The Sleeper in the Sands (35 page)

Tyi lifted off her wig and pointed to her skull. ‘See, O my brother!’ she hissed. ‘See how it is swollen! Do not hide from me any longer what I am becoming, for I. have glimpsed the hidden image of the gods from the First Time. No more secrets, then, no more silence! It is time you told me all!’

Inen stood motionless a moment, then kissed her suddenly on her cheeks. ‘You are right,’ he whispered. ‘The time has come indeed.’

He turned and passed back between the open doors, and Tyi -- following him through -- found herself walking down a long, thin room, very dark and swathed in smoke. Along its side ran a channel such as she had in her own chamber, leading to her bath; and indeed, as she peered through the clouds of incense, she saw a circular pool, empty of water, into which the channel seemed to lead. Beyond the pool there stood the single silhouette of a man, and beyond the man a mighty altar. Otherwise the chamber was empty, and Tyi wondered what secret it could possibly contain.

‘Wait here,’ Inen ordered as they reached the pool. Tyi did as her brother had commanded, then watched him continue round the pool’s edge and approach the man on its opposite side. He began to whisper in his ear, sometimes turning and pointing back at Tyi, and she was able to observe, peering through the incense-clouds, that the man was shaven-headed and dressed like her brother; and she knew that he could only be the High Priest of Amen. Studying his face, she began to understand why King Amen-hetep should have dreaded him so much, for there seemed something barely mortal about him, something predatory and cold, as though he were one of those cobras which she had occasionally discovered, coiled within the shade of the Palace walls. Thinking this, and recalling the ageless appearance of such serpents, Tyi suddenly knew what it was she found so strange in the High Priest: it was not that he was lined, or withered, or stooped, for in truth, in his looks he was as youthful as Inen - yet still, for all that, Tyi felt certain that he was fantastically old. As he began to round the pool and approach her, she could not restrain a shudder; and the High Priest, observing this, bared his teeth in a smile which seemed both mocking and cruel.

Yet as he approached her, he reached out and touched her on her arm in a gesture of reassurance. ‘It is no wonder you are afraid,’ he said softly, ‘for I can well imagine how unsettling it must be to discover the meaning of your descent from the gods.’

‘The meaning?’

The High Priest tightened his grip upon her arm and led her across to the wall beyond the channel. There were portraits upon it, carved into the stone -- thin-limbed, round-bellied, with giant, swollen skulls. ‘Isis?’ Tyi whispered, pointing at one whose regalia she remembered from the evening before.

The High Priest nodded. ‘And here . . .’ - he pointed -’Osiris -- and Seth. The gods of the First Time. The gods who made man.’

‘And Amen?’ Tyi whispered.

The High Priest frowned. ‘Why, what of him?’

‘Is this not his temple?’

‘True.’ He breathed in deeply. ‘Yes, very true.’

‘Then are there no portraits of him here to be seen?’

‘No.’ The High Priest spoke the word with unexpected force. ‘For he is the god who is within here but can never be glimpsed, whose name is the source of the power of this world.’

‘And what is that power?’

‘It is the power with which the gods fashioned man out of mud. It is the power of the blood which they have within their veins. And it is the power, therefore, O Queen’ -- he looked her up and down -- ‘which exists within you and your veins as well.’

As he said this, his stare seemed so glittering and eager that Tyi, despite herself, took a step back. She reached up to touch the back of her skull. ‘How shall I recognise this power within me, then?’

‘In many ways,’ the High Priest smiled, ‘for you and your line have been blessed above all mortals.’

‘Tell me,’ Tyi whispered. ‘Tell me what I am.’

The High Priest glanced at Inen, and smiled once again. ‘After the gods had fashioned man and brought him to life by the power of Amen’s name, they slept with the fairest of their new creations -- and their children, O Queen, were the first of your kind. The gods have long since left Egypt and returned to the heavens, but their descendants still sit upon the Throne of the Two Lands. And I’ -he gestured to Inen -- ‘we -- the priests who guard the mysteries of the gods -- are the heirs to those who first guarded the blood-line, and who have handed down the secret from the very dawn of time.’

