The City of Refuge: Book 1 of The Memphis Cycle (32 page)

LIII

“His Grace told me you'd probably return this evening,” Karoya said. Khonsu's escort had managed to scale the cliffs in a grueling race with the smoke and heat that had left them all sweat-drenched, panting and filthy on the crest of the cliff. Though the effort had exhausted them, Khonsu had not dared to remain near the fumes and blistering heat. He had commanded they go eastward to safety, away from the river.

His force had overtaken Nebamun's expedition just after sundown. He had identified himself and been brought to Karoya, who had been standing near a string of tethered horses and speaking quietly with Neb-Iry. Karoya greeted him, lifted his eyebrows at Hapu, who grinned back at him, and gave orders that Hapu and his men be fed. And then he had sat down with Khonsu apart from the rest to give his report of the day's events.

“So you went all the way to Khebet and back,” Karoya said. “Was Huni glad to hear the city is being destroyed?”

“I didn't know His Grace had it planned,” said Khonsu. “We saw a shadow as we headed south, but it wasn't until the turn of the river, north of Akhet-Aten, that we knew what was happening. You should see the smoke pouring along the riverbed! And it's starting to rise toward the top of the cliffs! You were wise to get above it!”

“That bad, eh?” Karoya said. “Hm. I wouldn't have expected it, but General Seti certainly did, since it was he who sent us up to the cliff road. Come to that, His Grace must have known, too, because he sent the ships south to Asyut. It's a pity Huni didn't know. He'd have thought he'd returned to his youth. He was here once before when they were tearing the place down under Prince Nakht's direction.”

Khonsu frowned. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“He came here just before Prince Nakht killed himself. Father Neferhotep told me.” Karoya saw Khonsu's blank expression and shrugged. “You remember. He's the priest at Sumneh, whom I questioned when we were looking into Ptahemhat's doings just before Paser was killed. He told me Huni was Neb-Aten's batman-”

“His batman?” Khonsu interrupted. “In the army?”

“Yes,” said Karoya. “Neb-Aten was a Commander of One Thousand, and he appointed Huni, who had grown up in his father's house with him, to be his aide.”

“Thoth's beak!” Khonsu exclaimed. “Hapu said Huni had been in the army. But I thought— I don't know what I thought.” He looked up at Karoya. “Finish what you were saying.”

“There isn't much to finish,” Karoya said. “Huni accompanied Neb-Aten here the day before Nakht killed himself. It was while Nakht was supervising the abandonment of the city. Neb-Aten arrived at Sumneh at night. He sent Huni on to Akhet-Aten with a message for his father. Neferhotep says he spent the next day pacing, not hidden away, but still furtively, as though he thought he should be hiding. According to Neferhotep, when Huni came back later, Neb-Aten questioned him almost desperately.”

Karoya paused for a moment. “It's odd,” he said. “Father Neferhotep told me that while Huni acted grieved when he delivered his message, he smiled when Neb-Aten turned away and went hurrying off to travel north along the cliffside track, the one they say they see his ghost on. Huni stood and watched him, and when he was well out of sight he went into Akhet-Aten once again. Neferhotep thinks he had one last conversation with Prince Nakht among the tombs. The next Neferhotep knew, Prince Nakht was dead, and so was Neb-Aten three weeks later. Of that threesome, only Huni was left. Neferhotep had thought him dead, but he surfaced maybe two years later as Mayor of Khebet. Odd, I must say. I wonder if he thinks of it.”

“Who told you this, again?” Khonsu demanded.

“It was Father Neferhotep, the priest at Sumneh,” Karoya said patiently. “He told me over cakes and beer while I was looking into Ptahemhat's doings during the time between Paser's death and his return to the city. Remember how we suspected he had found a girl in one of the outlying towns?” He saw Khonsu's expression for the first time. “What's amiss?” he asked. “Have I done something wrong?”

“You?” Khonsu repeated, climbing to his feet. “No, not you! Me! This is beyond any– Listen, Karoya: where's His Grace? I must speak with him at once!”

“His Grace isn't here,” Karoya said.

Khonsu stared down at him. “What do you mean?” he demanded. A thought occurred to him, and he seized upon it. “Did he continue to Asyut, maybe?”

“I don't think so,” Karoya said. “He hasn't had any dealings with Asyut since we came to Akhet-Aten, aside from sending courteous messages to the Governor of the Nome and sending the ships away there this morning. No, he stayed behind at the city. He said he had some unfinished business. Said he'd be joining us shortly.”

“And has he joined you?”

“Not that I saw,” Karoya said. “And I'd given orders that all arrivals be reported to me right away.”

