‘And yet is it not true?’
The Queen turned from him. She seemed to quicken once again upon the distant flickering of the stars, and for a moment Akh-en-Aten dreaded that she would melt and disappear into their light. Yet she turned again at last, and fixed him with her stare. ‘Tell me, then,’ she whispered, ‘what it is you want from me.’
‘I want . . .’ -- Akh-en-Aten paused - ‘what you failed to give before.’
She reached out with her hands again and cupped his face. ‘Mortality?’ she whispered, the word melting into a kiss.
Akh-en-Aten broke away from her lips to answer her question. ‘Mortality,’ he echoed. ‘I want the peace of death.’
She laughed. ‘A small desire.’
‘Yet is it possible?’
‘For those of your line to know death, after all?’ She paused. ‘It may be.’ ‘How?’
‘Only an immortal may consume an immortal. Only the deathless may give to the deathless true death.’
Akh-en-Aten gazed at her in a fury of hope and frustration. ‘What do you mean? You are speaking in riddles.’
She smiled at him. ‘It would require a great sacrifice from one of your line.’
‘Sacrifice?’
‘You, O my husband.’ She kissed him once again. ‘If I have indeed caught an echo of your great ancestor from within you, if your ambitions are indeed not merely presumptions -- then I know you will be willing to sacrifice yourself.’
He gazed at her in horror but also, still, some hope. ‘What, then,’ he whispered, ‘would this sacrifice mean?’
The Queen parted her lips again in a smile. Akh-en-Aten did not this time seek to break from her kiss; and, even as he felt her lips upon his own, he seemed to hear the sound of her voice from deep within his mind. ‘It will teach you,’ he heard her whisper, ‘how in love there must be hatred, and how in life there must be death. It will teach you what my fellow never understood. It will teach you, in short, what it means to be alone -- not just now, not for a while, but for the eternity of time.’ She paused; and he felt himself melting all the more into her kiss. ‘Such would be the sacrifice. Such would be your fate.’
Dimly, from afar, he could feel himself fading. Dimly, from afar, one last time he heard her voice.
‘Do you accept, then, such an offer?’
He knew he did not have to answer her, knew she understood. Darkness was rising thick upon her kiss, so that even the stars now seemed blotted out. Darkness seemed the breath that was blotting out his thoughts. Darkness seemed the world, seemed the universe itself.
But at this point, Haroun saw the approach of morning and broke off from his tale. ‘O Commander of the Faithful,’ he said, ‘if you would care to return here tomorrow evening, then I shall describe to you the price which Akh-en-Aten found that he had paid.’
And so the Caliph did as Haroun suggested; and the following evening he returned to the mosque.
And Haroun said:
It happened one morning that King Ay rode out to hunt. He was by now an old man, and had seen two of his great-nephews rule as kings and pass away. There was no one in all the royal court who could bend and string his bow so well, or rival his skill in the pursuit of wild beasts. Furiously that day he rode his chariot, and thrillingly he felt his blood starting to course through his limbs, so that he almost imagined himself young once again. He laughed in exultancy and ordered his charioteer to step down, taking up the reins and controlling them himself. It soon happened that all his party were left far behind, but still Ay rode onwards, and if he stopped, it was only to pull back an arrow on his string. Many were the beasts that fell before his skill, and in the end the greatest, the deadliest of them all - a giant lion, black and wild-maned, who would have killed King Ay in turn had the King’s aim not been good.
The beast’s death made certain, he reined in his horses. Stepping down from his chariot, he crossed the sands to inspect his prize. As he did so, he heard his horses suddenly whinny as though with fear. King Ay glanced back at them, then around him, and slowly drew out his sword. He could see nothing, but even so for a moment he stood frozen with his sword aimed at the air. Then, slowly again, he bent down beside the lion and drew out his arrows from the dead beast’s flank. He gazed at it in silence, at the stillness of its death; then suddenly he heard his horses neigh wildly again and he felt, across his back, the falling of a shadow.
He twisted round, raising his sword, and saw before him a figure shrouded in dark robes. As he gazed up, King Ay shuddered with a terrible, unaccountable fear, and he felt his fingers grow numb and his sword fall from his hand. ‘Who are you?’ he whispered.
The figure did not answer.
‘Who are you?’ King Ay whispered a second time; but suddenly, as he gazed upon the figure’s distended skull, visible even through the swathes of his scarves, he knew, barely believing it, who the stranger was. ‘Pharaoh.’ The word seemed to hang and burn in the air as King Ay stumbled forward, falling to his knees. ‘You have returned!’
