Warlock: A Novel of Ancient Egypt (Novels of Ancient Egypt)

by Wilbur Smith

  At last Taita judged it safe to leave him for a while in Bay’s charge, and drove through the narrow empty streets. Ahead of him he heard the sudden din of wild cheering. When he reached the environs of the palace he found himself enveloped in a dense crowd of citizens celebrating the ascension of the new Pharaoh. “Eternal life to His Sacred Majesty Pharaoh Naja Kiafan!” they howled, with loyal fervor, and passed the wine jugs from hand to hand.

  So thick were the crowds that Taita was forced to leave the chariot with Meren to go the rest of the way on foot. At the palace gate the guards recognized him, and used the butts of their spears to clear the way for him to pass. Once he was in the grounds he hurried to the great hall, and there he found another press of obsequious humanity. All the military officers, courtiers and state dignitaries were waiting to swear loyalty and fealty to the new Pharaoh, but Taita’s reputation and his unnerving gaze ensured that the crowd made way for him to pass to the front ranks.

  Pharaoh Naja Kiafan and his queen were in the private cabinet beyond the doors at the end of the great hall, but Taita had to wait only a short while before he was granted access to the royal presence.

  To his astonishment he found that Naja was already wearing the double crown, and holding the flail and the crook crossed over his chest. Beside him Queen Heseret seemed to have blossomed like the desert rose under the caress of rain. She was as lovely as Taita had ever known her, pale and serene under her makeup, her eyes made enormous by skilfully applied kohl.

  When Taita entered, Naja dismissed those around him and soon the three were alone. This, in itself, was a sign of high favor. Then Naja laid aside the flail and the crook and came to embrace Taita. “Magus, I should never have doubted you,” he said, his voice even more sonorous and commanding than before. “You have earned my gratitude.” He took from his right hand a magnificent ring of gold and ruby, and placed it on Taita’s right index finger. “This is but a small token of my favor.” Taita wondered that he had placed such a powerful talisman in his hands: only a lock of Naja’s hair or the clippings of his nails would have been more potent.

  Heseret came forward and kissed him. “Dearest Taita, you have always been faithful to my family. You shall have gold, land and influence beyond anything you have ever coveted.”

  After all these years she knew so little of him. “Your generosity is exceeded only by your beauty,” he said, and she simpered. Then he turned back to Naja. “I have done what the gods required of me, Your Grace. But it has cost me dear. It is not a light or easy matter to go against my sense of duty and the dictates of my own heart. You know that I loved Nefer. Now I owe you that same duty and love. But for a space I must mourn Nefer, and make my peace with his shade.”

  “It would be strange indeed if you did not feel for the dead pharaoh,” Naja agreed. “What do you wish of me, Magus? You have only to speak the words.”

  “Your Grace, I ask your dispensation to go out into the desert to be alone for a time.”

  “How long?” Naja asked, and Taita could see he was alarmed by the thought of losing the key to eternal life, which he truly believed Taita held in his hands.

  “Not too long, Majesty,” Taita assured him.

  Naja thought about it for a while. He was never a man for hasty decisions. At last he sighed and went to the low table upon which stood stylus and papyrus. Swiftly he wrote out a safe pass and sealed it with his royal cartouche. It was clear that the seal had been carved long ago in anticipation of his succession. While Naja waited for the ink to dry he said, “You may absent yourself until the next inundation of the Nile begins, but then you must return to me. This safe-conduct will allow you to travel at large and to avail yourself of whatever food and equipment you may need from my royal storehouses anywhere in my domains.”

  Taita prostrated himself in gratitude, but Naja lifted him to his feet in another extraordinary act of condescension. “Go, Magus! But return to us on the appointed day to receive the rewards you so richly deserve.”

  Clutching the roll of papyrus, Taita backed toward the door, making the signs of blessing and benediction.

  They left Thebes in the early hours of the next morning while most of the city still slept and even the guards at the east gate were yawning and heavy-eyed.

