Eater of souls (15 page)

Tentamun bowed low, but Zulaya had turned to survey the canal that ran past his estate, through the fields close to the river and into the Nile. "Did you know, dear youth, that none of the waters near Byblos or those of the mighty Euphrates rival the dark night blue of the Nile?"

"No, lord." Perhaps he feared Zulaya because he never seemed to approach any goal directly.

Zulaya lifted his arm and pointed across the river, indicating the desert. Swirls of sand formed dunes with knife-edged tops.

"That, Tentamun, is the reason for Egypt's happy nature. A great and terrible barrier against the ambitions and might of quarrelsome Asiatics. They snarl and claw at each other unceasingly, shed blood over scraps of coastline, over rich cities, over mountains covered with cedar. All the while Egypt remains fruitful and at peace behind her rock and sand ramparts. The envy of every monarch, every herder in search of pasture, every barbarian looking for plunder."

Now Zulaya wasn't frightening; he was tiresome. Tentamun waited until his employer transferred his attention from the desert to him. It was the only signal Zulaya would give that he was ready to listen.

"Someone came to visit Satet, my lord. You said you wished to know at once should this happen. He came a few days ago, a scribe in search of servants for his master."

"And did you know this scribe?"

"No, my lord. Now that I think, he never even gave his name."

Zulaya's eyes seemed to catch the sunlight, and he became more attentive. "Tell me everything, from the beginning."

Tentamun complied, but the tale took a long time to repeat, for his master frequently stopped him with questions.

"What do you mean, he took her away?" Zulaya demanded quietly. "Why would he employ that feather-witted old pestilence?"

"He said his master had cooks in need of training in the royal manner."

Zulaya's questions came more quickly now. He had tugged on his headband until the ribbon of cloth came loose. He was threading it between his fingers and pulling it free over and over again.

"Where did he go?"

"I think to Memphis, lord."

"Describe this man again."

"A face all of angles, lord. Black hair cut short."

"His age?"

"Oh, a great age. He could be my father, only he's much less aged than mine. I suppose it's because he's a scribe, but he wasn't weak looking, like those who spend their days inside bent over papyrus."

At this comment, Zulaya drew nearer. His questions became sharp and impatient as he grilled Tentamun on the scribe's appearance. Finally Zulaya once more lifted his gaze from Tentamun to the Nile waters.

"A scribe who doesn't look as if he spends his days bent over papyrus. A man of well-fed appearance. Your description is at odds with itself, dear youth. Was there nothing individual about this man? His speech, perhaps, or the way he walked?"

Tentamun rubbed his brow and thought hard. "No, my lord. He seemed very much like any other man." Then he remembered something. "There was a scar."

"What scar? Where?"

"It was on his inner wrist. I didn't see it clearly. The house was dark except for one lamp, and he wore a leather wristband."

"A scribe who wears a leather wristband," Zulaya said as he rested his bearded chin on a fist and studied the ground.

"The band pulled up on his arm a bit, and I saw part of a white scar. I remember because it was so clearly defined, not like a wound at all, and it seemed to be half of a circle."

His remarks elicited nothing from Zulaya. He turned his back to Tentamun and gazed at the canal, where a group of laborers was dumping loads of earth onto a collapsed section of the bank. As he awaited his employer's next command, Tentamun noticed that Zulaya had questioned him so long that the sun had moved, and he no longer stood in the shade. He stepped sideways, slowly and carefully, so as not to attract attention. He should have known better. Zulaya's fingers intertwined with the green-and-yellow headband, then grasped the ends and yanked the ribbon tight with a snap that made Tentamun jump.

"Some say I'm too suspicious and expect only the worst, but I'm vindicated by your news."

"Yes, my lord."

What could he say? He had no idea who would dare criticize Zulaya. He wasn't only a man of wealth. He was mayor of the town near his estate and friends with the great men of the district, who valued his trading contacts among the Asiatics, the Hittites, the Mycenaeans, and the Babylonians. But there was something ruthless and secretive about Zulaya. It caused Tentamun to doubt that even a great man would dare insult him.

