by Tom Holland
Arriving together in the temple’s mighty forecourt, King Amen-hetep reached out again for the face of his son, then pushed down his head so that he could feel the back of his skull. ‘Yes,’ King Amen-hetep whispered, ‘yes, the time has come. For I tell you again, O my son, you cannot - you will not - escape what you are, but must accept, as I have done, that this world is built on blood.’ Then he laughed, as though in triumph, and yet his face, so the Prince thought, seemed almost frantic with his eagerness. The Prince allowed himself to be taken and dragged by the arm; yet never, he thought suddenly, had he felt less afraid of his father, and less in awe of those secrets at which his parents had always been hinting. Even the very temple, so magnificent and vast, seemed somehow -- in comparison with his previous sense of it -- strangely reduced and unimpressive: for there appeared to be fewer priests and less commotion in the courtyards, and within the inner sanctuaries many of the riches and idols had been removed. Glancing at a plinth where before a statue must have stood, the Prince thought to himself how easily a god might be toppled from its place; and then, as he passed through the magic iron doors, how easily a custom, however ancient, might be changed.
And so he continued to think, even as the terrible secret was revealed to him, and the hideous purpose of the sacred bath. ‘I will not do it,’ said the Prince, gazing down into the empty pool. ‘I will never do it.’
‘But you must!’ his father cried, anguish and despair intermingled with his rage. ‘Or see what you must become!’ He gestured towards the portraits of the gods upon the walls. ‘How can you endure to become a thing like that!’
‘Yet what choice do I have?’ answered the Prince. ‘For it is either that or become, like you, a murderer and a shedder of innocent blood. I will not be the cause of all your captives’ deaths.’ He met his father’s stare a moment more, then turned and left the empty bath behind. Nor did he choose to visit it again but accepted, as the months and then the years began to pass, the strangeness which was moulding his form more and more. Not hiding it, he chose instead to have it proclaimed, the very mark of his ambition and intent to live in truth.
But it was noticed how from that moment on King Amen-hetep could no longer endure to be beside his son, nor even bring himself to gaze upon his face. And so he hid himself away with his pleasures and his drink, and the Prince was left to rule Egypt alone.
But at this point, Haroun saw the approach of morning and broke off from his tale. ‘O Commander of the Faithful,’ he said, ‘if you would care to return here tomorrow evening, then I shall describe to you how certain dreadful secrets were uncovered.’
And so the Caliph did as Haroun suggested; and the following evening he returned to the mosque.
And Haroun said:
Tyi had never forgotten the agonies of giving birth to the Prince, but she could tell, as she felt a sudden excruciating pain rip through her guts, that the coming birth would be infinitely worse. In the faintest of lulls, she cursed herself again . . . and the error committed some nine months before, when she had failed to resist her husband’s drunken demands, and condemned herself to bearing a second child. The pain wrenched deep through her stomach again. Tyi imagined that tiny monsters were squatting all across her, pulling on her breasts, reaching deep beyond her thighs, parting the flesh and gristle of her belly, and hissing amongst themselves at the sight of what they found. Tyi could not actually see what the monsters were like, but she could feel that they were thin-limbed, and slippery to the touch, and she vaguely imagined that their skulls were very large.
Again there came the faintest lull in the pain, and Tyi found herself held in someone’s arms. She looked up. It was Kiya. ‘Wha . . .’ she muttered feebly, ‘why . . .?’
‘I heard your cries,’ Kiya answered. ‘I was finding it hard to sleep.’
Tyi clutched at her own belly, then gazed up at her niece’s in sympathy; it was already starting to swell. No wonder, Tyi thought, that Kiya seemed so nervous. How terrible it must be to witness a foretaste of your own coming agony, and to know that it would all be in vain, for nothing . . .
The pain returned, and with it the monsters, still hissing as they dipped their fingers deep into her flesh. But then suddenly she tasted something bitter in her mouth, and swallowing, felt the pain and the monsters fade away. She opened her eyes again, wide in bemusement. Kiya was holding a flask of black liquid. ‘But. . . how?’ Tyi whispered, gazing at the flask. ‘I thought ... it is a deadly secret . . . Where did you find it?’
