Warlock: A Novel of Ancient Egypt (Novels of Ancient Egypt) Read online

  OUTSTANDING PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF WILBUR SMITH

  WARLOCK

  “Seamlessly composed, this epic historical drama by veteran author Smith tracks a power struggle in ancient Egypt between false pharaohs and a true royal heir, evoking the cruel glories and terrible torments of the era. Those willing to brave the blood and gore will be carried away by the sweep and pace of Smith’s tale.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Each time I read a new Wilbur Smith I say it is the best book I have ever read—until the next one. It’s the same with Warlock.”

  —Times Record News (Wichita Falls, TX)

  “Those of you familiar with Smith’s writing…can expect more of his signature brand of pulse-pounding, ‘Perils of Pauline’-style of adventure and excitement, with more blood and guts than a slaughterhouse.”

  —Tampa Tribune Times

  “This summer’s most entertaining read…another full-blown tale of war, intrigue, murder, lust, and true love set in ancient Egypt…[This] is really the book Taita fans have been waiting for.”

  —Flint Journal

  “When it comes to historical fiction, Smith is without rival. He is a warlock of writers.”

  —Tulsa World

  “The action…is pummeling and addictive…it’s hard to see how anyone who begins the book can possibly put it down unfinished…a perfect choice.”

  —Chattanooga Times Free Press

  “Filled with enough action, adventure, battles, betrayals, and actual cliffhangers to satisfy Indiana Jones, Wilbur Smith’s new novel Warlock is a rousing and worthy sequel to River God.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Smith illuminates all the cruelty and magnificence of a time lost in history, and what is truly amazing is that he does it with apparent ease. He has produced a totally credible story in a period that is shrouded in mystery and brings it flawlessly to life.”

  —Times Record News (Wichita Falls, TX)

  RIVER GOD

  “A grand tale of intrigue, deception, true love and exile.”

  —Denver Post

  “Vivid and fascinating…packed with passion, war, intrigue and revenge…sprawling and absorbing…gripping…A racy rampage through ancient Egypt that puts the reader right there with details that are intimate, inspiring, horrifying…. The author makes you see it, hear it—even smell it…Fans will be happy to know Smith hasn’t lost his touch for the dramatic, exotic adventure story.”

  —Orlando Sentinel

  “A page-turner…few novelists can write action scenes that all but leap off the page the way Smith can…his detailed portrait of ancient Egypt is fascinating.”

  —Anniston Star (TX)

  “Smith tackles the elevated literary fields of ancient Egypt, and comes up with a full-blooded epic.”

  —The (London) Times

  “Like a good action movie, the book ends with a showdown between the good guys and bad guys on the battlefield…well-written and entertaining.”

  —Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)

  MONSOON

  “[A] non-stop thriller that takes readers on a magical tour…this is what makes a Smith book worth reading.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Only a handful of 20th-century writers tantalize our senses as well as Smith…a rare author who wields a razor-sharp sword of craftsmanship.”

  —Tulsa World

  “A wild adventure…brought flawlessly to life through realistic sword fights and sea battles, vivid stories of pirates…breathtaking.”

  —Times Record News

  BIRDS OF PREY

  “Smith’s novel is far more than your typical pirate script…A fascinating account…Smith deftly evokes not only the horrific but also the beautiful, particularly the lush landscape of Africa.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “As usual, Smith…peoples his tale with unforgettable characters…swashbuckling and sensuous, Birds of Prey is not for the faint-hearted. Its bloodiest scenes are vivid and detailed—and so are hero Hal’s romantic encounters. But, as with Smith’s previous two bestsellers, River God and The Seventh Scroll, this latest epic transcends the average action-adventure yarn.”

  —Orlando Sentinel

  “Birds of Prey is a wonderful novel filled with excitement, pirates, and vivid sea battles…In short, it is vintage Wilbur Smith.”

