Shadows on the Aegean

by Suzanne Frank

  “Aye?” User growled.

  “I found this, my lord. It was lying underneath the man, between him and the woman.” The boy held out his hand, and User reluctantly received the muddy thing. With a production of disdain he wiped it off and stared.

  A ring. White and yellow gold were interwoven, and inside each loop was a chip of amber, or citrine. “It is too small for a man,” User said. The priest shrugged, crossed his chest again, and ran back to the temple.

  Thoughtfully User tucked the ring into his sash and bade the priests walk on.

  Noph was a changed city with the famine. Though it was nearly the Season of Growing, none of the rekkit could get to their farms. The Nile had overflowed again and water stood in the fields, making it impossible to sow seed. Earlier in the year, rats had invaded the city. All the sleek cats working every decan Ra gave them could not eradicate the vermin. Dozens of people had died; dozens more lay ill.

  Then there were the insects. They swarmed over the standing water, then attacked the people. No house, no person, was safe. Most of the population lived with weeping sores from the illnesses the mosquitoes brought. Again, dozens of people had died.

  User was glad he was an old man. The biting bugs had no interest in his leathery skin and sour blood. Though his bones ached and his teeth were rotten, still he could move; so he worked, bringing aid where he could and mixing herbs for those in need of more potent relief.

  They passed through the market section. In past Inundations this was such a pleasant experience: children and animals, fat and thin rekkit, mothers with babies, fathers with produce. User shook his head. Egypt was surviving, but her ka was weak from the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. Life begat life.

  Thank Osiris for Pharaoh, living forever’s! insight and inspiration, which had made Pharaoh gather up excess in the Inundations of plenty to share with the rekkit in these Inundations of hunger.

  The imposing structure of the House of Eternity took up the full block. The whitewashed walls and papyrus-topped columns in red, blue, and green were reassuring, as they should be. User gestured to the priests, and they followed him to the delivery entrance in back. Whitewashed slabs were placed uniformly in the courtyard for just such occasions. The priests laid the body down, and User dismissed them, then knocked on the door.

  A scribe opened it, his bulk filling the width of the doorway. User had worked with him before; he was an idiot. How could it be that in a three-year famine this scribe still looked as though he dined at Pharaoh, living forever’s! table nightly?

  “I need to arrange for a body,” User said, smiling pleasantly.

  “Dead?”

  “Haii, well, he is dying.”

  The scribe looked up. “Nay, my lord. We take only the already dead.”

  “He is dying. Quickly.”

  “Not dead yet? No entry.”

  “I am the first physician of the House of Life! I assure you, this man will be dead by tomorrow’s atmu!”

  “I am sorry, my lord, but only the already dead may enter.”

  User-Amun sighed. How inflexible the idiot was. “Look at him! In the sleep of death, broken limbs, probably shattered bones. He bleeds inside, see the bruises? There is nothing that can be done for him. I promise you, he will die tonight!”

  “Only the already dead, my lord.” He backed up as though to close the door, but User stuck his foot in the crack.

  “Look, my brother of Amun, I am busy. I have neither the time, nor the desire, to take him to my practice, watch him die there, then haul his carcass back here! Do you understand me?”

  “Just following my orders, my lord. I cannot help you. Already dead.”

  User-Amun ground his teeth. He was fully tempted to strike the comatose patient on the head and be done with it. Only the confession in the prayer of the dead, “I have not deprived any man’s life or ambition,” prevented him. “By the feather of Ma’at,” he shouted. “He’s going to die! Let me leave him here!”

  The victim chose this moment to mutter and thrash about.

  “Who is going to die?” a pleasantly cultured voice asked from behind User. He watched the eyes of the idiot scribe widen, and the man dropped into a sloppy bow. As User turned his heart sank. He suddenly knew he should not have left his home today. The gods were not smiling upon him.

  Imhotep. Pharaoh’s physician and offspring of the brilliant designer of the Pyramids. Stones the size of bird’s eggs glimmered at the man’s throat, wrists, and fingers. He was tall and unspeakably ugly, with features that were so disproportionate they looked like a mask. His teeth were decayed, rattling in his head and giving him the breath of a crocodile, but his gray eyes smiled. His gaze moved beyond User’s hasty bow to the half-wrapped body of the unknown victim. “The man you are so certain will die?” he asked with a gesture.

