Nick Drake - Egypt

She looked at me strangely.

‘But it was Nakht who told me of your death, and those of Simut and Zannanza,’ she said carefully. ‘He told me you died saving his life. It is he who has advised me there is no hope.’

At these words, something dark clicked into place deep inside me, and the blackness in my heart was complete.

I stood, a shadow in the shadows, and watched Nakht’s mansion. The golden strength of the opium coursed through my veins. With shaking hands, I had taken the last of it. Now everything was vivid and pin-sharp once again, my mind lucid and my heart clear. I welcomed the perfect God of Revenge as he took possession of me. The time had come.

The guards were on duty at the gateway. The street was thronged with the usual traffic of carts and chariots, and the crowds of mid-afternoon. I was waiting to see my children. Soon I saw them walking towards the house, accompanied by armed guards. They held hands, but they weren’t smiling; their faces were heavy, and they didn’t speak. All their usual vivacity had vanished. Then Tanefert suddenly appeared at the great door to the house, waiting to greet them. She was wearing a robe in the pale-blue of mourning. She held herself tightly, as if something was broken, and she was holding the parts together. She looked thin and exhausted. As the girls arrived, she enfolded them into her embrace, kissed their heads, and then, as if the noise and life of the world was too much to bear, hurried them inside. I desperately wanted to call out to them all, to reveal myself, to run across the street and sweep them into my arms. But suddenly Nakht himself appeared in the doorway; his smooth face, his perfect robes, his hawk eyes, gave nothing away. He glanced up and down the street, and then disappeared inside.

I settled down to wait. Darkness would reveal the truth. I had not slept for several nights now, but the opium gave me a new intensity of wakefulness and animal power. My long vigil was eventually rewarded. In the late hours of the night, the great door opened briefly and a dark figure, his head covered, slipped out and moved swiftly along the empty street, accompanied by two guards. They were well-armed; but now so was I, with weapons borrowed from the palace armoury. The figures crossed into the shadows of a side passage and disappeared. My hunting instinct was alive in me now, and I already guessed where they were going; I followed, tracking their progress through the dark labyrinth of the city. I arrived at the merchant’s house in time to see the figures slip through the big wooden doors.

I stood in the shadows, listening intently for any sound from the house. I watched the full moon as she moved slowly across the dark ocean of the night, and the great stars wheeled around her. Eventually, in the darkest hour of the night, when she was about to sink below the horizon, the doors opened once more, and the cloaked figure slipped out, accompanied by his two guards. I ran silent as the moon through the dark ways of the city, found the place I had decided upon in my head, where several lanes merged into a small open space, and waited. I was ready.

As the group of figures appeared, I sent an axe hurtling through the shadows with all my strength; it thudded exactly into the centre of the first guard’s forehead with a crack, and he slumped to the ground. The cloaked figures of Nakht and the other guard stopped in their tracks, trying to identify their attacker; the second guard moved quickly on his feet, fully-concentrated, coming towards me, his curved blade slicing at the shadows before him. I tormented him with a scatter of small stones cast against the wall beside him. He turned, and I plunged my scimitar deep into his belly, jerking the curved blade sideways until his guts spilled out, warm and slippery, into his clutching hands. His face tipped up to the stars; it was Nakht’s manservant, Minmose. Perhaps he recognized me, for he muttered something; but the blood in his mouth choked him, and he died. I lowered his body to the ground.

The hooded figure had already disappeared silently into the narrow streets. But he didn’t know his assailant was me; nor did he know I knew exactly where he was going. And above all, I knew how to get there faster. I ran like a jackal, with the supreme power of the opium surging through me; and I was waiting for him in the shadows opposite the door of his mansion when he arrived, breathless and silent. The moment had come. Just as he reached his door, and safety, I stepped into the street and revealed myself. He stared at me.

‘Show yourself,’ I said.

‘Why?’ he replied. ‘Do you not know who I am?’

‘I want to look upon the face of Obsidian.’

‘Obsidian has no face,’ he replied.

‘We have that in common, then. I, too, am a shadow returned from the Otherworld to feed upon revenge. So show yourself. Or is the great Obsidian afraid?’

He slowly slipped off the hood. In the moonlight, the face was familiar, and yet now it seemed possessed by a stranger. I knew him and I did not know him. His eyes were black stones.

‘Names are powers. You should use them carefully, with respect,’ he replied. ‘They bring the forces of eternity to life in this world.’

‘You lied to me. You left me to die.’

Obsidian’s face betrayed no emotion.

‘Have you not discovered there is so much more to yourself than you ever believed? And is it not so much darker than you could ever have imagined?’ he said.

I took another step closer to him. I could see a faint sweat on his skin. His right hand held on to a hidden weapon. He stood poised, like a different man entirely.

‘I have lost my family,’ I said.

‘All earthly things end. But the way forward calls you now to something far greater…’

‘Don’t talk that rubbish to me. I know you too well,’ I said.

‘You do not know me at all.’

‘ I want my life back ,’ I hissed.

Obsidian almost smiled.

‘Your old life is gone. It’s finished. But there is a place for you, in the future of a new world, without dynasties-if you join me now.’

I tightened my grip on my scimitar.

‘What future? Ankhesenamun cannot prevail now. Horemheb will occupy Thebes. Nothing you have done will prevent that calamity. You have simply made it possible,’ I said.

‘The royal dynasty is finished. General Horemheb is a soldier without imagination. He believes he will bring “order” to the land. It is a shallow ambition. He would stifle the priesthood, and impose his own dynasty. Egypt is the greatest of all empires. But it has for too long been ruled by kings and dynasties, beset by vanity and jealousy. That shall be no more. There will be no more kings. And that is not all. There will be no more worship of the Gods, for they too have failed. Only Osiris, Lord of the Dead, eternally incorruptible, will rise again at the midpoint of the night, reborn in me. When Ra ascends tomorrow, time itself will begin again, a new age and a new world,’ said Obsidian. ‘It is I who will prevail.’

Somewhere in the distance a dog howled, and another answered. It would soon be dawn.

I took another step forward. With the next I would be close enough to slay him. But he was prepared, too. He watched me carefully. The city was silent all around us. I looked up at the eternal ocean of the night, glittering with stars. A harrowing sorrow entered my heart.

‘I have one last question,’ I said.

‘Of course you do,’ he said.

‘Why did Obsidian kill Khety?’

‘You already know the answer to your own question,’ he said, simply. ‘Because you told me about him. Your own words condemned him. And now here we are.’

He might as well have cut my heart out with his knife. I had told Nakht about Khety for the first time on the boat, on our way to the palace. I had trusted him.