Day of the False King (28 page)

The Asp and his men came to a halt. The
man’s ghastly yellow smile lit up the dark as he drew close to
Semerket. “We knew your wife was dead, you see. Because I’m the one who
killed her. My only regret is I hadn’t the time to rape her first, for
she seemed a tasty little morsel.” His jeering laughter filled the
street.

Semerket hung between the two men that held
him, dead-eyed. He suddenly hawked up deeply and spat in the Asp’s
face. Though the man’s frozen rictus of a smile remained unchanged,
Semerket saw his eyes become lethal.

“Hand me that spear, will you?” the Asp said
calmly to the young embassy guard. “Nice,” he said when he held it in
his hands. “Good weight. Expensive.”

The guard merely swallowed, saying nothing.

Semerket knew he was going to be impaled,
just as Naia had been, and closed his eyes. He braced himself for the
terrible thrust. Instead of freezing metal in his guts, it was his head
that erupted in a blaze of golden sparks. The Asp had struck him with
the butt-end of the spear. A metallic taste filled Semerket’s mouth,
and a pitiless black overtook him. The last sense to go was his hearing.

“There,” the Asp said. “That ought to shut
him up for a while.”

THEY WERE STILL carrying him
when he wakened. Hearing the loud echo of his captors’ footsteps, he
thought that he was once again in the cisterns beneath the city. But
there was no accompanying sound of running water, and through the slits
of his eyes he saw no roots snaking along the footpaths and up the
walls. Torches lit the long hallway at regular intervals, telling him
that the place was inhabited.

His head ached and his mouth tasted of
blood, but he was no longer drunk; either the Asp’s blow or sheer
terror had driven the wine fumes from him. Semerket decided that if he
continued to lie motionless in their grip, a dead weight, the men would
have to lay him down eventually. The moment they did, he would spring
away.

The men stopped at a doorway. Semerket
tensed. This was where he would have to make his move. But he heard a
bolt drawn and then a heavy door pulled open.

They had brought him to some sort of cell,
he realized. Semerket was simultaneously relieved and fearful; it meant
that they were not going to execute him immediately, yet it precluded
any attempt at flight. The men carried him inside, dropping him roughly
onto the brick floor. From the movement of light through his closed
eyelids, he sensed that they had brought a torch into the room with
them.

When he felt rough hands begin to remove his
clothes, he surrendered all pretense at unconsciousness. Semerket
yelled loudly, striking out at them, and rolled away from their grasp.

“He’s awake!” one of the guards shouted.

“Ah, good,” said the Asp from outside the
cell. “That should make it all the more interesting for him.”

Without much difficulty, the Asp’s men
caught him again and continued to strip off his garments. All the
while, he noticed, they glanced nervously over their shoulders to the
rear of the cell. At last he was quite naked, for they had removed even
his sandals. They shoved him roughly against the wall and backed out of
the room, holding their swords in front of them to foil any attempt to
rush past them.

The last to leave was the young guard to
whom he had given the spear. The lad said nothing, but his glance was
peculiarly intense. He looked from Semerket to the wall, indicating
with his eyes that Semerket should look up as well. Semerket moved his
head to see that the guard had left the torch in its socket.

What was the lad getting at? Semerket
thought. So what if he could see the cell where he was imprisoned? Of
what value was that?

As the guards closed the door, he threw
himself upon it, pushing at it, pounding, but he heard only its bolt
slide into place. Then a small grilled window set high in the door
opened, and a pair of dark brown eyes stared at him — the Asp’s.

“Let me out of here,” Semerket pleaded. “I
have gold. I’ll make you rich.”

“I’ve gold enough,” the Asp said. His
indifference was chilling; how many people had offered him gold to
spare their lives? It was hopeless, anyway, Semerket thought,
suffering, not gold, was what the Asp relished.

Semerket heard the sound of approaching
footsteps from down the hallway. The high whinny of Menef’s voice
reached him. “Is he in there?”

“He’s there,” replied the Asp.

“Let me see!”

The ambassador was so short that he had to
struggle to put his eyes to the grille.

