The Quest (Novels of Ancient Egypt) Read online

  They hurried to the pots beside the cold ashes of last night’s fires. Habari and the other captains stood to attention at the head of their troopers, all drawn up in review order. They beat their sword scabbards against their shields and cheered as though Taita were a victorious general taking possession of the battleground. ‘Quiet!’ Taita groused. ‘You will split my skull.’ But they cheered him all the louder.

  The first three pots were filled with a nauseating black stew, but the water in the fourth was clear. He scooped out a handful and tasted it gingerly. It was not sweet, but redolent with the earthy flavour that had sustained them all since childhood: the familiar taste of Nile mud.

  From then on, at each overnight camp, they boiled and limed the pots of river water, and in the mornings, before they set out, they filled the waterskins. No longer weakened by thirst, the horses recovered and the pace of the march quickened. Nine days later they reached Assoun. Ahead lay the first of the six great cataracts. They were formidable obstacles for boats, but horses could take the caravan road round them.

  In the town of Assoun, Meren rested the horses and men for three days, and replenished their grain bags at the royal granary. He allowed the troopers to fortify themselves against the rigours of the next long leg of the journey by recourse to the joy-houses along the waterfront. Conscious of his new rank and responsibility, he himself greeted the blandishments and bold-eyed invitations of the local beauties with feigned indifference.

  The pool below the first cataract had shrivelled to a puddle so Taita had no need of a boatman to row him to the tiny rock island on which stood the great temple of Isis. Its walls were chiselled with gigantic images of the goddess, her husband, Osiris, and Horus, her son. Windsmoke carried Taita across to it, her hoofs ringing on the rocky riverbed. All of the priests were assembled to greet him, and he spent the next three days with them.

  They had little news for him of conditions in Nubia to the south. In the good times when the flood of the Nile had been reliable, strong and true there had been a large fleet of trading vessels plying the river up to Qebui, at the confluence of the two Niles. They returned with ivory, the dried meat and skins of wild animals, baulks of timber, bars of copper, and gold nuggets from the mines along the Atbara river, the principal tributary of the Nile. Now that the flood had failed and the waters that remained in the pools along the way had turned to blood, few travellers braved the dangerous road through the deserts on foot or horseback. The priests warned that the southern road and the hills along its way had become the home of criminals and outcasts.

  Once again he enquired after the preachers of the false goddess. They told him that it was rumoured Soe prophets had appeared from the wastes and made their way northwards towards Karnak and the delta, but none had had contact with them.

  When night fell Taita retired to the inner sanctuary of the mother goddess Isis and, under her protection, felt at ease to meditate and pray. Although he invoked his patron goddess, he received no direct response from her during the first two nights of his vigil. Nevertheless he felt stronger and better prepared to face the challenges that lay ahead on the road to Qebui and in the uncharted lands and swamps beyond. His inevitable confrontation with Eos seemed less daunting. His strengthened body and resolve might have been the result of hard riding in the company of young troopers and officers, and the spiritual disciplines he had observed since leaving Thebes, but it gave him pleasure to think that the close proximity of the goddess Lostris, or Fenn, as she now chose to be known, had armed him for the struggle.

  On the last morning, as the first light of dawn roused him, he asked again for Isis’s blessing and protection, and for those of any other gods who might be near. As he was about to leave the sanctuary he cast a last glance at the statue of Isis, which was hewn from a monolith of red granite. It towered to the roof and the head was shrouded in shadow, the stone eyes staring ahead implacably. He stooped to pick up his staff from beside the rug of plaited papyrus on which he had passed the night. Before he could straighten, the pulse started to beat softly in his ears, but he experienced no chill on his naked upper body. He looked up to see that the statue was gazing down at him. The eyes had come alive and glowed a luminous green. They were Fenn’s eyes and their expression was as gentle as that of a mother watching an infant asleep at her breast.

  ‘Fenn,’ he whispered. ‘Lostris, are you here?’ The echo of her laughter came from the stone vaulting high above his head, but he could see only the dark shape of bats flitting back to their roosts.

  His eyes switched back to the statue. The stone head was alive now, and it was Fenn’s. ‘Remember, I am waiting for you,’ she whispered.

