The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  “The gods, yes,” she said. “Now go.” She sent two of the Arianas with him, “And not to keep you awake, either. Mind you sleep. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly, great lady,” he said.

  She made a sound of disgust. “Oh, go. Go!”

  ~~~

  Iphikleia was as salubrious as a dash of cold water in the face. But she had commanded that he sleep, and sleep he did; nor would the Arianas suffer him to dally with them before he slept. They bathed him—teasing him unmercifully—and dried him and tucked him in bed, and left him there, already more than half asleep; though his manly parts would gladly have roused the whole of him to quite another occupation.

  He dreamed of bulls, a great heaving herd of them. Bulls running. Bulls grazing. Bulls mating, mounting the smaller, gentler cows, driving home their seed, dropping sated to the trampled grass. He dreamed that he was a bull; that he courted a fine speckled cow; that she ignored him, but the way of her disregard invited him to pursue her.

  It was a hotter passion than men knew, and swifter. A man could linger, could draw out the pleasure. A bull knew no such thing. Once he had mounted, the rest was irresistible: thrust and thrust, and the burst of it, all at once, with force that emptied him of thought or will or self. There was nothing in the world but this. There could be nothing, nor ever would be.

  ~~~

  He woke with a start. The light was all wrong, the shadows twisted. Somewhere amid confusion, he found memory.

  It was evening, the sun not yet down but near to it. He had slept much of the day away. His body ached: his legs in particular, but his nether parts, too. He had joined in wild passion with the coverlets.

  He rose stiffly, cleansed himself and dressed, and reflected that, come morning, he should ask the servants to shave him. But he would do, for a while longer.

  He peered at himself in the disk of polished bronze that lay on a table near the bed. He never did that; he trusted servants to keep him looking presentable, and women’s eyes to assure him that he looked well enough for the purpose. This evening he had an odd desire to be certain that the face he wore was his own; that he had not grown the horns and muzzle of a bull.

  It was much the same face he had last seen reflected in bronze. There was nothing remarkable about it. It was Egyptian: narrow, long-nosed, full-lipped. His eyes were long and dark, painted with kohl and malachite against a sun that did not shine here; but habit was strong, and fashion inescapable.

  After so long in Crete, looking at rounder, softer faces, and seeing every man and woman with a waist-long curly mane, this crop-headed, sharp-featured face was strange. He did not see the beauty in it that all the women claimed to see. There were handsomer faces in Egypt, and great beauty among the women.

