‘Because he is a man of great wisdom, who knows many secrets and sees many wondrous things.’
‘But I doubt he can see as far as my grandfather did.’
The Prince watched as his mother flinched and bit her lip. Then she reached out, almost gingerly, to touch him on his forearm and kiss him on his brow. ‘Would I ask you to do anything, O my beloved son,’ she whispered, ‘if it were not for your own good? So go with him. Listen to what he says. For it is all -- I say it again -- for your future good.’
The Prince frowned at her doubtfully, but then he shrugged and bowed his head, and did as she requested. He went with his uncle, who led him from the Palace and into the very depths of the temple, as far as the magical door of gliding metal, and then beyond it into the chamber with the round, empty pool. Once there, Inen pointed to the carvings on the walls, the secret portraits of Osiris and the gods, and then revealed to the Prince how his own blood was divine, descended through countless ages from the stars. ‘And yet you,’ he said with a sudden dry anger as arid and burning as a desert wind, ‘would presume to spoil a bloodline which has flowed since the very dawn of time? Why, it is as criminal as to seek to dam the Milky Way or the sacred waters of the life-giving Nile!’
‘No,’ answered the Prince, ‘for they are both the gifts of the One Who Dwells On High.’
‘The blood-line is the gift of the great god Osiris.’
‘No,’ the Prince repeated, ‘for there can be only one God.’
Inen smiled very thinly. ‘You will not think that, O Prince, when the moment of your death arrives and you discover that in truth you will never die at all.’
‘All men must die.’
Inen’s smile only broadened. ‘Not those of the royal blood, the blood of Osiris -- the blood, O Prince, which flows within your veins.’
But the Prince laughed contemptuously. ‘I have seen the tombs in which my forefathers have been laid.’
‘Yet such tombs are merely the portals to the eternity of Osiris. You as well, O Prince, whether you desire it or not, will be taken there by virtue of your royal descent.’
The Prince stared at him closely a moment; then he shook his head. ‘I believe neither in Osiris, nor in anything you say.’
‘But the time will come when you must.’
‘I do not think so.’
‘But I tell you, the time will come all the same, for your blood is your fate and cannot be denied.’
‘How do you mean?’
Inen did not reply; but as the Prince watched his uncle’s stare, he saw that it seemed to flicker to the pool by his side, before darting back to size him up and down.
‘I have had enough of this,’ said the Prince with sudden impatience, and he turned to walk back through the metal doors. But his uncle pursued him and seized him by the arm. ‘It were better for you,’ Inen whispered, ‘yes, and the Lady Kiya too, if you abandoned her now, before you ever have a child.’
‘Why?’ asked the Prince, feeling suddenly nervous. His question seemed to him like a fragile jar, flung from a roof and dropping through silence -- and yet, though he waited, there came no impact.
At last his uncle cleared his throat. ‘She is not already carrying your child, I hope?’
The Prince did not answer but, even as he sought to keep his face impassive, he knew that his uncle had read his silence.
‘I had hoped,’ said Inen at length, ‘that it would not come to this. It is possible, of course, since the child will have your blood, that it will grow to be an order of being like yourself. More likely, however . . .’ -- he met the Prince’s eye -- ‘your child will be dead before it can ever be born.’
‘How can you know that? Why should it be?’
‘It is, as I have said, the nature of your blood. Your child must share in it, or -- I am sorry -- be stillborn.’ He reached out to touch his nephew’s shoulder. ‘And so you see,’ he whispered, ‘what your mother said was true - I have had nothing but your own best interests at heart.’
For a moment, the Prince stood frozen rigid; but then he shook away his uncle’s hand and, turning, began to run through the many chambers of the temple, towards the distant gold of the light of the day, towards the light of the sun. Nor, for the next half-year, did he once return to the temple or speak with his uncle, ignoring his mother’s most earnest pleadings but instead devoting all his time to Kiya, caring for her and his unborn child. Yet still, despite all his attentions, some weeks before the birth was finally due she was rushed into her confinement, and the child was born tiny, frail-limbed and dead. For the next week, neither the Prince nor Kiya left their chamber but remained closeted away in the privacy of their grief; and when at last the Prince emerged back into the light of the sun, his face appeared strangely harrowed and thinned.
