The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  Far inside the palace, in a maze of corridors, the chamberlain brought Iry to a pair of tall doors watched over by men in polished armor. They eyed her from the shadow of their helmets, but bowed and suffered her to pass in the chamberlain’s wake.

  She had come, of course, to the king’s chambers. They went on and on, a maze of rooms and passages, all seemingly deserted, but the shadows were full of whispers. She could feel the eyes on her, though she never caught any of those who stared.

  In the heart of those chambers was a room of surprising smallness. It had windows, which rather surprised her. They looked out on the central court of the palace, a deep space of pillars that made Iry think, somehow, of a bed of reeds made vast and set in stone. Or a forest such as Khayan had described it to her, pillars of trees that marched on and on into green shadow.

  This room was high above it, and must be near the roof of the palace. There was no one in it, but there were chairs to sit in, even a couch if she had a mind to lie at ease, and wine and cakes to tempt her, and a bowl of flowers to regale her senses.

  She should sit, she knew, and be patient. But she had been expecting to see the king, not be forced, after all, to cool her heels until he deigned to see her. She paced, pausing with each turn to gaze down and far down into the courtyard. People passed below, sometimes alone, more often in companies. She amused herself trying to guess what each person was, whether lord or soldier, servant or commoner wandering gape-jawed through the palace.

  Sometimes there were dogs, alone or on leads, wanderers or hunting dogs or, once, what must be the warhounds she had heard of but not seen. They were large even from this vantage, grey as wolves, in collars spiked with bronze. Their handlers struggled a little against the tug and surge of them.

  No cats, she thought. She had not seen one since she passed these walls. Retenu did not like cats. Wicked, uncanny creatures, they said, given to creeping about and startling passersby with a leap and a sudden slash of claws. Which was perfectly true, but that was what made them cats and not simply very small dogs.

  Iry did not like dogs. She particularly did not like the warhounds, even seen from so high and far away. She was glad when they were gone.

  She had by then become very comfortable in the deep embrasure of the window, curled like a cat herself, with warmth all about her from the sun as it rose above the walls. She let herself drift and dream, till a gnawing in her belly reminded her that she had not eaten since she woke in the morning.

  The cakes were not as good as she might have had in the Sun Ascendant, but they were pleasant. The wine, well watered, was of royal quality.

  Just as she sat licking her fingers, wondering if she could finish another cake, footsteps sounded—not at the door, but above. She looked up startled. The footsteps passed, grew dim, paused. Then she heard the sound of feet on a stair.

  A chamberlain, not the one who had brought her here, opened the inner door. “You will come,” he said in the soft light voice of a eunuch.

  Eunuchs, like warhounds, were a thing she had heard of but not seen. Neither of the lords she had been slave to had had eunuchs.

  She had heard that they were gross and vastly fat, and warbled like birds. This was a very tall, thin, elegant personage, and his voice was higher than a man’s but low for a woman’s. He reminded her of an ibis, as tall as he was, and as gangling-graceful. He did not look like a woman, except that he was beardless; but Egyptian men did not grow their beards.

  She followed him more because she was fascinated than because she was obedient to his summons. He led her out into a passage and up a stair. The top of it was blinding sunlight and the broad expanse of a roof. Much of that was cleared for ease of defense, but not far from the stair, someone, king or queen, had made a garden. It was small, and nestled against the foot of one of the four tall towers that warded the corners of the palace. A low wall surrounded it. Greenery overhung the wall, and a torrent of flowers.

  Within, there was no sense of smallness at all. Everything was green, and dizzying with scent. Above it Iry could see the grim face of the tower, but veiled and softened in leaves and bright petals. The center of it was, as always in this land of desert and precious green, a pool: here, rimmed with stone and glinting with fish. Lotus grew there, flowers like moons floating on the water.

  A man sat by the pool. The same guards who had attended him the day before attended him now: favorites, they must be, and trusted as she had trusted Kemni and—yes—Iannek.

  Of course the man in the menagerie had been the king. She remembered clearly Iannek’s face—he had known but not spoken, the idiot.

  King Apophis, against whom she had sworn perpetual hatred, smiled at her and said, “Good morning, my lady. Did you rest well?”

  “Very well, majesty,” Iry said. “Were the rest of the animals as entertaining as always?”

  “Quite so,” he said. “One of the lionesses cubbed in the night—I was visiting her, or I’d not have kept you waiting.”

  Gods, she thought. It was ghastly difficult to hate this pleasant man who loved his animals. And yet he was Apophis of the Retenu. He ruled the Lower Kingdom. He was the conqueror of conquerors, king of the foreign kings. All that she hated, all that she had sworn to fight against, was embodied in him.

  She could only do a thing that she had learned to do when the old lord seized the Sun Ascendant after her father died. She divided her souls. That part of her which hated, she laid aside. The rest could be cool if not dispassionate, could listen to him and converse with him and be as civil, even as amiable, as she had been to the nameless man in the menagerie.

  That nameless man was the one she spoke to. Names were power; everyone in Egypt knew that. Without a name, a man could not live forever, could not be immortal.