‘Do not draw near me.’ The voice had been barely above a whisper and with a note that seemed hauntingly, musically strange, like that of silver pieces being blown on by a wind. Still though, King Ay recognised it and, despite himself, stumbled forward again.
‘Do not draw near me.’
‘Why?’ King Ay gazed up at his nephew baffled and uncertain. ‘What will you do?’
‘What I cannot control in myself.’ And so saying Akh-en-Aten shuddered and seemed to clench his fists, as though fighting some desperate, monstrous urge, borne to him upon the very scent of his uncle. ‘No more of this,’ he hissed. He shuddered again, and half-closed his eyes. ‘I would have you tell me what you did to my sons.’
King Ay frowned. ‘To your sons? But... I did nothing.’
‘Then how did they die?’
King Ay’s frown deepened and he rose slowly to his feet. ‘Of those frailties to which we are all of us the heirs. Smenkh-ka-Re, within a few months of your departure, grew sick of a fever. All that could be done we sought to do - but alas, it was in vain. So great was the surprise that there had not even been a tomb prepared for him, and so my sister gave him hers, which had been built for her in Thebes. He was buried within the shrine she had prepared for her own death, with every honour, O my nephew -- every honour, I swear it.’
Akh-en-Aten nodded shortly. ‘And Tut-ankh-Aten?’ he asked.
‘Tut-ankh . . .’ King Ay swallowed in sudden confusion. ‘He ... sat upon the throne for ten years, growing to manhood, a handsome, much-loved King. But then he also, like his brother, died of fever. No mystery, O my Nephew, no mystery at all. Such things must happen, for we are all of us mortal, even Pharaohs, O my Nephew, even the greatest of Kings.’
Akh-en-Aten smiled very thinly. ‘And yet I tell you, O my Uncle, that if Tut-ankh-Aten is truly dead, then it is a wonder that the earth has not been shadowed by the news, that the Nile has not dried up, that the ocean has not swayed, and that the land itself has not been turned upside down.
If
he is truly dead -- for you cannot know what it was that ended with him.’ Akh-en-Aten paused a moment, and then he shook his head. ‘And yet he died of a fever - and that was all?’
King Ay shrugged helplessly. ‘He was laid to rest with every splendour, I promise you.’
Immediately, Akh-en-Aten tensed and narrowed his eyes.
‘Where?’
‘In the valley beyond Thebes.’
‘Thebes.’ Akh-en-Aten almost spat out the word. Why not in a tomb beside Kiya, his mother, in the cliffs above the city of the Dwelling of the Sun?’
Again King Ay swallowed and stammered in confusion, but Akh-en-Aten, in a sudden surge of fury, raised his hand. ‘I have seen it for myself,’ he cried. ‘Abandoned to those weeds which will grow amidst the sands, to the serpents and the jackals, and the mournful-sounding owls. Why, O my Uncle? How could you have permitted my great work to be destroyed?’
‘Did you not order me,’ King Ay answered, ‘to obey your sons’ commands?’
‘Yes, but I cannot believe they would have wanted you to destroy their father’s cause.’
‘You may well be right -- yet all the same, when they spoke, they did so as Kings.’
‘Inen.’ Akh-en-Aten whispered the name very softly. ‘Inen. Has he returned?’
King Ay paused, then nodded. ‘He is once again the High Priest.’
‘Then it was he,’ Akh-en-Aten whispered, almost to himself, ‘who must have ruled my sons. And it was he, it may be, who delivered them to their tombs.’ He turned, glided across the sands and seemed to melt into the haze.
‘Wait!’ King Ay shouted out.
Akh-en-Aten did not pause.
‘Wait,’ King Ay cried again, ‘there is something I must tell you!’
But only an echo answered his cry. Where before the figure of Akh-en-Aten had been, there was nothing but the shimmering of dust in the air. King Ay stumbled to his feet and ran across the sands. Still he could see nothing. He gazed about him, then frowned and shook his head. ‘May peace be with him,’ King Ay muttered. He shivered, despite the burning heat. ‘For I fear he greatly needs it.’ He glanced about him once again, then crossed back to his chariot. He could see his courtiers now approaching in a heavy cloud of dust. As they joined him they fell and knelt down in the sand, then gazed in wonder at the body of the lion. King Ay accepted their cries of praise without comment; nor during all the ride back to the Palace in Thebes, did he say a further word. But the servants marked the strangeness of the expression on his face; and they whispered that their King must have witnessed something wondrous.