Khonsu clenched his fists and stared at the distant glow of the burning city, hearing in his memory Hapu's description of Huni's escort. “Oh, Neb-Aten!” he groaned. “What are you doing?”

“You're starting to talk to ghosts, just like Huni,” said Karoya. “Neb-Aten's dead, and you know it!”

“I'm not so sure!” Khonsu said. A flash of fire made his eyes sharpen for a moment. “If I'd only known sooner! All those dreams of Horus and Set! He is Horus! I should have guessed it!” He paled as he remembered his dream of the night before. “And there's to be treachery!”

Karoya was staring at him. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Khonsu said. “But it's up to me to make certain it stays that way!” He thought for a quick moment and turned to Neb-Iry. “Find Blackwing and harness him for riding,” he commanded.

“Where are you going?” Karoya demanded, scrambling to his feet.

“I'll ride northeast along the river,” Khonsu replied.

“But you'll be going through the worst of the heat!” Karoya objected.

“Night's falling,” Khonsu said. “It's already cooler. I'll stay on the cliff road at any rate. That will shield me from the worst of it. But as for you: I want you to find General Seti and tell him what I'm doing. Tell him to send a force along the high road and wait for me near Prince Nakht's tomb.”

“Near his tomb?” Karoya repeated.

“He knows where it is,” Khonsu said grimly. “And have him bring Sennefer and all his supplies, if he's here with you. He may be needed before the night is out!”

Neb-Iry returned leading Blackwing. The stallion was wide-eyed and sidling with nervousness. Khonsu took the reins, paused to calm the horse, then vaulted astride the stallion and turned him north.

“You have your orders!” Khonsu said. “Don't waste any time! Lives could depend on it!” He drove his heels into the stallion's sides and was off at a gallop.

**   **   **

Huni had tried three times to turn back and escape his pursuer, but each time a hail arrows had stopped him. Hemmed in on two sides by death that came on those terrible, silent arrows, and on the third by the smoke and heat from the burning city, he knew he was being herded toward the place of rendezvous.

The twisting passages had narrowed to a blur in Huni's eyes, blocking him in every direction, channeling the sound of soft, inexorable footfalls that dinned in his ears as loudly as the pounding of his heart. He fled the steps along the sheer paths, not daring to look behind him, pressing ahead, seeking escape…

Huni's breath was coming in groans through fear-slackened lips. His escort lay dead somewhere among the pillars and passages of the tomb-riddled hills, and now, helpless in the face of fear and death, he knew himself to be near the end of his strength.

An opening loomed before and above him. He burst upward through it and into spaciousness and silence, aglow with red light and swept by the wind. He collapsed to the ground with a groan and dragged sobbing breaths into his lungs. After a moment he was able to raise his head and look around.

He was on a high piece of ground, well above the smoky pall enveloping the city. The Nile curved away to the southwest below him, gleaming dull red, like a river of blood. The city itself was a thundering, hissing mass of flames, too bright still to look at without pain.

He pushed himself to his knees and then to his feet, wavering a little as his air-starved lungs fought to fill themselves. He closed his eyes, overpowered by the surge of memory. He had been in this spot before; remembering it across the expanse of twenty-five years, he thought for a moment that it was odd to think that the years had passed, when they seemed in fact never to have existed at all.

When he opened his eyes once more, shivering with a sudden chill, it was to the reality of a shadow rising up before him, black and fathomless against the brassy glare of the fire, with starlight glinting upon a jewel at its breast.

He knew the shape, though it had been more than twenty-five years since he had seen it, and when it spoke he knew the voice, as well, though he had all but driven it from his memory.

Huni, what have you done?

LIV

The flames cast a sullen red glow over the hills and cliffs; the smoke had risen higher than before, filling the low areas and moving along the pathway in sluggish tendrils curling about Blackwing's pasterns and deadening all but the sharpest sounds.

The distance between the camp and Akhet-Aten were covered at Blackwing's mile-eating trot that consumed the distance without any seeming effort. Khonsu skirted the burning city with the uneasy sense that he was moving along the border between reality and nightmare, and one false step might send him spinning into horror.

The Northern Sentinels lay before Khonsu. He could see the tangle of passageways leading to Prince Nakht's tomb just ahead of him. If it had been daylight, he would have been able to find the tomb easily, but with night cloaking the earth and the shroud of smoke softening the outlines of even the most familiar landmarks, he was lost.

He drew Blackwing to a halt and looked around, trying to regain his sense of direction. The city lay behind him, but if he turned—

A scream smote his ears with the force of a fist as the sky seemed to darken. Khonsu hauled backward on the reins, bringing Blackwing down on his haunches in a spray of sand and gravel.