  ‘Where will I find you? Tell me where to look,’ he begged.

  ‘Where else would you search for a moon fish?’ she teased him. ‘You will find me hiding among the other fishes.’

  ‘But where are the fishes?’ he pleaded. Already her living features were hardening into stone, and the brilliant eyes dulling.

  ‘Where?’ he cried. ‘When?’

  ‘Beware the prophet of darkness. He carries a knife. He also waits for you,’ she whispered sadly. ‘Now I must go. She will not let me stay longer.’

  ‘Who will not let you stay? Isis or another?’ To utter the name of the witch in this holy place would be sacrilege. But the statue’s lips had frozen.

  Hands tugged at his upper arm. He started and looked around, expecting another apparition to materialize, but he saw only the anxious face of the high priest, who said, ‘Magus, what ails you? Why do you cry out?’

  ‘It was a dream, just a foolish dream.’

  ‘Dreams are never foolish. You of all people should know that. They are warnings and messages from the gods.’

  He took his leave of the holy men, and went out to the stables. Windsmoke ran to meet him, kicking up her heels playfully, a bunch of hay stalks dangling from the corner of her mouth.

  ‘They have been spoiling you, you fat old strumpet. Look at you now, cavorting like a foal, you with your big belly,’ Taita scolded her lovingly. During their sojourn in Karnak a careless groom had let one of Pharaoh’s favourite stallions reach her. Now she quietened and stood still to let him mount, then carried him to where Meren’s troopers were breaking camp. When the column was ready, the men standing by their horses’ heads, with the spare mounts and the pack mules on lead reins, Meren went down the ranks checking weapons and equipment, making certain that each man had his copper water-pot and a bag of lime strapped to the back of the mule.

  ‘Mount!’ he roared from the head of the column. ‘Move out! Walk! Trot!’ A train of weeping women followed them to the foot of the hills, where they fell back, unable to keep up with the pace that Meren set.

  ‘Bitter the parting, but sweet the memories,’ Hilto-bar-Hilto remarked, and his platoon chuckled.

  ‘Nay, Hilto,’ Meren called from the head of the column. ‘The sweeter the flesh, the sweeter the memories!’

  They roared with laughter and drummed on the shields with their scabbards.

  ‘They laugh now,’ Taita said drily, ‘but let us see if they still laugh in the furnace of the desert.’

  They looked down into the gorge of the cataract. There was no rush of angry waters. The vicious rocks, which were usually a hazard to shipping, were now exposed and dry, black as the backs of a herd of wild buffalo. At the top end, on a bluff overlooking the gorge, stood a tall granite obelisk. While the men watered their steeds and the mules, Taita and Meren climbed the cliff to the monument and stood at its foot. Taita read aloud the inscription:

  ‘I, Queen Lostris, regent of Egypt and widow of Pharaoh Mamose, eighth of that name, mother of the crown prince Memnon, who shall rule the Two Kingdoms after me, have ordained the raising of this monument.

  This is the mark and covenant of my vow to the people of this very Egypt, that I shall return to them from the wilderness whence I have been driven by the barbarian.

  This stone was placed here in the fi
rst year of my rule, the nine-hundredth after the building of the great pyramid of Pharaoh Cheops.

  Let this stone stand immovable as the pyramid until I make good my promise to return.’

  As the memories flooded back, Taita’s eyes filled with tears. He remembered her on the day they had raised the obelisk: Lostris had been twenty, proud in her royalty and womanly glory.

  ‘It was on this spot that Queen Lostris placed the Gold of Praise upon my shoulders,’ he told Meren. ‘It was heavy, but less precious to me than her favour.’ They went down to the horses and rode on.

  The desert enveloped them like the flames of a mighty bonfire. They could not ride during the day, so they boiled and limed the river water, then lay in any shade they could find, panting like hard-run hounds. When the sun touched the western horizon, they rode on through the night. In places the gaunt cliffs crowded the riverbank so closely that they could only ride in single file along the narrow track. They passed tumbledown huts that had once given shelter to travellers who had gone before them, but they were deserted. They found no fresh sign of any human presence until the tenth day after they had left Assoun when they came across another cluster of abandoned huts beside what had been a deep pool. One had been recently occupied: the ashes on the hearth were still fresh and crisp. As soon as Taita entered it, he sensed the faint but unmistakable taint of the witch. As his eyes adjusted to the shadows, he made out writing in hieratic script that had been scratched on the wall with a stick of charcoal.