‘It was your brother,’ Kiya answered, ‘Inen, the Priest. He remembered how cruel my pain had been before. He told me the potion was a magic charm.’ She inspected it herself. ‘Is it not working?’
‘Yes,’ Tyi nodded feebly. ‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘You will not . . .’ Kiya glanced down nervously at the bottle in her hand. ‘The Prince . . . you must not tell him I have been using it. He must never know.’
‘No.’ Tyi smiled again; then she felt the pain return, but gentler now like a lapping wave, and she surrendered to it as though it were to sleep, for it seemed like darkness. Dimly, she felt herself being carried to her quarters, laid upon cushions, tended to by servants; and she could feel her thighs growing damp with warm blood. Then gradually, upon the flood of strange nightmares, the waves of pain began to deepen once again and she became aware of a loathsome, unnatural stench, rising, so it seemed, from the depths of her stomach. Tyi moaned, and tried to lift her head. Vaguely she could see streaks of yellow matter oozing amidst the blood as it spread across the cushions; and then she screamed and twisted uncontrollably, for the pain had stabbed anew, but now a million times worse, as though some hideous clawed thing were scratching at her womb. Desperately, she raised her head again and imagined she saw her husband, his features numbed by anguish and despair, watching as someone, his back turned to her, cut with a knife through her quivering belly. Tyi gasped and moaned again, and struggled to fight against the eddies of delirium. She imagined she saw, being yanked through the incision, what appeared to be a tiny, curled human creature, and yet something was wrong, horribly wrong, for it was glistening and sticky with the putrid yellow matter, and its limbs, as they stirred, appeared preternaturally thin. Was it her husband she heard scream -- or was it herself? Tyi could not tell; for all was growing black. Faintly, she felt her mouth being opened, and a thick familiar taste flowing bitter down her throat; and then, with relief, she surrendered to the blackness.
When she woke again, the pain was almost gone and her belly felt purged. She opened her eyes. The room seemed empty; but then she realised that someone was with her after all, for her hand was being held.
‘O my beloved sister.’
‘Inen?’ she murmured. She turned to face him, then frowned as she saw how tight-lipped and drawn he appeared. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Your husband,’ he whispered, ‘great Pharaoh -- he is dead.’
‘Dead?’ Tyi looked away. ‘But ... no ... I remember . . .’ -- she gazed round suddenly, wildly - ‘my child!’
Inen tightened his grip upon his sister’s hand. ‘There is much,’ he whispered gently, ‘I have to reveal.’
‘Where is my child?’
‘Dead as well - and yet, O Tyi, it was never a child.’
Tyi gazed at him wild-eyed; then she shook her head.
‘Listen to me.’ Inen stroked Tyi’s cheek gently. ‘It was a monster, a . . . monster. I ordered it cut out early from your womb - for, had I not, then the birth would surely have caused your own death.’
‘But . . .’ -- still Tyi gazed at him in disbelief -- ‘how could you have known?’
‘Have I not always told you how there are many secrets within the sacred books of Amen, those which the priests have always guarded in his temple, speaking of the nature of the descendants of the gods? One of them warns of what has happened now to you -- of how the Queen will grow infected by the emission of the King, for the time must come, with the passage of the ye
ars, when monsters, not children, will be grown from his seed. Monsters, I say -- and yet, in truth, they are the very image of the star-born gods, and of all that is more than mortal within you. Even so’ -Inen paused -- ‘when the moment arrives - when a monster emerges from the womb of a Queen -- then it heralds the moment of the death of Pharaoh.’
‘What’ -- Tyi shook her head -- ‘and so it has proved?’
‘Try to clear your mind of it,’ Inen answered softly, squeezing her hand before rising to his feet. But Tyi, despite her pain, struggled in vain to reach after him. ‘And me?’ she asked, slumping back into her cushions. ‘This birth of a monster - what does it mean for me?’
Inen’s face, for a moment, appeared cold and still, but then suddenly he smiled and bent down to kiss her. ‘Do not fear,’ he whispered, ‘for there is a secret I must reveal to you very soon, more strange and wonderful than you could ever believe.’
‘And this secret,’ Tyi pressed him, ‘what might it be?’
