Day of the False King (29 page)

Once again he banged on the door, screaming.
The torch in his hand gutted and flared, plunging the chamber into
total darkness, then lighting it up again. To his horror, he saw the
insects begin to peek from their portals once more. Their flat,
unblinking eyes reflected the momentary bursts of light. Antennae
moved, tasting the air, seeking his smell.

Semerket sank to the floor, his back against
the door, and he wept in despair. He had faced death many times, but
always at the hands of humans — not like this, engulfed by thousands of
tearing jaws and ripping pincers. Worse, at the end of it there would
be nothing left of his body. His ka would be doomed to wander the earth
forever, looking for it, never able to rest in the eons ahead. Menef
had even stolen his eternal life from him…

The chamber echoed with his sobs. The torch
sputtered for a final time and died. Not long now, he thought. He began
to mouth the ritual prayer for the dead. “Osiris, who made me,” he
began, “raise my arms up again, fill my lungs with your breath. Let me
stand at your side…”

From across the chamber he heard scratching
movements coming nearer.

He inhaled raggedly, rushing to complete his
prayer. “In the fields of Iaru…” But terror had burgled the prayer from
his memory. “In the fields of Iaru…” he kept whimpering, “of Iaru…”

Semerket closed his eyes. He held his hands
over his ears to shut out the sounds of the skittering, advancing
insects. He braced himself for their onslaught…

Then the world fell out from behind him.

With his hands to his ears, he had not heard
the door’s latch unbolted. Before he even realized what was happening,
arms were reaching in to drag him swiftly from the cell. He was dimly
aware that the chamber door was being slammed shut, and a moment later,
he heard the noise of a thousand chitinous bodies hitting the back of
it at full force. Then he was looking up from the floor at the inverted
face of Shepak hovering over him.

“Semerket!” Shepak whispered. “Thank the
gods! You’re not hurt?”

He could not speak. He could not move. He
was thinking, I’ve died, I’ve passed through the gates of darkness —
and this is what heaven looks like.

SEMERKET COULD NOT rise from
the floor. He was only able to lie on the bricks, staring upward.

“How did you know I was here?”

“Your servants found me,” Shepak said.

Servants? Semerket craned his neck. The
brothers Kuri and Galzu, his two Dark Head spies, bent their heads in
greeting. He was shocked to see Nidaba as well, standing apart from the
rest.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said
languidly. “I’m not your servant.”

“But how did you find me here? How did you
know?”

“We had you in sight most of the day, my
lord,” said Galzu, wheezing. “Didn’t we promise you that we would? I
confess, though, we lost you after you left this lady’s house. You both
seemed to disappear suddenly at the end of a street. Luckily, around
sunset, we checked the wineshop — merely as a last resort, you know —
and saw you there.”

“I had followed you from…” Nidaba turned
away, eyeing Shepak, her Elamite enemy, and bit her lip; she could
hardly mention the cisterns to him. “I followed you to the Egyptian
Quarter. It took me a while to find where you had gone, but then I
heard your shouts. I saw those men surrounding you.”

“We knew you were in trouble,” said Kuri.
“The lady here joined us, then, when she saw that we were also
following you. She was most concerned, and wanted us all to attack the
men. We convinced her that such a job was hardly fit for a woman. The
lady hid here in the corridors while we went to fetch Colonel Shepak
from the garrison.”

Semerket blinked, interrupting them dazedly.
“But where is ‘here’? Where am I?” he asked.

“The palace dungeon, Semerket,” Nidaba told
him.

The dungeon. Of course; that’s why Queen
Narunte had been there. And if they were in the dungeon, then —

Shepak interrupted his fevered thoughts.
“When I got here, this lady was trying to rip the door from its hinges.
I daresay she would have done it, too.” He looked at Nidaba admiringly.
“I’ve never seen a woman so brave — or so strong.”

Despite the fact that Shepak was the hated
invader, Nidaba dimpled prettily.

Under the full force of Nidaba’s gaze,
Shepak had to swallow before he spoke again. “I must tell you,
Semerket,” he said, “we didn’t know what we’d find in there.”

“A few seconds more and you wouldn’t have
found anything,” Semerket answered. Shakily, he sat up. It was then
that he noticed he was still naked. Hastily, he covered himself with
his hands, looking askance at Nidaba; but Nidaba was staring only at
Shepak. And Shepak, he noticed, was staring back.

