Egypt

The Book of Chaos

Nick Drake

An Imprint of
HarperCollins
Publishers
www.harpercollins.com

Save me from that God who steals souls. Who laps up corruption. Who lives on what is putrid. Who is in charge of darkness. Who is immersed in gloom. Of whom those who are among the dead are afraid
.

Who is he?

He is Seth
.

The Book of the Dead
Spell 17

Cover

Title page

Epigraph

Maps

Cast list

Part One

     
1

     
2

     
3

     
4

     
5

     
6

     
7

     
8

     
9

     
10

     
11

Part Two

     
12

     
13

     
14

     
15

     
16

     
17

Part Three

     
18

     
19

     
20

     
21

     
22

     
23

     
24

     
25

Part Four

     
26

     
27

     
28

     
29

     
30

     
31

     
32

     
33

     
34

Part Five

     
35

     
36

     
37

     
38

     
39

     
40

     
41

     
42

     
43

Epilogue

Author's Note

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Nick Drake

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Rahotep–Seeker of Mysteries, detective in the Thebes Medjay (police force)

His family and friends

Tanefert–his wife

Sekhmet, Thuyu, Nedjmet–his daughters

Amenmose–his young son

Thoth–his baboon

Khety–Medjay associate

Nakht–noble, Royal Envoy to All Foreign Lands

Minmose–Nakht's manservant

The royal family

Ankhesenamun–Queen, mid-twenties, daughter of Nefertiti

Ay–King

The palace and other officials

Simut–Commander of the Palace Guard

Nebamun–Chief of the Thebes Medjay

Panehesy–Sergeant in the Thebes Medjay

Khay–Chief Scribe

The Hittites

Hattusa–Ambassador

Suppiluliuma I–King

Crown Prince Arnuwanda–his eldest son

Prince Zannanza–his fourth son

Queen Tawananna

You shall be decapitated with a knife, your face shall be cut away all round. Your head shall be removed by him who is in his land. Your bones shall be broken. Your limbs shall be cut off
.

The Book of the Dead
Spell 39

Year 4 of the Reign of King Ay, God's Father, Doer of

Right

Thebes, Egypt

I stared down at five severed heads that lay in the dust, at the godforsaken crossroads, in the small dark hour before dawn.

It was cold, and I drew my old Syrian woollen cloak closer around me. The night sky was moonless. The city was all shadows. Doors and windows were shut. No early workers, up before dawn on their way to another long day's labour, paused to observe the spectacle. No one would dare to approach a scene like this. Not in these dark times. The old phrase came to me unbidden: ‘The earth is in darkness as if in death…' Only the stray dogs of Thebes howled to each other across the districts of the city, from the poor slums to the rich suburbs, as if giving voice to the
ka
spirits of these murdered Nubian boys, hungry for sustenance as they flew between this world and the next.

Under the setting stars shimmering in the ocean of the heavens, a few officers of the city Medjay moved about in the flickering light of their torches, chatting nonchalantly, their shadows wavering on the mud-brick walls of the nearby dwellings. A few nodded at me; others didn't. They had already carelessly trampled their sandals all over the crime scene, destroying any evidence that might have remained. Not that it would matter, for the investigation would be cursory at best. Massacres like this had become commonplace, and the gangs who committed them with impunity seemed to have taken control of the poor districts. They trafficked in opium, gold and human beings, trapping and selling young girls and boys into dead-end prostitution. Their victims even included Medjay officers, fantastically tortured, then decapitated and dismembered for refusing to take the golden opportunity of corruption. Rival gangs slaughtered each other in score-settling bloodbaths along with their screaming girlfriends; the teenage sons and daughters of high-ranking bureaucrats were kidnapped and brutally murdered
after
the ransoms had been paid; and so, despite all the security and high walls gold could buy, no one in Thebes felt safe.

But these decapitated victims were just street kids–Nubian boys, with tattoos and braided hair, and little arrow amulets on leather necklaces to mark their gang membership. They would have run the low-level opium sales for their bigger brothers. They were from the poorest, most dismal of the slums; uneducated, without employment or prospects, vulnerable to the stupid outlaw mystique of the gangs. All bore the wounds of previous street battles: knife-scars on their cheeks, blotted and sunken eyes, blunted, misshapen noses, and ears deformed by beatings. None were older than sixteen–most were younger. Their childish faces now wore the empty look of disappointment common to the newly dead.

The boys' heads were set in a neat row at the feet of their corpses, which had been laid side by side, so that they looked like innocent friends dreaming together. Their dusty hands and feet had been roughly, tightly bound with cheap cord–but when I examined them I was puzzled, for the knots were unusually expert. Also, when a man is beheaded, his blood pumps in arcs from the neck wound; but judging from the absence of any other bloodstains in the street dust, these boys must have been executed somewhere else, and then dumped here as a warning, probably from one gang to another.

I bent down to examine the wounds in better detail: the neck muscles and the spine of each boy had been severed by a single, powerful stroke, which suggested a practised, indeed an exemplary, skill. And the killer must have used a high-quality blade; perhaps a ceremonial
khopesh
scimitar, or a butcher's long yellow flint blade, razor-sharp for eviscerating cattle. Knives have powers of protection and of retribution. The Guardians of the Otherworld carry knives, and so do the minor Gods of that dismal place, with their fearsome faces and their heads turned backwards; and so, clearly, did this killer. I could picture his excellent technique, and his unusual pride in his skill. This did not seem like the work of the usual brutal gang executioners.