  —Times Record News (Wichita Falls, TX)

  Also by WILBUR SMITH

  THE COURTNEYS

  When the Lion Feeds

  The Sound of Thunder

  A Sparrow Falls

  Birds of Prey

  Monsoon

  Blue Horizon

  The Triumph of the Sun

  THE COURTNEYS OF AFRICA

  The Burning Shore

  Power of the Sword

  Rage

  A Time to Die

  Golden Fox

  THE BALLANTYNE NOVELS

  A Falcon Flies

  Men of Men

  The Angels Weep

  The Leopard Hunts in Darkness

  THE EGYPTIAN NOVELS

  River God

  The Seventh Scroll

  Warlock

  The Quest

  ALSO

  Gold Mine

  The Dark of the Sun

  Shout at the Devil

  The Diamond Hunters

  The Sunbird

  Eagle in the Sky

  The Eye of the Tiger

  Cry Wolf

  Hungry as the Sea

  Wild Justice

  Elephant Song

  WARLOCK

  A Novel of Ancient Egypt

  Wilbur Smith

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  FOR MY NEW LOVE

  MOKHINISO

  Spirits of Genghis Khan and Omar Khayyám

  reincarnated in a moon as lucent

  as a perfect pearl

  Contents

  Begin Reading

  Like an uncoiling serpent, a line of fighting chariots wound swiftly down the gut of the valley. From where he clung to the dashboard of the leading chariot the boy looked up at the cliffs that hemmed them in. The sheer rock was pierced by the openings to the tombs of the old people that honeycombed the cliff. The dark pits stared down at him like the implacable eyes of a legion of djinn. Prince Nefer Memnon shuddered and looked away, furtively making the sign to avert evil with his left hand.

  Over his shoulder he glanced back down the column and saw that from the following chariot Taita was watching him through the swirling clouds of dust. The dust had coated the old man and his vehicle with a pale film, and a single shaft of sunlight that penetrated to the depths of this deep valley glittered on the mica particles so that he seemed to glow like the incarnation of one of the gods. Nefer ducked his head guiltily, ashamed that the old man had witnessed his fleeting superstitious dread. No royal prince of the House of Tamose should show such weakness, not now when he stood at the gateway to manhood. But, then, Taita knew him as no other did, for he had been Nefer’s tutor since infancy, closer to him than his own parents or siblings. Taita’s expression never changed, but even at that distance his ancient eyes seemed to bore into the core of Nefer’s being. Seeing all, understanding all.

  Nefer turned back and drew himself up to his full height beside his father, who flipped the reins and urged the horses on with a crack of the long whip. Ahead of them the valley opened abruptly into the great amphitheater that contained the stark and tumbled ruins of the city of Gallala. Nefer thrilled to his first sight of this famous battlefield. As a young man Taita himself had fought on this site whe
n the demigod Tanus, Lord Harrab, had destroyed the dark forces that were threatening this very Egypt. That had been over sixty years ago, but Taita had related to him every detail of the fight, and so vivid was his storytelling that Nefer felt as if he had been there on that fateful day.

  Nefer’s father, the god and Pharaoh Tamose, wheeled the chariot up to the tumbled stones of the ruined gateway, and reined in the horses. Behind them a hundred chariots in succession neatly executed the same maneuver, and the charioteers swarmed down from the footplates to begin watering the horses. When Pharaoh opened his mouth to speak, the coated dust crumbled from his cheeks and dribbled down his chest.

  “My lord!” Pharaoh hailed the Great Lion of Egypt, Lord Naja, his army commander and beloved companion. “We must be away again before the sun touches the hilltops. I wish to make a night run through the dunes to El Gabar.”

  The blue war crown on Tamose’s head gleamed with mica dust, and his eyes were bloodshot with tiny lumps of tear-wet mud in the corners as he glanced down at Nefer. “This is where I will leave you to go on with Taita.”

