Sunrise on the Mediterranean (16 page)

On the island of Tsor there was no need for family housing. Each man was gone the six sailing months of the year, each woman
spun and wove for six; then together they walked to the lowest level of the palace, the pits, and dyed for the winter six.

It was said that even the sea in Tsor was a darker blue.

On the mainland, the residents lived in carved-out caves overshadowed by trees that grew so tall, they almost blocked out
the sun. The men there were craftsmen, whittling at wood to shape the winged lions Zakar Ba’al, the master of Tsor, so greatly
loved.

They carved Ashterty trees, symbols of the goddess’s fertility. They built temples far and wide. Each three-chambered building
was hewn of wood already prepared in Tsor, then attached to the local stone with the master’s
shamir
—a wondrous, magical tool—in a soundless, scarless fashion. Only those sworn to the secrecy of being a
mnason
could learn the master’s powers of pouring rock, shaping stone, and transforming. The others were carpenters, hewing the
wood and never setting sail. In Tsor, each person wanted to own himself fully.

It was a goal they all sought. The women worked, as women always do, maintaining the home, rearing the children: however,
these women were also merchants. As a body they had called on the master, petitioning that his sailors trade for food with
homegrown delicacies: a drink made from pine needles; the nuts from the inside of a pinecone; their embroidered, dyed cloths;
and orphaned children, to the many courts and ports the sailors visited.

The Tsori were a wealthy, wealthy people because of this merchandising. Zakar Ba’al was not alone in dining on gold plates,
drinking wine from across the Sea, or playing dice with ivory-and-jade play pieces.

The master fingered his playing pieces meditatively, staring from the island to the mainland. The coast was rugged and beautiful,
the sea a shade of blue matched only in Tsori cloth. Trees and mountains, these with no fire, no molten lava, rose in the
distance. Zakar Ba’al looked away, bored.

He had two pathways leading from the splendors of Egypt, Kush and the jungles beyond, to the great civilizations north, Mitanni,
Hattai, and hundred-gated Assyria. Beyond Assyria were the wonders of the East, with their elephants, slant-eyed men, and
curiously spicy food.

One of the pathways was via the sea. Sail south to Qiselee, Yaffo, Ashdod, Ashqelon, the Delta of Egypt, then through the
throat of the Nile, to Noph, Waset, Simbel, Kush … then beyond.

Or he could send a caravan of donkeys north, up through the Arava, mounting the hills to walk on the King’s Highway all the
way to Assyria.

Both thoroughfares were now blocked. Soon his people would be hungry, for the Tsori were not farmers; they traded for their
foodstuffs.

Tsidoni, the imbeciles, had declared war on Tsori ships. Already the master had lost a handful of vessels. There was no way
to sail south without passing Ako, a Tsidoni port. Since Tsor wasn’t a battling country, she had no army. Retreat was the
sole option.

Then the King’s Highway, his back door of security, had been breached. Some new power prowled Canaan’s hills. A monarch unwilling
to share in profit.

That king just hasn’t been properly approached, the Zakar Ba’al thought. No one refused him.

Then the years fell away, hundreds and hundreds of years, a millennium. One face remained forever etched in his memory. Once
he had been refused, before he wore the name Hiram Zakar Ba’al, Shiva, Thor, or Dionysus. Only one man had he longed for,
had he sought after to no avail. Only one man had been his equal. He had loved that way just once, giving his best, granting
immortality, then letting the object of his passions leave him.

The one man he’d wanted and never known.

Cheftu
sa’a
Khamese. The Egyptian.

C
HEFTU WANTED TO WEEP WITH RELIEF
when the sun finally left the sky. His head was throbbing, he was nauseated, and the spots before his eyes concerned him.
He would not last many more days of this. Not survive and keep his eyesight.

How to escape? Had anyone noticed he was missing? Wenaten probably wouldn’t notice if his own body were missing, much less
Cheftu’s.

The temple complex all but shut down with the setting of the sun; he’d had three days to observe it. The priests bade each
other good night and left. A closed temple was something he’d never seen in the courts of Amun-Ra. However, he was beginning
to believe that most of this was behavior he’d never seen in the courts of Amun-Ra. When had the Egyptian religion and its
practices changed from being a personal choice to being a law? What perversion of faith was this?

His eyes burned, his stomach cramped, and Cheftu wondered what he could do. Right now it was dark, so he couldn’t even see
the stones to learn what the future held. Leaning against the cooling wall of the pit, he closed his eyes. He would rest for
a moment.

“Chavsha?” A whisper woke him.

As he opened his eyes, the memory of the past three days engulfed him. Fighting the panic in his throat, he remained motionless.

“Chavsha?” It was Wenaten’s voice. “Are you there?”

“Aye,” he said. Cheftu heard rustling, then felt a rope hit him on the head.

“Climb quickly. Guards will be reporting for duty in moments.”

Though he was weak from hunger and heat, the very thought of being free was icy water to his soul. He jumped for the rope,
checked the anchor, then pulled himself up, using the wall to speed him.

Hands, hard with calluses, grabbed his arms, hauled him over the edge; Wenaten had assistance. Cheftu couldn’t see the face
of his rescuer. “My undying gratitude,” he said in a rush. “I am indebted to you.”

“Flee now. You will become a wanted man,” Wenaten said. “Egypt is not safe for you.”

“Can’t I hide here?” Cheftu asked. He had no valuables, no way to buy passage anywhere. He needed to check with the stones,
be certain Chloe wasn’t here. Or was this what he was supposed to follow?

“Nay, everyone will be looking for you. You didn’t watch the sun, you turned away.”