“Did they happen to leave my clothes
behind?” Semerket asked plaintively.

Shepak and Nidaba joined Kuri and Galzu to
search the dim hallway. They found his garments on top of a nearby
midden. So sure were his captors of his imminent demise, they hadn’t
even bothered to hide them. Shepak and Nidaba helped him dress, for his
limbs were still so rubbery that he could barely manage the task. As he
donned his clothes, he told his four friends of what he had learned —
that Menef and the Asp had been responsible for the raid on the
plantation, as well as the Egyptian temple, and that the queen had
assisted them in their crimes.

When he had clothed himself at last, they
huddled together, conferring in whispers. “We’ll go to the garrison and
put a guard around you,” said Shepak. “Then we’ll ask for an audience
with the king. You’ll have to tell him what you know.”

“No,” said Semerket after a moment. “Not
yet. There’s something else I must do here first, one final task.”

“But what?” asked a puzzled Shepak. “You’ve
solved the riddle — at least enough to tell Kutir who the culprits
were. What else is there?”

“If we’re truly in the palace dungeon, then
we must be near the burial vaults…?”

Nidaba and the Dark Heads looked at him
quizzically, but it took only a fraction of time for Shepak to
comprehend what he meant. Semerket saw the Elamite’s face slam shut.
“No,” Shepak said.

“I must.”

“I told you before — it’s sacrilege!”

“Shepak, listen to me. Naia’s body is in one
of those jars. I know it now. The last possible thing I can do for her
is to take her back with me to Egypt. My one comfort is to know that
we’ll be able to lie together in our tomb.”

Shepak remained obstinate. “How would you
like it if we were to come to Egypt and sift through your dead? You
need a priest to recite the proper prayers and spells before you can go
inside a crypt. It isn’t just a tomb to us — it’s the underworld
itself. Ghosts and demons lurk there!”

Before Semerket could reply, Nidaba
delicately coughed, interjecting in a small voice, “I’m a priest.” She
shot an alarmed glance at Shepak. “Er, priestess. I serve Ishtar.”

Semerket looked at Shepak, silently pleading
for his consent.

With a resigned curse, Shepak seized a
nearby torch from its sconce.

THERE WERE ACTUALLY several
floors to the palace cellar. Over the generations the Babylonian kings
had been forced to dig ever deeper into the fine river soil, creating
chambers in which to store the detritus of their reigns — unwanted
gifts of tribute, old furniture, tattered hangings. Statues from
faraway lands, outlandishly formed and bizarrely colored, emerged from
the darkness, caught in the passing light of Shepak’s torch. They
seemed, indeed, to lunge forward when the light caught them, like the
underworld demons Shepak feared.

They came to a pair of immense copper-plated
doors, set into a blood-red wall. Nidaba began to chant a prayer in her
loveliest voice, while Galzu came forward with his knife to dig out the
lead that had been poured, molten, into the crack between the doors.
Only when Nidaba stopped her chanting and indicated that he could, did
Shepak pull them open.

The first thing Semerket noticed was the
overwhelming smell of honey, overlaid by the sweeter smell of rot.
Semerket placed a tentative foot inside the crypt. Nidaba’s prayers
must have been effective, for no demons or ghosts rose to do battle
with him. With a nod to the others, Semerket reached for the torch that
Shepak held.

“I’m coming with you,” Shepak said.

“You don’t have to.”

“You’ll need someone to hold the torch for
you.”

Semerket nodded, grateful for the company.

“I’m coming, too,” Nidaba said. “I must say
the Prayer for the Dead over the jars you unseal.”

Shepak shook his head in wonder to see such
courage in so delicate a creature. Leaving Kuri and Galzu to guard the
crypt’s entrance, the three walked silently forward. To Semerket’s
eyes, the place looked like one of the huge river warehouses in Thebes,
with thousands of clay jars filled with grain or olives. But these jars
held a different treasure — the preserved corpses of Babylonian kings,
their wives and nobles, families and servants.