  By Sobek’s tail, User thought, my career is finished. “Aye, my lord. In such a time as this we must trust the gods’ will that some be taken.”

  Imhotep raised the man’s eyelid, then checked the voice of his heart. “Skilled work on his hands,” Imhotep said. “It is well that a man not enter the afterlife without use of both hands.”

  “Aye, my lord,” User said, exhaling silently in relief. He glared behind Imhotep’s back to the incompetent scribe in the doorway. Perhaps this would make the man yield? “His injuries are mostly internal and far too serious.” User shook his head in pity. “He looked a strong man, but perhaps Isis wanted him more.”

  Imhotep was looking at the man’s ring. “Have you seen this before?” he asked. “Is this man a scribe?”

  “I know not, my lord.” User indicated the black hair matted to the soon-to-be-corpse’s skull. “He was found in the Apis run, but he is not a priest with hair like that.”

  Imhotep’s gaze touched the man’s legs and chest, both liberally sprinkled with hair. “Very odd,” he said. “Great pity that we cannot ask him.”

  User watched as the great physician’s eyes narrowed.

  “How long, say you, does this man have?”

  Aware of the listening idiot, User said, “A day, two at most.”

  “Is it not in your vows as a neter in the House of Life to care for this man until he meets Osiris?”

  User felt his face warm. “My lord, this man is doomed. I would wager a month’s grain that he will not wake again.” A gleam flickered in the great one’s eyes. Had the whisperings been true, then? Imhotep was open to any wage making? Perhaps this unfortunate victim would not be buried, unmourned, by the state.

  “If you choose to waste your grain that way, let me sweeten the wager. I will treat this man for three weeks. If he dies before then, I will pay for his burial and tomb.”

  “What if, by unlikely chance, he lives, my lord?”

  “Then he is mine and you repay me for my costs: treatment, time, and skills.”

  Sweat ran down User’s back. Truth of it, the man could linger for three days. To take his word back now would be admitting he’d exaggerated. But three weeks? Thirty days? Impossible. “As my lord suggests,” he said, keeping his tone even.

  With a curt nod, Imhotep’s guard loaded the body in a cart and began walking away. “I am here on Pharaoh, living forever’s! business,” Imhotep said. “I will send a messenger if the man lives and will expect your compensation by return message.”

  User nodded, crossing his chest in relieved respect.

  “Tell me again, where was he found?”

  “The Apis chamber.”

  “Trampled only?”

  “Aye, my lord, though he has some cuts. They are not gore marks, nor do they look like hoof marks. Perhaps he received them a short time before he was hurt?”

  The great one paled and made a motion of protection against the Evil Eye. “Could they be teeth marks?”

  User frowned, picturing the wounds. “Aye,” he said slowly. “But from a large animal. Perhaps even the bull.”

  Imhotep rattled his loose teeth. “The gods’ best to you,”
he said. “Life, health, and prosperity!”

  User bent low until the footfalls of the jogging slaves were gone. The scribe saw the look on his face and hurriedly shut and bolted the door. Swearing, User walked home.

  I was just on this road, User thought. Now, though, it was dark. Not as fearful as darkness on the 23rd of Phamenoth, but still he felt the breath of khefts on his neck. Hurriedly he passed through the temple gate. The priest waited, his kohl-ringed eyes glittering in the torchlight. From the darkened rear of the temple User could hear the sound of singing priests, taking the god Ptah to his couch.

  Silently the two men walked into the chamber. The body of the woman was there, no longer stiff, the flesh warm from the heat of the day. Decay was setting in, and User felt his gorge rise. In protection against wandering khefts and khaibits, he had bound an amulet around his throat and one on each arm. Prayerfully he covered the corpse with cloth.

  The sem -priest, chanting softly, bound a black cord around her waist, then knotted it. Had he wanted to destroy her ka, her spirit, he would have written her name on a papyrus scroll and bound it into the cord. Since they were destroying her body only, it was unnecessary to use her name. A boon, since her name and identity were unknown.

