Day of the False King (24 page)

Sweet Isis! How would he ever scale the
thing? He looked at the staircase; it extended out from the tower no
more than a cubit at most, and possessed no railing or balustrade.
Semerket felt his legs starting to swim beneath him.

“Can she not meet me down here?” he asked
faintly, trying not to sound like he was pleading.

“She cannot. It’s coming on the New Year and
she reads the heavens for its portents.”

There was nothing for him to do but put his
sandaled foot tentatively on the first step. As he did, he realized
that he was not breathing. Firmly, he bade himself to show a little
fortitude. He inhaled and took another step, going up a single riser,
and even felt brave enough to try the third.

The curving stairs were steeply inclined,
and his rise upward was precipitous. Semerket was careful to face
inward, concentrating on the next stair in front of him. Though the
women muttered under their breath at the slowness of their ascent, he
was deaf to anything but his own terror.

At last, many eons later, Semerket edged his
way onto the uppermost level of the tower. Only about half the diameter
of the base, it was crammed with bronze and copper instruments made for
the calculation of the heavens. Semerket rejoiced to see that a
waist-high wall surrounded the platform.

A tall woman across from him peered through
a long bronze tube affixed to a tripod. As he stepped onto the
platform, she turned to stare at him. Semerket was dumbfounded to see
who it was. “You!” he said.

Mother Mylitta regarded him suspiciously.
“We’ve met?”

Semerket shook his head. “No. But I saw you
at the singer Nidaba’s house, only last night.”

Mother Mylitta was the older woman who had
accompanied the donkey train to Nidaba’s back courtyard — the one he
had heard speak his name so vengefully in the dark. If she was
surprised that he knew her, her cold, dark eyes indicated only
contempt. She bent to make another notation on a clay tablet. While she
did this, Semerket finally screwed up his courage to look finally out
and over the tower. From above the lingering smoke of cooking fires,
the desert plains beyond the city were silver, especially brilliant in
the dry, clear, starlit air. Semerket took a single step forward,
looking down upon the wide walls surrounding the city. He was almost
disappointed to see no chariots galloping atop them, four abreast.

Without looking up from her notations, the
woman spoke. “I’m told you stand in our courtyard and fling accusations
at me from the dark.”

He decided to come straight to the point.
“I’m Semerket, envoy of Pharaoh —”

“I know who you are.”

He stopped, irritation plucking at him. He
took another breath and began again. “Because of the friendship between
our nations, I’ve been asked by King Kutir —”

“To find his sister, yes,” Mother Mylitta
interrupted him again. “Go on.”

Semerket gritted his teeth. All right, he
thought, I can do it your way. “I know that Princess Pinikir survived
the massacre. I know she came here.”

Mother Mylitta looked up from her
note-taking. She pursed her thin, wrinkled lips. Laying down her
stylus, she placed her hands into the sleeves of her robes and stared
at him. “It was not the princess who sought sanctuary that night.”

“Who was it, then?”

“A woman needing our help.”

“Who was she? What was her name?”

Mother Mylitta’s expression did not change
and she said nothing.

He sighed. “You’re not going to tell me?”

Mylitta gave a haughty shake of her head. “I
cannot. Our bylaws prohibit us from divulging the names of our members.
Not even a woman’s husband may claim her once she enters the gagu.”

“And if I should tell the king that I
suspect his sister is behind these walls…?”

An amused smile of indulgence creased the
old woman’s face. “Do it, Semerket, and see what happens. There’s not a
prince in Mesopotamia who doesn’t owe his throne to the gold we lend
them, including Kutir.”

“Then if you’ll answer none of my questions,
why did you let me in here? You could have chased me away, or simply
ignored me.”

She did not answer him at once, but
continued to gaze at him with the same hard, unforgiving expression.
Then, as if she had come to some sort of inner decision, she turned
suddenly, squinting into the tube of bronze. Mother Mylitta aimed the
tube almost to the level of the horizon line, scanning the skies
intently. Then she stopped and beckoned him to approach.

“I brought you up here for one reason, to
show you this. Look into the scope,” she commanded.

Careful not to get too near the edge of the
tower, he edged forward to put his eye to the tube, not knowing what he
would see. The tube, it turned out, was simply that — a hollow piece of
cast metal that allowed the user to follow a single star exclusively
among all the others.

“Well?” he said.

“It’s the star of Egypt — the Seshat star,
you Egyptians call it.”

