The Shepherd Kings (48 page)

This was a fool, but a strangely perspicacious fool. Kemni
saw the road ahead studded with stones, and any one likely to catch and break
his chariot wheel.

But he must go on. “One of us should guard her tonight,” he
said. “Shall we divide watches, then?”

“Yes,” Iannek said with a boy’s eagerness. “Yes, I’ll take
the first one. I’ll fetch you at middle night.”

“Well enough,” Kemni said with the hint of a sigh. Iry would
be well guarded—too well, perhaps; but who knew? She might actually be in need
of protection.

Iry could feel the walls closing in. Her cousin’s presence
was a comfort, but he was in danger every moment that he lingered with her.
Surely none of these Retenu could fail to see how he carried himself, how he walked
like a lord and a warrior. But they seemed blind to him, except as a shadow in
her shadow.

When they came to Avaris, he would slip away. That was
already decided. He would find his allies where they waited for him, and return
by secret paths to the Upper Kingdom.

She would have given one of her souls to slip away with him.
But the Mare bound her. She had taken no vows, committed to nothing—but there
was no need. The Mare’s choice was all the rite and consecration that was
required. Through the Mare she was made priestess, and given all the powers
that she might hold.

Foreign powers. Powers of a people she hated.

She would run away. How could she go on?

“I am not one of you,” she said, not caring, just then, what
danger she put herself in.

Of all people she might have unburdened herself to, she had
not expected it to be Khayan. He should have been preoccupied with duties, with
being lord of this holding. But he had seized a moment, late in the second day
there, to soothe his spirit among his horses.

Iry had had the same impulse, had escaped her guards and her
jailers and taken refuge in the stable. The Mare suffered herself to be shut in
walls for Iry’s sake, though it made her irritable: she was flat-eared and snappish,
even went so far as to lunge at Khayan when he drew near.

He calmed her as he knew how to do, born horseman that he
was. That had provoked Iry’s outburst: the ease with which he moved among
horses, the foreignness of his presence, robed and adorned as a prince of his
people. But the golden eyes were his own, and the smile he bestowed on her, as
if he were actually glad to see her.

“I am not one of you,” she said. “I will never be.”

“All you need be,” he said in his warm deep voice, “is the
Mare’s chosen.”

“No,” she said. “No. Today I learned to pray in a language
my people never spoke or heard spoken, a language that was old when my country
was a village on the banks of the river. I prayed to a goddess who is utterly
alien to me. My ancestors did not know her. I do not know her. How could she
have chosen me? I’m an utter stranger.”

“And yet she knows you,” Khayan said, “and finds you
worthy.”

“Why? What is she doing, besides being contrary?”

“You ask me?”

“Of course I ask you,” she said bitterly. “You know
everything.”

“And you hate me for it?”

She wanted to spit at him, or strike him. The first was
ridiculous. The second had begun before she thought. It was meant to be a hard
blow, a man’s blow, or at least a boy’s. But he, warrior-trained, caught her
hand before it could strike home. Like a fool she sought to pull free; but he
was much, much stronger than her slender and female self.

She had two hands. The second caught him roundly on the
shoulder—aiming for the cheek, but he was too tall. He grunted: she had taken
him by surprise. It was like smiting a wall, as big as he was, and solid, and
honed with years of riding and hunting and fighting.

He caught her second hand. Now she was trapped indeed, but
never cowed. Never that.

If he had mocked her or tried to overwhelm her, she would
have fought free, with the edge of her tongue if not with the strength of her
arms. But he stood still, gripping her wrists as if he had forgotten he was
doing it, staring into her face. Had he never seen her before? What had he
seen, then?

“What?” she demanded of him. “What haven’t you seen?”

“You,” he said, like one in a dream.

“Then what did you see?”

“A face,” he answered. “Eyes, nose, a mouth. A body like a
fish in the river, quick and sleek. But I never—”

He trailed off. She wanted to hit him all over again, but he
was still holding her arms.

“Let me go,” she said in a low, still voice.

He obeyed slowly. She lowered her hands. She should leave,
she knew it. But there was something about this man and dim places. Moonlight—moonlight
became him. And late sunlight through a stable door.