  Instead they offered prayers of protection for her ka, already loose on the face of the earth. Once the corpse was wrapped and tied, the priest picked up a wax figure of the woman. This was the most sacred of ceremonies, the vilest of Egyptian ritual. But it was necessary protection. Egypt was already weak with the famine, with sand-crawling Asiatics invading from across the desert. The red and black lands did not need a khaibit wandering the marshes.

  With a sharp bronze blade the priest cut off the feet of the wax figure. Was it User’s imagination, or did the corpse jerk, as though she felt the knife? In an inversion of the prayers of the dead, the prayers recited by the deceased as they traveled through the afterworld, the priest chanted. “When Ra’s light shines on these fields, you cannot rise to walk through them.” He cut off the figure’s hands. “Creativity is taken from your hands. You cannot fashion yourself.” The priest’s voice was trembling as he raised the hilt of the knife and bludgeoned the figure’s face. “You are blinded, you cannot find the river, the land. You cannot see to revenge or wreak destruction or take what is not yours.” He cut its head off. “In the protection of Osiris, I cut off my sister’s head. I beg the counsel of Osiris that this one’s ka is admitted to the afterworld. You cannot seek revenge.”

  He laid down the blade, picked up the pieces of the figure, then wrapped them in the edge of the linen. After letting themselves out a side door, User and the priest carried the body into the star-strung night, reciting prayers that were as rote as their names.

  “Hail, long-legged beast, striding from the cornfield, creature from the House of Light. I’ve seen nothing in the world but beauty. May we live forever!

  “Hail, priest of incense, smoke, and flame, fresh from the soul’s daily battle, I’ve taken nothing from life but strength. May we live forever!

  “Hail, wind in my face, blown from the mouths of the gods, I returned the goslings to their nest. The hawks soar freely above the cliffs. May we live forever!

  “Hail, devourer of shadows, terror lurking in the entrails of mountains, I extinguished no man’s life. I took neither his life nor his dreams. May we live forever!”

  They stood at the pre-Inundation edge of the Nile, supporting the body between them, water at their waists. Clumsily they tucked rocks into the linen wrappings. The priest was weeping freely now as they recited the final prayer.

  “May the light shine through us and on us and in us. May we die each night and be born each morning and that the wonder of life should not escape us. May we love and laugh and enter freely into each other’s hearts. May we live forever!”

  The splash seemed loud: then she was gone. Wherever her ka had gone, it was now trapped there. The two men gripped arms, looking out into the dark river. “May we live forever,” User whispered.

  IPIANKHU, LITERALLY “He Who Is Called ‘Alive,’ ” jolted awake. Sitting up, he slowly focused on the room around him. He was not in the dark confines of his prison cell, where despair was an odor that clung in the night, where men’s panicked cries to stone gods filled his ears.

  He breathed deeply.

  Instead, his wide, opulent chamber was washed in dawn’s glow. The white linen sheets that draped his couch were tinted pink and orange. The covered body of his wife moved gently as she breathed. This was his home. He was safe. Free. The most powerful man in Egypt, next to Pharaoh, living forever!

  So what had awakened him? He rose stiffly, went to the alcove, and washed his face and hands. He looked into the bronze reflection for a moment. At sunrise his foreignness was most apparent. The light seemed to catch fire on the red stubble of his chin and scalp. His skin was sprinkled with freckles, beaten into one copper mass by the sun. His eyes, the brownish green of the Nile, contrasted with his bronze brows and lashes. He looked away. A decan with his brush and paint-wielding manservant, and Ipiankhu was as Egyptian as any other man.

  He pushed away from the mirror and he walked to the door overlooking his courtyard. The famine had killed any beauty that had once dwelt there. Vegetation rotted in stagnant pools of water. Yet the famine would last only four more Inundations. This he knew; he’d been assured of it.

  Ipiankhu raised his gaze to the sun. Go to Pharaoh! a powerful command whispered through his questing mind. Senwosret needed him. The knowledge seized him and he clapped, waking his manservant to prepare him for an audience. When slaves came to get him less than a decan later, they were stunned. Surely Ipiankhu was an awesome mage!

