Immortal (24 page)

I reached Khufu’s antechamber fairly quickly and found him alone but for one solitary slave—Nampheta.

She was kneeling beside his throne, leaning forward and face down in a position of maximum supplication. Khufu, who had been pacing, stood before his small dais and watched me as I entered.

“Lord Vizier,” he greeted.

“My king,” I replied, bowing deeply. I noticed the guards who had escorted me left us alone and shut the doors as they went. Nothing about this looked even a little bit good.

“You have something to tell me, I think.” It wasn’t a question.

I should mention that like many persons of royal blood I have met in my life, underneath it all King Khufu was moderately insecure. I think it’s because so many of them spend their lives trying to aspire to the greatness that is frankly assumed because of their family background, the problem being that blood alone does not guarantee greatness in a man. Deep down inside, most of them realize this. Some overcompensate. Khufu was like that. And he had a lot to compensate for. He was a little man, not terribly bright, and not the slightest bit clever. I often had to go out of my way not to appear too smart so as to avoid his wrath. This was not always so easy.

In this case, I had no idea what he was talking about. “I don’t believe so.”

“No?” he snapped. He glared at me, but soon decided this wasn’t terribly threatening given I was a head taller, so he retreated to his raised throne and sat. I waited for more details.

“You have been plotting against me,” he stated, as though it were a fact. It was complete nonsense. My sense of political intrigue didn’t extend beyond making sure my ass remained securely covered.

“I’ve done nothing of the sort.” My eyes strayed to Nampheta on the floor. She would not look up to me, or move much beyond breathing. What had she been telling him?

“Liar!” he shouted. Sweet Re—the man was angry. “I know about the meetings you have been having with my snake of a half brother! Behind my back! Did you think I would not learn of this treachery?”

“With Khalfu?” Khalfu was the eldest son of Khufu’s father’s second wife. (One needed a chart to keep track, especially since none of them were very creative in the name department.)

“Yes, why don’t you tell me what you were plotting, Lord Vizier?” He had taken my positive identification of his half brother to be a confession of some sort. Again, not the brightest guy in Kemet.

“The last I spoke with Khalfu was last week,” I said. “He requested information on the crop blight in the south. Two provinces had been lax in their duties.”

“Again you lie! Why would Khalfu concern himself with such matters!”

“Because you asked him to look into it, my king.”

He paused in mid-bluster as soon as he realized that yes, he had done exactly that, while I stifled the urge to giggle. He recovered quickly.

“There were other meetings,” he insisted. “Private meetings.”

“When might these have occurred?”

“Suffice it to say I know they have. Unfortunate for you both that I have a witness whose loyalty is far greater than yours.”

Which brought us back to the supine figure by the throne. Nampheta had still not moved a muscle, but she was certainly listening.

“Do you mean the slave on the floor, my king?” I asked mildly.

“She overheard your treachery, Lord Vizier.”

“Did she?” I asked. “Tell me, when did the great Khufu decide that the word of a palace slave was greater than his vizier? Greater than even your own brother’s?”

“My brother is a dog!” he shouted. “And you, vizier, no one knows what you are!”

This was very bad, and it was going to get worse very soon if I didn’t figure out a way to calm him down. Unfortunately, I was getting pissed off myself, although not so much at him. How could Nampheta do this?

“Khufu, she is a slave! What is the matter with you?”

“I have long suspected this from you,” he spat.

“Then you are foolish and paranoid, and listening to lies!”

Oops. Never call a king paranoid. Even when they are.

He leapt to his feet. “Guards!”

The two Cro-Magnons from outside the room came running in, spears at the ready.

“Hold this traitor!” Khufu demanded, pointing at me.

Well, I couldn’t have that. I mean it was already obvious I was in major trouble, but while I didn't see any ready solution, I could be pretty positive the options would go from few to none as soon as I let Khufu’s palace guards chain me up. Fortunately, he employed only humans. Two of them I could handle.

When the first guard reached me, I grabbed his spear, yanked it over his head and kneed him in the groin. He let go of the spear in time for me to swing it around like a baseball bat and swat down the second guard with a blow to the side of the head, shattering the wood haft and knocking him out. With a quick spinning kick, I broke the nose of the first guard before he had an opportunity to do much more than grab his privates and whimper. He was unconscious by the time he hit the floor.

Khufu was too stunned by my actions to find his voice, which afforded me the time to pick up the half of the broken spear that had a point on the end of it. A quick jump up to the throne and I had the tip pressed up against the front of his throat.

“Sit down, Khufu,” I ordered. He did as I requested, which had to be the first time since he was a whelp that he took orders from anybody.

“Nampheta,” I barked, “get to your feet.”

She rose slowly. Tears were streaming down her face and she looked more terrified than I had ever seen her, which was appropriate. The foolish thing had put both our lives in danger. “Look at me.” Her eyes found their way from her feet up to my face. Frightened indeed. Of me.

This would have been, incidentally, the very best time for Khufu to grab the spear from me as I wasn’t paying him much attention. He didn’t budge. Can’t say I was surprised.

“Why?” I asked her.

She trembled mightily, but couldn’t put to words what had to be a complex stew of emotions. It didn’t matter. I could guess most of it. After leaving me she must have found her way into Khufu’s bed. It was the only way a slave could have gotten his ear, and it was the only way she could have found out his deepest fear: that the people he trusted were plotting against him. I refused to believe she really wanted me dead—doubted, in fact, that she even thought through any of this to the proper conclusion. She had just wanted to hurt me, and perhaps, also show that she had more power than I’d given her credit for. But then I had more power than she’d given me credit for as well.