  Nefer was laid in the back of the wagon drawn by a team of four horses. These draft animals had been chosen carefully by Hilto. They were strong and healthy, but not exceptional in any way that might excite envy or comment. The wagon was loaded with essential supplies and the equipment they might need once they had left the river valley. Hilto was dressed as a wealthy farmer, Meren as his son and Bay as their slave.

  Nefer was laid on a straw mattress in the bed of the wagon, under a screen of tanned leather. He was now fully conscious and able to understand all that Taita had to tell him. Despite the royal safe-conduct, the sergeant of the guard was officious. He did not recognize Taita under his hood, so he climbed into the back of the wagon to inspect the contents. When he pulled back the screen and Nefer peered out at him with his gaunt, pale features spotted with the unmistakable scarlet stigmata of the plague that Taita had applied, the sergeant of the guard swore with horror and leaped down from the wagon signing so vehemently against evil that he dropped his lamp, which shattered at his feet.

  “Get you gone!” he shouted frantically at Hilto on the reins. “Take that filthy poxy wretch out of the city.”

  Twice more during the days that it took them to cross the littoral plain of the river and to reach the hills that marked the frontiers of the cultivated lands and the desert they were stopped by military patrols. Each time the royal scroll and the plague victim were enough to send them on their way again with only the briefest delay.

  It was clear from the attitude of the patrols that in Thebes the substitution of corpses had not been discovered, and that no alarm had been raised. All the same Taita was relieved when they climbed the hills into the desert and followed the old trade route eastward toward the Red Sea.

  Now Nefer was able to climb down from his bed in the wagon, and for short periods limp along beside it. At first it was clear that, despite his denials, the leg was painful, but soon he was walking more easily and for longer periods.

  They rested for three days at the ancient ruined city of Gallala. They refilled the waterskins at the meager and bitter well and let the horses recover from the rigors of the hard, stony road. Bay and Taita tended their hocks and hoofs. When they were fit to resume the journey, they turned aside from the known way: traveling in the cool of the night, they took the path known only to Taita that led to Gebel Nagara. Bay and Hilto swept their back-trail and covered all signs of their passage.

  They arrived at the cave in the middle of a night lit by bright stars. There was not enough water in the tiny seep to supply so many men and horses, so once the wagon was unloaded Hilto and Bay started back, leaving only Meren to serve Taita and Nefer. Hilto had resigned from his regiment on the pretext of ill-health, so he was free, with Bay, to return with every full moon to bring supplies, medicine and news from Thebes.

  The first month at Gebel Nagara passed swiftly. In the clean, dry desert air Nefer’s wounds closed without further reverses, and soon he was limping out into the desert to hunt with Meren. They startled the desert hares and bowled them over with their throwing sticks, or Taita sat on the crags of the hills above the spring and worked his charm of concealment to entice the herds of gazelle within arrow shot.

  At the end of that month Hilto returned from Thebes with Bay. They brought the news that Taita’s subterfuge had not yet been discovered and Pharaoh Naja Kiafan, along with all the populace, still believed that Nefer’s corpse was pickling in the natron bath in the Hall of Sorrow.

  They also brought news of insurrections in the Lower Kingdom, and the terrible reprisals by Pharaoh Trok at Manashi. Unrest had also flared in the Upper Kingdom where Naja, like Trok, had increased taxation and ordered an enlistment of men into the army. “The people are angry that t
here should be such an enlargement of the armed forces when there is peace throughout the land,” Hilto reported. “I think that the armed insurrection will soon spread to the Upper Kingdom, where Naja will deal with it as kindly as Trok has in the north. Those who cheered the ascension of these two pharaohs will soon have reason to regret it.”

  “What other news have you from the Lower Kingdom?” Nefer asked eagerly. Hilto launched into a long recitation of trade news and millet prices, of the visit of the Assyrian special envoy to the court of Pharaoh Trok. Nefer listened impatiently, and when Hilto had finished he asked, “What news is there of Princess Mintaka?”

  Hilto looked puzzled. “None that I know of. I should think she is in Avaris, but I cannot be certain.”