Don’t watch the idol, the stones had said. The idol was the sun! “Where was Yamir-dagon?” Cheftu asked. “Tell me that.”

“With the Pelesti. Go now.”

“Thank you,” Cheftu said again. “If I can—”

The voice cut him off. “You did, by getting me home.” Wenaten gripped his shoulder. Cheftu winced as his burned skin was pressed.
“No more. Go!”

Adrenaline cleared Cheftu’s head as he slipped into the shadows, careful to keep an eye on the street and the
tenemos
walls of the temple. If Akhetaten was built like any other Egyptian city, the Way of the Nobles would be the large houses
right on the edge of the Nile. The river was his thoroughfare out of here. Once on the other side, or on a boat, he would
ask the stones how to get to Chloe. Whom or what he should follow.

Carefully he picked his way from black shadow to gray shade, for it was a full moon. Finally he stood on the dock alone. No
sailors loitered around, lousy with beer. People weren’t allowed on the streets after dark, for to spend time in darkness
was perceived as embracing the enemy of the Aten. At the Nile’s edge were boats, some awaiting a boatwright’s attention, some
already repaired, all bobbing in the shallow water. He slipped the stones from his sash and tossed them. “Where is Chloe?”

“G-o.”

“Is she here?” he asked them, squinting to see the letters through his sore eyes.

“G-o.”

“Am I going to get any other answers?” he asked angrily. “G-o-n-o-w.”

He put them back in his sash. Gritting his teeth against the necessity of stealing, Cheftu selected the smallest of the rowboats
and stepped in.

Fumbling for oars at the bottom, he pushed away from shore and paddled like a madman to get away from the city before the
break of dawn. He would never return to this cursed place where the prayers of God were used in manipulation of a people.
Pharaoh cared nothing for the land.

As the muscles in his shoulders pulled, as his eyes teared in the dawn, as his skin burned in the morning light, he knew it
didn’t matter. He was leaving Egypt. Chloe was waiting for him.

He abandoned the skiff on the eastern side of the Nile, just south of Khumnu, the Middle Kingdom capital of the Hare Nome.
The town had been mostly abandoned. The temple of Thoth was closed off. Even this far north Cheftu saw the stele of Akhenaten,
marking the border of Akhetaten. Uncertain if priest-soldiers would be tracking him, Cheftu walked into the desert, then doubled
back. For the night’s stay and three days’ provisions he fell back on his skills as a physician and delivered a baby. It was
a boy child, whom they wanted to name after him. Impulsively Cheftu gave them the name Nacht-met. It was a good, solid name
meaning “One who could see” and was completely unlinked with him. He could leave no tracks.

Cheftu walked out of town as the women of the village were tying amulets onto the infant’s arms, protecting him against the
many evils in the air, the night, and the water.

Those provisions kept Cheftu as he walked next to the Nile, through field after field, north. The stones were silent; all
he had to go on was
dagon
and Pelesti. He walked onward. Priest-soldiers sailed up and down the river, harassing fishermen, stopping in villages to
be certain the temples were closed, that only the Aten was being worshiped.

In Akoris he heard rumors of a dangerous felon who had fled Akhetaten. Cheftu was shaken to hear his own description given,
quite accurately.

That night, under the cover of darkness, he crept to the ruined step pyramid where a wisewoman was rumored to dwell. From
her, for the price of clearing away the mouth to a cave, he bought a drug that would disguise his appearance. Then he continued
north.

In Per Medjet, where fish were worshiped in addition to the Aten, he sewed up a barber’s daughter’s flesh wound in exchange
for provisions, a homespun kilt, and skin-darkening paste to protect against further sunburn as well as misrepresent his appearance.

The man who entered the streets of Noph was vastly different from the one who had crept out of the streets of Akhenaten. The
sun—and dye—had blackened his skin, his head was bare, his long hair shaved off and burned to ash somewhere in the desert.
He wore a small goatee and mustache. However, the pièce de résistance was his eyes.

Belladonna, purchased from the wisewoman, both protected his vision from the Aten’s punishing rays and dilated his pupils
so much that the amber color of his irises was hidden.

Cheftu didn’t recognize himself when he went to the temple; his only fear was that Chloe wouldn’t, either. Was she here? Still
the stones said, “G-o.” A quick but necessary sacrifice to the Aten, then he would find his way farther north by ship.

Due to great rejoicing throughout the kingdom, however, no ships were sailing. Smenkhare had arrived. In celebration, Egypt’s
remaining stores of food would be open to the people for three days of rejoicing that Pharaoh’s brother—or cousin, no one
was sure—had safely joined the court.

For three days Cheftu sought passage north. A letter of passage from the petitioner’s local temple of the Aten was required
for anyone seeking to leave Egypt. At first it seemed simple enough. Then he asked around, loosened tongues with beer, and
learned that these letters were written on a special type of papyrus. A fraud would be recognized immediately.

Cheftu cursed. Every night he rolled the stones. Go, go, go, they said. “I am trying!” he protested, frustrated. The streets
were alive with tales about how Smenkhare had arrived.

Some said she’d sailed up the Nile in a golden ship and was built like the old Nile god with both breasts and phallus. Others
said he had appeared from the desert horizon, as fragile as mist, with an entourage of children. Everyone believed she was
an incarnation of the goddess, any goddess, come to woo Egypt back from the sole control of the Aten. Having been Egyptian,
Cheftu understood that just because they thought Smenkhare was male did not mean he could not also be a goddess. That anyone
would be ruling Egypt instead of that siren-voiced misfit was cause for rejoicing!