Semerket looked through the tube again. The
Seshat star seemed very much like all the rest of the anonymous lights
in the sky, though perhaps a trifle redder. Then he remembered what the
villagers had told him.

“Blood in the sky,” he murmured.

“Yes,” Mother Mylitta said, not surprised by
his words. “The reason I cannot help you.”

Mother Mylitta pointed a knobby finger at
the Seshat star. “Never before has Egypt’s star been seen in our part
of the sky, nor blazing with such ominous color. Worse, we’ve
discovered it reverses its orbit. The omen cannot be clearer. A great
evil has come out of Egypt to threaten us. It is the gods themselves
who have decreed that we can give no Egyptian our help.”

“But I am not this evil.”

“Until a clearer message is sent us, all
Egyptians are suspect. Even you, Semerket. Or perhaps I should say —
especially
you.”

He would have attempted to reason with the
woman, but before he had a chance to say anything more, Mother Mylitta
made a gesture to the two female guards. They came forward and seized
him by the arms, removing him from the observatory. The one beneficial
outcome of that evening was that Mother Mylitta had so confused him
with her talk of malevolent stars that he made his descent in a kind of
daze and was not quite so aware of the tower’s giddy height. It was
small consolation for losing Pinikir’s trail again, however.

Semerket retraced his steps to the hostel.
There was no one on the streets, and the profound quiet disturbed him;
it reminded him too much of the previous night, when the assassins had
leapt upon him from the dark. He wondered vaguely if his two Dark Head
spies, Galzu and Kuri, were watching over him as they had promised.
Semerket doubted it, for the Elamite patrols were too diligent to allow
many Dark Heads on the streets. He was somewhat heartened to realize
that if the Elamites made it difficult for his bodyguards to be abroad,
they did as much for any assassins. With that thought, he stopped to
risk a drink from a nearby well.

“Lord Semerket!” a strangely familiar voice
whispered to him.

He jumped, dropping the drinking gourd in
the well, his heart racing. But it was only the man from the Sick
Square.

“I apologize for frightening you,” said the
man. “But there is a message —”

“Another one?”

“You are warned to avoid the harbor this
evening, my lord. Particularly that area where the Elamite fleet is
moored.”

So now the Isins were planning an assault on
Kutir’s navy. Even Semerket, who was no military strategist, could
recognize it for the bold move it was; simply put, the Isins would cut
off the Elamites’ only means of escape. The war for the hand of Babylon
would be played to the death.

“Who sends me this warning?” Semerket asked
the man, knowing what his answer would be.

“Alas, my lord, I don’t know myself.”

SEMERKET REACHED THE HOSTEL at
the same time as Shepak. Upstairs in Semerket’s rooms they whispered
together. Semerket confessed his inability to extract any information
from Mother Mylitta, other than her insistence that the princess was
not at the gagu.

“Do you believe her?” Shepak asked.

Semerket nodded glumly. “Yes, I do — though
I don’t think she’d hesitate to lie to me, if she felt she needed to.”

He did not tell Shepak what Mother Mylitta
had told him of the great evil supposedly arising from Egypt. Nor did
he tell Shepak about the impending Isin attack in the harbor. The civil
strife in Babylon was none of his affair, he kept telling himself, and
the warning was for him alone. Of course, he would do all he could to
prevent Shepak from going in the direction of the harbors that night.

Shepak, on the other hand, had been more
successful in his quest. “The boy is still alive,” he said resolutely.

“Thank the gods!” Semerket exclaimed. “Tell
me!”

“I went to the oasis and found that the boy
was left with a local farmer who lived a few leagues up the road. I got
to the place just before dark. Apparently this Rami was so seriously
hurt that the caravan merchants didn’t want to take him on their
journey, fearing a death would curse their enterprise. That’s when Rami
wrote his message to you, giving it to the caravan masters.”

Semerket immediately threw his cape over his
shoulders. “Take me to him! We’ll have trouble getting out of the city,
but maybe Kutir’s pass will be enough —”

“Hold on,” interrupted Shepak, a warning
glint in his eye. “Rami’s no longer there. Not a week ago, a band of
Isins swooped down on the place and took him hostage. The last the
farmer saw of the boy, he’d been flung across a saddle and taken north.”

It was all too much for Semerket. He let out
a torrent of profanity that impressed even Shepak.

Semerket at last collected himself. For a
while, all he could do was pant, leaning his head against the wall in
dejection. “What in hell do we do now?” he asked, turning to Shepak.

