The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  The others collapsed in giggles. “Oh! Oh, I wager!” cried Neferure. “But those eyes, I’m not sure I like them. They’re too much like a cat’s. Or a hawk’s. Hawk’s eyes are cold. They’re full of killing.”

  “Not these,” said Mut-Nefer. “They’re warm, like amber.”

  “I’m sure he’s killed people,” Neferure persisted. “They all have, all that kind. With those big hands.” She shivered deliciously. “Oh! To feel them on me.”

  It was fortunate that the Lady Nefertem deigned to appear just then, in a procession of maids, or Iry would have risen up and knocked those idiots’ heads together. The lady’s arrival silenced them abruptly and mercifully. It took a great deal of time to see her settled in the proper degree of comfort, full in their center, of course, with all of them hovering, waiting on her eagerly.

  All but Iry, and Khayan who never left his place once he had established himself in it. He was like the Mare. If Iry was there, he cared little for anything else.

  At length the flurry faded. The room had a new center, that luminous beauty and that serene certainty that the world existed to serve the Lady Nefertem. Iry let it indulge itself for a little while—not, she told herself, because her courage was failing, but because her mother seemed so happy in it.

  She could not delay too long. The five Beauties were restless already. A moment more and their clamor would begin anew.

  “My friends and my kin,” she said. Her voice sounded thin in her ears. She firmed it as she had been taught to do, as a priestess must who would speak before all the people. “I have brought you here to tell you of a thing. This morning my lady mother reminded me of my duties and obligations, not only to rule here in the king’s name, but to consider the proper rule of these lands and the continuation of the line. She pointed out that in the Two Lands, a woman holds lordship through and by her men; that the king’s name alone is not enough, and that certainly he cannot provide her with an heir.”

  One or two of the Beauties tittered, till their mother boxed their ears. When the cries of outrage had died down, Iry went on. “My mother informs me that, as is proper, she has chosen one to stand beside me in the ruling of this domain.” She held out her hand. Kemni took it a little warily, eyes dark with mistrust.

  People were beginning to babble, a clamor more joyous than not. But there was silence behind her, silence as large as Khayan’s body.

  Iry met Kemni’s stare. His hand, she could not help but notice, was well fitted to her own. Khayan’s was easily twice the breadth, so that if she would take it, she must do it in both of hers. Kemni was a smaller man by far, but large enough as men went in Egypt. They would look well together, matched as to height and breadth, and in looks, too, though Iry was no beauty and Kemni was a great one.

  Still with her eyes on his, she slipped her hand free. “I have heard my mother’s reasons,” she said, to him more than to anyone, “and considered them with care. They are excellent reasons, most fit and proper. No one could possibly quarrel with them.

  “And yet,” she said, “I can’t marry you.”

  He said nothing. He was—relieved? Maybe. He would still argue with her, if she let him.

  Which she did not intend to do. Not with him, not with anyone. “You see,” she said, “I was born a daughter of this house, a child of the Sun Ascendant. But when I had come to womanhood, another destiny was laid on me. I was chosen to serve a goddess whom none of us then knew, a power that takes shape as a white Mare. That goddess, in choosing me, laid on me other choices, choices that I cannot refuse. Even if I would, I cannot refuse them. And one,” she said with beating heart and a prayer for calm, “is this.”

  She rose. She took Khayan’s hand in both of hers. It did not resist her. He was very, very still. “This,” she said, “is the father of my daughter who is to be born, and the father of the children that I will bear hereafter. He is my husband by the law of the tribes, my chosen one before the goddess.”

  It interested her to see how little surprise there was, even in her mother. But shock—of that there was much. Outrage, indignation, all of that. Even anger.

  “That is one of the Retenu!” Mut-Nefer cried.

  She spoke for them all, except, Iry thought, the Retenu themselves, and Kemni who was beginning, rather maddeningly, to be amused. If he laughed, she would hit him.

  “This is a man of the Mare’s people, whose father happens to have been Retenu,” Iry said. “He is a great master of horses. He knows the ruling of lands—including these—and the ways of our people.”

