The City of Refuge: Book 1 of The Memphis Cycle

by Diana Wilder

  The clatter of the chariot's wheels upon the roadway sounded unnaturally loud in the midnight hush. “Here's a fork!” Seti said.

  Khonsu nodded. “That's the first one. The wider path goes north up into the hills. The other way is passable only for about half a league, then it dwindles to a footpath. The larger branch splits once again, farther on, but there's nowhere else he could have gone than to this point.”

  Seti frowned along the wider branch. “Let's go on, then,” he said. “We need to talk to him.”

  The thud and clatter of hooves upon hard-packed earth behind made both men turn. A chariot was bearing down on them from the narrow fork. The driver's face was featureless in the shadows of his hood.

  “He was waiting for us!” gasped Khonsu.

  “Well, he's found us!” Seti said through his teeth. He wheeled the chariot to the right in an attempt to block the pass. “Hold tight and I'll stop him!”

  The roadway was too wide at that spot; the other reined his team in a well-controlled, left-hand swerve bringing him through inches ahead of the other team's noses. His free hand seemed to flicker as he passed them.

  Khonsu shut his eyes against a sudden cloud of gravel and sand. Seti cursed and hauled at the reins as his horses squealed and shied, backing the chariot hard against the uneven shoulders of the road. It tipped perilously, the axles creaking, and then righted as Seti, still swearing, tried to calm the team.

  “Do you see him?” Seti demanded through his teeth, occupied with controlling snorting, shying horseflesh.

  “Yes,” said Khonsu, shielding his face against the strengthening wind. “Heading south toward the King's Road! I placed guards at the southern end just before the stables-we've got him bottled up!”

  Seti smiled grimly and urged the horses to a gallop.

  The line of clouds was closer now, nearly obscuring the moon as they clattered down along the road, past the northern palace lying silent and ghostly on their left.

  “He's dead ahead!” cried Khonsu. “He's slowing!” He swore as the Royal Road took a bend, losing the other chariot from sight for a moment.

  “We'll catch up with him!” said Seti.

  The temple of the Aten lay to their left, silent and pale in the increasing darkness. The walls of the royal enclosure rose to either side.

  A knot of shapes slightly south of them, beneath the bridge containing the Window of Appearances, resolved itself into the now abandoned chariot. The horses, reins trailing, were standing and gazing wide-eyed as Khonsu and Seti approached and reined in. One of them shied.

  “He's afoot!” said Khonsu. “Where could he have gone? There's no shelter here, unless he-”

  He looked up, gasped, and seized Seti's arm.

  A white shape flickered at the window: the wind catching a linen cloak.

  Khonsu sprang from the chariot. “Follow me!” he called over his shoulder. “There's a doorway! It leads to the bridge!”

  He and Seti plunged through the opening, ran up the two banks of eight steps two at a time, and arrived, panting, at the Window of Appearances. They could see the two chariots below them in the street.

  “Footprints!” said Seti, pointing at the sand lying in drifts before the window. “Going that way!”

  Khonsu ran along the slope of the bridge, pelted down the ramp, and paused at the base, which opened to the middle palace of the Heretic.

  The ramp led past the ruined garden to a wide courtyard bordered on two sides with the stubby bases of what once had been colossal statues. More ramps led up to the exits on the other three sides. Khonsu frowned and cast over what he remembered of the layout of the palace. Pillared courtyards lay to the west, and a labyrinth of small rooms. South of where he stood was a smaller, high-walled courtyard, entered by only one door. The door itself, made of bronze-clad timber, was still in place. Khonsu could see its square outline in the wall like a block of shadow.

  Seti gripped his shoulder and pointed into the yard. “We've got him!” he exulted.

  A white cloak, huddled against the wall in the far corner, fluttered in the rising wind. Khonsu gave a crow of triumph. “There's no way out!” he hissed. “We've got him!”

  “Come on!” said Seti, and ran through the doorway followed by Khonsu. He came to a halt in the middle of the room. “All right, now,” he said, schooling his voice to gentleness. “There's no need to be afraid. We just–”

  The slam of the heavy timber door behind them cut off his words. A moment later they heard the crash of the bronze bar into its sockets.