Shepak pulled a cushion from the bed,
throwing it on the floor. “We sleep on it,” he answered shortly.

THAT NIGHT THE ISINS
attacked the Elamite fleet, burning the ships on the river. As the
Elamite troops converged on the harbor, the Isins again evaporated as
if by magic, only to reappear at the city granaries. While the Elamites
fought to save their ships, the Isins emptied their silos. As a result,
now the Elamites were starving, too.

The last place the marauders attacked that
night was a small, out-of-the-way building not far from where Semerket
and Shepak slumbered. The raiders forced open the gates of the Egyptian
temple, going into its shrines with brands and torches, where the
greasy soot of candles and incense instantly caught fire. The temple’s
three inhabitants — an elderly couple and a young, beautiful woman with
slanted green eyes — were hacked to pieces as they called upon their
gods to save them.

SEMERKET WANDERED, BEWILDERED
AND
speechless, through the ruined Egyptian temple. The
roof had collapsed from the heat of the flames, and he had to crawl
over heaps of brick and plaster. The colored mural pieces littering the
floor caught his eye — the smile of a goddess, the green hand of Osiris
clutching his scourge, wavy blue lines that had depicted the Nile…

The Babylonian civil police and their
servants — all whose duty it was to make the ashes and blood go away —
spoke to him as he passed. Their words sounded like the singsong
clacking of alien birds. Semerket simply could not comprehend another
Babylonian word at that moment. At the officials’ questions, he merely
averted his eyes and kept walking through the ruins, deaf to everything
but the scream in his head.

Fortunately, Shepak was there. The workers
deferred to him, for they knew Shepak was a highly ranked Elamite
officer. He barked questions at the witnesses, asking all the things
that Semerket was too tired and heartsore to ask.

Leaving Shepak to deal with them, Semerket
at last came to the little temple’s granite altar. Wildflowers were
still standing upright in its vases, and its surface was slick with the
black blood of sacrifice. But it was not a heifer or ewe that had been
slaughtered on it. Three unmoving figures lay at the altar’s granite
base, draped in shrouds: Senmut, Wia, and Aneku.

Who had been the first to die? Semerket
wondered.

The wind suddenly gusted, lifting the shroud
a little. A shaft of light happened to fall upon a frail, withered hand
— Senmut’s hand, the old priest who had been too proud to beg for alms
on the street. Semerket saw the deep cuts that ran across its palm,
telling him that the priest had tried to fend off his assassin’s blade.

He pulled the thin cloth over the hand
again, accidentally brushing his fingers against the priest’s flesh.
Its coldness was a shock; even the fierce Babylonian sun could do
nothing to kindle warmth in it.

When the wind once again lifted the shroud,
Semerket turned away. He did not wish to see their bodies, did not want
to remember his friends so torn and bloodied. He cursed himself for
having forgotten to warn Aneku that such an attack might occur. Though
such a warning would have done his friends little good, still he blamed
himself.

Semerket was standing beside the bodies when
Shepak found him. “I’ve questioned everyone who saw or heard the
attack,” he announced. “It was a force of Isins who did it, about ten
strong.”

Semerket raised his brows in surprise.
“Isins again?” he remarked coldly. “And did they suddenly appear from
nowhere to attack this little Egyptian temple, and did they vanish
again just as quickly?”

Shepak ignored his bitter jest. “They came
on foot, around midnight, yelling and cursing. They woke up the whole
quarter, it seems. Plenty of witnesses saw them — not just the
Egyptians from around the neighborhood, but Dark Heads, too.”

“Or thought they saw them,” Semerket
murmured. He stood up, turning soberly to Shepak. “A favor…?”

“Of course. Anything.”

Semerket took some gold and silver rings
from his belt and gave them to Shepak. “See that my friends’ bodies are
taken to the House of Purification. The locals will know where one is.
Give the priests this cash, and say that you want them to receive the
best possible embalming.”

Shepak looked squeamish but he nodded,
knowing how important such things were to Egyptians.

“While you’re there I want you to do
something else.” Semerket swallowed, dropping his eyes.

Shepak’s expression now became apprehensive.
“What?”

“Ask them to check their records for last
winter. Find out if they embalmed a woman named Naia.”

Shepak, appalled, protested. “Don’t you
think
you’re
the one to do that?” he said. “You can describe
her for them. I can’t.”

“She was beautiful, tell them, just
twenty-three years old. Her skin was the color of ash, and her eyes
like the Nile at flood season.”

