Lynda Robinson: Eater of souls

"Karoya!" pharaoh shouted. "Why is this barbarian, this mannerless foreign pestilence, still on his feet?"

Silence fell. No one moved, except Karoya, who simply lifted his spear. Reversing it, he held it in throwing position over his shoulder and flexed his knee, awaiting the command of the living god. Mugallu's gaze dropped from pharaoh to the Nubian. He didn't move. Then the silence in the hall was ripped by a snarl.

Mugallu's head swiveled in pharaoh's direction, then fixed on a lashing black tail. Cobralike, Sa slowly rose from his place beside the throne. Three stalking paces brought him to pharaoh's side. The restless tail swirled back and forth and snaked around Tutankhamun's legs. The flat black head lowered between lean shoulders, ears pinned back. Sa's wary gaze never left the Hittite.

Another snarl. Without glancing at the predator, pharaoh lowered his hand to caress the cat's obsidian neck. Sa bared his teeth, but his snarl turned to an irritated rumble at the back of his throat. The Hittite hadn't breathed since that first snarl. When Sa remained at pharaoh's side, the emissary remembered to take in a gulp of air. Meren nearly smiled. He heard a suppressed snigger from the group of ministers behind him.

Mugallu heard it too. His mouth worked, and a flush crept up his neck to stain his cheeks. His jaw muscles contorted with fury, but he darted a glance at Karoya, knelt, slowly, and touched his forehead to the floor.

The silence stretched out, causing even Meren to grow uneasy. Pharaoh was still glaring down at the Hittite. At last he whirled on his heel. Karoya abandoned his battle stance and walked swiftly to meet the king as he descended the throne by the left-hand stair. No one moved while the bodyguard snapped a salute and turned in formation to follow the king. Tutankhamun vanished through the door Meren had used. More guards issued forth to slam the portal closed and plant crossed spears before it.

Meren blinked several times during the royal departure, trying to take in what had happened. Living gods weren't supposed to speak to lowly foreign princes. Living gods preserved an aura of divinity, majesty, calm authority. Even Akhenaten had never broken with this tradition.

"Help me up, boy."

Meren straightened and lent his arm to Ay, whose brittle bones protested at such exertion. Around them the court got to its feet. Mugallu jumped up and rounded on Ay, red-faced, tight-lipped, and furious.

"I am a royal prince, beloved by his majesty and trusted of the great king, Suppiluliumas! Never has the royal message of my king been rejected with such discourtesy. I repeated with all truthfulness the words of my-"

Meren interrupted smoothly. "Highness, are you telling the vizier that your message, which has provoked the wrath of the living god, was the intentional insult of the king of Hatti?"

Mugallu started to reply, then hesitated. His crimson face paled, and he began again. "Never has my master, the great king, offered insult to his brother, the divine Lord of the Two Lands."

"I thought not," Meren said.

Ay sighed and wiggled his fingers at Mugallu in a dismissive gesture. "Leave now, prince. Before the golden one's wrath renews itself. I would hate to have to send you home in boxes."

"Boxes?"

Meren gave him a gentle smile. "Boxes, probably a dozen or so, highness." He kept smiling until Mugallu was gone. Then he whispered to Ay.

"Pharaoh almost brought us to the verge of war. Was this your idea?"

"Don't be absurd, boy. The Hittite was even more insolent than usual."

"More insolent? What has been going on?"

Ay was prevented from answering. Ministers and nobles crowded around them, asking them what this amazing occurrence meant. Meren answered inquiries with soothing unconcern while his own apprehension remained unabated. Then, abruptly, Karoya appeared at his side. Friends and officials dropped away from Meren. He gave the Nubian an inquiring look. Karoya made no reply. He simply turned and left, expecting Meren to follow. Meren obeyed; for an Egyptian there was no other response imaginable. When pharaoh commanded, the world bent to his will.

From the shelter of a persea tree in pharaoh's private garden Meren watched Karoya leave and a pair of royal guards swing shut the carved door in the gate. Surrounded by a high brick wall, the garden was called Delights of Hathor, and it was deserted. As he'd entered, Meren had glimpsed retreating figures as they went through a door concealed behind dense vines. The chief gardener and his assistants, several water carriers, slaves bearing tall fans, women carrying trays-all had been dismissed.

The king would be a while disrobing. The heavy crowns, beard, rings, and jeweled linen overrobe demanded intricate maneuvers to get pharaoh out of them without snagging the royal hair or tangling the beads of a necklace with those sewn on the robe. And each item had to be treated with ceremony by privileged servitors who would be offended if Tutankhamun removed even an earring by himself. This was why the boy often avoided formal robing ceremonies.

Meren wandered over to a stand of sycamores. A delicate pavilion stood in the midst of this small forest, a bright blue, red, and gold jewel amid the dark green foliage. The quarrel with Mugallu would have to be settled. Pharaoh's harsh words could provoke an exchange of insults during which one side or the other would go too far, inciting war before Egypt was ready. Ay was already handling that problem; Meren had his own duties, others tasks, other worries, not the least of which was his own son.

Kysen was daily growing more perceptive. Even a few months ago, Meren could have hidden his anxiety from the boy. Wandering across the garden to a line of imported incense trees, Meren sat on the edge of a clay tub in which a myrrh tree flourished. His wrist itched. He pulled a slender pin from the clasp of a wide gold wristband inscribed with his name and titles, opened the hinged bracelet, and removed it.

He rubbed the white scar on his inner wrist. He could feel the voice of his heart pounding beneath his fingers as he rubbed the skin. Without meaning to, he sank into memories sixteen years old. Then he'd been but eighteen and a prisoner of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. The king had suspected him of adhering to the old gods when pharaoh had thrown them all out in favor of his own deity, the sun disk called the Aten. After killing Meren's father for refusing to adopt the new god, Akhenaten had imprisoned the son and tested him. Beatings, starvation, threats, nothing had broken Meren and made him confess to betraying the king's parvenu god.

Meren could still remember the smell of that shadowed cell where they kept him, a smell composed of dirt, sweat, the coppery scent of blood, and the contents of the sandy hole that served as his chamber pot. Meren pounded his fist against the side of the clay tub, willing himself to abandon this senseless reverie. Yet the images flooded through him as relentlessly as the Nile during Inundation. A burly guard kneeling on his arm while others pinned him to the floor. The white heat of a brazier, a glowing brand in the shape of the sun disk with sticklike rays extending from it and ending in stylized hands.

Then the images became feelings-that brief space between the moment when the brand met his flesh and that first searing agony; the pain shooting up his arm, into his heart; his scream; the feeling of distance, of floating away from his body, even as he broke out in icy sweat.

Then, at last, the nausea that slammed him back into his body and kept him there to endure the pain.

Cursing aloud, Meren pounded his first harder against the tub. The memories of pain faded, but not the misery of humiliation. The sun disk scar began to itch again. Meren glanced down at his wrist, smoothed his fingers over the pale circle that formed the sun, rubbed the rays that marked him as a victim of the heretic. Then he replaced the bracelet.