  On the incoming leg of his journey Hilto had crossed the spoor of a large herd of oryx, and asked Taita’s permission to follow them up and hunt them. Dried venison would eke out their supplies, so Taita agreed readily. But he decreed that Nefer was not yet strong enough to join the hunting party. Strangely, this did not seem to make Nefer unhappy: instead, he suggested that Taita go out with the hunting party to use his powers to find the game, and to conceal the hunters when they closed in.

  As soon as he was alone in the cave, Nefer unpacked the small cedarwood chest of fresh papyrus scrolls and writing material that Hilto had brought him, and began to compose a letter to Mintaka. He knew with all certainty that by now the reports of his death would have been received in Avaris. He remembered his own terrible suffering when he had heard the false reports of Mintaka’s death with her family at Balasfura, and he wanted to spare her the same kind of agony. He wanted also to explain that it was Naja and Trok who had annulled their betrothal, but that as far as he, Nefer, was concerned he still loved her beyond his own hope of eternal life, and would never rest until she was his wife.

  All this had to be couched in language that, should the scroll fall into the wrong hands, would be meaningless to any person other than Mintaka.

  He saluted her in his opening as “The First Star.” She would remember how, when they had discussed the derivation of her name, she had told him, “I am called after the third star in the belt of the celestial Hunter.”

  He had replied, “No, not the third. The very first in all the firmament.”

  He drew the symbols of the hieratic with great care—he had always excelled at penmanship. He signed himself as the “Fool from Dabba,” sure that she would recognize the reference to his solecism when they had been alone in the desert.

  That evening when the hunters had returned and they were feasting on fresh oryx steaks, Nefer waited his opportunity to speak to Hilto in private. This came when Taita left the circle around the campfire to stalk out into the desert night for a while. Hilto had brought several large jars of beer among the load of supplies from Thebes, and Taita had enjoyed a bowl or two, but one of the few signs he showed of his age was the rate at which the brew passed through him.

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Nefer leaned closer to Hilto and whispered, “I have a special duty for you to perform for me.”

  “I shall be greatly honored, Your Majesty.”

  Nefer passed him the tiny roll of papyrus. “Guard this with your very life,” he ordered, and when Hilto had hidden it in his shawl Nefer gave him the orders for its delivery to the Princess in Avaris. He ended with a further caution: “Tell nobody of this. Not even the Magus. On your sacred oath!”

  The following evening Hilto and Bay left Gebel Nagara at the setting of the sun, when the air had started to cool. They made their loyal obeisance to Nefer, asked Taita for his blessing and a charm of protection, then struck out into the starlit wilderness. The horses toiled up the first slope of the dune hills and into the jumble of moon silver rocks that crackled as they cooled in the night.

  Walking ahead of the horses, Bay suddenly recoiled, gave a startled exclamation in his savage tongue and reached for the lion-bone charm on his necklace. He pointed it at the strange shape that had emerged from the shadows of the rocks.

  Hilto was even more agitated, “Stand aside, evil shade,” he shouted, cracked his whip and made the sign against evil, then gabbled an incantation to turn aside all ghosts and hobgoblins.

  “Peace, Hilto!” The apparition spoke at last. The moon was so bright that it threw a long shadow along the shale-hard earth and made the head of the creature glow like molten silver in the crucible. “It is I, Taita the Magus.”

  “It cannot be you!” Hilto shouted. “I left Taita at Gebel Nagara at sunset. I know you. You are some dreadful shade from the netherworld, pretending to be the Magus.”

  Taita strode forward and seized Hilto’s whip hand. “Feel the warmth of my flesh,” he said, then lifted Hilto’s hand to his face. “Feel my face, and listen to my voice.”

  However, it was only when Bay had touched Taita’s breast with the lion bone, smelt his breath for the stench of the tomb and declared him to be who he claimed he was that the old warrior was reluctantly convinced. “But how did you reach this place ahead of us?” he demanded plaintively.

  “These are the ways of the adept,” Bay told him mysteriously. “It is best never to ask that question.”