  But he was content with it. It was his face, and not the bull’s head that he had half feared to see. With a sigh and a shake of the head, he went in search of a congenial dinner.

  ~~~

  Kemni’s place in the palace had not changed because he had ridden the bull. He was still the stranger, interesting because he was foreign, and fashionable because he had the Ariana’s favor. The bull only proved what they had all been saying: that Kemeni the Egyptian was anything but a dull guest.

  Kemni the Egyptian, doomed to be fascinating, attended the bulldancing as the Ariana’s guest. She had sent her servant for him—a man, somewhat to his disappointment, but perhaps that was as well. He did not need distraction before that of all festivals in Crete.

  He had dressed in his best, as if he went before the king; and after all, it was a god he honored, the great Bull who was the image and servant of the Earthshaker. In wig and kilt and gold of honor, he followed his guide through the mazes of the palace, to a part of it that he had not seen before.

  Except in dreams. This was the court in which he had sat so often in the spirit, the court of the Bull: great open space, and ranks of benches ascending in tiers, and below them clean white sand, raked level, waiting for the dancers. He sat where his eyes had been in the dream, just above the sand, with the wall below and the crowds of lesser watchers above. His seat was softened with cushions, his head canopied against the sun. Great lords and princes sat around him.

  But not the king. The king sat across the court under his own golden canopy, with his queen beside him. There were older lords, ladies in jeweled skirts and tall headdresses, and servants with fans and sunshades and jars of wine and platters of sweets. Here on Ariana’s side were the younger folk, the priestesses, the lords’ sons and younger brothers, warm already with wine, and passing round a gluttonous array of sweets and spiced cakes.

  Kemni could not eat or drink. Since he came into this court, he had felt odd, as if one or more of his souls had wandered apart from his body.

  Ariana was not there. Another priestess sat in the tall chair of ivory inlaid with gold. It was, Kemni realized with a shock, Iphikleia. She was clad as if she had been a goddess, even to the serpents wound about her arms. Kemni thought them the work of hands, until one of them stirred and lifted its head, questing toward him with a flickering tongue.

  He sat still on his scarlet cushion. The rite had begun below: the mournful cry of horns made of great shells of the sea, and a processional of priests—men, for Earthshaker was a men’s god, though both men and women honored him in the dance. They wore the horns and hides of bulls, and came as bulls would come, stepping slowly, stamping, snorting, pawing the sand. Behind them came the dancers, slender youths and maidens in kilts wound and belted tight. These laughed as they passed into the court, spun and wheeled, leaped and somersaulted, like acrobats in a market in Egypt.

  There was a wild joy in their coming, a gladness that Kemni understood: he had felt it when he ran with the bulls. Today one of them, or more, might die. Or they all might live, conquer the bull and honor the god.

  Three by three they leaped and danced and whirled about the court, and three by three they paused, first to salute the priestess, and second to salute the king. With prayers and chanting and moaning of horns the priests blessed them; and then, abruptly, they were gone. The court was empty. Servants ran to rake the tumbled sand, to smooth it once more, as if no foot had ever sullied it.

  The court stilled. All the hum and babble of gathered people, the ripple of laughter, eruptions of song, fell silent. Everyone, it seemed, drew breath together, and held it.

  A drum began to beat. Pipes skirled. Horns sang their moaning song. The bull came.

  Kemni knew him. He was the pied bull who had carried Kemni into the palace. He seemed even vaster in that court, and far more deadly, as he loomed in his gate.

  The dancers’ gate faced his, opening beneath the priestess’ seat. For a while Kemni could not see them, though he knew they had come out: the crowd had drawn taut, and the eyes of those on the far side were fixed below him.

  The bull saw them. His head lowered. His ears flicked. He pawed the sand.

  With sudden motion, all three of the dancers leaped into the center of the court. Kemni had not known that he was holding his breath. But they were not the dancers of his dream. These were two maidens and a youth, somewhat pale even at this distance, and intent on their dancing. First they tempted and tormented the bull, to lure him out of his gate. And when he had come, slowly, dubiously perhaps, they began the dance proper, the leap and spin and somersault over those long curved horns.

  The bull was placid as bulls went, as Kemni had discovered when he rode it into the palace. It seemed almost to indulge the dancers; to spin and circle and gallop massively from end to end of the court, with dancers leaping weightlessly over and about it. There was a kind of beauty in it, an ease and almost safety that might have pleased the dancers, but the crowd was growing restless. When the bull had circled thrice, the dancers joined forces to drive it through its gate. It went as if it had been a tame thing.

  The dancers took their bows and the less than avid approval of the crowd, and whirled and leaped and tumbled out. Again the servants c
ame out to rake and smooth the sand. Again there was that breathless waiting: the sun beating down, the crowd breathing as one, the bull coming forth and the dancers coming to meet him.