Zulaya turned back to Tentamun, his speech resuming its customary soft tones and embroidered language. "Dear youth, you have done well, and I call upon the gods and my ancestors to look with favor upon you. Ishtar, Marduk, Gula, and Ninurta, the great ones of Ur and Susa and Ugarit."

"My lord is kind," Tentamun said as he fell to his knees and touched his forehead to the earth. He straightened, but kept his head down when he felt Zulaya's hand come to rest on his hair. "My lord?" He hated this. All he could see was dirt and Zulaya's manicured toes. All he could hear was the man's soft voice made harsh by the guttural tones of his accent.

"You don't like coming here, I know. You fear my servants, those with whom I trade, my friends." There was a pause during which Tentamun guessed Zulaya gazed out at the river again. "I will tell you a thing that may help you, dear youth. I have known kings and criminals. I prefer criminals. They cheat, steal, and betray, but at least you don't have to worship them while they do it."

The emptiness clawed at her belly, the gnawing of rats' teeth inside her gut. In the darkness her metal claws scraped the bark of a tree. She rubbed the shining thongs that bound the ax head to its handle and rasped her claws over the engraving on the flat of the blade, but the emptiness remained. The hollow void was growing, spreading, replacing the essence of the Devouress. Others had put it there—the undeserving great one, the pretend god, the foreigner.

Their callousness toward the favored one battered at her belly, causing a crack that spread throughout her gut, spreading slivers of nothingness that grew into holes and then into this horrifying abyss. If she didn't stop them, they would continue to abuse the favored one. Then the emptiness would press outward, through her hide, and envelop her whole. She would cease altogether. She would become emptiness.

There was no moon. The chasm had swallowed it, but she saw with yellow-eyed clarity, inspired by the pain. The task of penetrating the garden had been a simple one. Scale a wall. Kill the sleeping creature who guards the enclosure. Slink into the darkest of shadows. And wait.

A young woman entered the garden. She hummed to herself and stooped to sniff a flower with wrinkled red petals. Eater of Souls wrapped her claws around a knife. This one was of no importance, hardly worth the effort to strike. The Devouress waited until the young woman took the gravel path that would bring her near the tree. Tossing her bushy mane over her shoulder, she raised the knife high and drove it down. When all was over, she lifted the young woman and arranged her on a bench beside the reflection pool. The foreigner would think the girl was pretending sleep to entertain him.

As she pulled a length of transparent linen over the hole in the girl's back, she heard the gate creak. A quiet leap to concealment. A snout raised to sniff the air currents. The scent of a transgressor.

The foreigner crept into the garden and closed the gate slowly, as though trying to keep it from creaking. Eater of Souls lifted her snout, tested the air, caught the stench of a foreign soul. Not appetizing, but begging for judgment. This one had insulted the favored one and caused sorrow. She could hear the favored one's piteous lament—"Life is so terrible. Everyone is so cruel, especially that evil foreigner. I've done nothing wrong.
He
was in the wrong. He should suffer for it."

It was then that the emptiness began. A familiar feeling, the harbinger of misery, of feeling powerless. The descent into gloom was always quick, like falling from a desert cliff and never reaching the ground. But the Devouress knew that the anger would come to save her and the favored one as well. Healing rage was growing in her belly now. It burned the emptiness away, directing the blame to the proper culprit. All she had to do to banish the emptiness and regain her power was destroy the evildoer, the true sinner, the cause of the favored one's pain.

The foreigner reached the girl lying on the bench. He bent over her and touched her shoulder. "My little lotus, have you fallen asl—"

The man sucked in his breath. Eater of Souls was already moving. She lifted her ax high to deliver a stunning blow. But the foreigner wasn't like the others. As he realized the young woman was dead, he backed away from her, and his eyes darted around the garden. He saw her move and jumped out of the path of the reversed ax.

The Devouress hissed, whirled in place, and struck again. The foreigner dodged the second blow but didn't stay for the next. His eyes as large as figs, he uttered a ragged shriek and bolted. She sprang after him, but he reached a door in the garden wall and was out in the street before she could catch up.

