
The captain didn’t even feel the cold. He vaguely hoped a virgin might be available, a timid virgin. Her fear would add spice to the proceedings.
A man approached him deferentially.
“May I speak to you, Captain?”
“What do you want?” he slurred.
“I have something special to offer you,” replied Ahsha.
Kenzor smiled. “Yes?”
“A young virgin.”
Kenzor’s eyes lit up. “How much?”
“Ten good pieces of tin.”
“That’s a lot.”
“The merchandise is worth it.”
“I need it right away.”
“She’s all yours.”
“I only have five tin pieces on me.”
“You can pay me the rest tomorrow.”
“You trust me?”
“I’d like to keep doing business with you. She’s not the only virgin in my stable.”
“Good man. Come along now, I’m in a hurry.”
Kenzor was in such a state that the two men nearly ran through the sleepy streets of the lower town.
Ahsha opened the door of his modest dwelling.
Arinna was dressed in her brand-new outfit, her hair carefully arranged. Captain Kenzor studied her hungrily.
“Looks old for a virgin,” he muttered.
Without warning, Ahsha rammed the captain against a wall. As Kenzor slumped half conscious, the Egyptian nimbly relieved him of his short sword and held the tip to his throat.
“Who are you?” gasped the Hittite.
“It’s not important. But you’re the liaison between the army and the palace. Either you answer my questions or you die.”
Kenzor struggled and the sword sliced his neck, drawing blood. Muddled with alcohol, he was at his captor’s mercy.
Ahsha’s terrified lover huddled in a corner of the room.
“When is the attack on Egypt planned?” asked Ahsha. “And why has the army ordered so many new chariots?”
Kenzor grimaced. The man already knew far more than he should.
“Attack . . . is classified information.”
“Tell me, unless you want to be classified among the missing.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“You’re wrong, Kenzor. I’ll kill you and work my way through a hundred officers, if I have to. I want the truth.” He pushed the blade deeper, bringing a groan from the officer. The farm wife covered her eyes.
“Only the emperor knows. They don’t tell me things like that.”
“But you do know why the army has ordered so many chariots.”
His neck hurt, his head felt fuzzy. Kenzor grunted something, as if talking to himself.
Ahsha’s hearing was acute enough to pick it up. There was no need to make him repeat his appalling statement.
“Are you mad?” he shouted at Kenzor.
“No, it’s the truth.”
“Impossible.”
“It’s true, I tell you.”
Ahsha was dumbfounded. He had just obtained a piece of information so important it could change the fate of the world.
Like lightning, he thrust the blade through Kenzor’s neck, killing him instantly.
“Turn around,” Ahsha said to the cowering woman in the corner.
“No, you go and leave me alone.”
Sword drawn, he approached his lover. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I can’t afford to let you live.”
“I saw nothing, heard nothing!”
“Are you sure?”
“He was mumbling, I didn’t hear a thing, I swear it!”
Arinna fell to her knees. “Don’t kill me, I beg of you! I can help you get out of the city!”
Ahsha hesitated. She had a point. The gates to the capital were shut at night. He would have to
wait until dawn before leaving town. With Arinna posing as his wife, he would be less conspicuous. Later, he could dispose of her along some country road.
Ahsha slumped next to Kenzor’s body. He stayed awake all night, planning how best to make use of his startling discovery.
The Nubian winter, once the predawn chill lifted, was delightful. On the riverbank, Ramses sighted a pride of lions. Monkeys scampering in the tops of dum palms saluted the royal ship’s passage with their shrill cries.
At a scheduled stop, the villagers offered the monarch and his retinue an impromptu feast of wild bananas and milk. Ramses sat next to the local chief, a white-haired shaman still presiding over his tribe at the age of ninety.
When they left, the old man attempted a deep bow to Pharaoh, but Ramses reached out an arm to check him.
“I thank the gods for blessing my old age with a visit from Pharaoh,” the chief said, “may I not be allowed to pay my respects to him?”