The sound had come from nearby, southeast of where he sat. Turning toward the sound, Khonsu saw a handprint upon the walls of the passage, and suddenly he knew where he was. He sprang from Blackwing's back and ran down along the narrow passageway that he knew would lead to Nakht's tomb.

An object, huddled in the passageway and hidden from his sight by the streamers of smoke rising upward through the passes, sent him stumbling to his knees. He bent closer to peer, and started back as he recognized one of the guards who had been standing beside Huni at Khebet. One of the handpicked five. And beyond him, faintly lit in the growing smoke, he could see the entrance to Prince Nakht's tomb.

Khonsu looked around. The sound of voices close by made him frown and move toward a branch of the path. The faint glow of light from the tomb touched a second bloody handprint on the rock, the one that had guided him and Seti to Nakht's tomb from the upper reaches of the northern road. Khonsu's eyes widened; he ran up the steep incline until he emerged into comparative coolness beneath a star-scattered sky, with nothing but a low line of rocks and the form of a man standing between him and the burning city.

Huni, mayor of Khebet, was staring toward Akhet-Aten with the wide eyes and unsteady breath of sheer terror.

Khonsu looked away from Huni, back toward the city. His breath froze in his throat and he sank to his knees beside the path, for silhouetted against the burning city, outlined in flame, the fitful light glinting from a jewel at its breast, a form towered before him, silent and terrible in the night.

He had stepped into his dream.

**   **   **

“Neb-Aten!” Huni gasped. “I thought—I thought—”

The shadow did not move, but its voice was hard and cold.
There is no retreat: it is time to deliver the message.

The air rasped unevenly into Huni's lungs like an inverted scream. “You are not here!” he said shakily. “I am dreaming!”

The shadow stood silently. Like the nightmare, and yet unlike, for the despair and horror Huni remembered were not there, only the sense of terrible, grim patience that had waited through the years and would wait forever, if it were necessary.

You are not dreaming, Huni. It is time to deliver the message.

Huni straightened. “I was given no message!” he said, fumbling for the amulet of Horus at his neck and holding it before him. “Begone and trouble me no more!”

The shadow did not move.
Put that trinket away!

Huni's hands were shaking, but his voice was steady as he said, “By Osiris of the West, by the great enchantress Isis, by Horus, son of—”

The shadow's voice was contemptuous.
Don't add blasphemy to your list of crimes, Huni. It is time to fulfill your promise and deliver your message, as you swore to do all those years ago.

There was no escape; Huni lowered his head. When his voice came at last it was thin and shaking and more otherworldly even than that of Neb-Aten:

These are the words of the Vizier and Hereditary Prince Nakht, son of Prince Ahmose, son of Thutmose IV, son of Amenhotep II, son of Thutmose III, son of Thutmose II, son of Thutmose I, to Neb-Aten his beloved son. Do not grieve me by pursuing a path of folly that can only lead to your death. Turn back and come to me, for time will pass and injustices will be righted and we will be strong once more. But know that I will die by my own hand rather than allow you to go to your death by the paths of madness in order to save me. Send your word to me by Huni's lips so that I may know whether I am to live or die.

The words trailed away into the night. Huni's voice shook and then steadied, and he lifted his head. “Those are the words of the Vizier and Hereditary Prince Nakht, son of Ahmose,” he said. “I have delivered them as he charged me.”

And now,
said the shadow
, tell me why you didn't deliver them long before. Tell me why, instead, you deceived and sent to his death the man who had been a father to you in all but name from the time you were a boy.

Huni stared at the form before him as it drew an arrow from the quiver at its back and set it to the string of his bow in a motion that sprang at once to his memory. The bow rose slowly to breast level; light glinted from the bronze tip of the arrow.

He moistened his lips. “It was Huy's doing,” he said desperately. “It was none of mine!”

Whose doing was it?
the voice demanded with cold contempt.

“It was Huy's,” Huni repeated. “He came to me at Memphis when he was first named Vizier. He spoke of power and of wealth. He spoke of a way for me to turn away from my life of servitude and gain power and wealth beyond my dreams!”

Is servitude the name you give the years of love and care you received at my father's hands?

The scorn in the voice made tears start to Huni's eyes. “I was young!” he wept. “I was foolish! I—I never dreamed—”

The voice came like the crack of a whip.
Stop your sniveling! Tell me why you betrayed my house!

“It was Huy! He persuaded Pharaoh to remove Nakht from power and name him Vizier in his place. And then he sent Nakht to Akhet-Aten to dismantle the city. When you spoke of your anger at his disgrace, I saw a chance to reach for power, and I sent to Huy. We spoke, and he told me what to do and say. He was Vizier: I obeyed him!”

What pay did he offer to make you enter this plot?