  ‘Eos is great. Eos cometh.’ Not long ago, one of the witch’s adherents had passed this way. His footprints were still in the dust of the floor at the bottom of the wall where he had stood to write the exhortation. It was almost sunrise, and the heat of the day was coming swiftly upon them. Meren ordered the column to make camp. Even the ruined huts would afford some shelter from the cruel sun. While this was happening and before the heat became unbearable, Taita cast around for other traces of the Eos worshipper. In a patch of loose earth on the stony track that led south he found hoofprints. By their set he could tell that the horse must have carried a heavy load. The tracks were heading south, towards Qebui. Taita called Meren, and asked, ‘How old are these tracks?’ Meren was an expert scout and tracker.

  ‘Impossible to be certain, Magus. More than three days, less than ten.’

  ‘Then already the Eos worshipper is far ahead of us.’

  As they turned back for the shelter of the huts a pair of dark eyes watched their every move from the hills above the camp. The dark brooding gaze was that of Soe, the prophet of Eos who had bewitched Queen Mintaka. It was he who had written the inscription on the wall of the hut. Now he regretted having announced his presence.

  He lay in a patch of shade thrown by the crags above him. Three days previously his horse had stepped into a cleft in the rocks on the path and broken its foreleg. Within an hour a pack of hyenas had arrived to pull down the crippled animal. While it still screamed and kicked they ripped chunks of flesh from it and devoured them. Soe had drunk the last of his water during the previous night. Stranded in this terrible place he had resigned himself to death, which could not be long delayed.

  Then unexpectedly, and to his great joy, he had heard hoofs coming up the valley. Rather than rush down to greet the newcomers and beg to accompany them, he had spied upon them warily from his hiding place. He recognized the troop immediately it came into sight as a detachment of the royal cavalry. They were well equipped and superbly mounted. It was plain that they were on a special assignment, possibly on the orders of the pharaoh himself. It was even possible that they had been sent to apprehend him and drag him back to Karnak. He knew that he had been noticed at the ford of the Nile below Thebes by the magus Taita, and that the magus was a confidant of Queen Mintaka. It did not need a stretch of the imagination to realize that she had probably confided in him, and that he knew of Soe’s involvement with the queen. Soe was patently guilty of sedition and treason and would stand no chance before a tribunal of Pharaoh. Those were the reasons why he had fled Karnak. Now he recognized Taita among the troopers camped below where he lay.

  Soe studied the horses that were tethered among the huts on the riverbank. It was not clear which he needed most to ensure his survival: a horse or the bulging waterskins that a trooper was offloading from his pack mule. When it came to his choice of a mount, the mare that Taita had tethered outside his hut was indubitably the strongest and finest of them all. Even though she was with foal, she would be Soe’s first choice, if he could reach her.

  There was a great deal of activity in the camp. Horses were being fed and watered, copper pots were being carried up from the river pool and placed on the fires at which men were busy preparing food. When the meal was ready, the troopers divided into four platoons and squatted in separate circles around the communal pots. The sun was well above the horizon before they found a little shade in which to settle down. A somnolent silence fell over the camp. Soe marked the position of the sentries carefully. There were four at intervals round the periphery. He saw that his best approach would be along the dry riverbed, so he gave the sentry on that side his full attention. When he had not moved for some considerable time, Soe decided that he was dozing. He slipped down the flank of the hill, screened from the eyes of the more alert sentry on the near-side boundary. He reached the dry river course half a league below the camp and made his way quietly upstream. When he was opposite it he raised his head slowly above the top of the bank.