Because he could no longer speak, Semerket
turned abruptly, heading down the stairs that led to the secret tunnel
beneath the temple.

“Where are you going?” Shepak called after
him.

There was no answer, for Semerket was
already gone.

“I MUST SEE HER,” Semerket
said, pushing against the gate.

The Syrian pushed back. “My lord, be
reasonable. I told you Nidaba isn’t awake —”

Semerket suddenly threw all his strength
against the gate. It flew back, striking the wall loudly. He stalked
through the portal, into the gardens. The concierge ran up the outer
stairs to the villa’s second floor, flinging terrified glances over his
shoulder, as though Semerket were some barbarian intent on ravishing
his mistress.

From the gardens, Semerket went into the
courtyard and waited in the veranda. In the harsh sunlight, the
flowering vines were scraggly. The silken cushions on the divans seemed
faded and wine-stained. Without the dark and the soft glow of oil
lamps, the villa resembled a dead wizard’s palace in some ancient folk
tale, its magic withered away.

A short while later, Semerket heard a noise
above him. A young man stood on the balustrade grimacing into the
bright light and rubbing his eyes. The concierge held a fluttering
tunic for the young man, which he donned while descending the stairs.

“Semerket?” he asked. “What are you doing
here?”

Semerket went to meet him in the courtyard.
The youth was very pale and his chin was dusted blue-black with morning
beard.

“I came to see Nidaba,” Semerket said
firmly. “It’s important. Take me to her.”

The young man was momentarily shocked. With
a stricken glance at the concierge, he brought his hands up to his face
to hide his smirk. “Oh, dear,” he said, “I’d forgotten how Egyptians
can be so naive about such things.”

Then Semerket saw the young man’s nails,
lacquered in gold dust, while tiny lines at the corner of his eyes
still held smudges of antimony. The dawn broke at last in Semerket’s
frail mind.

“
You’re
Nidaba?” Semerket asked
faintly.

The young man nodded, laughing softly. His
low and sultry tenor convinced Semerket of the truth. No wonder
Nidaba’s voice was so forceful, Semerket thought — a man’s lungs
powered it.

“Surely you know,” Nidaba explained with a
touch of defiance, “that Ishtar is male and female both — the god of
war and the goddess of love together. I’ve dedicated my life to serving
both their holy guises.”

Semerket nodded, a man of the world, though
he was thinking, Sweet Osiris, is anything in Babylon truly what it
seems to be?

“So,” Nidaba said, “since I’ve told you my
secret, you must tell me the reason you’ve come to see me.”

“Some friends of mine were murdered last
night.”

“Were they at the harbor?”

Semerket looked at Nidaba squarely. “How do
you know about the harbor?”

Nidaba picked at an imaginary thread. “I
heard something about it this morning. My concierge told me.”

“My friends were killed in the Egyptian
temple,” Semerket said. “They’re saying that Isins were behind it.”

Nidaba eyes glittered. “I’m very sorry, but
what can I do?”

“The same thing I asked you to do before:
take me to the Heir of Isin. I want to question him myself about the
attack.”

“Impossible. I told you before. I don’t even
know him.”

“I think you do.” Semerket said nothing
more, letting his black eyes bore into Nidaba’s.

“Haven’t you forgotten, Semerket? I’m
forbidden to help any Egyptian.”

“No, I haven’t forgotten. And I know that it
was Mother Mylitta who forbade it. I also know that she was here the
other night — just as I know what was in those donkey sacks.”

Nidaba gave a start. Gone were the graceful
movements and languid smiles.

“Now,” said Semerket evenly, leaning forward
to speak in a low tone, “what would happen, do you think, if Kutir knew
that the women of the gagu were sending the Isin rebels their gold,
coated in melted bitumen?”

Nidaba gasped. “How did you find out they
were sending it to them?”

“I saw the gold for myself. As for who it
was being sent to, that was a guess — one you just confirmed.”

Nidaba had succumbed to the oldest trick in
an investigator’s arsenal, and glared at Semerket. “The stars were
right,” Nidaba said. “You really are a bastard.”

“HOW ARE WE GOING to get past
the Elamite blockades?” Nidaba whispered to him.

“Just bat your lashes at them; that should
do it.”

“I’m serious.”

Semerket explained that he possessed a pass
from the king that should see them easily through any checkpoint.

“Well, aren’t we the fortunate ones,”
sniffed Nidaba scathingly, no longer bothering to hide her loathing of
the Elamites from him.