  “He is not Egyptian,” Nefertem said in a tone of icy scorn. “Child, truly, he is good to look at, as one of his stallions is, and no doubt he serves as well as a stallion may, but is he fit mate for a lady in the Two Lands?”

  “Not at all,” Iry said. “And yet he is mine.”

  “I forbid it.”

  “You cannot. It is done.”

  “Then let it be undone. You will take your kinsman as I bid you, and send this young stallion away. There are mares enough for him, surely, wherever he may choose to go.”

  Oh, she was angry, was the Lady Nefertem, to come so close to the edge of vulgarity. Iry had never seen her in such a temper.

  Fear, as Iry had discovered in the war, could only rise so high before it either destroyed one’s wits or restored them to a keen and almost bitter clarity. Iry’s mind was like bright water, that the wind could touch and ruffle and even shift, but always it flowed back to the stillness in which it had begun.

  Khayan’s hand was still in hers, her small fingers stretching to clasp his large ones, but well content to be so overpowered. “I will not send him away,” she said to her mother out of the deep quiet in her center. “If his presence here offends you, then I will give you a holding of your own, a place where you may rule to your heart’s content. For you will not rule here. I am the lord whom the king set over these lands, the ruler whom he has chosen. This is my lord whom I have chosen, with the goddess’ blessing.”

  The Lady Nefertem sat mute. Iry did not know that anyone had ever defied her before. It was a terrifying thing, but Iry could do nothing but what she did.

  Nefertem spoke at last in a soft, still voice. “You are determined in this?”

  “I can do no other.”

  “I will not leave,” Nefertem said.

  “Then you will accept my choice.”