  “No!” yelled Khonsu.

  Seti strode forward, seized the cloak and then cursed. The garment had been carefully draped over a pole against the wall. The wind had caught its folds and made it move as though it were still on its owner.

  Khonsu stared at the door, then slid slowly down the wall to end up sitting on the floor. “Duped!” he said. “He was waiting just inside the door as we ran past. Brilliant! And there's no way out!”

  XVIII

  “I can feel an opening-there!-big enough to get my hand through,” Seti said. He was standing by the door, groping along the spine, where it was set into the socket of the pivot. “Maybe I can get enough purchase to cut away-” He broke off with an oath.

  Khonsu hurried over. “What is it?”

  “It's bronze-clad all the way down! Damn and rot it!”

  “How thick is the bronze?” asked Khonsu. “If it's just a thin layer, we can punch through it with the points of our blades and then whittle away the wood.”

  Seti sat back after a moment. “More than a finger's breadth. This door is fortified from top to bottom. What was this courtyard, anyhow? A treasury?”

  Khonsu looked up at the high walls. “These are clad with limestone. In fact, all the pillars, all the lintels, all the grillwork-all are stone. I had thought it would make this palace a more secure lodging-place for everyone.”

  “You were right about that,” Seti said through his teeth. He pushed to his feet and paced the length of the wall. “It's getting darker... Could you reach the top of the wall by standing on my shoulders? And maybe get enough purchase to climb over?”

  Khonsu ran his hand down the polished stone walls and craned his neck back to look up to the top, then shook his head. “I'd need to be half again as tall as I am,” he said, “With fingers cupped like a frog's toes to get any purchase on this stone.”

  “And there's nothing we can pile up and use as stools,” Seti said, peering around in the darkness. “This was a neatly laid trap. And it caught a brace of geese!”

  Khonsu sat down on the floor with a muffled oath and drew his knees up after a moment. “We're in the palace complex,” he said. “The western part, where no one is staying. This was the harem courtyard, as I recall.”

  “That's why the walls are so high,” Seti said grimly.

  “The others are only across the street,” said Khonsu. They're sleeping now, but in the morning we could shout for help and make noise-”

  “Using what?” Seti inquired with a gentleness eloquent of clenched teeth.

  Khonsu looked at the stone walls and his dagger again, and sighed.

  Seti's annoyance faded a little. “Well, anyhow,” he said. “We can certainly shout tomorrow. No use wasting our breath tonight. Do you suppose that fellow knew we were laying for him and came up with this trap while he was outside the city?”

  “I'm ready to believe just about anything,” Khonsu returned. “A brilliant plan, perfectly executed-the bastard should have been a general!”

  Seti's ironic smile vanished as a rumble overhead made him look up.

  The massed clouds were black now, the moonlight a thing of the past. The building wind whirled shrieking through the walled courtyard. A rapid succession of blinding white flashes lit the area as the skies opened with a roar.

  “Oh shit!” Khonsu yelled as he pelted for the small portico by the door. By the time he and Seti had reached it, their clothes were plastered to their skin
s and they were shivering in the increasing cold.

  “It only lacked this to make a perfect evening!” Seti said through his chattering teeth, watching the sheets of water slant down from the sky. “I can't imagine what more can go wrong this night!”

  A moment later he and Khonsu were turning to stare behind them as the door swung slowly outward.

  “General Seti? Commander Khonsu?” It was one of Lord Nebamun's personal guard. His quiet, respectful voice was barely audible above the crash and rattle of the storm. “Follow me. His Grace has been looking for you.”

  And he turned and led them back through the doorway, beneath an arcaded walkway to the covered ramp from the Window of Appearances, where the Second Prophet of Ptah, flanked by his guard, stood waiting with folded arms and a formidable scowl.

  ** ** **

  “Tell me again why you decided to follow this mysterious fellow,” said Lord Nebamun. They were sitting in his small reception room, part of the quarters assigned to him in the king's private apartments, which lay across the street from the ramp.