They walked down a narrow, crooked side
street in the old part of the city. Nidaba, clad in all her finery,
strolled with her usual grace — due, perhaps, to the jeweled clogs she
had insisted on wearing. Freshly barbered and painted, she explained to
him when he complained at how long her toilette took, that if she were
going to be murdered, she certainly did not intend to die a frump.

The little street they traveled on ended
abruptly at the grated entrance to a large cistern. When Semerket
looked questioningly at her, Nidaba merely walked over to lean casually
against the grate, idly scanning the rooftops and doorways. Semerket
realized she looked to see if anyone watched them. Satisfied that no
eyes were turned in their direction, Nidaba abruptly reached her hand
through the grate’s bars. He heard a latch open.

“Hurry!” Nidaba hissed at him. She had
lifted up the grate, something no ordinary woman could have done so
effortlessly. “Get in!”

Semerket did not ask questions, just crawled
under the opening. He braced his back against the grille so that Nidaba
could join him. When they were both inside, she led him forward into
the dark. They went about twenty paces before they found a curving
stairway leading to a lower level.

Nidaba seized a torch from the wall, knowing
just where to find it. She took a flint from her gilded leather sash
and quickly lighted it. The torch threw the staircase into bright
relief, allowing them to descend in safety. When they reached the lower
level, a long tunnel loomed before them, beside which an underground
canal gabbled softly.

“What
is
this place?” Semerket
asked in wonder. “A sewer?” It certainly did not smell like one, for
though the air was dank, it was not foul.

Nidaba began to lead him forward. “It’s a
sort of underground highway,” she whispered. “Babylon’s laced with
them. A queen built these tunnels hundreds of years ago. She wanted to
be able to rush her troops to any place in the city in case of riot.”

“Amazing,” Semerket said, awestruck by the
engineering effort it must have taken to build them. Expensive glazed
brick sheathed the tunnel’s surface. Over the centuries, however, a
mare’s nest of spidery roots had grown down from the street above,
snaking into the canal. It made their going very tricky, for the roots
clutched at their feet as they passed.

“Why don’t the Elamites use these tunnels?”

“As I said, they’re very old. Not many
people even know they exist.”

“But the Isins do,” he said, realizing just
how their troops were able to come and go so quickly. It was magic,
yes, but not the kind the Elamites believed in.

He and Nidaba reached a well of light that
fell from a vertical shaft leading up to the street. They heard an
Elamite captain distantly shouting orders to his men. Nidaba flashed a
warning look at Semerket, putting her finger to her lips, and they
continued forward in silence.

Semerket reflected how much easier it would
have been for the Elamites to control Babylon had they known about
these cisterns. But they had marched into the city with all the
arrogance and conceit with which conquerors possessing superior forces
are usually imbued, no doubt believing they could easily subdue such a
corrupt and vitiated people as the Babylonians. If only the Elamites
had taken a little time to do some reconnaissance, Semerket thought —
or at least some cursory investigation into the city’s history — they
might not now be fighting for their lives.

Such an odd people, these Babylonians, he
thought. And the woman — man — walking beside him had turned out to be
the oddest of them all. At that moment, Nidaba happened to glance over
at him. “Why do you look at me like that?”

“I’d never have taken you for a freedom
fighter.”

“Well, why should you? An Ishtaritu is only
ever expected to be amusing, never brave or daring — or even
patriotic.” There was bitterness in her lovely voice.

They had reached another cistern opening,
and Nidaba cautioned Semerket again to be quiet. As the minutes passed
and the dark grew even more stygian, he began to feel almost buried
alive. He suddenly remembered the time when he had been locked inside a
pharaoh’s tomb in the Great Place. A trickle of sweat snaked down his
spine as the long-repressed panic came flooding back. Before it
completely engulfed him, however, Nidaba stopped abruptly.

“We’re here,” she said.

They stood in front of another metal grille,
chained and locked. They could go no further.

“Where are we?” he whispered.

“Beneath the Royal Quarter.”

He almost smiled. “You mean the Heir of Isin
can be found only a few cubits below Kutir himself?” He marveled at
both the irony and the daring.

“That’s right.”

Nidaba bent to run her fingertips near the
base of the wall. She stood a moment later, holding a short copper
spike in her hand. Nidaba tapped out a code on the grille. From deep
inside the dark tunnel, Semerket heard the answering tones. Then a
torchlight appeared from far away, carried in the hand of a tall,
bearded man.