Lynda Robinson: Eater of souls

Under a column headed "Happenings of the Day" Sokar wrote in cursive script: "One death, a farmer not of the city." No need to disgust a great one with meaningless details. He moved on to list the theft of valuable chisels from a stone worker.

A little girl followed her mother past a fruit stall in a crowded market near the palace district. She yanked on her mother's skirt and pointed up, past the rooftops, at a bird of prey soaring on the invisible winds that swept the sky. Horus, the falcon, "Far-Above One," god of the sky, son of Osiris, protector of pharaoh. This was the sky-falcon, whose eyes are the sun and the moon.

The Horus falcon embodied the majesty and power of Egypt and her king, from its hooked upper bill to the tips of its slate-gray wings. Gray darkened to black as it reached the bird's nape and head, creating a startling contrast with the white of its underside. A curved black slash marked its white cheek.

The bird suddenly dove straight down and vanished near the bank of the Nile, then reappeared, its attack aborted. Banking sharply, it left the market behind to glide easily over the massive ramparts of the royal palace. Uttering an ascending wail, weechew-weechew, weechew-weechew , it began a long, graceful descent. The falcon's path took it over colossal pylons, palace lakes and gardens bursting with exotic flowers and incense trees, masses of lofty palms around courtyard after courtyard filled with festival-dressed men and women. At last the bird landed on top of an obelisk carved in pink granite and covered in electrum. Strong wings swept back and forth for balance before folding to the creature's sides.

The sky-falcon tilted its head. The eye of the sun, round and obsidian-black, looked down at a gravel path lined with guards along which two men walked. The taller, darker one followed the other, and they disappeared into the palace. With a rasping kack-kack-kack , the Horus falcon sprang aloft, climbing the sky to leave behind the palace called Domain of Tutankhamun, Great of Conquests, and the court of the Golden Horus.

As Meren stepped inside the royal palace he heard the harsh cry of a falcon. If he could have escaped on wings like that bird, he would have. But a summons from pharaoh couldn't be escaped, even if his mood was as foul as a chamber pot. Why had fate thrust upon him this burden of discovering secrets so dangerous that even suspecting them could result in the annihilation of his whole family?

Thus preoccupied, Meren spared no glance at the dozens of guards on alert in the palace corridors and faience-tiled reception rooms through which he walked. Trying to hurry without seeming to do so, Meren reached an antechamber behind the imperial throne room. It was protected by the largest and most formidable of the king's personal bodyguards, under the command of Meren's even more formidable escort.

None of the guards took notice of Meren as Karoya came forward and opened the polished cedar door. The antechamber was filled with more of Karoya's men. Each was armed with a scimitar and a dagger thrust into his beaded belt. All wore engraved bronze-covered leather corselets wrapped across their chests.

Meren felt almost naked without his own armor. He was dressed for court, bejeweled and painted, decked in gold, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and malachite. His own weapon was a ceremonial dagger with a hilt of beaded electrum. A brief thought flitted into his heart. If he pursued Nefertiti's killers-there had to be more than one- and made the slightest mistake, it would take an army of royal bodyguards to keep him and the family safe.

He should be making preparations, not wasting time at court. The moment he'd seen Karoya at his house, Meren knew his plans for the morning were ruined. Karoya only appeared when pharaoh sent a personal rather than official message. He had been summoned to a ceremony he'd thought to avoid-the king's reception of the long-awaited Hittite royal emissary. Meren's own web of informers was convinced that the king of the Hittites, Suppiluliumas, had been using rebellious vassals and disgruntled rival claimants to princely thrones to create unrest at the edges of the Egyptian empire.

Several princes loyal to pharaoh had already been attacked and defeated in their city-states in Syria and Palestine. Ordinarily Egypt would have attributed such events to the perennial eddies and currents of warfare that plagued the region. But Suppiluliumas was a conqueror. If he was allowed to continue his depredations unchecked, Egypt might someday find the Hittite armies at her own borders. It had happened once, with the Hyksos. That humiliating conquest had left Egypt with an abiding determination never again to fall victim to an invasion of Asiatics.

Pharaoh must have decided he needed all his foremost servants beside him to present a united phalanx to the Hittite emissary. Thus it was that Meren had donned court garb and come to the palace. Karoya had taken up a stance beside the door that opened into the imperial throne room, a vast, pillared audience hall fabled throughout the world for its magnificence. Nodding to Karoya, Meren waited for the Nubian to open the door, then sighed and walked into a blaze of gold. Blinking in the light of a thousand tapers and alabaster lamps perched on stands, he entered behind and to the right of the throne itself. Karoya went to his place in front of the right-hand support column of the dais.

Pausing, Meren surveyed a sea of the finest starched and pleated linen worn by dozens of courtiers. Ministers, nobles, and government officials rivaled the raiment of the gods in their stone temples with their plaited and smoothed wigs, their heavy earrings, their collars of gold and electrum. None, however, equaled the splendor of pharaoh.

Tutankhamun was seated on an ebony-and-gold throne, and he wore the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. Though only fourteen, he carried the heavy gold, lapis lazuli, carnelian, and turquoise of his royal costume as if it were unadorned linen. Meren had to stop himself from smiling. It wasn't long ago that the boy-king had complained bitterly of the nuisance of having to wear the tall, heavy crowns, the ceremonial gold beard and cumbersome imperial rings. He'd said it was like wearing the contents of the royal treasury.

A snakelike movement caught Meren's attention. Lying beside the throne and swirling his tail was the king's black leopard-Sa, the guardian. The double crown moved slightly. Meren's gaze flicked upward to meet the solemn regard of pharaoh. Tutankhamun lifted his eyebrows, a signal so fleeting that most wouldn't understand it.

Meren eased his way through the ranks of ministers close to the king and joined the vizier Ay and General Horemheb beside the first step of the covered dais upon which the throne rested. The entire hall gleamed with the jewels of the courtiers, the decorations on the weapons of the guards, the embellishments on the posts and awning over the dais, the throne itself. More royal guards stood in motionless rows against the walls. Behind them rose great painted reliefs showing the king slaughtering his enemies in his golden chariot, the king returning from battle with hundreds of prisoners, the king trampling a Libyan rebel while hacking a Syrian with his war ax.

Tutankhamun complained increasingly that Meren and his other ministers wouldn't let him go into battle and make these brilliantly executed paintings more than examples of royal aspirations. The boy was growing more and more impatient to measure up to the warrior-king images with which he was confronted daily. Soon Tutankhamun would make Meren fulfill his promise to take him on a raid against one of the bandit gangs that plagued the more isolated Egyptian villages.

An abrupt silence fell over the assembly. A hollow pounding echoed through the hall and bounced off the high walls. The overseer of the audience hall paced slowly down the long avenue formed by column after column, each in the form of a bundle of papyrus plants. Meren had to stop his thoughts from wandering back to his own troubles as the overseer stopped some distance from pharaoh.