  Pharaoh Senwosret was sitting up on his couch. His bare head was covered, lines formed by Inundations of worry drawing down his face, free of makeup. The film that covered his eyes and was ruining his vision seemed thicker today. His eyes were murky, filled with poison, like the Nile. Ipiankhu prostrated himself.

  “Rise, my wise one,” Pharaoh commanded. “I have dreamed!”

  As happened every time he interpreted a dream, Ipiankhu saw images flash in his head: His childhood and the arrogant dream of the sun, moon, and nine stars bowing to him. The beautiful mantle proclaiming him heir to his father’s herds, the same mantle ripped from his body by his half-brothers. The clammy, rodent-ridden chill of the well where he spent countless days and nights in sheer terror. His beautiful employer’s face changing from lust to hatred as though a sculptor were reshaping her features before Ipiankhu’s eyes. The haughty demeanor of the baker who had died. He felt a chill race through his blood, and in his heart he begged for assistance. “My Majesty, if it be the Unknown’s will, I shall interpret.”

  “I was in a desert. It was cold, not hot, even though Ra blazed down.” Senwosret licked his lips. “Before me the dunes and sands were losing their colors. An incense-thick gray fog surrounded me. Then all became darkness. Out of the darkness I heard an angry growl, the sound of a big cat in pain. Blazing fire engulfed me, and I saw the world in brilliance and a mountain cat with eyes like molten gold standing before me. He held a knife in his mouth.” Senwosret looked away. “Then I awoke.” The pharaoh chewed on his lip for a moment. “Could it be a sign to go to the temple of Bastet?”

  Ipiankhu sighed. He doubted the Unknown would send Pharaoh to worship a stone image. When would the man under Egypt’s double crown realize his gods were nothing? Ipiankhu wondered. Of course, Senwosret could not worship Ipiankhu’s god, not being of Ipiankhu’s tribe. His tribe … Ipiankhu pushed away his thoughts and focused on Pharaoh. “I must pray for the wisdom of the Unknown,” he said. “Only by his—”

  “Aye, I know,” Pharaoh interrupted. “Only he can see and tell you. You are merely a vessel.” He sighed. “What a pity your god will not allow you the honor of realizing your gift and accepting it as your own.”

  “It is not mine,” Ipiankhu began their common argument.

  Pharaoh waved hi
m away. “I have no heart for your words today. Go, do what you must to interpret. I shall not see your face in court until you know why I have had this dream.”

  “But the Aztlan envoy, My Majesty—”

  “What do you have assistants for? Surely you have trained at least one Egyptian to parry Aztlan’s threats and smile through bared teeth?”

  Ipiankhu bowed and backed from Pharaoh’s sight—there was no need to respond. Once on the other side of the double doors he swore. Responsibility weighed on him; Aztlan was pressing dangerously, and he and Imhotep had to defend Egypt … somehow.

  Ipiankhu’s anger was washed away by something more potent. A call more visceral, more urgent, than desire or marital devotion, daily duties or fleeting power. Forget not your first love. The unmistakable whisper filled his head. With quick commands he delegated his day’s duties, then Ipiankhu prepared to meet with his Unknown God.

  AZTLAN

  PHOEBUS FEINTED TO THE RIGHT, catching his opponent in the chest with a prong of his triton. The Mariner fell, and Phoebus pulled back. “That is enough,” he said, handing a serf the tall metal staff with its covered tines. “A good match.”

  “My gratitude, Golden One,” the Mariner said, bowing.

  Phoebus, Rising Golden Bull of the Aztlan empire, looked up at the balcony, where Niko, his dearest friend, was engrossed in a scroll. Though practice had gone well, and Phoebus was certain to be ready for the ceremony, he was disappointed that Irmentis had not come in. Hadn’t she been here, clinging to the shadows, the safety of the torch-lit chamber? He thought he had felt her gaze on him, almost as tangible as a touch.

  Pushing his long blond hair away from his face, he accepted a damp linen from a serf and wiped away sweat from the fake battle. The Season of the Snake had been warm this year, a strange omen that no one knew how—or dared—to interpret. Phoebus swallowed hard at the thought of the upcoming rituals. He was nineteen; he had spent his whole life training for this, the Megaloshana’a, the Great Year.