  Seven times they danced the bull in that court, seven sets of dancers, seven bulls for the honor of the Earthshaker. For Kemni who knew none of the finer points of the art, it grew monotonous. Some dancers won more approval than others: most often, he thought, because the bull was wilder, his will more malevolent. For some of the bulls, as with the first, this seemed almost a game, a thing they did for the amusement of it. But for others, this was battle. The dancers, tiny leaping things, were like gnats: annoying, then irritating, then maddening.

  At last, when the sixth dance was done, Kemni gathered wits to ask one of his many questions. He addressed it to the priestess beside him, but Iphikleia answered from her throne, where she had sat unmoving through all that long burning morning. “The bull’s anger makes the dance more deadly. Earthshaker cherishes it the more for that. And if there is bloodshed . . .”

  Kemni nodded. “Then if the bull is placid, Earthshaker withholds his blessing?”

  “No,” said Iphikleia. “The dance is always holy, and always blessed. Blood makes it stronger, that’s all.”

  There had been blood already: a dancer in the third dance had caught herself on a horn and so pierced her hand. But she had spun free and her fellows had diverted the bull, and she had continued the dance, leaving a bright trail in the white sand. All the others had escaped unharmed. They were not, it was clear, expected or even asked to sacrifice their lives to the god.

  The last dance began just as the sun reached its zenith. The court throbbed with heat. It was warm enough even for Kemni, as warm as Egypt. For the first time since he had sailed past the Delta, he was not shivering with perpetual cold.

  There was a difference in this dance. The drums and horns seemed louder. Voices joined them, a deep, slow chant like the surge and swell of the sea. It was Earthshaker’s hymn, invocation and blessing, and a promise that here, at the end of the dance, he would find his greatest favor.

  Kemni had forgotten to breathe again. The light, the heat. The stillness of the gathered people, the great circle of faces rising up the sides of the court.

  With the inevitability of a dream, the bull came out from beneath his gate: a great bull, speckled white and red like seafoam flecked with blood. And the dancers when they came, two youths, a maiden laughing, wild and eerie-sweet.

  Kemni the dreamer had not known her. Kemni the waking spirit, king’s emissary to Crete, knew her well indeed. The Ariana danced below him, danced for the honor of the god, dared death to win his blessing for her people.

  In his dream she had lived, but one of her fellows had died. Kemni could not move to cry warning, though every step unfolded as he had seen it while he slept, far away in Egypt.

  This was not why he had come—to save the life of a boy who had consecrated himself to a god. And yet this had brought him here. This had marked him from all who might perhaps better have gone on his king’s errand.

  He could only watch, barely breathing, as the dance played itself out under the pitiless sun. A god could not be gainsaid, nor his sacrifice denied. No matter how a mortal might dread it, and yearn to stop it.

  The boy was one whom he had seen here and there about court and palace. They might have shared a banquet together, or gone in company on an expedition to the city. Kemni did not remember his name. There were so many like him among the youth of the court.

  He danced well, but without wisdom. Ariana seemed to care little for danger or death. And yet her skill was great, her control remarkable. People murmured at it, marveling—how close she came to those terrible horns, and how effortlessly she evaded them.

  Her taller partner was nearly as skilled—Kemni could see that, after six full dances. The smaller boy had not danced before, someone behind Kemni whispered to someone else. He danced well, but he took risks he should not have taken. He should have left them to the others, hung back somewhat, protected himself with caution.

  But caution was seldom a young man’s virtue. And Ariana taunted him with her art. She leaped when the bull was nearly upon her, leaped and whirled and came lightly to rest on the shoulders of the taller dancer. The bull plunged onward. He was one of the great ones, the ones made mighty with a terrible anger. The curve of his hump was like the swell of the sea. His hooves thundered like the crash of waves on the shore.

  The boy flung himself as if into the sea, and like the sea, the bull took him and broke him and cast him up on the sand.

  In the dream Kemni had awakened as the boy died. But this was no dream. He saw the body fallen, the slow seep of blood, the deep and terrible silence.

  It shattered. It burst in a vast wave of sound, a roar from every throat in that place: men, women, even the bull. But Kemni was silent. He owed no loyalty to Earthshaker. His gods were of another place and kind.

  The sacrifice was made, the victim carried away in great honor. Those who had watched him die left the court in quiet that partook a little of grief, but much more of exaltation.

  X

  The day after the dancing of the bulls, Kemni was summoned again into the king’s presence. It was a day of quiet after the great festival, a day as it were of atonement, of mourning for the one who had died, and invoking the gods and the great goddess to bless the land and people of Crete.

  Earthshaker had blessed them that morning, as the people thought of it. Kemni had just risen and was reaching for the jar of water lightly sweetened with wine when the earth heaved and shifted underfoot. The jar began to topple. He snatched it, too startled yet to be afraid.

  The earth had moved. He shook his head, sure that he had dreamed it; but the spatter of spilled wine belied him.

  It was true, then. In this country, on this island in the sea, the earth itself could shift and stir as if it had been water.

  The Cretans had taken it as an omen. Earthshaker was pleased with his sacrifice. Kemni, more shaken than at first he knew, obeyed the king’s summons without reflection, and with little expectation of what he might hear or say.