Undeterred, she hurtled after him. The pounding of his footsteps kept her on his path through deserted streets, crooked alleys and paths. The foreigner seemed to be running without purpose, blindly, as if propelled by witless fear. So much the better. Eater of Souls sprang up a flight of stairs that led to the roof of a storage building. Once on top, she saw her prey turning down an alley that led to a dead end.

Grunting with satisfaction, she darted across the roof, lunged over the gap between it and the next building, and ran to the wall that intersected another that barricaded the alley. Long, leaping strides took her to the open end of the trap as the foreigner entered it. He ran into the wall that formed the dead end, smacking into mud brick and bouncing off again. He stumbled, shook his head, and took several running steps back the way he'd come.

As he did, Eater of Souls sprang off the roof and into his path. She landed on her feet, her hide rippling. Drawing herself up, she spread her arms wide and showed her claws. She pointed her snout at the foreigner and sucked in his scent through her long, armored nose. Then she drew the ax from between her teeth.

Her prey had staggered backward when she jumped into his path. Now he was staring at her fangs as he tried to back into the darker shadows of the alley. Even in his terror, he sought to escape. The others had never lived so long. It was time for this one to die.

Briefly she wondered what it was like for the transgressor when she snarled, spitting saliva at him, and at the same time sprang at him so quickly he had no time to scream. Eater of Souls smelled a sweet foreign scent mixed with the odor of terror as the reversed blade bashed into the skull of the offender. Raised claws opened. As they brushed together, she heard the hiss of sharp edges sliding against each other.

Then came the first swipe. The impaling. The drag of skin and flesh against incising metal. A dog entered the alley, his nose sweeping back and forth in the air. The animal stopped as she whirled around and raised her claws. Without making a sound, the dog turned and trotted away, tail curled down, head lowered between his shoulders. Eater of Souls let fall the feather of truth and watched it drift down to rest in a bloody valley hacked into flesh.

Eater of Souls took a deep breath and let it out in a long, groaning sigh. Her joints and muscles began to ache, but she welcomed the hurt, the sign of a task completed. Claws stroked the lion's mane. Weariness crept into her bones. And relief. Again the favored one had been avenged, the cause of suffering destroyed. And the emptiness was gone—for now.

On this moonless night, quiet reigned in Lord Meren's household. Meren was in his office, slumped down in a chair, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. His chin rested on the broad collar of turquoise, lapis lazuli, and electrum that covered his upper chest, and he was scowling at the tip of a gilded leather sandal. Kysen sat cross-legged on the floor in the midst of a pile of reports from the mayor of Memphis, from agents at the Hittite court and in Babylonia, numerous vassal princes and a wide range of useful acquaintances. Meren felt a tiny muscle in his jaw twitch.

He'd been back two days, and he was still annoyed at the foolishness of his arrival at the house. Satet had refused to come inside through the front door and protested in a loud, annoyingly high voice that had attracted most of the servants, his daughters, and Kysen to the portico. He'd been forced to argue with the old woman in front of everyone. Luckily, Bener had introduced herself and persuaded Satet to come inside with her to inspect the kitchen.

"Sending Abu after me was deliberate disobedience," Meren said.

Kysen looked up from a city police report and said quickly, "Has Satet remembered anything else about where her sister went?"

"Isn't it enough that she remembered Hunero told her she was going to hide in Memphis?"

"You're angry because you know she's just making things up to impress you."

Pulling himself upright, Meren leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and put his head in his hands. From behind a screen of fingers, he said, "Now she says she's going to look for Hunero herself. I told her no, but—"

"She does seem to get her way regardless of our precautions."

Meren groaned. "I'm still suffering from the spices she used to poison that roast goose." He pounded the arm of his chair. "Damnation of the gods, she's useless. It's going to take weeks for the men I sent to search the towns south of their farm and return."

"I've heard nothing from Ese or Othrys," Kysen said as he tried to stack city police reports into a pile. "Have you read these? Old Sokar must be exhausted. One of these lists of disturbances and crimes took up an entire half page."

Rubbing his forehead, Meren sighed. "I should have known the killer's death would cause the rats to scatter. I should have pursued the cook immediately."