  Nefertem shook her head. But she did not speak further. Iry took that as assent, or as close as that proud lady was going to come.

  ~~~

  “Will she ever accept me, do you think?”

  Iry sat in the wide and lordly bed, clasping her knees and enjoying the simple pleasure of Khayan lying naked before her. He had stretched out on his side, lazy as a lion in the sun, but his eyes on her were clear amber, almost gold, and very keen.

  “Do you think she ever will?” he asked again.

  “Probably not,” she said. “My mother is almost as stubborn as I am, and very proud. But she won’t conspire against you, or try to have you driven out or killed. That much she’ll do for me, because I am her blood kin.”

  “I’ll win her over,” he said with surety that in another man would have been arrogance. But Khayan might actually do it. “She may never accept me as your husband, but she might, in the end, grant that I have a right to live here.”

  “That would be a victory,” Iry conceded. Then, after a pause: “Are you regretting what I did? If you don’t want to be—”

  “That depends on what you’re asking me to be. Can a woman here marry a slave?”

  “You were never a slave,” she said. “Never in my heart. You are my lord and my beloved.”

  “I am an exile in the country in which I was born. People spit in my tracks when I pass.”

  “That will end,” Iry said with calm conviction. “We shall be bold, you and I, side by side as it is done in Egypt. Will you do that, my lord? Come out with me in the morning, dressed as a lord should be, and walk beside me
as proudly as you ever did, and sit in a chair equal to mine as we share the morning’s judgments. Side by side, my lord. Hand in hand. Can you do that?”

  “I can try,” he said.

  “You will do it.”

  “As my lady wishes,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “As my lord wishes. Side by side.”

  “Side by side.” He spoke the words as if he did not quite understand their meaning, but was willing to learn.

  She smiled. “Side by side, and proudly.”

  “Proudly.” Now that, he understood. “Yes. I can do that. With joy, even. Bravado. Defy them to hate me. Dare them to love me.”

  “And when they succumb,” she said, “let them see your great heart and your strong spirit. Maybe I’ve forced you on them—but in the end they’ll be glad of you.”

  “I can hope so,” Khayan said, a little doubtfully still; but she knew no doubt at all.

  SON OF RE

  Kemni dreamed. He was his winged self, his ba-spirit, riding the winds of heaven above the visions that the gods wished him to see.

  He looked down on white walls, blinding in the sun, and the white mountains that men’s hands had made to be the tombs of kings: Memphis at the gate of the Lower Kingdom, and the Pyramids beyond it, rising tall out of the Red Land. It was a day of festival, the festival at the height of Inundation, when the king came to the white city and stood with the priests of Ptah beside the ancient measure of the river’s flood, and marked it with great rite and ceremony.

  This was the first time in a hundred years that the king at that rite wore the Two Crowns, white within red, and bore the blood of royal Egypt. The foreign kings were driven out, their kingdom in Canaan defeated, their cities broken. Their names were expunged from the annals of the Two Lands. All that they had done was unmade, their monuments broken or taken back. Even their great city, their capital of Avaris, was given as gift by the king to his queen from Crete.

  Ariana was present at this rite, beside and slightly behind the Great Royal Wife, the Queen Nefertari. There was a crowd of princes about them, lords and ladies and their kin and servants and children. Joy sang in them, the joy of victory.

  The wind bore Kemni in a spiral downward, the better to see the faces of those about the king. He found those he looked for, and quickly, too: Iry his cousin in the gown and wig of an Egyptian lady, but the headdress that crowned the wig was the golden crown of the Mare’s priestess. A towering figure stood beside her, not behind her, in lordly garb and a great weight of gold. A smaller one clung to his leg: small naked girlchild, her head shaven as children’s were, save for the sidelock which, even plaited, let slip a vagrant curl.

  She looked remarkably as Iry had when she was small, but her eyes were light, almost gold, and her skin was not quite the warm red-brown of Egypt. Instead of the blue bead that children were wont to wear for luck, this child wore an amulet: a plump white horse on a string of plaited horsehair.

  They stood close, the three of them, and Kemni could see that in a little while there would be four. Even as he watched, Khayan laid his arm about Iry’s shoulders, and she leaned lightly against him.

  Kemni’s spirit knew a moment’s regret, and a moment’s jealousy. To see two who loved each other so, and could defy the whole of their nation and kin and blood, and came to joy for it, and he—he had nothing—

  He called himself to order. He would be glad to see them so glad. More so for that the Lady Nefertem stood not far from them, and not as one who set herself apart. Indeed, when her glance fell on her grandchild, it grew almost soft. Nefertem might never accept the father, but Kemni would wager that the child was the light of her grandmother’s eye.

  There were others near them, too. Iannek in armor like a guardsman. A number of Sadana’s warrior women. Even Kemni himself half-hidden behind the bulk that was the young Retenu.

  The sight of his own body sent him spinning down into it. Eyes that had seen the whole throng, now saw only what a man on foot could see, and that only what the mind behind them willed. Kemni’s spirit had no power over this body.

  Still, he could see what it saw, and feel what it felt. It was dizzy with joy, and not only to be present at this rite. Something else had befallen it. Something wonderful. Something to do with the warmth beside it, which it refused to glance at, as if the sight of it would make it vanish. It was a woman, his spirit knew. Who she was, he was not permitted to know.

  His spirit stiffened in dismay, and in a kind of horror. The love of his heart was dead. How could he turn to another, even after the passage of years? Was he then so inconstant?

  It seemed that, at least in dreams, he was. It was sweet, that joy; sweeter than he had ever thought to know again. He was not even afraid to lose it. That fear had tormented him, his spirit knew as spirits could, but he had grown into calm. What the moment offered him, he would take. He would be a fool to do otherwise.

  He was almost sorry to wake; but a voice was calling him. He opened his eyes, blinking, half-blind with sleep.

  Sadana stood over him. He gasped in startlement, then in sudden relief. “Is it morning already?”

  “It’s dawn,” she said. “The lame mare foaled in the night. Her sister has been pacing for an hour and more.”

  Kemni sprang up, staggering but keeping his feet, and scrambled for his kilt. “An hour? She’ll have foaled before I come there!”

  “I think not,” Sadana said. “She’ll wait for you.”