  ~~~

  King Minos received him this day, not in any hall of audience, but in the court of the bulls. Kemni hesitated at the entrance to which his guide had brought him, blinking at the blaze of sun on sand. No blood sullied it now. All that had been taken away when the sacrifice was done.

  The king sat at ease and in little state on a bench that, the day before, had seated a common man of Crete. A single guard attended him. There was no other escort, no witness but the servant who had guided Kemni to this place.

  Kemni had learned long ago not to question the whims of kings. Therefore he was not astonished to be received with such lack of ceremony. But the place—he could not burst out with the question, however strong the temptation.

  The king knew. His eye glinted as he said, “Come, man of Egypt. Sit. I trust it’s warm enough for you here?”

  “It is very pleasant,” Kemni said. The king seemed comfortable enough himself, though his brow gleamed with sweat.

  Kemni sat on the bench just below the king. Minos gazed out over the sand. “You dreamed the dance,” he said. “Did it happen as you remember?”

  “Exactly,” Kemni said. “I couldn’t—if I could have stopped it—”

  “No one should ever try to stop what the gods have ordained.” Minos spoke mildly, but his voice held the hint of a growl.

  Kemni bent his head.

  “Earthshaker chose you,” Minos said. “And Earth Mother—she blessed you. It seems they see some profit for us in this venture your king proposes.”

  “Perhaps,” said Kemni, a little unwisely, “they believe that Egypt and Crete together will be a great power in the world.”

  “Perhaps,” the king said. “And is it insult or great gift that your king sees no threat in us? We could conquer you once we drove out the conquerors.”

  “You might try,” Kemni sai
d.

  The king laughed, startling him. “Ah! Well and swiftly countered. Yes, we might try, but for what? We have no great yearning to rule a people who despise us. And your river—it is very great, no one denies it, but never as great as the sea.”

  “We cherish our river,” Kemni said, “and admire your sea.”

  The king smiled. “So. We are safe from one another. Will you pay a price for our aid in your war?”

  “Only ask,” Kemni said, “and if I can’t grant it, I can take it back to my king, and he will decide.”

  “You must grant it now,” said Minos. “Here, where the gods have brought you.”

  Kemni had not felt alone or terribly far from Egypt in some considerable while. It had been a kind of mute endurance, and a refusal to fall prey to the sickness that could fell a man far from home.

  But now he felt it, in this court, in this audience that had nothing of formality about it, and yet was everything to his embassy. Thebes lay at the other end of the earth. Any choice that Kemni made, he made alone, with the whole fate of Egypt resting on it.

  Minos knew that. He might wish Kemni to end his embassy now, to confess that he lacked the power or the will to speak for his king. Kemni was young, with little wisdom and less skill in the arts of princes. Perhaps his presence was an insult—gods, dreams, and all.

  He must not waver. He must trust to the gods who had brought him here, and to the indulgence of his own king, that whatever bargain he struck, Ahmose would honor it.

  “Tell me your price,” he said levelly.

  Minos might be amused. He was not struck dumb with admiration, Kemni could see that. He stroked his beard as he seemed to like to do when he would draw out a moment. “This is not my price,” he said after a while. “You should know that. I am king in Crete, but there are others higher than I. They ask this of Egypt, if Egypt is to have our aid in its war.”

  Who asks? Kemni almost asked aloud. Your gods? But he was silent.

  “You are asked,” said Minos, “to confirm this alliance with blood as well as gold. To make a marriage, man of Egypt, between your king and a royal daughter of Crete. Will he do that? Can he do it?”