“You can ask,” he said.

“What?”

He did not answer. Would not. There was an air about him
that she almost understood, that she was not sure she wanted to understand.

“You have to ask,” he said. He did not sound angry or
dismayed, or disappointed. He was telling her what she should know.

She was not ready to know it. “Please go,” she said.

And he did. As simply, as promptly as if she had every right
to ask it.

When he was gone, she leaned against the Mare’s warm and
solid shoulder. The Mare was glad to be rid of him. Males, in her estimation,
were worth nothing, except when she was in season. Then she took what she
wanted and went away.

That was a very good way to live one’s life. It was a pity Iry
had not the art. All she had was her ignorance and her stubbornness, and the
moon-white Mare.

~~~

Sadana had no patience for fools. And that, she reckoned
Iry. It was not about Khayan, as it happened. It was about Kemni. She had
conceived an intense dislike for Iry’s guardsman.

Or perhaps not dislike. Sadana was hardly proof against that
face—Egyptian though it was. “No man has a right to be so pretty,” she
declared.

“Why not?” Iry wanted to know. “If men are our playthings,
why shouldn’t they be pleasing to look at?”

“He is not pleasing!” Sadana snapped. “He’s a shaven
foreigner. If he’d let himself grow his beard like a man, he’d be handsomer to
look at.”

“I don’t think so,” said Iry. “Don’t you like being able to
see a man’s face? He can’t hide behind a beard, any more than a woman can. He’s
all the easier to read.”

“Why do you think there’s anything in a man worth reading?”

Iry shrugged. “Maybe there’s not. I’d rather know for
certain.”

She could not dismiss Sadana as easily as she could dismiss
Sadana’s brother. In this strange world the Mare had brought her into, women
were like men, and men were like servants. And Sadana was a great power here.

She disliked this delay within a day’s ride of Avaris. Iry
began to wonder if there was something, or someone, in that city whom she was
eager to see. Enemy? Friend? Lover?

Or perhaps there was something here that troubled her. She
was restless always, but more so the longer they stayed. It seemed she was
constantly at Iry to practice with the bow, to go over her lessons in the
prayers and rituals, even to exercise herself in riding the Mare, though that
was supposed to be Khayan’s duty.

Iry did not mind the bow or the Mare, but the endless hours
of speaking words in strange languages, and remembering them, gave her a
hammering headache. One rite in particular, the death-rite of the Mare’s
servant, had nothing to do with her at all. The former servant had died before
Iry ever knew her. Iry’s successor would perform the rite for her.

But Sadana was insistent. “You must know everything,” she
said. Even the words the initiate must say as she laid out the body, then the
thing she must do, that to Iry was deep and heartfelt revulsion: to strip the
bones of flesh, and cleanse the bones, and lay them in the earth. All but the
skull. That was to be cleansed likewise, polished and set with silver, and
fashioned into a cup from which the successor would drink.

“That is sacrilege,” Iry said. “I thank my gods I never had
to do this—and by all gods that are, no one will do it to me. I will be laid
whole in my tomb as is fitting and proper, so that I may come entire to the
land of Osiris.”

“That is not our way,” Sadana said. “It’s ill enough that
you have no cup of your preceptor’s spirit to inspire you and teach you and
grant you blessing whenever you drink from it.”

Iry shuddered and swallowed bile, but her mind was clear.
“Where is it, then? What became of my predecessor’s body?”

That gave Sadana brief pause. Guilt? Or simple surprise that
Iry should have wits enough to ask?

“She died of sickness here in Egypt, where she had come by
the Mare’s will. She was buried with all honor.”

“Buried whole?”

Sadana nodded shortly.

“You see,” Iry said. “So tell me, how is it that the Mare is
here? Shouldn’t she be in the east?”

“After the Mare’s servant died, the elders in the east were
commanded by Horse Goddess herself to single out my brother. He was to return
to his father’s people, and take with him such of the horse-herds as wished to
go. Among them were the Young Mare and her kin.”

“All of them?”

Again, that sharp nod, as if it offended Sadana to confess
to such things.

“Then it seems to me,” said Iry, “that the Mare has in mind
to change the world.”

“I am not in the Mare’s counsels,” Sadana said.

“Sadana,” Iry said, “if I could give you all of this, I
would. Am I allowed to make you my successor?”

Sadana’s eyes went wild. Her hand swept up, round, down:
averting evil, and casting off any temptation to it. “You must not do that! You
don’t know me at all, nor should you trust me.”

“Why not? You know more of all this than I ever will.”

“What if I killed you, or trapped you so that you would die?
Then I would have what I want. I would have it all.”

“No,” said Iry. “Not if the Mare wouldn’t choose you.”

“What makes you think she would, if you were gone? Or that
her own successor would?”

“That’s hers to do,” Iry said.

Sadana tossed her head like an angry mare. “You aren’t
making sense.”

“I am,” Iry said. “If you kill me, you have nothing. If you
wait and have patience, you have everything.”

“You’re younger than I am. You’ll outlive me.”

“I might,” Iry said. “Then your daughter has the office. Is
that why you resist? Because you want it all now? Isn’t it worth the gamble to
accept? I could die in the next fever season, or fall from a chariot, or die
bearing a child. Death is beside us with every breath we take.”

“And in this country,” Sadana said, “it towers above you.
What was it with your old kings, that they built tombs as great as cities?”

“They haven’t done that for a thousand years,” Iry said. “It
was something they had in mind to do then, because the gods asked it, or they
felt a need to do something grand and mighty, that no one had ever done before.
Then that grew old, and their successors hid their tombs, as they do still.”

“I know that,” Sadana snapped. “But why? Why tombs so rich?
The dead need nothing.”

“The dead need everything. All that they had in life, they
have in death. But they have to take it with them—body, possessions,
everything.”

“How very cumbersome.”

“It’s what is,” Iry said.

“And you want me to come after you.” Sadana shook her head.
“No. I will not. I was to be the Mare’s servant in this age of the world. The
Mare refused me. I’ll not be second best, or wait futile years for a
fulfillment that never comes. What I am now, I remain. Your successor will make
herself known when it’s time, just as the Young Mare will appear when your Mare
grows old.”

“I can’t compel you,” Iry said. “But—”

“No,” said Sadana. “Give me again the prayer you sing when
one of the Mare’s kin delivers herself of a foal.”

Iry drew a breath. That was nothing to do with death—very
much the opposite. It was a more comfortable thing to consider, and simpler,
once she had groped for and found in her memory the words and the gestures.
Sadana did not speak again of death or of successors, or require that Iry
recite prayers and rehearse rituals that she would never need. That had been a
test, perhaps, or a slightly cruel whim. Once it was past, as far as Sadana was
concerned, it was forgotten.