Semerket had no idea how he was ever to find
Naia in them. But Shepak said they would locate Kutir’s brother-in-law
in the far end of the crypt, where the most recent chambers had been
dug. As they walked further into the crypt, Semerket noted that each
jar was inscribed with the name of the entombed, together with the clay
seal of the king or queen they had served. Semerket was surprised by
the fact that king and servant alike were buried in exactly the same
kind of jar. In Babylonia, kings were not gods as they were in Egypt;
in death, all were equal before an unforgiving and indifferent heaven.

As they penetrated into the most distant
reaches of the crypt, the jars were newer-looking, not covered with the
dust of centuries. The honey smelled fresher, too. Soon the jars became
pristine in their newness, shiny with brown glaze, and the honey was
still sticky on their sides.

“Here they are,” whispered Shepak.

Shepak pointed to the seal on the jar in
front of him. It was Kutir’s seal, and the name below it said that the
body within belonged to Nugash, the husband of Princess Pinikir. To
Semerket’s dismay, many of the jars bore only the words “servant of
Nugash” or “servant of Pinikir.” As there had been no one left alive to
identify the servants, Shepak explained, there had been no record of
their names. Semerket groaned aloud. It meant that he must search every
jar reading “Servant of Pinikir.” He counted them — there were at least
six such jars in the row before him, perhaps more behind.

He went to the first jar that bore the
inscription. Nidaba, white-lipped, came forward to say a prayer to the
jar’s inhabitant, begging their forgiveness. At its conclusion, she
nodded to Semerket. His hands were trembling as he smashed the jar’s
seal of dried clay. The moment he did, the foul stench of putrefaction
flooded the room.

Shepak brought the torch nearer so Semerket
could look inside. It was worse than he thought — a foamy scum of rot
was on top of the honey. The Babylonians did not remove the soft inner
organs as the Egyptians did; all the gases and liquids of corruption
had therefore been released, to rise and pool at the top of the jar.

Semerket felt his stomach twisting, and a
sour taste rose again in the back of his throat. Firmly, he willed his
nausea away; he simply could not give in to it now. Holding his breath,
he fiercely plunged his hand into the viscous mess. He closed his eyes,
reaching further, until he felt his hand brush against a nose, and then
an ear.

He gasped, took another quick breath, and
held it. Moving his hand slowly through the thick honey, he reached for
the woman’s floating hair and pulled. The weight of the body was much
heavier than he had imagined, for the honey did not want to release it
so easily. Suddenly the scalp tore loose from the skull, and he
stumbled backward.

Semerket stood in the middle of the crypt,
clutching a wad of dripping hair in his hand. Shepak’s face was a mask
of horror, and Nidaba made a strange noise, turning away. Semerket
looked down at the gooey mess. The hair was white; the woman had been
elderly.

Naia was not in that jar.

He and Nidaba went to the next jar. Again, a
prayer was intoned, and again he broke the jar’s seal. Once more, the
fetid, sour odor rose in his nostrils. He plunged his hand once more
into the mess; this time, however, he reached down further than the
corpse’s head, hoping to snag an arm. Semerket was surprised when he
felt a piece of cloth, wrapped around the body’s shoulders; for some
reason, he had assumed the dead would be buried in the nude. His job
became a bit simpler by this discovery, for a robe or mantle would be
far easier to grasp than a slippery piece of flesh.

Bracing himself against the side of the jar,
he pulled on the cloth. Slowly the body rose; finally, the top of the
head emerged. This time the color of its streaming hair was black, and
he strained to lift the rest of the body into the light.

“Bring the torch closer,” he panted.

Shepak moved the torch, angling it toward
the face. Both of them winced to see it. Even with the natural
slackening the features had undergone, Semerket could not remember ever
having seen a picture of such affecting and hideous agony. The woman
had suffered massive burns, and one side of her face was gone. The
features that remained were horribly distorted; her torn mouth a
hideous grimace.

But the woman was not Naia.

Semerket let the body slip back again into
the dark, golden ooze, where it settled slowly. Honey drizzled across
the tiles from his arm as he went to the next jar. He did not know how
much more of this horrific gruesomeness he could endure. But when he
broke the seal, he knew his search was over.

There, floating at the top of the jar,
fouled by putrefaction, was Naia’s mantle. It was the one he had given
her on the Theban docks, as she was about to set sail for Babylonia. It
had been the color of the Egyptian sky, embroidered in five-pointed
stars of gold thread.