I decided that was absolutely the only thing I had going for me. Nobody knew what I really was. Khufu had said so himself.

“Vizier,” Khufu began.

“Shut up,” I said.

“You dare speak to me like that?” he asked, his voice rising to its former heights.

“I’ll speak to you however I wish,” I replied. I pressed the point a tiny bit further into his throat to emphasize my resolve.

“I am about to offer you a deal, Khufu,” I said. “I recommend you take it.”

“A deal?” he repeated, shocked.

“Spare her life and I will spare yours.”

He scoffed at the notion. “In a moment this room will be full of guards, and you will be dead. You are in no position to bargain.”

I pressed the tip of the spear forward a bit more, opening a pinhole in his throat. “Your guards cannot kill me,” I said. “Now make the deal.”

“All right,” he whispered.

I looked at Nampheta. “Go,” I said to her. “The king’s word is his bond, now run. Leave this place and never return.”

Hesitating only momentarily, she fled the chamber. If I was very, very lucky she wouldn’t alert the guards for at least a few more minutes.

“I would not have had her killed,” he insisted. “She’s done nothing wrong.”

“We disagree,” I said. “And after you let me go, you will need someone on whom to target your wrath.”

“After I let you go? Lord Vizier, you have truly gone mad.”

“My real name is Seth,” I said, trying hard to sound as sinister as I could. “Why don’t you try calling me that instead?”

He laughed, but only for long enough to decide I wasn’t joking.

It’s hard to overemphasize the hold the old myths had over the people of Kemet. Try to imagine a society of fundamentalist Christians and then imagine that the Bible included a thorough plan for a system of government and you’d be close. In order for the king to hold onto his power, the old stories had to be essentially factual, otherwise, the whole king equals god thing would have to be untrue as well. And if it were possible for the king to be the living incarnation of Horus or Osiris or Re, then it was also possible for the living incarnation of Seth to walk the Earth.

As the legend had it, Seth—god of the desert, god of violence, basically god of everything unpleasant—betrayed and then slew Osiris and chopped his body up in a million pieces, scattering the remains all over Kemet. Osiris’s wife—Isis—eventually found all the pieces (except, interestingly, his penis, for reasons I’m unclear on) and restored her husband.

Kings associate themselves with one god or another, sometimes Re, but generally Osiris or his father Horus. It’s not unlike popes picking the names of earlier pontiffs with whom they feel a kinship. Khufu—and this was good news for me—believed himself to be the living incarnation of Osiris.

So you can imagine how he felt being told that the man holding a pointy thing to his neck was the god Seth himself.

“I don’t believe you,” he said defiantly. His tone said he wasn’t so sure.

“Believe what you see, Khufu. You see what I did to your guards. You see that I have not aged a day since we first met.” I pulled myself up to his ear and pressed the blade a bit harder into his throat, because it seemed like a good and sinister thing to do. “Believe that all you will do by striking me down today is anger me,” I whispered, laying it on as thick as I thought I could. “And if you do, when I return I will not be interested in honoring the deal we made today.”

“Deal?” he whined.

“Your life for hers,” I repeated. “You remember?”

“Oh . . . yes.”

I could hear footsteps from outside the chamber. We were cutting this close.

“Consider yourself lucky, Khufu,” I said, trying to pick up the pace without being too obvious about it. “I keep my word. Escape my wrath today—let me leave freely—and you shall live a long life.”

“Halt!” shouted about a dozen guards, more or less simultaneously from behind me.

I released Khufu, stepped off the stage, and tossed down the spear half. A trickle of blood had escaped the small wound I’d put in his throat. Immediately I was grabbed by three guards, my arms pinned. I watched Khufu.

Reflexively, he reached down and touched his throat, discovering the blood. I hoped the little twerp wasn’t the type to faint at the sight of it.

Two more guards joined in to wrestle me to the ground and there was a good possibility I had only a few seconds left to live.

“Khufu!” I barked. He was testing the royal blood’s texture, looking rather out of sorts. “Remember what I said!”

A particularly large palace guard stepped in front of me with a sword, looking prepared to remove my head on the spot. Drawing the king’s blood was customarily an immediate death sentence, so that was probably precisely what he had in mind. I’d hoped that brazenly wounding Khufu would lend credence to my claim of godhood, the big drawback being the instant execution thing.

“Stop,” Khufu said a bit too quietly. “I said
STOP
!”

Everybody froze.

“Release him.”

Reluctantly, they did just that. Nobody had a word to say, either. That’s another thing presumed divinity will buy you.

Khufu stood. There was a matter of saving face that still needed taking care of. “I have decided to let this man live,” he said grandly. “He is to be exiled immediately. Unharmed. Is that clear?”

The lead guard bowed his head, meaning he understood. No guard dared speak directly.

“I thank you,” I said, bowing myself. “My king.”

Not willing to push my luck any further, I walked as calmly as possible from his throne room and headed directly for the nearest exit, escorted by the entire palace guard.

I didn’t stop until I reached the coast.

*
 
*
 
*

It would be several centuries before I returned to Egypt again, and it was long after Khufu and his entire bloodline had died out, and long after Nampheta had passed on. I never learned what happened to her, but I hoped she took my advice and fled to someplace safe.

I noted, with some amusement, that Khufu managed to get his pyramid built, although I understand it took him twenty years—about ten years longer than expected. (Again blazing the trail for modern public works programs.) The damn thing is huge and still standing. It’s the big one at Giza. It has been completely looted, of course, which is what happens when you announce to the world precisely where you and all your worldly possessions have been buried. I believe I even told Khufu this would happen. That’s what he gets for not listening to me.