“You’ll answer to Pharaoh for this, Menef!
You’ll be lucky if you’re not burned to death for it! I know you were
part of Tiya’s conspiracy —”

Menef turned unconcernedly to the unseen
Asp. “I told you that Aneku would burble everything to him.”

“Does it matter?” murmured the Asp. “She
can’t talk anymore.”

Semerket pounded on the door in rage. “When
I get out of here, Menef, I’ll tell Kutir you ordered the attack on the
plantation, that your own men did it —”

The ambassador interrupted nonchalantly.
“But I didn’t order it, Semerket.”

Semerket fell silent. Even at that moment of
extremity, his mind sought to solve the puzzle. Another person suddenly
pushed Menef away from the grille. A pair of familiar silver eyes took
the place of the ambassador’s.

“I ordered it,” said the heavily accented
voice. This time, however, the queen’s voice was not slurry from beer.
“Surely you had guessed by now.”

Semerket shook his head slowly.

Narunte’s laugh was a vulgar cackle. “And my
husband thought you were such a brilliant investigator!” Behind her,
Menef tittered immoderately.

“But why?” Semerket asked faintly.

Narunte sighed, rolling her demon’s eyes,
and spoke in an indulgent tone. “Because Nugash and Pinikir had been
sent to undermine my husband. Shutruk, his own father, had sent them —
he could not have a son who outshone him. Not even his own blood could
compete with that monster. Well, I couldn’t have that. I wouldn’t.”

Was that what Rami meant when he said that
Naia had known Pinikir’s secret reason for coming to Babylon?

“Menef and I put our heads together,” the
queen continued, “and came up with a perfect solution to both our
problems. We could eliminate all our enemies at once, and make everyone
think that the Isins had done it.” Her voice grew petulant. “It was a
perfect plan — perfect! Until you came here. You even foiled the
assassin we sent against you. Did you kill him, Semerket?”

“Yes.”

He saw her silver eyes darken. “He was my
kinsman. The Asp said he had seen your followers do it.”

“I was there that night, Semerket,” said the
Asp.

So he had been the second man!

Menef’s voice behind the door was
solicitous. “Don’t fret, Majesty. In a few moments, Semerket will die
and the king will never know about any of this. Your kinsman will be
avenged. You’ve nothing more to worry about.”

Semerket pounded on the door. “Pharaoh will
scour this country looking for me, Menef!”

“Alas, Semerket, you’ll have disappeared. As
completely and utterly as anyone
can
disappear. There won’t
even be a fingernail left to identify you.”

In the hallway, a bronze stirrup hung from a
chain. The last thing Semerket saw before they closed the grated window
was the Asp reaching for it, his death’s-head smile etched on his face.

“Goodbye, Semerket,” he heard Menef’s faint
voice from behind the thick door. “We’d stay and watch, but the king
will be wondering where we are. Mustn’t keep royalty waiting, you
know.” There was a pause. “Pull the lever,” Menef said. Semerket heard
the fading echoes of their footsteps as they walked swiftly away.

With a great rasping of chain, the sound of
moving machinery came to him from the floor above. Wheels were turning,
latches falling into place, hidden doors springing open. From behind
him, in the cell itself, he heard another noise, and turned swiftly to
look. A small portal in the far wall opened. He had not noticed it
before, for it was located close to the floor, in the shadows. Two
other doors were beside it, but they remained closed.

A slight movement in the portal’s black
recess caught his eye. Something was crawling forward into the light. A
rat, Semerket thought. Yet the thing was not gray, as a rat would be,
but gleamed iridescently as if it were made of metal. He looked closer.
It skittered forward. Its flat, shiny eyes shone in the flickering
torchlight, and mandibles moved in its head. Then its long back broke
apart. As two wings sprouted, the thing lifted from the ground, and the
giant black beetle flew straight at him.

With a shout of terror, Semerket realized
where he was…

SEMERKET POUNDED ON the
chamber’s door, scratching at the wood with his nails, screaming for
help. He felt the thing hit his back. Searing pain radiated from the
nape of his neck. The beetle had sunk its mandibles into his flesh and
clung there, already feasting. Its legs wrapped obscenely around the
contours of his shoulders, so that it pressed against him in an almost
intimate way. Semerket’s mouth filled with bile.