  ~~~

  She had waited. She was in the stable as certain of the mares were who were nearest their time: favorites, or mares of the Mare’s kin. Her sister nursed a fine tall colt, dark and spindly against his dam’s moon-pale bulk. She was still pacing, lashing her tail, glaring at her sides.

  Kemni settled quietly outside of the stall, as he had learned to do when mares foaled. “Does Iry know?” he murmured into Sadana’s ear.

  Sadana raised a brow. “Why, should she?”

  “These are the Mare’s kin.”

  “But not that Mare,” Sadana said. “And she may be preoccupied.”

  Kemni bit his lip. Preoccupied. Indeed.

  Sadana folded her arms on the breast-high wall that marked the stall, standing almost close enough to touch, but not quite. Kemni followed suit, resting his chin on his arms, waiting in quiet for the mare to get about her business.

  As he stood there, intent on the white mare but aware in his skin of the presence beside him, it came to him: he had felt this before. This warmth, this presence. This gladness so deep he had not even been aware of it.

  In this waking world, he could command his eyes; he could glance at her. She seemed unaware of him. She was watching the mare.

  Sadana? Sadana was the woman in his dream?

  Well, and why not?

  He did not love her as he had loved Iphikleia. No woman would ever have that from him again. And yet, maybe, he loved Sadana no less. It was different, that was all. Love born first in friendship, in the bond between comrades in arms; between warrior and charioteer. She had chosen him once to be her lover, but not again; nor had she seemed inclined to do it. He had never forgotten that night, but neither had it grown into obsession.

  In the dream she had loved him as he loved her, and that was the joy of it. But that might have been his own wishing given substance. Certainly she took little notice of him now, nor seemed to care how close he stood, and he near naked.

  The mare had gone down, heaving as mares did in the swift violence of birthing. He saw the silver bubble of the caul, and an ivory gleam within it: the foal’s foot as it dived into the air.

  Sadana frowned. He saw: one foot only where should be two, and the mare straining. Sadana leaped over the wall and dropped at the mare’s side, reaching within, searching; pausing. The mare strained again. Smoothly, cleanly, Sadana drew out the body of the foal, dark and wet within the clouded silver of the caul. She folded it back from round muzzle and from ears that curled at the tips, thin wet neck and great square
shoulder.

  The foal stirred, struggling, pulling itself free of its mother. Sadana sat back as it moved, letting it birth itself now that she had freed it. It tried to crawl into her lap. She cradled it, turned it till it faced its mother.

  The mare had raised her head. Her nostrils fluttered. She touched nose to small wet nose.

  Sadana’s smile was sudden, luminous, and completely unselfconscious. It warmed Kemni like sunlight as he settled beside her, watching the mare greet her foal.

  “Colt?” he asked.

  “Filly.” Sadana sounded greatly pleased. “A mare among the Mare’s people. She will be very beautiful.”

  Kemni was learning to see the seeds of beauty amid all the legs and angles of a foal; but he was still far from accomplished in the art. Sadana, who had learned it as a child, spoke with confidence and no little pride. It was a great thing to bring one of these creatures into the world, so rare as they were, and so dear to the goddess.

  They watched together in silence as the white mare’s child taught herself to stand, to seek the brimming udder, to nurse. There was no need to speak, to cover discomfort with a veil of words. All that they needed to say, the mare and her foal were saying between them.

  Kemni could leave it so, as it had been since Sadana appointed herself his keeper. Or, when the foal had drunk its fill and sighed and dropped down to sleep, and the mare had turned her attention to the fodder that she had disdained the night before, he could say, “Come with me. When I go to the Bull of Re, as I should do soon—come and help me.”

  She raised a brow. “Is there no one there to do it?”

  “No one of the Mare’s people.”

  “Well then,” she said, “one or two of my women would be delighted, I’m sure, to ride with you into the Upper Kingdom.”

  He heard her in a kind of despair. But he would not surrender yet. “I was asking you.”

  Both brows went up. If she was laughing at him, he would look for a sword to fall on. “What can I do that one of my women cannot?”

  “Be Sadana,” he answered.