And it happened, even as King Ay was riding back to Thebes, that his brother Inen also found himself shadowed by strange emotions. He had entered the innermost sanctuary of the temple, where silence -- deep silence, the silence of stone and of a close, heavy darkness -- had at last been restored. Inen raised his candle. Although the room was small, still the darkness remained in dense, deep-brooding pools, only thinly lined by the faint wash of his flame. Here, Inen thought to himself, is true mystery -- and where there is mystery, there must be terror as well. He stepped forward; raised his candle; gazed at the statue against the furthermost wall. He had had to piece its fragments together himself, for no one else could have been permitted to gaze upon its form, and since he lacked any skills his work had been clumsy. Even so, barely recognisable as it was, the aspect of the statue served to fill him with dread -- as must all things, he reflected, which touch upon the gods.
Inen thought, suddenly, that he heard something from behind him. He spun round, raising his candle, even though he knew he would see nothing there. He smiled to himself ruefully. Ever since his exile from Thebes, his imaginings had seemed feverish, uncertain, not his own at all. He had hoped that his return might have served to ease such fears. He raised his hands to where his ears once had been. Much had been lost. He touched the noseless scar which ran up his face. Much that would never, for all his efforts, be restored. He turned again to face the shattered statue. Such vandalism, he thought. Such sacrilege, such ruin! He cursed beneath his breath the criminal who had wreaked it.
Then suddenly, even as he spoke his nephew’s name, he heard a noise like a footstep, and this time he was certain that he had not imagined the sound. ‘Who is that?’ he shouted, raising his candle. ‘Who dares to enter this most secret, holy place?’
Silence still answered him but he could see now, as though it were itself composed of the darkness, a silhouette yet more black than all the shadows around it. Its limbs seemed thin, its belly distended, its skull - like the statue’s behind him -very swollen. ‘Who is that?’ Inen cried out again. He had attempted in his voice to preserve a tone of authority, but as he spoke, fear made it suddenly crack. The figure took a single pace forward and, with a sweep of its hand, removed the swathe of cloth which had been wound about its face. Inen shrank back with a horror he no longer sought to disguise. He could see now who the stranger was, for despite the darkness his skin seemed to gleam very palely, as though lit from within by a burning white light. In his eyes as well there was an astonishing brightness, and Inen knew, without asking, that his visitor had been marked by a wondrous and deathly change.
Despite himself, he took a step forward, but the figure raised its hand.
‘Do not draw near me.’
‘Why?’ Inen clenched his fists in fear and rage. ‘What will you do?’
‘What I cannot control in myself.’
‘And what might that be?’
The shadow of a smile seemed to flicker on Akh-en-Aten s lips. ‘You are not,’ he said softly, ‘the only guardian of mystery. But tell me’ -- he gazed about him, at the stone above his head -- ‘how is it that this roof has been restored, and that statue’ -- he pointed -- ‘erected once again? When last I saw this place, it had been abandoned to the weeds.’
‘It is the temple to your god, O Criminal, which has been toppled and abandoned now.’ Inen clenched his fists again, no longer with terror though, but in a sudden flush of triumph. ‘Your works and your statues have been flung into the dirt, and your very name defaced wherever it was found. In times to come it will be forgotten that one such as you has ever even been - you and your city, your god, and your sons.’
‘My sons . . .’ Akh-en-Aten spoke the words so harshly, and with such an icy force, that Inen felt all his terror suddenly return. ‘My sons. . .’ Akh-en-Aten narrowed his eyes. ‘Is it true what Ay told me, that they both died of fever?’
‘So it was reported.’
‘They were both unmarked, untainted by the curse of my blood?’
‘So it was reported,’ Inen answered once again.
‘But was it true? I have to know. Tell me, was it true?’
Inen swallowed. Despite himself, he met with Akh-en-Aten’s eyes. Drawn into their brightness, he imagined himself suddenly stabbed upon their glare and he moaned with surprise. ‘It was true,’ he muttered, ‘yes, it was true . . .’ Desperately he sought to break free his stare, yet still he found himself trapped, so that he imagined he was drowning beneath a rolling wave of fear.
‘It was true, it was true . . .’ he muttered once again.