From that moment on, he made public his devotion to the One God of Yuya - yet Joseph was dead, and he had no guide save himself. But he remembered what his grandfather had said to him, standing beneath the shade of the trees and pointing to the sun; and so the Prince gave to the All-High the Egyptian name of ‘Aten’, which in the language of the pagans meant ‘the sun’. It was in the name of the Aten that he continued to reign, seeking to do so - as he had always done before - for the benefit of all, so that the poor, the oppressed and the powerless might approach him, just as easily as any of the great men of the Court. And so it was that one day a Nubian came to see him; very old, and covered in dust, he had travelled the whole vast distance of the Nile, from his own tiny village all the way to mighty Thebes, to ask the Prince to release his son, who had been captured and made a prisoner in King Amen-hetep’s wars; and the Prince did so at once, and released all the Nubian’s fellows too. Then a Syrian came, as old and wretched as the Nubian had been; and his request was the same, and the Prince’s answer the same also. Then a Libyan came with a similar request; and again the Prince ordered the prisoners released. He asked that all of them give praise and thanks to the Aten, and he taught them that men were all the same beneath the sun.
But when the news was brought to him, King Amen-hetep was roused a second time from his debaucheries, and came to his son in a greater fury than before, demanding to know by what right the prisoners had been freed, when it was by his express command that they had first been brought to Thebes. Then he laughed suddenly. ‘For what purpose, O my son, you will soon find out yourself.’
But the Prince shook his head and merely repeated what he had said to the liberated captives, how all were equally blessed by the sun.
At this, though, King Amen-hetep laughed bitterly once again. ‘Men are not equal,’ he snarled, jabbing with his finger, ‘for there are those who are mortal and there are those of us who are gods. The stronger must ever feed upon the weaker, the greater upon the lesser, blood upon blood, for this world is nothing but a pattern of destruction -- and it is time that you learnt to take your place within its order.’
So saying, he seized the Prince by his arm, and ordered his chariot and weapons prepared, and he led his huntsmen out into the desert, with Ay, the Prince’s uncle, the Master of Chariots, at their head. A stately tent was erected for them in the shade of a cliff, filled with cushions, and gold plates, and splendid rugs; and King Amen-hetep lolled there for a day, being plied with food and wines. Then at last Ay came to him and spoke into his ear, at which the King grunted with satisfaction, and heaved himself to his feet. With the aid of two servants, he stepped into his chariot, then ordered his son to ride his own alongside. Upon the brow of a ridge, King Amen-hetep reined in his horses and the Prince, looking down, saw a flock of bleating goats. They were pawing the sands and milling frantically against a high fence made of net; and when the Prince turned to look for the cause of their terror, he saw three black-maned lions crouched low against the sands. One of these suddenly bounded forward, crushing a goat beneath its weight, and then the other two -- padding forward likewise with hungry, bared-teeth snarls -- similarly pounced and seized their prey beneath their paws. King Amen-hetep laughed contentedly, watching as the dull sands were stained a deeper red. He leaned from his chariot and dug the Prince in the ribs. ‘And there you have it, O my son -- the way of this world!’
The Prince did not answer him; for he was remembering how his mother had once said the same thing, and promised him that one day he would be the bearer of death himself. King Amen-hetep, misinterpreting his son’s silence, chuckled once again, then shook out his reins and urged his chariot forward. By the fence of netting, he reined it in again while Ay, with his vast strength, bent and strung his bow. King Amen-hetep took it and drew an arrow, then aimed, and with a mighty wheeze, let the arrow go. It grazed the flank of one of the lions, who spat and snarled; then, its side streaked with red, came running forward towards the chariot. Suddenly it leapt, but could only hit the netting, and as it struggled in confusion to release itself, King Amen-hetep aimed and shot from his bow once again. Leaving the lion still struggling feebly against its bonds, he then rolled his chariot around the circuit of the fence, aiming at the infuriated lions trapped within it, until all three had been injured and made frenzied with their pain. Only then did King Amen-hetep return to his son, and hand him his bow and a quiver full of arrows.
‘Finish it,’ he ordered.
The Prince gazed down at the bow.
‘Finish it!’ King Amen-hetep bellowed, as the thick folds of his flesh began to shudder once again, and the sweat to dampen the lank strands of his hair.
