Year of the Hyenas (44 page)

“All the way
down!”

The vizier of
Egypt
continued to drink until there was no more. He poured out a second bowl.

Tiya seized
the bowl
and drank greedily. “That’s fine stuff,” she said. “I’ve only had water
since they put me in here, and brackish at that. Not even beer.”

Toh smiled and
took
his leave, telling her that she should be prepared to move from her
cell. When he had returned to his chambers, he put a feather down his
throat to vomit up the wine, along with the oil he had swallowed
earlier to prevent the powerful sleeping herb from taking effect.

When she
awoke, Tiya
was no longer in the chilly cell in Djamet’s dungeon. She gazed around
the unfamiliar room, at its barbarous friezes and strange colors. The
queen lay on a flat, hard table, with no pallet beneath her. When she
tried to rise, she found that she was quite naked, and that her arms
and legs were strapped tightly to the table.

A strange
animal sound
came to her through the gloom. Twisting her head, she saw that a ram
had made the bleating noise. Strangely, it was reined to a miniature
chariot. Craning her neck to see, she found herself staring into what
appeared to be the red eyes of a man—a horrible legless creature with a
crown of battered acanthus leaves on his head. Tiya uttered a small cry.

“We are
honored,
madam,” the legless thing said, “to entertain you today in my kingdom!”

With a snap of
his
fingers, four other men drew forward, dressed only in scant loincloths.
At that moment Tiya saw the braziers of charcoal that were placed
nearby, each containing a set of hooks and knives, all glowing a bright
orange.

“May I now
introduce
you, madam, to the finest surgeon in Thebes?” asked the king gallantly.
“Cripple Maker, meet Lady Tiya.”

“A pleasure,
great
lady.” The man’s sickly syrupy voice made her recoil more than the
cruel instruments he held in his hands.

“She was a
queen of
Egypt once,” the Beggar King said. “But that was not enough for her. So
today she is given a new kingdom to rule— mine. Make of her your finest
creation, for the queen of the beggars deserves the very best. But mind
that you do not kill her in your zeal, for the pharaoh has promised
that she may live. And he is a man who keeps his word.”

Tiya’s famed
voice of
many strings rose up in a crescendo of short, sharp screams.

PHARAOH GRIMACEDas he rose from his
couch and clutched his side. Irritably he waved away the slave who
would have assisted him. He pulled aside his hand, and revealed that
his freshly changed bandages were again soaked in blood.

Already he
wears his
mummy wrappings, Semerket thought to himself. As the crown prince had
requested, he had returned again to Pharaoh’s side, leaving Huni in his
brother’s house in the care of Keeya. Semerket shuddered to see the
blood, and dropped his eyes to prevent Pharaoh from reading his mind.
But it was too late; the king had seen him staring.

“Yes,” Pharaoh
said.
“My wife has won her battle.”

“A hundred
years,”
Semerket muttered the ritual phrase automatically.

“A hundred!”
The old
ruler’s laugh was sharp. “I would give all I have for one.”

With
difficulty he
walked the length of the terrace to gaze at Eastern Thebes across the
river. Semerket followed at a discreet distance, avoiding the drops of
blood that trailed Ramses. The fires in the city’s hearths gleamed like
facets in a thousand rubies. The entire horizon was aglow with them.

“Do you
remember the
Egypt of my father, Semerket?” The old man’s hand shook as he reached
out, as if to clasp the rubies to him. They shimmered just outside his
touch, and the hand fell slowly back. Still, the fingers clenched and
unclenched, unused to not holding what they sought.

Semerket kept
his
silence. In his mind Pharaoh was addressing a contemporary. What good
would it do to remind an old man of his age? Ramses was not much
interested in Semerket’s reply, in any case. The words poured from him
in pained gasps, a confession. A valedictory.

“Egypt was
cast
adrift. Every man was a law to himself. Anyone could murder whomever
they chose, high and low. So many years of misrule and discord before
him… generations of civil wars. My father took up the red and white
crowns that had fallen in the dust. But he was an old man when he
became Pharaoh. The gods gave him only two years. Then it was my turn.”
He pointed to the black mass of the distant temples. “I found the gates
of Karnak stripped of their plate and jewels. Amun’s barque had even
sunk in the Sacred Lake, it was so rotten. This was my inheritance.”