  Although he knew that it was futile to protest, Nefer opened his mouth to do so. The squadron was going in against the enemy. Pharaoh Tamose’s battle plan was to circle south through the Great Dunes and weave a way between the bitter natron lakes to take the enemy in his rear and rip an opening in his center through which the Egyptian legions, massed and waiting on the Nile bank before Abnub, could pour. Tamose would combine the two forces and, before the enemy could rally, drive on past Tell el-Daba and seize the enemy citadel of Avaris.

  It was a bold and brilliant plan which, if it succeeded, would bring to a close, at one stroke, the war with the Hyksos that had already raged through two lifetimes. Nefer had been taught that battle and glory were the reasons for his existence on this earth. But, even at the advanced age of fourteen years, they had so far eluded him. He longed with all his soul to ride to victory and immortality at his father’s side.

  Before his protest could pass his lips, Pharaoh forestalled him. “What is the first duty of a warrior?” he demanded of the boy.

  Nefer dropped his eyes. “It is obedience, Majesty,” he replied softly, reluctantly.

  “Never forget it.” Pharaoh nodded and turned away.

  Nefer felt himself spurned and discarded. His eyes smarted and his upper lip quivered, but Taita’s gaze stiffened him. He blinked to clear his vision of tears, and took a pull from the waterskin that hung on the side rail of the chariot before turning to the old Magus with a jaunty toss of his thick dust-caked curls. “Show me the monument, Tata,” he commanded.

  The ill-assorted pair made their way through the concourse of chariots, men and horses that choked the narrow street of the ruined city. Stripped naked in the heat, twenty troopers had climbed down the deep shafts to the ancient wells, and formed a bucket chain to bring the sparse, bitter water to the surface. Once those wells had been bountiful enough to support a rich and populous city that sat full upon the trade route between the Nile and the Red Sea. Then, centuries ago, an earthquake had shattered the water-bearing stratum and blocked the subterranean flow. The city of Gallala had died of thirst. Now there was scarcely sufficient water to slake the thirst of two hundred horses and top up the waterskins before the wells were dry.

  Taita led Nefer through the narrow lanes, past temples and palaces now inhabited only by the lizard and the scorpion, until they reached the deserted central square. In its center stood the monument to Lord Tanus and his triumph over the armies of bandits who had almost choked the life out of the richest and most powerful nation on earth. The monument was a bizarre pyramid of human skulls, cemented together and protected by a shrine made of red rock slabs. A thousand and more skulls grinned down upon the boy as he read aloud the inscription on the stone portico: “Our severed heads bear witness to the battle at this place in which we died beneath the sword of Tanus Lord Harrab. May all the generations that follow learn from that mighty lord’s deeds the glory of the gods and the power of righteous men. Thus decreed in the fourteenth year of the reign of the God Pharaoh Mamose.”

  Squatting in the monument’s shadow, Taita watched the Prince as he walked around the monument, pausing every few paces with hands on hips to study it from every angle. Although Taita’s expression was remote his eyes were fond. His love for the lad had its origins in two other lives. The first of these was Lostris, Queen of Egypt. Taita was a eunuch, but he had been gelded after puberty and had once loved a woman. Because of his physical mutilation Taita’s love was pure, and he had lavished it all on Queen Lostris, Nefer’s grandmother. It was a love so encompassing that even now, twenty years after her death, it stood at the center of his existence.

  The other person from whom his love for Nefer sprang was Tanus, Lord Harrab, to whom this monument had been erected. He had been dearer than a brother to Taita. They were both gone now, Lostris and Tanus, but their blood mingled strongly in this child’s veins. From their illicit union so long ago had sprung the child who had grown up to become the Pharaoh Tamose, who now led the squadron of chariots that had brought them here, the father of Prince Nefer.

  “Tata, show me where it was that you captured the leader of the robber barons.” Nefer’s voice cracked with excitement and the onset of puberty. “Was it here?” He ran to the broken-down wall at the south side of the square. “Tell me the story again.”