But Inen only smiled again. ‘Do not say “this secret”. Say rather . . . “this gift”.’ Then he slipped her a flask, stoppered and full, before turning and leaving his sister alone. She longed to rise and pursue him, but the pain from the wound to her stomach was too great; nor did it heal for several days, despite her consumption of the contents of the flask.
During the period of her recovery she was visited several times by her son, newly proclaimed King Amen-hetep the Fourth, his withered throat adorned with the necklace of Pharaoh and his swollen skull surmounted by the Double Crown of Egypt. From him she was careful to keep the flask of potion hidden; but to Kiya, the first time that they were alone, Tyi revealed her supply, for she had long been eager to share the secret, which to her had always been a hard one to keep. Kiya smiled back guiltily but acknowledged, when Tyi pressed her upon the matter, that she was suffering none of the customary pain of her pregnancies. ‘And yet,’ she whispered, her look of guilt returning, ‘so miraculous do the powers of this potion seem to be, that I dread to imagine from what sorcery it might proceed.’ Tyi as well, watching her wound now healing by the hour, had been wondering the same; and at length, when she found that she could rise up from her bed, she resolved that Inen should put off telling her no longer.
She found him in the secret chamber of the temple, praying to the altar beyond the empty pool. Within the sanctuary, everything was just as she remembered it; yet throughout the larger chambers and courtyards beyond it, silence had reigned and the floors had been empty of worshippers and priests. What has happened?’ Tyi demanded, as Inen came to join her. ‘How is it that the temple has grown so deserted?’
Inen glanced back at once to where the altar stood. ‘We have looked to the stars,’ he said slowly, turning back round, ‘and seen disaster written there, abomination.’
‘Abomination?’
‘Of the gods, and the sanctuaries, and their most sacred mysteries.’
‘Then what is being done? Where has everyone gone?’
Again Inen gazed back at the altar and beyond. ‘It was not to be risked,’ he murmured at last, ‘that the wealth of knowledge contained within this place, the riches preserved from the very dawn of time, be seized and destroyed by impious hands.’
Tyi narrowed her eyes. ‘ “Impious hands”, O my brother? Who can you mean?’
Inen met her stare for a moment, but he did not answer her. Instead he gestured towards the chambers beyond the magical doors. ‘There is a place, set far within the desert, to which the sacred treasures of Amen are being taken. They will remain there until the period of danger has passed. Very shortly, I too will be leaving for the desert, when my business in Thebes has been brought to a close.’ He paused, then reached for Tyi’s hand and raised it to his lips. ‘You as well,’ he whispered, ‘if you wish, may come with me.’
‘Leave Thebes?’ Tyi exclaimed in astonishment. ‘Leave my palace, my son?’
Inen smiled thinly. ‘I spoke to you before of a . . . gift . . .within my power. If you choose to come with me, then that gift will be yours.’
‘But I do not even know what such a gift might be.’
Inen’s smile still flickered, and then he nodded. ‘Very well. Please - wait here.’ Turning, he passed back beyond the empty pool, into the darkness which stretched beyond the altar to Amen; and Tyi listening, imagined that she heard the opening of a door. There was a silence of several minutes, then Inen returned with something in his hands. It appeared withered and black; and then, as Tyi was able to see it better, she realised that it was a segment of a human arm.
At once she shrank back but Inen, seeing her response, laughed bitterly and reached out to seize her. ‘What,’ he sneered, ‘do you dare to parade your scruples like this, when you have been bathing these long years in human blood?’
‘I had no choice.’
‘Your son, King Amen-hetep, would not agree.’
‘Yet you know the time will come when even he will change his mind.’
‘Indeed? When he grows too hideous for mortal eye to bear? While you, O my sister -- you will have remained as beauteous and youthful as ever. But as a result of what?’ Inen laughed once again. ‘Not your baths alone!’
Tyi gazed at him in slowly dawning horror. ‘The potions,’ she whispered, ‘from what were they formed?’
Mockingly, Inen raised the fragment of the arm. ‘Why, from this,’ he smiled.
‘No,’ Tyi shuddered. ‘It is not possible . . . But . . . how?’