Pharaoh stared
into
the night, the hard, bitter line of his profile limned by torchlight.

“My father had
given
Egypt back its government. I vowed to give it back its place among
nations. And I was young, and strong as the Buchis bull. It was sunrise
in Egypt, I told the people.”

Ramses pulled
a
kerchief from his pectoral and wiped at the flecks of spittle at his
mouth. In the flame’s light, Semerket saw the tinge of pink. Pharaoh
saw it, too, and quickly closed his hand around the cloth. “And for a
while I thought I had succeeded. Yet I was forced to marry Tiya, to
assuage the pride of these ludicrous, arrogant southerners. I had to
promise to make her firstborn my heir. It seemed that only I saw the
evil in them both. I should have had her quietly killed, but I felt
sorry for Pentwere. He was so attached to her. And what real harm could
she do, I thought. She was only a woman, after all. And then the other
children came.” He looked at Semerket with bitter irony. “Though I am
worshipped as a god, Semerket, I am Egypt’s biggest fool.”

For the only
time in
his life Semerket wished that fulsome words of flattery and praise
could bubble spontaneously to his lips, words of reassurance and hope,
empty though they might be; for the only time in his life Semerket
wished he was his own brother.

But his tongue
was a
block of wood in his head as always. So unused to saying any words but
those of the stark truth, his throat actually hurt from the effort to
find sweet and temperate ones, full of comfort and lies. In the end,
Semerket could only reach out to the old man in a gesture of fleeting
spontaneity. He wished to draw him near, so that Pharaoh’s pain might
be eased. But the majesty of Pharaoh overwhelmed him. How to comfort a
living god? Semerket’s hand stopped, only to fall uselessly to his side.

Ramses
regarded
Semerket with grim amusement. But then he was seized with another
abrupt spasm of pain. He dropped to one knee. Semerket caught him, and
led him to a bench where he could regain his breath, holding him as the
spasm slowly subsided. Pharaoh’s bandages were now soaked completely in
red.

It was Pharaoh
who
moved away first, sitting up straight and dignified on the bench beside
Semerket. After a time, the king spoke again. His voice seemed
strengthened.

“For a while
it seemed
I had succeeded in my dreams for Egypt. I planted the entire land with
trees and greenery and I let the people sit in their shade. A woman of
Egypt could travel freely wherever she wanted, and no one molested her,
not even foreigners. I sent to Lebanon for cedar to repair the sacred
barque. I replated the temple doors. I built new… or so I thought.”

Then Pharaoh
turned
and regarded Semerket with an expression of absolute bitterness.

“And then in
this Year
of the Hyenas you came into our lives. You were the one, Semerket—the
terrible truth-teller—who opened all our eyes at last. Until you came,
everyone thought the rams’ horns blew paeans of praise for me. But you
told us it was a dirge they played instead. Thanks to you, I realize
now it was not a triumph I led—but a funeral procession.” His breath
came in gasps at the end.

Pharaoh and
Semerket
watched through the long evening together, saying nothing, as one by
one the fires of Egypt’s hearths went out.

“I wish…”
Semerket
began, and stopped.

Irritation
again lit
Pharaoh’s eye. “Yes? What is it you wish for? Everyone wants something
from me in the end. Well, gold chains I have offered you in plenty.
These you have all refused. What could you possibly want, I wonder?”

Semerket
dropped his
head. “I wish that it had not been me.”

The living god
of
Egypt was startled, and for an instant his face became a shattered mask
of woe. He collected himself swiftly.

“Nonsense. It
was the
fate the gods gave you… and me.” Though he spoke crisply, Pharaoh
reached out tentatively and draped an old, sinewy arm across Semerket’s
shoulders. It was an arm unaccustomed to such familiarity and it lay
there stiff and immobile.

Feeling
Pharaoh lean
on him, a great dullness fell upon Semerket’s heart. As he gazed out
into the blackness of Thebes it seemed to him that Egypt had been
plunged into an eternal night.

Brad Geagley
has worked for many
years in the entertainment industry, mainly as a producer. All of his
assignments—from documentary television shows to virtual reality
attractions—heavily emphasized his writing abilities. History was
Geagley’s first love, however, particularly that of ancient Egypt. He
became a full-time writer in 2001 and is currently at work on his
second Semerket novel and on stage plays. He lives in Palm Springs,
California.