~~~

It was not death that vexed Sadana, nor, entirely, her
long grievance with Iry. Her trouble, Iry discovered, was something quite
different. It came to Iry almost by accident at the end of that day’s lessons,
which had begun to circle and circle as if Sadana were persistently distracted.

The end came soon after the changing of Iry’s half-unwanted
guard. Iannek, who had slept—and snored—through much of that afternoon,
wandered off without a word. And Kemni wandered in, a much quieter and more
compact presence, to sit neatly in a corner and entertain his own thoughts
while Iry did whatever it pleased her preceptor to have her do.

Sadana’s questions grew more and more strange, and less and
less coherent. Her eyes were carefully not fixed on the figure in the corner,
but Iry caught the dart of glances.

He seemed oblivious. His face in that light was striking in
its beauty, and strikingly like the Lady Nefertem’s, though he practiced no art
but that of painting the eyes, which no Egyptian would omit.

Iry went still inside. If Sadana could see—if she began to
suspect—

But no. That was not what made her glance return again and
then again. Iry had seen a stallion look just so at a mare. It was an odd,
intent, almost dreamlike expression, as if Sadana had been taken out of
herself.

It made her angry. In that she was like the Mare. When the
Mare came into season, she reveled in it, and yet also she resented it, as if
that loss of her body’s control and her mind’s good sense sparked her temper.