  Nebamun, wakeful in the night, heard the sound of hooves, and went to investigate. The sight of two driverless teams of horses had alarmed him. He had alerted the guard and then, learning that Seti and Khonsu were missing, joined in the hunt. He had discovered the footprints on the ramp of the Window of Appearances and gone through the abandoned, western part of the palace.

  After having the two men bundled up, hurried back to his private quarters, and given something warm to drink to chase away any possible chill, Nebamun had sat back, looked them over, and treated them to a pithy summation of his opinion of their intelligence that made them feel like children again.

  “He had been taking horses in the night,” said Khonsu. “Going out cloaked and hooded.” The words sounded foolish even to his own ears.

  “'Cloaked and hooded',” Nebamun repeated. “So do I, when the weather warrants it. Is something wrong with that?”

  “No, Your Grace,” said Seti.

  “The horses were taken out,” Khonsu said.

  Nebamun folded his hands around his cup of warmed wine and regarded them gravely. “Now that's something,” he conceded. “Especially considering Paser's comments about intruders to the north.”

  Khonsu lowered his eyes.

  “You did not tell me any of this,” Nebamun continued. “Why not?”

  “I didn't think the fellow was an intruder, Your Grace,” Khonsu said. “I thought it might be someone with this force. I have the city well ringed with guards.”

  “Not that well ringed,” Nebamun pointed out. “The man cut through several times without any apparent problem.”

  “I thought he might be harmless, Your Grace.”

  “A harmless man might have come openly and asked for the loan of a team of horses if he was harmless?” Nebamun pointed out.

  “I'm not so sure,” Khonsu said. “I thought it best to confront him and confirm it.”

  Lord Nebamun sipped his wine without comment.

  Khonsu frowned into his cup and then raised his eyes. “Isn't it possible, Your Grace, that something quite harmless might also cause embarrassment to the person doing it? What if that man found a woman on one of the farms along the river and wants to be with her? If that's all he's doing, then I have no quarrel with him, though with the talk of intruders, I meant to tell him to stop. But why should I treat him like a criminal if there is some doubt?”

  Nebamun finished his wine and sat back. “You have your answer,” he said. “You're lucky neither of you was hurt getting it.”

  Seti traded looks with Khonsu. “The worst damage was to our pride, Your Grace.”

  “You were wet to the skin and the night was growing cold,” Nebamun said with crisp precision. “If we hadn't found you, brought you here and warmed you, you would still be there and well on the way to a severe chill at the least. I don't want this to happen again. Until I tell you otherwise, you are to make it impossible for this horse-borrower to take horses any more. Set a tight guard at the stables.” He added with relentless sweetness, “Indeed, Commander, I am surprised you didn't do so sooner.”

  Seti had been listening with a frown. “But we really should discover what this mysterious fellow is about.”

  “No,” said Nebamun. “It is my command that we make it impossible for this man to take our horses, and then let the matter drop.”

  “But Your Grace-”

  Nebamun looked Seti up and down. “I have stated my wishes in plain Egyptian, General,” he said. “I didn't think “no' was an ambiguous word in that language. Apparently it is. Very well: I speak Akkadian, Hittite, two dialects of Babylonian, and the trade language of the Cretans, as well as a little of the language of the Tjehenu. Would you understand me better if I were to translate my instructions into one of these?”

  Seti reddened and was silent.

  “No,” said Nebamun. I refuse to allow you to take any liberties with the safety of this mission. Post your guards, Commander, and let us put a stop to these midnight excursions.” He looked over at Sennefer. “Are they warmed and dried to your satisfaction, Master Physician?” he asked. “Yes? Then, gentlemen, I suggest you both go to bed.”

  XIX

  “His Grace told me to show you this,” Nehesi said the next morning.

  By Lord Nebamun's orders, Khonsu had been allowed to sleep late, and now he was enjoying a breakfast of new-baked bread and watered wine in the shade of the palace's western wall. An honest review of the past night's fiasco had convinced him that he had acted irresponsibly, and His Grace should not have been so gentle with him. Now he smiled at Nehesi and motioned him to continue.