‘By means of the mystery which was learned by Isis, the mystery of the sacred name of Amen. What that is I may never tell you, for the wisdom of a god is a terrible thing -- and yet its effect, its power, you shall see now for yourself So saying, he pulled again upon his sister’s arm and led her out beyond the magical doors, where he crouched down on his haunches with the piece of flesh held out before him. From the shadows Tyi heard a sudden skittering, and then a cat emerged cautiously, its delicate nostrils flared. Inen scooped it up and clasped it in his arms, feeding strips of the meat into its jaws until at last the cat had had its fill. Inen glanced at his sister, and for a moment he smiled; then suddenly he swung the cat and smashed its skull against the wall.
Tyi screamed. She rushed forward but Inen, seizing her, held her back. ‘See.’ He pointed to the cat and Tyi, staring down at it, saw that its head was nothing but a pulp of blood and bone. Yet even as she broke free and bent down beside it, she saw that its body was stirring and struggling to rise, and her horror grew intermingled with disbelief. ‘How can this be?’
Inen smiled again, even as he brought his foot down upon the animal’s back. There was the sound of delicate bones being snapped but the cat, for all the horror of its injuries, still writhed and twisted about on its paws. ‘Kill it,’ Tyi sobbed, ‘in the name of pity, please, kill it, now!’
Inen gestured with his arms. ‘Is it not a wonder?’ he asked.
‘Kill it!’ Tyi screamed.
‘Very well,’ Inen sighed. Yet there is only one way’ From beneath his cloak he drew out a dagger, then seized the cat and pressed it down against the floor. ‘The heart,’ he whispered, aiming with his knife, ‘it must be pierced.’ He drove the point down hard. The cat tensed, then twitched, and then at last grew still. Inen smiled at his sister. ‘As I promised you,’ he nodded, ‘a miracle and a wonder.’
Tyi breathed in deeply, one hand on her heart, the other clasped across her mouth. ‘Never,’ she whispered, ‘have I seen such a horror.’
‘And yet the cat, as you saw, would soon have grown whole.’
Tyi shook her head. ‘How is it possible?’ she whispered.
‘All things,’ Inen answered, ‘are possible to the gods.’ He paused, waiting for his sister to reply, then seized her impatiently. ‘Well?’ he pressed her. What do you say? For it is not everyone, O my sister, who is offered immortality.’
Tyi glanced down at the bloodied mess by Inen’s feet. ‘I . . .’ She swallowed. ‘I need time ... to think ... to con
sider . . .’ she replied.
Inen’s face hardened. ‘Not long.’
‘But I must have time.’
‘Within seventy days your husband will be laid to rest, and within seventy days after that I must have your decision, for it cannot be delayed any longer. In the meantime, O my sister -- do not betray what I have shown you here today’ He paused, and glanced back into the inner sanctuary. ‘For knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous privilege.’
‘Then why have you told me? Why have you risked the secret?’
‘Can you truly not tell?’ Inen gazed at her almost in disappointment; then he reached for her again and clasped her very tightly. ‘I shall be living,’ he whispered, ‘for all eternity. Do you think I can face that, if it must be without you?’ He kissed her suddenly upon her brow, then released her, and turned and walked back towards the doors. ‘One hundred and forty days!’ he cried out as the doors glided shut. Tyi was left alone.
That afternoon, returning to the Palace, the sun seemed brighter, the light more vivid, the colours richer and more imbued with life than Tyi had ever seen them -- yet their beauty served only to deepen her disquiet. The cool of twilight brought her no relief, nor the profounder stillness of night - and so at length, discovering that she could not sleep, Tyi rose from her bed. She called for a cloak, then walked through the gardens towards the side of the lake. The way was not difficult to follow, for it was lit by the moon, and she could remember, as she drew nearer to her father’s favourite spot, every twist, every turn, from the days of her childhood. Yet as she approached it, she saw that someone was already there, standing beneath the trees; and she could just distinguish his domed skull against the stars, his withered body, his narrowed arms, the ruined beauty of King Amen-hetep, her son. ‘Not here,’ Tyi thought, ‘not now, not with him.’ Instead she turned back to the Palace, and called for a horse, then rode up the path which led towards the hills. By the ravine which marked the entrance to the valley of the dead, she found no guards, which surprised her but seemed also, such was her mood, a relief. Passing between the cliffs, she dismounted from her horse and led it as far as her parents’ tomb. Having tethered it, she then knelt down in prayer, to ask her father for his comfort and aid.