  “No, it was here. This side,” Taita told him, stood up and strode on those long, stork-thin legs to the eastern wall. He looked up to the crumbling summit. “The ruffian’s name was Shufti, and he was one-eyed and ugly as the god Seth. He was trying to escape from the battle by climbing over the wall up there.” Taita stooped and picked up half of a baked-mud brick from the rubble and suddenly hurled it upward. It sailed over the top of the high wall. “I cracked his skull and brought him down with a single throw.”

  Even though Nefer knew, at first hand, the old man’s strength, and that his powers of endurance were legend, he was astonished by that throw. He is old as the mountains, older than my grandmother, for he nursed her as he has done me, Nefer marveled. Men say he has witnessed two hundred inundations of the Nile and that he built the pyramids with his own hands. Then aloud he asked, “Did you hack off his head, Tata, and place it on that pile there?” He pointed at the grisly monument.

  “You know the story well enough, for I have told it to you a hundred times.” Taita feigned modest reluctance to extol his own deeds.

  “Tell me again!” Nefer ordered.

  Taita sat down on a stone block while Nefer settled at his feet in happy anticipation and listened avidly, until the rams’ horns of the squadron sounded the recall with a blast that shattered into diminishing echoes along the black cliffs. “Pharaoh summons us,” Taita said, and stood up to lead the way back through the gate.

  There was a great bustle and scurry outside the walls, as the squadron made ready to go on into the dune lands. The waterskins were bulging again and the troopers were checking and tightening the harness of their teams before mounting up.

  Pharaoh Tamose looked over the heads of his staff as the pair came through the gateway, and summoned Taita to his side with an inclination of his head. Together they walked out of earshot of the squadron officers. Lord Naja made as if to join them. Taita whispered a word to Pharaoh, then Tamose turned and sent Naja back with a curt word. The injured lord, flushed with mortification, shot a look at Taita that was fierce and sharp as a war arrow.

  “You have offended Naja. Some day I might not be at hand to protect you,” Pharaoh warned.

  “We dare trust no man,” Taita demurred. “Not until we crush the head of the serpent of treachery that tightens its coils around the pillars of your palace. Until you return from this campaign in the north only the two of us must know where I am taking the Prince.”

  “But Naja!” Pharaoh laughed dismissively. Naja was like a brother. They had run the Red Road together.

  “Even Naja.” Taita said no m
ore. His suspicions were at last hardening into certainty, but he had not yet gathered all the evidence he would need to convince Pharaoh.

  “Does the Prince know why you are going into the fastness of the desert?” Pharaoh asked.

  “He knows only that we are going to further his instruction in the mysteries, and to capture his godbird.”

  “Good, Taita.” Pharaoh nodded. “You were ever secretive but true. There is nothing more to say, for we have said it all. Now go, and may Horus spread his wings over you and Nefer.”

  “Look to your own back, Majesty, for in these days enemies are standing behind you as well as to your front.”

  Pharaoh grasped the Magus’ upper arm and squeezed hard. Under his fingers the arm was thin but hard as a dried acacia branch. Then he went back to where Nefer waited beside the wheel of the royal chariot, with the injured air of a puppy ordered back to its kennel.

  “Divine Majesty, there are younger men than me in the squadron.” The Prince made one last despairing effort to persuade his father that he should ride with the chariots. Pharaoh knew that the boy was right, of course. Meren, the grandson of the illustrious General Kratas, was his junior by three days and today was riding with his father as lance-bearer in one of the rear chariots. “When will you allow me to ride into battle with you, Father?”

  “Perhaps when you have run the Red Road. Then not even I will gainsay you.”

  It was a hollow promise, and they both knew it. Running the Red Road was the onerous test of horsemanship and weapons that few warriors attempted. It was an ordeal that drained, exhausted and often killed even a strong man in his prime and trained to near perfection. Nefer was a long way from that day.

  Then Pharaoh’s forbidding expression softened and he gripped his son’s arm in the only show of affection he would allow himself before his troops. “Now it is my command that you go with Taita into the desert to capture your godbird, and thus to prove your royal blood and your right one day to wear the double crown.”