The Prince dropped the arrows and the bow upon the sand.
King Amen-hetep goggled in disbelief. ‘Coward!’ he screamed.
The syllables echoed around and out from the cliffs, fading out into the silence of the desert. The Prince observed that all the huntsmen were perfectly motionless, and that Ay, his uncle, would not meet his eye.
‘Coward!’ shrieked King Amen-hetep again, tottering forward now as though to choke his son, but the Prince nimbly avoided him and jumped on to the sand. He drew out his knife and cut a hole through the fence, then approached the lion which was still tangled in the nets and being almost throttled by its attempts to save itself. As he walked across the sands, so the other two lions, arrow-gashed and foam-streaked, came bounding towards him; but the Prince turned, and met their flaming eyes, so that the lions paused in puzzlement, then slowly dropped back. The Prince continued towards the lion entangled in the netting, and freed the animal from its bonds; then he drew out the arrows embedded in its flank, while stroking its mane, so that the lion half-rolled and closed its eyes with pleasure. Then, when he had done the same with the animal’s fellows, the Prince returned to the hole which he had cut into the netting and held it apart. The three lions slipped gracefully through it and paused a moment, their tails twitching, gazing up at King Amen-hetep as he sweated in his chariot; and then they tossed their manes and bounded away.
Watching them escape, the Prince approached his own chariot. As he did so, Ay stepped forward and picked up the bow and scattered arrows. He handed them across, his face perfectly motionless, but with a hint of something like amusement in his eyes; and the Prince, receiving them, passed them in turn to the King. But in King Amen-hetep’s stare there was no amusement at all, as he reached out slowly to touch the face of his son. ‘Your cheeks are growing hollow,’ he whispered. You must be careful’ -- his fat lips flickered at last into the faintest of smiles - ‘or your beauty will fade.’ Then he turned and shook out his chariot reins, and bellowed a command to return to the Palace; nor did he speak to the Prince again all that journey, save to order him, as they rode at length into Thebes, to continue onwards to the temple of Amen.
Arriving together in the temple’s mighty forecourt, King Amen-hetep reached out again for the face of his son, then pushed down his head so that he could feel the back of his skull. ‘Yes,’ King Amen-hetep whispered, ‘yes, the time has come. For I tell you again, O my son, you cannot - you will not - escape what you are, but must accept, as I have done, that this world is built on blood.’ Then he laughed, as though in triumph, and yet his face, so the Prince thought, seemed almost frantic with his eagerness. The Prince allowed himself to be taken and dragged by the arm; yet never, he thought suddenly, had he felt less afraid of his father, and less in awe of those secrets at which his parents had always been hinting. Even the very temple, so magnificent and vast, seemed somehow -- in comparison with his previous sense of it -- strangely reduced and unimpressive: for there appeared to be fewer priests and less commotion in the courtyards, and within the inner sanctuaries many of the riches and idols had been removed. Glancing at a plinth where before a statue must have stood, the Prince thought to himself how easily a god might be toppled from its place; and then, as he passed through the magic iron doors, how easily a custom, however ancient, might be changed.
And so he continued to think, even as the terrible secret was revealed to him, and the hideous purpose of the sacred bath. ‘I will not do it,’ said the Prince, gazing down into the empty pool. ‘I will never do it.’
‘But you must!’ his father cried, anguish and despair intermingled with his rage. ‘Or see what you must become!’ He gestured towards the portraits of the gods upon the walls. ‘How can you endure to become a thing like that!’
‘Yet what choice do I have?’ answered the Prince. ‘For it is either that or become, like you, a murderer and a shedder of innocent blood. I will not be the cause of all your captives’ deaths.’ He met his father’s stare a moment more, then turned and left the empty bath behind. Nor did he choose to visit it again but accepted, as the months and then the years began to pass, the strangeness which was moulding his form more and more. Not hiding it, he chose instead to have it proclaimed, the very mark of his ambition and intent to live in truth.
But it was noticed how from that moment on King Amen-hetep could no longer endure to be beside his son, nor even bring himself to gaze upon his face. And so he hid himself away with his pleasures and his drink, and the Prince was left to rule Egypt alone.