  A sentry was sitting cross-legged only twenty paces away. His chin was on his chest and his eyes were closed. Soe ducked below the bank again, stripped off his black robe and bundled it under his arm. He tucked his sheathed dagger into his loincloth and climbed to the top of the bank. Boldly he headed for the hut behind which the grey mare was tethered. In nothing more than a loincloth and sandals he could try to pass himself off as a legionary. If he was challenged he could reply, in fluent, colloquial Egyptian, that he had gone to the riverbed to attend to his private business. However, no one challenged him. He reached the corner of the hut and ducked round it.

  The mare was tethered just beyond the open doorway, and a full waterskin lay in the shade of the wall. It would be the work of a few seconds to swing it over the mare’s withers. He always rode bareback and needed no saddle blanket or rope stirrups. He crept up to the mare and stroked her neck. She turned her head and sniffed his hand, then shifted restlessly, but quieted again as he murmured to her soothingly and patted her shoulder. Then he went to the waterskin. It was heavy but he lifted it and threw it over her back. He slipped the knot of her halter rope and was on the point of mounting when a voice called to him from the open doorway of the hut, ‘Beware the false prophet. I was warned about you, Soe.’

  Startled, he glanced over his shoulder. The magus stood in the doorway. He was naked. His body was lean and muscled like that of a much younger man, but the terrible scar of the old gelding wound showed silver in his crotch. His hair and beard were in disarray, but his eyes were bright. He raised his voice in a loud cry of alarm: ‘On me, the guards! Hilto, Habari! Meren! Here, Shabako!’ At once the cry was taken up and shouted across the camp.

  Soe hesitated no longer. He swung up on to Windsmoke’s back and urged her away. Taita threw himself into her path and seized her halter rope. The mare came to such a sudden halt that Soe was thrown on to her neck. ‘Stand aside, you old fool!’ he shouted angrily.

  He carries a knife. Fenn’s warning echoed in Taita’s head, and he saw the flash of a dagger in Soe’s right hand as he leant down from Windsmoke’s back to slash. If he had not been forewarned Taita would have received the thrust full in the throat, where it was aimed, but he had just enough time to duck to one side. The point of the dagger caught him high in the shoulder. He stumbled backwards, blood streaming down his shoulder and flank. Soe urged the mare forward to run him down. Clutching the wound, Taita whistled sharply and Windsmoke shied again, then bucked furiously and hurled Soe headlong into the f
ire, knocking over the water-pot in a hissing cloud of steam. Soe crawled off the hot coals, but before he could regain his feet two burly troopers pounced on him and pinned him to the dust.

  ‘’Tis a little trick I taught the mare,’ Taita told Soe quietly, and picked the dagger out of the dust where he had dropped it. He placed the point against the soft skin of Soe’s temple just in front of the ear. ‘Lie still or I will skewer your head like a ripe pomegranate.’

  Meren rushed from the hut naked, sword in hand. He took in the situation instantly, and pressed the bronze point into the back of Soe’s neck, then looked up at Taita. ‘The swine has wounded you. Shall I kill him, Magus?’

  ‘No!’ Taita told him. ‘This is Soe, the false prophet of the false goddess.’

  ‘By Seth’s sweaty testicles, I recognize him now. It was he who set the toads on Demeter at the ford.’

  ‘One and the same,’ Taita agreed. ‘Bind him well. As soon as I have seen to this cut I desire to converse with him.’

  When Taita emerged from the hut a short while later, Soe was trussed up like a pig for market and laid in the full glare of the sun. They had stripped him naked, to ensure he had no other blade concealed, and already his skin was reddening under the caress of the sun. Hilto and Shabako were standing over him with drawn swords. Meren placed a stool with a seat of leather thongs in the shade thrown by the wall of the hut, and Taita took his ease upon it. He took time to survey Soe with the vision of the Inner Eye: the man’s aura was unchanged from the last time he had scried it, angry and confused.

  At length Taita began to ask a series of simple questions to which he already knew the answers so that he could watch how Soe’s aura reacted to either the truth or a lie.

  ‘You are known as Soe?’

  Soe glared at him in silent defiance. ‘Prick him,’ Taita ordered Shabako, ‘in the leg and not too deeply.’ Shabako delivered a finely judged stab. Soe jumped, shrieked and twisted against his bonds. There was a thin trickle of blood on his thigh.