Day of the False King (34 page)

Mayatum fled the pavilion. This time no
Shardana guards rose to stop him. He ran through the temple grounds,
panting, out between the Pylons and to the docks. His attendants had
been so entranced by the spectacle in the pavilion that they had not
seen him leave. Mayatum was forced to look himself for a ferryman to
take him across the river. As they traversed the Nile, he looked back
to see if he was being followed. But he was not.

Alone in Eastern Thebes, he stumbled into
the street that led to the foreign quarter. Only a tiny, silver scrap
of moon lit the twisting alleys. Though he was a prince and wore enough
gold to make him a tempting target, not one of the denizens who
lingered in the lightless doorways dared to make a move against him.
Mayatum was known and protected in these parts.

Soon he stood before the rotting gates of
the Hyksos temple, the one-time abode of the King of the Beggars. The
place was ruled by another now, a female this time, but it was just as
foul a place as it ever had been. Mayatum pounded hysterically on the
gates, crying, “The queen! I must see her! Open up!”

The black door slowly opened. An old woman
appeared, giggling in delight to see him. Once, long ago, she had been
his wet nurse at the palace. Quickly she bolted the gates behind him.
Still chuckling fondly, she pulled him by the sleeve past the overgrown
oasis of reeds and grasses that had once been the temple’s sacred lake.

Inside the temple proper, only a few oil
lamps lighted its twisting hallways, and he had to be careful where he
trod. Hundreds of beggars slept on the floor — like bees in a hive, he
thought, guarding their queen — and he was loath to touch them even
with his gilded sandal.

His one-time nurse led him to a suite of
rooms, high in the back of the temple, overlooking the Nile. “Majesty,”
the old woman whispered into the gloom, “our Mayatum has come to visit
you!”

There was a rustling from the darkened
recess. A black, bent shape crept into the dim circle of candlelight.
Even now, after so many months, he was shocked by her appearance. All
his tension broke then, and tears of despair stung his eyes, for she
was hideous to see, almost immobile from the injuries she had suffered.
Her flesh seemed fused together, as if she had been caught in some
terrible conflagration, barely escaping with her life. Flaps of melted
skin covered her eyes, so that she had to crane her neck up from her
crooked back to see him.

Her voice was an ugly rasp, barely
intelligible as language. “You’ve come to tell me that the rumors are
true,” she said, slowly hauling her bulk toward him. “That Semerket is
back in Thebes.”

“Yes, it’s true — and he’s brought the idol
with him!”

“Has Ramses taken its hand in his?”

“I saw it with my own eyes! Ramses forced me
to watch while he did it!”

The woman emitted a demented shriek, her
damaged scream a thing of broken stones and gravel. Mayatum winced to
hear it. He saw the furious tears running down her wrinkled cheeks,
tinted with red. Even now, almost two years since she had come there,
the Beggar Queen had not yet healed from the Cripple Maker’s artful
attentions.

“He should never have done it!” she railed,
tearing at herself with talonlike fingers. “It’s heresy for a king of
Egypt to seek the protection of a foreign idol!”

Mayatum was too numb to say anything.

“Well,” the woman said finally, “what can
you expect from a northerner whose mother is a Canaanite whore?”

Mayatum began to shake again, and he blurted
out shrilly, “That’s hardly important! Semerket has brought his wife
and friend back to Egypt with him. They survived. Menef failed us. Now
Pharaoh will know of my secret trip to Babylonia, and how the
conspiracy still lives. I will be judged and condemned a traitor, given
the white cord to strangle myself with — just as my brother Pentwere
was!”

His tension broke at last and he fell into
choking sobs, hiding his face in his hands. The crippled woman crawled
painfully toward him. She took him into her arms then, and laid his
head upon her bosom.

“Don’t be afraid,” she croaked to him.
“Remember that you are a royal prince, and that the blood of Amun-Ra
himself flows within you. Semerket is less than the dust beneath your
feet. And remember, too, that I — and all the beggars who serve me —
will protect you.”

“But how…?”

“You will stay here, with me, for the time
being. No one will think to look for you here, not even Semerket. It’s
been half a year since he left Thebes. He doesn’t know of the changes
that have occurred in the city.”

“What of his brother? Won’t he tell?”

“Do you mean the mayor? That twitching
halfwit?”

“He must know that you’re the Beggar Queen
now.”

“Doubtless he’s heard that a woman rules the
beggar kingdom. But that’s all he knows, and ever will.”

“But what can we do against them?”

“We wait. Semerket will be afraid of losing
his wife again. This will make him either ferocious or timid. We must
see how he plays out the game. In the meantime, I shall make new spells
against him.” She grasped the prince’s head in her hands, peering at
him from beneath the folds of melted skin. “Do you trust me? Do you
know I love you best of all?”

Mayatum swallowed. He nodded his head. As
always, her presence served to reassure him. Even as a little boy, she
had possessed this same power to make everything seem possible. It all
would turn out all right; he knew it now.

“Yes, mother,” he sighed contentedly, laying
his cheek once more on Tiya’s slowly heaving breast.

THERE ARE MANY PERSONS TO THANK
in the creation of this book, and most of them know who they are. But
there are six people in particular who deserve to be singled out…

Michael Korda
, my editor,
whose wisdom and taste permeate every page of this book.

Gypsy da Silva
,
Queen of copyediting, Mother Courage, and a dear friend.

Ellen Sasahara
,
whose design skills lift my books into the realm of the sublime. (If
they just read as good as they look, I’m home free.)

Katie de Koster
,
whose fact-and grammar-checking are nothing short of phenomenal; I am
humbled each time she returns a manuscript to me, being permanently
dissuaded that I know anything about either history
or
writing.

And finally, to
Elizabeth
Hayes
and
Deirdre Mueller
, my publicists at Simon &
Schuster; their excellent stewardship ensures my tomes don’t slip into
the mire of obscurity. They are my angels.

Thank you, one and all.

Brad Geagley

Brad Geagley
worked for
many years as a producer of virtual reality environments in the
entertainment industry. History and writing were Geagley’s real loves,
however. His first book,
Year of the Hyenas
, which featured
the debut of his detective Semerket, clerk of Investigations and
Secrets, appeared in 2005. Geagley currently lives in Palm Springs,
California, where he is completing his third novel.