  “Hilto, you have something on your person that places all of us in mortal danger.” Taita cut through the trivialities. “It exudes the smell of death and confusion.”

  “I cannot think what that might be,” Hilto said uneasily.

  “It is something that was entrusted to you by the very Egypt,” Taita insisted, “and you know it well enough.”

  “By the very Egypt.” Hilto scratched his beard, and shook his head.

  Taita held out his hand, and Hilto sighed and capitulated without further resistance. He reached into the leather purse on his belt and brought out the roll of parchment. Taita took it from him. “Say nothing of this,” Taita warned him, “not to anybody, not to Pharaoh himself. Do you hear me, Hilto?”

  “I hear you, Magus.”

  Taita held the papyrus in his right hand and stared hard at it. After a few seconds a tiny glowing spot appeared on the scroll, a wisp of smoke curled up into the night air, then abruptly it burst into flame.

  Taita let it burn out between his fingers without flinching at the heat, then crumbled the ashes to dust.

  “ ’Tis magic,” Hilto gasped.

  “A simple feat,” Bay muttered, “one that even an apprentice could perform.”

  Taita raised his right hand in benediction. “May the gods keep you safe during your journey,” he said, and watched the wagon roll away and merge with the gloom.

  When Taita stood once again beside the small hearth fire in the cave of Gebel Nagara, warming his old bones from the desert chill, he studied Nefer’s sleeping form covered by a sheepskin, against the back wall.

  He felt no anger at the boy’s pathetic attempt to outwit him. Age had not withered his humanity, or dimmed his memories of the torments of passion, and he empathized with Nefer’s wish to allay Mintaka’s fears and her suffering. Added to which was the deep affection, verging on love, that he had conceived for Mintaka.

  He would never confront Nefer with what might have been the consequences of this deed of compassion. He would allow him the opiate of believing that Mintaka would soon know that he still lived.

  He squatted down beside Nefer and, without touching him, gently worked his way into the boy’s inner being. From long exercise of this power over his patient, he achieved it readily. Nefer stirred, groaned and gabbled something that made no sense. Even in deep sleep Taita’s power, cast like a web over him, had touched him and brought him almost awake.

  His body has journeyed well along the road to full recovery. Taita delved deeper. His spirit is strong, and he has lost nothing by the ordeal through which he has passed. It will not be long now before we can move on to our next endeavor.

  He went back to the fire, and placed a few more acacia sticks upon it. Then he settled back, not to sleep, for at his age he needed only a few hours eac
h night, but to open his mind to the currents generated by events, some distant and others much closer. He let them eddy around him as though he were a rock in the stream of existence.

  The next moon passed more swiftly than the last, as Nefer grew stronger and more restless. Each day his limp became less noticeable until at last it disappeared. Soon he was racing Meren from the valley floor to the crest of the hills. These contests became a regular part of their lives at the oasis. At first Meren won easily, but soon that changed.

  At dawn on the twentieth day after the departure of Hilto, they started at the mouth of the cave and flew across the stony valley bottom shoulder to shoulder, but when they started the climb up the dune face Nefer edged ahead. Halfway up he unleashed a sudden, powerful rush and left Meren struggling after him. On the crest of the hill he turned back and laughed down at Meren, placing his hands on his hips in a triumphant gesture. In the dawn wind his long dense tresses floated on his shoulders. The early sun was rising behind him and the golden rays cast a nimbus of light around his head.

  Taita had watched it all from below, and was about to turn back into the cave when an eerie sound in the desert silence stopped him. He lifted his face to the sky to see a dark speck describing a high circle against the blue, and felt the divine presence of the god close at hand. The cry sounded again, small and faint, but it pierced to the heart: the unforgettable cry of a royal falcon.

  On the crest of the dune Nefer heard it also, and turned his head to search for the source. He picked out the tiny shape and lifted both hands toward it. As though the gesture was a command the falcon dropped into a stoop, seeming to swell in size. The wind across its cocked wings sighed as it dived straight at Nefer. If it struck at that speed it would rip flesh and break bone, but Nefer did not flinch as it came straight for his upturned face.