“Old man, it is I who should bow to your wisdom.”
“I’m only a village elder.”
“A man who has lived a long life and followed the law of Ma’at is worth more than any temple priest with a hollow heart.”
“You’re Lord of the Two Lands, Majesty, as well as Nubia, while I have only my own little clan to care for.”
“Even so, I must call on you for help. Will you lend me your memory?”
Pharaoh and the old shaman repaired to his accustomed seat in the shade of a palm tree.
“My memory . . .” the old man began. “It’s full of blue skies, games I remember from childhood, the smiles of women, gazelles leaping in the distance, the return of the floodwaters. And all that belongs to you, my pharaoh. Without you, I’d have no memories, and future generations would have no heart.”
“Do you recall anything about a sacred place where the goddess of love hid a sacred stone, somewhere deep in the heart of Nubia?”
With his walking stick, the shaman sketched a crude map in the sand. “My father’s father brought such a stone back to the village. Our women were cured when they touched it. Sad to say, a band of nomads later made off with it.”
“Where did it come from?”
His stick pointed to a spot farther down his map of the Nile. “There, where you enter the land of Kush. A place full of mystery.”
“What would you like for your village?”
“Nothing other than what we have. But that’s asking a lot, don’t you think? Protect us, Pharaoh, and keep Nubia intact.”
“Through you, old man, I have heard Nubia speaking. Through you I have understood.”
The royal ship sailed out of Wawat and into Kush, where years earlier Seti and Ramses had quashed a rebellion and restored the shaky peace among warring factions.
It was a wild and dramatic land, kept alive by the Nile. There was only a narrow strip of cultivated land on either bank of the river, but date palms and dum palms provided some shade for farmers as they battled with the encroaching desert.
The cliffs came upon them suddenly.
Ramses sensed that any human presence was an intrusion here, that the Nile intended nature to stand alone in this majestic setting.
The enchanting scent of mimosa added to the otherworldly impression.
Two rocky ridges jutted out toward the river, almost parallel, with a sandy gorge between them. At the foot of the granite overhangs were flowering acacias. In the heart of Nubia, in a creek with golden sands, where the mountain cleaves and comes together, the ancient text went . . .
As if roused from a long sleep, or waking from a spell that had clouded his view, Ramses finally got his bearings. Why hadn’t he thought of it sooner?
“We’re landing,” he ordered. “This is it, it can’t be anywhere else.”
Lotus dove naked into the river and swam to shore. Her body glistening with silvery droplets, she ran like a gazelle toward a native dozing in the acacia grove. She shook him awake, questioned him, ran off again toward the rock face, chipped off a piece of stone, and returned to the boat.
Ramses kept his eyes fixed on the cliff.
Abu Simbel . . . He was back at Abu Simbel, the magical place to which he had long ago been drawn, the spot where he had planned to build a temple, the realm of Hathor he had since neglected and then forgotten.
Setau helped Lotus board the ship again. She held a piece of sandstone in her right hand.
“It’s Hathor’s magic stone, all right. But these days no one knows how you make it work.”
FORTY-FIVE
Dim light filtered through a single slit in the wall of the dank little house. Arinna woke to the sound of a passing patrol. She squirmed when she saw Captain Kenzor’s body.
“He’s still here!”
“Come to your senses, woman,” Ahsha scolded. “The officer can’t incriminate us.”
“But I didn’t do anything!”
“You’re posing as my wife. If I’m caught, you’ll be executed, too.”
Arinna threw herself at Ahsha, pounding his chest with her fists.
“I’ve had time to think tonight,” he said calmly.
She stopped, inhaling sharply. In her lover’s icy gaze, she saw her death. “No, you have no right . . .”
“I’ve been thinking,” he said again. “Either I kill you on the spot, or you help me.”
“Help you? But how?”
“I’m Egyptian.”
The Hittite woman looked at him as if he was a creature from another world.