He reached behind to pry it away. The beetle
made a hissing noise, and he felt it move across his back to avoid his
hands. He could not reach it. Swiftly, he turned and rammed himself
against the brick wall. There was a satisfying crunch, and the beetle
fell to the floor, writhing, legs and mandibles still working
spasmodically.

Other beetles were beginning to emerge from
the portal, equal in size to the monster he had just killed. He saw
them begin to twitch and quiver as they sought to break open their
carapaces and stretch their wings. Though he could barely stand to
touch it, he kicked the dying insect over to where the others teemed.
They fell on their cousin, swarming over it, devouring it. Even at the
opposite end of the chamber, he heard the awful sounds of their jaws
working in unison.

He pounded on the doors again, screaming,
“Help! Somebody! Please! Open the door!”

Semerket pressed his ear to the wood to
ascertain if anyone in the corridor moved, but the only thing he heard
was another clanging movement from the hidden mechanism above. He
turned, gasping, and saw the second portal open across the chamber.

The scorpion emerged slowly, creeping warily
into the light, keeping near the door while it studied the chamber.
Semerket saw it raise its forearm, and heard the clack of its pincer,
as big as an infant’s fist. Even in his primal state of horror, he
stopped to gape at the thing.

Semerket remembered those scorpions he had
seen by the river at Mari, and almost laughed aloud to think that he
had once thought them large. The creature he now faced was easily the
size of his foot, and its lethal sting curled up over its back like a
miniature scimitar.

Semerket remembered the desert nomads
telling him that the larger scorpions possessed the least-toxic venom;
it was the sting of the smaller ones that caused the greatest numbers
of deaths, and the most agony. But Shepak had told him that these
insects in the chamber had reached their grotesque size from a steady
diet of human flesh; for all he knew this could be one of the smaller
specimens grown large.

He heard the dry skittering of countless
others of its kin trying to wedge themselves out from the portal. But
the giant scorpion did not move, and the others behind it could not
enter the chamber; the first scorpion seemed to be taking Semerket’s
measure before attacking him. Fortunately, it sensed that easier prey
was nearby, and it turned, rushing with a blur of legs to the beetle’s
carcass. The beetles that feasted on it fled backward, giving the
scorpion ample room to dine alone. It was clear which was the dominant
insect in the chamber — so far. Semerket watched, sickened, as its
claws delicately sheared off pieces of the dead beetle, bringing them
to its mouth where its jaws worked busily.

Other scorpions and beetles boiled out from
their hidden lairs. Semerket again pounded on the door, screaming. The
insects began to venture near him, and he lunged threateningly at them.
He was gratified to see them retreat, but only for a moment.

Sweet Isis, what was he to do?

Then, as though Isis herself had sent the
thought, he suddenly remembered the young guard.

The torch!

Now he knew why the boy had looked so
intently at it before he left — and Semerket called down all the gods’
blessings on the lad, who had left it there for his defense. Kind lad,
intelligent lad — sweet and wonderful lad —!

In one leap, Semerket had the torch in his
hand.

He brought it low in a wide circle in front
of him. To his relief, the insects clambered away, hysterically piling
atop one another, some even attempting to crawl back into their
portals. Savagely, he held the torch to them, gleefully watching as
they shriveled and died. Even the stench of their bursting carcasses
was like perfume to him.

Semerket heard the overhead mechanism stir
itself again, and this time maggots and grubs poured out from the third
and final portal — fat squirming things the color of mucus and the size
of a man’s thumb. These were the things that were supposed to cleanse
his carcass of all the shreds the others had left behind. He burned
them as they spilled from the portal, glorying in the sounds their
shriveling bodies made, like tiny shrieks as they withered into nothing.

He actually might survive this, he thought.

But the hope was dashed as soon as it was
born, when he saw the torch begin to sputter, going dim for a moment.

Oh, Sweet Isis, no! He could not run short
of fuel — not now! Please, please, he begged the torch soundlessly,
trying to shake more melted wax from its cone into the flame. But its
light was irretrievably dying, and the chamber was becoming dim.