  And so, to her, the king of the foreign kings was simply a man. He had no name, and therefore no strength to stand against her if she chose to do battle with him.

  “Did you see the lion-cubs?” she asked him.

  “No,” he said rather regretfully. “The mother was not ready to bring them out of her den into the world. But when she does, would you like to go and see them with me?”

  “I would like that,” Iry said. And she would. This man without a name was very good company, and wise in the ways of beasts. Except horses. Those, he had confessed, he did not know well.

  She did not think that she would teach him. Indeed, as if he had read her thoughts in her eyes, he said, “So you are the Mare’s servant. Do you know how surprising you are?”

  “I would think the proper word would be ‘appalling.’”

  He laughed, rich and deep. Iry wondered if he and Khayan were kin. It was possible. Why not? “Yes, there are those who have called you appalling. I might have thought so when I first heard of you. But you are not as any of us might have expected.”

  “What did you expect?” she asked him.

  “Fear,” he answered. “Defiance. Mockery of us all.”

  “How do you know I don’t feel every bit of that?”

  “Maybe you do,” he said. “But you have mastered it. Have you not? You are what you are. You do what you must do. The Mare chose you for that.”

  “I’m glad you see so clearly,” she said. “Not many of your people do.”

  “Kings are taught to see clearly,” he said.

  “Even through clouds of flattery and the sleights of courtiers?”

  “Especially through those. The king who fails in that is weak, and his kingdom may suffer for it.”

  Oh, Iry could hate him now—for being wise; for speaking the words of a good king. He must not be a good king. He was a conqueror, an invader. He must be cast out of Egypt.

  And yet he sat in that garden on the roof of his palace, under a sky that his people had never been born to—but he had; he was born in this country as Iry herself had been—and he smiled at her, and said almost gently, “You wish I could be weak. Don’t you?”

  “Does it matter what I wish?”
r />   “The Mare’s servant is a great power in this kingdom. Surely you know that. What you wish matters very much.”

  “Why?”

  He must be accustomed to difficult questions. He was barely taken aback. “A goddess chose you for her own. She speaks through you. What you do, what you think, signifies more than if you were a simple mortal woman.”

  “So they tell me—those who’ve taken it on themselves to teach me. Are you all afraid of me?”

  “Some are in awe of you,” he said. “Some think you quite dangerous. A person of your nation, given such power as the Mare gives you . . . you could destroy us.”

  “And you would say such a thing?”

  “I’m sure you’ve thought it,” he said.

  “Do you think I would do that?”

  “I think you might.” He seemed unperturbed by it.

  “You won’t try to stop me?”

  “I never said that.”

  There was a pause. Iry had been warned. His expression was as calm as ever. He even smiled a little. He liked her, she could see. But he was a king. Kings could destroy even what they loved, in the name of their kingship.

  When she spoke, she spoke carefully, but taking no great pains to be circumspect. “I can promise nothing. Except this. Whatever I do, it will not harm the Mare. Whatever comes of all of this, it will be as she wills. Not as you will, lord king. Not for the good of your kingdom. But for her—whatever she ordains, I will do.”

  “She is ours,” he said.

  “She chose to accompany you for a while. She comes from another tribe than yours, and another world.”

  That silenced him. Iry might have condemned herself, but she thought not. She had seen how he looked at her. He was remembering what she was. Not a slave, not an Egyptian, but the Mare’s servant. The goddess’ chosen.

  She still had not fully understood what that was; what it meant. Sometimes she thought she never would. And yet she could use it. She used it now, to face the conquerors’ king.

  And what, she wondered, if he had no fear because he knew what she could not face? What if, for the Mare’s sake, Iry turned on her own people? That must be what he hoped for, even expected. As of course he would. Never, she thought. By the gods. Never.

  But doubt niggled at her. Maybe it had troubled Kemni too—and hence he had vanished without telling her when or where he was going.

  Enough. She was still in front of the king, and he had eyes that could see both far and deep. For him she must be strong, and not waver. He must never see her doubts or her fears, or know that she had them.

  She smiled at him, not too brightly, and not too shakily, either. “Tell me more about the animals,” she said. “The spotted ones whose necks go up and up, till they tower like trees—tell me about them.”

  He might have been inclined to press her on the subject of the Mare, but it seemed that he too saw the wisdom in turning aside from it. He answered with no apparent reluctance, in fact almost eagerly.

  The rest of the audience was pleasant, and perhaps prolonged; until a chamberlain came and hovered, and reminded him that he had duties in the greater palace. Then Iry was let go. She was not sorry to go, but neither was she in excessive haste.

  She did like him. What he was, she hated, to the heart of her. But the man without a name, the pleasant companion who knew so much of so many animals, she could think of, in a way, as a friend.

  X

  Khayan in Avaris remembered anew why he had been so glad to be sent away to the steppe, far from the courts of kings. In his own domain he was happy enough; he was born and bred to rule, and he did it well. But he was not born to be a king.

  “You were born to serve kings,” his sister Maryam said. She had taken on herself the management of the suite of rooms they were all crowded into. Of them all, she seemed the most content.

