Lynda Robinson - Drinker Of Blood

Kicking Wind into a trot and hauling Star behind him, Meren covered the remaining distance quickly. He approached the outlying post at a near canter. As he passed them, the guards shouted.

"There he is! He's here!"

Racing into camp, Meren hauled on Wind's harness as he was met by a phalanx of infantry, charioteers, and officers. In moments he was surrounded. Taken aback, Meren surveyed the men until he found Horemheb. The general was shoving his way through the crowd.

"General," Meren said, using his friend's title before others. "What passes here?"

As Ra brought forth the light of morning, Horemheb stalked over to him, his face wiped clean of emotion. He grabbed Wind's harness and spoke in a rough voice.

"Why?"

Meren's gaze cut from Horemheb to the men surrounding him, seeing wariness, astonishment, rage. "Where is pharaoh?"

"I'm here.

Men parted, and Tutankhamun limped toward him. He was bleeding from a cut on his temple. There was a gash on his left biceps, and he held a wad of cloth pressed to a wound on his right forearm. The boy came close, despite the protests of the physician who trailed behind him, pleading, and the attempts by Mose and his bodyguards to put themselves between him and Meren. Wiping a trail of blood from his eye, Tutankhamun braced his legs wide apart and fixed Meren with a gaze of bewildered horror. Horemheb started to say something, but a slash of the hand from pharaoh commanded silence. Stunned, Meren gaped at the king.

Tutankhamun took an unsteady step toward him and said, "By the god my father, why, Meren?" Those words held the anguish of a lost soul.

Shaking his head, Meren tried to speak, but the king snatched the hem of his kilt, twisting his bloodied fingers in the material and drawing close so that only Meren could hear his violent whisper.

"Tell me, damn you. What evil demon possessed you?"

Meren put his hand on Tutankhamun's, but the boy snatched it away.

"Majesty, I don't understand."

The king's harsh laugh sent an uneasy mutter through the men surrounding them. The physician scurried forward, but Tutankhamun motioned him away and kept his scimitar stare on Meren.

"What I don't understand is why you came back after you tried to kill me. Didn't you think I'd recognize your voice, even inside the blackest tent?"

Horizon of the Aten, the independent reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten

In the queen's palace Nefertiti was dressing for the morning devotion to the Aten. A maid held up a polished electrum mirror, and she regarded the paint that had been applied to her eyes. She waved the mirror away. Never had she expected to experience pain upon regarding her own reflection. After her last visit to Memphis, she could hardly look at herself, for the sight of her well-fed perfection only called up the memory of what she'd seen.

She'd gone to visit her former tutor, Tati, in a village near the capital. She had stopped at Memphis-White Wall, old capital of the Two Lands-and confronted the results of Akhenaten's new policies. Pharaoh was diverting to the Aten the entire endowments of the great gods of Egypt.

She had driven past the temple of Ptah on the way to the royal palace and found it closed. The dwelling of the artisan god who fashioned the world was deserted. Lay priests, god's servants, and lector priests no longer walked its columned courtyards. Where they had gone, she didn't know.

Vanished also were the officials of the god's granaries, his cattle herders and stonemasons, the makers of incense, and the painters who adorned the walls of the temple and lived in the city-within-a-city that surrounded the temple. So many depended on Ptah for their life and work.

Those who remained in the temple area were like spirits of the dead with none to attend their graves. They starved. Climbing down from her chariot, ignoring the protests of her bodyguards, she walked by children crouched in the dirt. Their distended bellies hung beneath ribs that threatened to press through their flesh. She saw their hope-dead eyes even now, back in her own palace. Every time she ate, she remembered the skeletal hands of a little girl who snatched at flies and shoved them into her mouth.

Closing her eyes, Nefertiti banished the vision of the starving girl. She went to the nursery first to kiss her little ones and listen to their chatter. The gods set each person upon the earth in his proper station. She possessed this palace with its terrace overlooking gardens and azure pools, its spacious rooms surrounded by more shaded gardens, courtyards, and vibrant frescoes. She lived with Akhenaten in the great riverside palace with its mighty battlements and countless rooms stuffed with furniture wrought of exotic wood and trimmed with gold. This was right, for she was queen of Egypt. But it wasn't right that those who had once worked and lived well should be reduced to misery.

Dawn found Nefertiti setting foot on the polished stone of the open-air temple within the palace, just as Thanuro arrived with the offerings he would present to the god. Thanuro was a third prophet of the Aten assigned to her service. At the same time he functioned as scribe of accounts of the house of the god. He oversaw the disbursement of revenues from the former estates and treasuries of Amun. Nefertiti's lip curled up, along with one eyebrow. Thanuro was an ex-priest of Amun who saw the wisdom of converting to Aten worship.

The man had been instrumental in ferreting out obscure endowments and revenues of the old god so that they could be transferred to the Aten. Thanuro had been one of those who invaded the archives of Amun, at pharaoh's order, to compile lists of the god's possessions. He thereby deprived Tati, among others, of the income the old scholar depended on for his daily sustenance and his funerary grant.

Nefertiti constantly had to find dispossessed priests new occupations. Sometimes a particularly rigid prophet or divine one would insult Thanuro, and the Aten priest would have the man bastinadoed. Then Nefertiti dared not interfere, for Thanuro had been appointed by pharaoh.

The priest came forward to stand before her. He bore a gold tray on which rested boxes of cedar containing frankincense, cassia, and myrrh. Behind Thanuro stood priests bearing offerings of food and wine. It was time for the adoration. Nefertiti took the tray from Thanuro and walked to the middle of the platform.

"Courage." Nefertiti tightened her lips, angry that the word had slipped out.

Thanuro was chanting and hadn't heard. She bit her lip and made her body go through the motions of worship. She needed courage to perform this adoration, for she prayed to her husband. Long ago Akhenaten made it clear that pharaoh was the only one in the world who could approach the Aten directly. Everyone else, including Nefertiti, prayed to the Aten through pharaoh as the incarnation of the sun disk. She never got over the feeling that the old gods watched her, for in truth, she'd never really believed in Akhenaten's god.

Oh, she lived as though she believed. No other course was possible, and for a while in the early years she had almost succeeded in convincing herself that Akhenaten's way was the truth. But Nefertiti found that her own nature fought against her. She was practical, as grounded in the black land of Egypt as any peasant. Her heart reasoned that the gods who had guided the Two Lands from the beginning of time, who had brought prosperity and empire, wouldn't go away simply because Akhenaten denied them. And now the Two Lands suffered. She suffered.

Perhaps her children's illnesses were a sign of the gods' wrath. The gods knew she worshiped the sun disk. Every time she approached the altar of the Aten, she expected to be struck down for her heresy.

Forcing the words out, Nefertiti begged her husband's intercession with the Aten so that her prayers would be heard. She raised the box of frankincense to the rising sun. Over the tops of the trees a band of pink light grew faint as the golden orb rose.