“I’m an Egyptian and I need to get home as soon as possible. If I don’t make it out of here, I want you to cross the border and deliver a message for me.”
“Why would I take such a risk?”
“I’ll make it worth your while. The tablet I give you will entitle you to a town house, a servant, and an income for life. My employer is generous.”
As a poor widow, it was more than she had ever imagined in her wildest dreams.
“All right,” she said finally.
“Each of us will leave the city by a different gate,” demanded Ahsha.
“What if you reach Egypt before me?”
“Don’t worry about anything but getting there and delivering my message.”
Ahsha wrote a short note in hieratic characters, a shorthand version of hieroglyphs, and handed the thin wooden tablet to his lover.
When he kissed her, Arinna didn’t have the strength to resist.
“I’ll see you in Pi-Ramses,” he promised.
When Ahsha reached the edge of the lower town, he was swept up in a crowd of merchants on their way out of the capital.
All around, watchful soldiers paced.
It was impossible to backtrack. A squadron of archers was organizing the civilians into groups and checking their credentials.
There was probing, griping, jostling. Donkeys brayed in protest. But nothing seemed to move the sentries guarding the gates.
“What’s going on?” Ahsha asked a tradesman.
“They’ve sealed off the city because some officer is missing.”
“What does that have to do with us?”
“Hittite officers don’t go missing. Someone must have attacked him, even killed him. Palace intrigue is my guess. They won’t rest until they solve this.”
“Any leads?”
“Probably another officer . . . all this infighting between the emperor’s brother and Uri-Teshoop. One of them is going to wind up dead.”
“The sentries are searching everyone . . .”
“They’re making sure that some armed soldier isn’t trying to sneak out disguised as a merchant.”
Ahsha relaxed.
The search was tedious and thorough. A man who looked about thirty was knocked roughly to the ground. His friends protested, saying that he was a cloth merchant who had never been in the army. The man was released.
Now it was Ahsha’s turn.
A sharp-faced soldier laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Who are you?
”
“A potter.”
“Why are you leaving the city?”
“To stock up on pots at my farm.”
The soldier frisked him.
“Am I done?”
The soldier gestured, brushing him off like a fly.
Just a few short paces away stood the gate to the city, the open road, the way to Egypt . . .
“Just a minute.”
Someone had spoken to Ahsha’s left.
A man of average build, with darting eyes and a trim goatee, dressed in a red and black striped woolen robe.
“Arrest this man,” he ordered the sentry.
An officer intervened. “I’m in charge here,” he blustered.
“My name is Raia,” said the man with the goatee. “I’m with the palace police.”
“What crime has this man committed? He’s only a potter.”
“He’s no potter, not even Hittite. He’s an Egyptian, his name is Ahsha, and he’s one of the Pharaoh’s closest advisers.”
Thanks to the north-flowing current and the sleek design of his ship, Ramses covered the distance between Abu Simbel and Elephantine, the city at the southernmost tip of Egypt, in two days. It would take two more days to reach Thebes. The crew had been a model of efficiency, as if each man had grasped the seriousness of the mission.
During the voyage, Setau and Lotus had done countless experiments with samples of Hathor’s magic stone. It was a unique variety of sandstone. As they prepared to land at Karnak, the frustration showed on their faces.
“I don’t understand how this stone works,” Setau admitted. “It doesn’t behave the way it should. It resists acids, turns amazing colors, and seems to contain an energy I’m unable to measure. How can we cure the queen without any idea of how to use the stone in a formula?”
The monarch’s arrival took the temple staff by surprise and upset the usual protocol. Ramses hurried to the temple laboratory along with Setau and Lotus, who explained the results of their initial testing to Karnak’s chemists and pharmacists.
The king supervised the next phase of the research. The library’s science collection yielded information that helped them draw up a list of substances to combine with the stone from Abu Simbel. The correct combination would cleanse the queen’s blood of the demons sapping her life force.
Ramses, Volume III Page 23