  “I can serve kings outside of the court,” Khayan said. He had not exactly come looking for her; he had been seeking refuge from the importunings of people who seemed to think that he had influence with the king. But she had been overseeing the servants on their washing-day. Amid the scents of fresh-washed linen and damp wool, he paused to whimper at his sister. It was no more than that, he knew it, but he had been doing much the same since he was young enough still to seek his nurse’s breast.

  Maryam had always indulged him but never spoiled him. She went on about her smoothing and folding, with a very pretty maid to help her. The maid slanted glances at Khayan that he could well read. If he should happen to remember her later, she would be delighted to oblige him.

  He might, at that. Barukha was a jealous woman, but in Avaris she had had perforce to return to her kin. Protestations that she was a priestess in training, that she could not be spared, had been set at naught by Sarai’s gracious granting of leave. Sarai was perhaps glad to be rid of her. Khayan was somewhat surprised by the extent of his own gladness. Barukha heated his blood wonderfully, but she was neither a restful nor at all a safe companion.

  He was free now to cast his eye elsewhere. That was quite to his liking. He allowed himself to meet one of the girl’s glances, and to bestow on her the hint of a smile. She took it as he had meant. Her eyes sparkled as she bent diligently to her work.

  Maryam’s voice pierced through the distraction. “You’ll be leaving here soon enough. Surely you can bear to be a king’s man for the little while between.”

  Khayan sighed gustily. “I’ll have to, won’t I?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You will.”

  She had dismissed him, so smoothly and with such tact that he was well away from her before it struck him what she had done. He paused then and laughed ruefully. Maryam kept his house wherever he was, but she did not serve him or any man—no matter what she might want him to think.

  He should be in one of the courts, gathering with others of the lords who were in the city, to speak of things that they had spoken of endlessly before. Matters of the kingdom, the latest embassies, and of course, always, the question of war. Some of the young hotheads, Iannek’s agemates, were yelling to be allowed to conquer the south of Egypt. They and their forebears had been yelling for it for a hundred years, and no doubt would be doing the same in another hundred. It was not practicable, that was all. Khayan knew it. The older lords knew it. But the boys and children would not hear it. They wanted what they wanted. They did not care what it cost, or how difficult it might be.

  Khayan had been as young as that once. He was not so old now. But he had been riding the steppe when he might have been ramping and snorting with the other boys. The women of his mother’s tribe had kept him in hand, slapped him down when he got above himself, and taught him to master his temper.

  It was a pity, rather. He might have liked to be an idiot for once. Idiots were happy creatures, as far as he could see. When they were thwarted, they professed to misery, but even that had an air of good cheer about it.

  In that frame of mind, he made his way through the crowded and bustling rooms. People kept stopping him with this trouble or that. Most he could send to Maryam, a few to his mother—though they blanched at that. The rest he put off till evening. It would make for an interrupted dinner, but that in turn would spare him the need to attend one of the court banquets.

  For the moment he was as free as he could be in the heart of this prison. He considered hiding in the room that he had, bless the gods, to himself. But he happened on his way up to it to collide with Iry on a stair. She was hurtling down it just as he began to go up.

  He was a middling large man and she was a small woman, but her speed came near to knocking him flat. Only good fortune and battle-quickness kept him on his feet, albeit winded and counting his bruises. She clung to him lest she tumble past him down the stair.

  Somehow and another it seemed most sensible to swing her up into his arms, light weight that she was, and carry her up the way he had been going. The passage it led to was long and very dim, with his own door at the end of it. Hers, he knew, was som
ewhat nearer. But he passed it, and she did not try to stop him.

  He began to wonder if she had injured herself somehow. She was so very still. Her eyes were shut. He quickened his step, kicked open the door at the end of the passage, and nearly dropped her as she came to life and wriggled bonelessly out of his grasp.

  She seemed quite unharmed, after all. She looked about at the room, which was smaller than he had grown accustomed to but still rather larger than a tent among the tribes. The bed was discreetly hidden behind a drapery, but she could not but know where it was. The rest at least was harmless enough: a gilded couch in the Egyptian fashion, a table and a pair of chairs, a chest for such of his clothing as the servants saw fit to keep close by him, and a quite incongruous graven image of an Egyptian king.

  “King Dedumose,” Iry said, tracing the characters of his name with her finger, then enclosing it within the carved cord of the cartouche. “He must have been king before you people came. There was a city here, you know. You found it and built it high, but it was ours before it was yours.”

  “That’s the way of conquest,” Khayan said.

  She shot a glance at him. “Do you expect me to love you for it?”

  “No,” he said. She stalked round the room, frowning at the walls, which were hung with fine weavings. There were painted revels underneath, he knew, but she did not look to see them.

  After a little while she halted by the window, leaned deep into the embrasure and peered out. Her voice sounded strange, coming from within: muffled, yet with an echo in it. “The king has a window, too, but on the other side, and much higher.”

  His brows rose. “You’re high in favor, then.”

  “Or the Mare is.” She slipped backwards out of the embrasure, with little care for the way her robe slipped up, baring her leg to the thigh.