  “He thinks it bears directly on your task here,” Nehesi said. “He wants you to be aware of it and take whatever steps you think are best.”

  Khonsu set down the loaf of bread, crusted with cumin seed and warm from the oven, and looked up into the Nubian's dark eyes. “What is it?” he asked.

  “This,” said Nehesi, offering a parcel wrapped in a length of coarse linen.

  Khonsu took it from him and opened it to find what appeared, except for its weight, to be a large block of light-colored cheese. but was, instead, a fine-grained chunk of limestone the color of thick cream. Though it was almost cubic in shape, one side was rougher, scored with slightly curving gouges.

  He looked up at Nehesi again. “A rock?” he said.

  “Yes, Commander. From the quarry. I brought it back yesterday.”

  Khonsu was frowning, but he remembered his manners. “Please sit down, Master Mason,” he said. When the man had done so, and had accepted a cup of watered wine, he turned his attention back to the piece of rock. “Is there something unusual about this one?”

  “The marks on the underside-there,” said Nehesi.

  Khonsu ran a finger over one of the curves and then looked up at the Chief of Stonemasons. “Very well, Master Nehesi,” he said with a wry smile. “I'll take your word for the significance of these scratches. For myself, I can't tell a thing about them.”

  “They were made with a maul,”Nehesi said, his dark brows knotted into a frown. “A dolerite maul, such as they use in the Aswan quarries.”

  “But there's nothing unusual about that, is there?” Khonsu said. “These are quarries as well, here.”

  Nehesi smothered a snort. “This is a limestone quarry, Commander,” he said. “Limestone can be worked with copper tools and wooden wedges. Try using copper on granite and see how long you keep an edge or a point. A hard stone like granite requires dolerite and a lot of effort.”

  “But don't you have any mauls here?” Khonsu asked.

  “Didn't you hear me, Commander?” Nehesi asked with a flash of white teeth. “We don't need them. And just as well,” he added. “They're expensive.”

  Khonsu reflected that his own intelligence was not making itself shown an any remarkable fashion. “I'm dull today, I see,” he said, handing back the stone. “So the fall was nothing that might ha
ve happened in nature?”

  Nehesi set the limestone on the ground. “Would it be natural for a plank of wood, lying completely flat upon another, on a level piece of ground, to fall?” he asked. “You saw the quarries. The stone is taken out in blocks. They're flat-sided. They don't fall of their own accord. They must be pried loose. And here-”he lifted the rock again. “-you can see where the rock was torn away. The dolerite cut through virgin stone: you can see the crystals here. It's as though you clawed gouges into sand with your nails. There's a weathered crust on the side opposite the marks.”

  Khonsu frowned at him. “Then that means-”

  “Someone undercut a support,” Nehesi finished for him. “The collapse was engineered. I'll be reporting on it today.”

  ** ** **

  Lord Nebamun assembled his key officers for his customary morning meeting and announced his plans for the next week. A messenger arrived from Khebet as he was speaking, with news that the supplies from Memphis had reached Khebet as scheduled and were awaiting them. He concluded his message by inviting Lord Nebamun to join Mayor Huni for an afternoon meal.

  Nebamun listened without comment and then dismissed the messenger. “It is a pity the harbor here at Akhet-Aten was filled in when the city was abandoned,” he said after the man had left. “Having it would have saved everyone the annoyance of traveling to Khebet. Well,” he said after a moment, fingering his carnelian amulet, “It can't be helped. Commander Khonsu, General Seti and Ptahemhat will go to Khebet and take charge of the cargo. Prince of the Winds can probably carry most of it, but two of the smaller ships will escort you. They can be loaded first and sent back. The Ship's Master told me just last night he's kept them ready to sail.”

  Khonsu bowed. “Very good, Your Grace.”

  “I suggest you check the bills of lading carefully against the delivered cargo,” Nebamun said.

  Sennefer elbowed his way past Khonsu and stared almost accusingly at Nebamun. “Do you think my medicines have arrived?” he asked.