The unrelenting questioning was battering at the armor of complacency Huni had built around himself year by long year, stripping it away, leaving him shamed and angry. He began to sob in deep, resentful gulps.

What pay?
demanded the voice.
What pay turned you when there were honorable paths you could have followed that would have left your soul unstained and your honor whole?

“There was a girl,” Huni said through chattering teeth. “She was from a wealthy family, while I had nothing. Huy promised wealth and power.”

The shadow seemed to lean forward as the flames behind it flared into painful brightness.
Didn't you think that my father, who was still a wealthy and powerful man even when he was removed from his post as Vizier, would have freely given you the bride-price and a good estate for your own?

It was coming too close. Huni cowered away from it. “I didn't want charity! I wanted to make my own way!”

So you refused charity and settled for treachery, instead.
The voice fell silent for a long moment. When it spoke again, it seemed more distant.
Now tell me what happened that night. The voice grew even colder. Tell the truth!

Huni set his teeth. “I went into Akhet-Aten as you commanded,” he said. “I gave my message to Prince Nakht. The—the one Huy charged me with. He was saddened by it, and he told me what to say to you. I returned to you at Sumneh and told you there was no answer. I went back to Akhet-Aten and told—” Huni faltered into silence.

Yes?

Huni's voice was almost a whisper. He felt for a moment as though he were telling his story for the first time and, for the first time, really seeing it for the contemptible tangle it was. He drew a ragged breath. “I told Prince Nakht you had said 'So be it'. That...that's all.”

Liar.
The voice was dispassionate.
Tell me the rest.

Huni moistened his lips. “Prince Nakht questioned me at some length,” he said. “I answered him. I said I had brought your answer, and I couldn't be blamed if it were unfavorable. He—he paid me with a bracelet that had been a gift from Pharaoh Akhenaten, and he told me to hurry away, lest I be taken and questioned by Pharaoh's men. And that's all.”

Not quite, said
the voice.
There is more beyond this. Nakht went back to his home in the city, sick at heart, believing himself to be cast off by his own son, believing that his son consented to his death and even welcomed it. And Prince Nakht nevertheless bowed his neck to death so that such an unnatural son might live. And his heartbreak and lonely death, and the widowhood of his wife and the disgrace of his son, all were your doing.

Huni's eyes dilated as the bow was raised to shoulder level, the arrow drawn back.” Please!” he gasped. “Have pity! I have suffered through the years!”

Suffered!

“It's true! Not a day passed that I didn't feel the pain of what I'd done! I cursed Huy for corrupting me! I longed to take back what I had done, but it was too late! Too late! Dreadful ghost, why do you pursue me when I have suffered so much? Can't you see—”

The response came with all the force and violence of a stroke of thunder.
I can see a treacherous serpent striking in every direction in an attempt to escape! Suffer! Even now you pick the bones of the city you helped to wreck! Did you think you could cheat the Avenger of Blood and escape the payment you owe?

“Have pity!” Huni cried again, raising his arms in an attempt to ward off the arrow. “I have a son! He was near death—he is still so weak— What will become of him if I'm killed? Your father died to keep you alive, spare me to keep him alive! I beg you!” He collapsed to his knees and doubled over in the dust, sobbing.

The bow was lowered after a long pause, the arrow was removed from the string and slid into the quiver. The rising sigh of the wind almost hid the whisper of Neb-Aten's voice.
Tell my beloved father, Huni, that rather than suffer one hair of his head to be harmed or cause him to shed one tear, his son Neb-Aten will obey his command and come to him in the morning, and will stand at his shoulder to face with him all the future will bring.

Huni covered his face with both hands and wept.

The bow clattered to the ground.
And as for you: your thefts are known and your treachery is unveiled. Crawl back to Khebet and safeguard your son's life. Your back is broken now and your power is gone. Soon Khebet will be gone as well. Live out your life and remember my father, who has saved you from the punishment you deserve and in his mercy turned aside even the Avenger of Blood.

The shadow turned silently away and moved toward the spot where the path fell away from the cliff top.

Huni watched him, shuddering with rage and shame, one hand at his heart. The hand wavered, fell lower to his belt and touched the arrow he had brought from Khebet. He drew it forth, crawled two paces forward until he could reach the bow, and lifted it. And then he climbed to his feet.

The bow was solid and real in his hands, wood, horn and bronze with a string of twisted sinew. A bow that could be drawn by human hands, a bow meant to be carried by a man and not by a ghost.

The rage within him grew; he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. and set the nock of the arrow to the string. “You sanctimonious fraud!” he breathed. “I don't know how you escaped death, but if I was the death of your father, I can be yours as well!” He drew the arrow back until the fletching touched his cheek...