Tyi gazed between the two of them, back and forth. ‘That, then,’ she whispered, ‘was the reason you would not permit me at first to be Great Queen?’

The High Priest nodded. ‘The purity of the blood-line must always be preserved.’

‘But then,’ Inen smiled, ‘when you fell from the Harim roof, we knew that you possessed the sacred blood after all. For it is the quality of those who own it, O my sister, that they can survive what to others would be certain death.’

‘And yet . . .’ - Tyi frowned and narrowed her eyes -- ‘when you had first discovered what I was, on the evening when Pharaoh proclaimed me Great Queen, you came to me, did you not, O my brother, and told me how you wished that things had been different? Did you not, O Inen? Tell me -- did you not?’

Inen glanced at the High Priest, then took his sister’s hands. ‘It is true,’ he whispered, ‘that the power of Amen which courses within you is a thing of the heavens and the far-away stars, and therefore not of this world at all. Do not be surprised, then, if in its outward appearance it should sometimes seem a thing of horror to men.’

‘How do you mean?’ Tyi whispered, her voice hoarse now with suspicion.

Inen glanced at the High Priest again, then past him towards the portraits of the gods upon the wall. ‘Do you wonder,’ he asked Tyi, ‘that we keep the truth of their appearance veiled from mortal eyes, and portray them instead as being like their worshippers? So also, O my sister, we must do now with you.’

‘What, you do not mean ... it is not possible . . . that I will end up as loathsome to look at as these gods?’

‘Unless -- precautions - are taken, yes, you will.’

‘ “Precautions”?’ Tyi whispered. ‘What . . . “precautions”?’

Inen turned to the High Priest, who stood motionless a while and then slowly nodded his head. Tyi observed how her brother glanced down at the channel, then back towards a side-door from which the channel led. ‘Come,’ he said softly, taking her by the hand. He escorted her towards the empty pool and then ordered her, very calmly, to remove her jewellery and to undress.

‘Before you?’ Tyi gazed at him in horror. ‘I shall never do that!’

‘And yet you must. Do not fear -- I shall not watch.’

‘I cannot.’

‘Very well.’ Inen shrugged. ‘Then you know what you will become.’

Tyi closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Inen met them for a moment, then turned and looked away. Tyi breathed in deeply before reluctantly doing as he had ordered her.

‘I am ready,’ she said at last.

‘Enter the bath,’ Inen said, still looking away.

Tyi did so, her shoulders hunched and her arms across her breasts. The stones felt sticky and damp beneath her feet. She did not dare to look down, to see what might be there. ‘O Inen,’ she whispered, ‘I am afraid, so afraid.’

As well you might be,’ said Inen softly. ‘For what happens now is a thing of wondrous horror.’

‘Why,’ she stammered, ‘what might it be?’

‘It is the way of the divine that it must feed upon the mortal, as a hungry plant must draw upon water. Within you, O my sister, the mortal is growing dry. You must prepare then, like a plant, to be watered anew’

‘No!’ Tyi cried out. She could hear from the darkness sudden muffled sounds, strange and indistinct; and, turning round, she saw that the High Priest had gone. At the same moment, she observed a flood of liquid coursing down the channel, moving very thickly, and then it started to splash down upon her where she stood in the bath. ‘No!’ she cried out again, then screamed, as she gazed up at the liquid and realised what it was. She began to scrabble despairingly at the side of the bath, trying to escape, but even as she sought to pull herself up she saw Inen crouched above her, shaking his head.

‘I cannot endure it!’ she screamed.

‘And yet,’ Inen whispered, ‘O my beloved sister, you must.’

‘No,’ she sobbed, ‘no . . .’ When she looked up again, though, she saw that Inen was now holding a mirror in his hands. She gazed at her own reflection, streaked and damp with blood; and she gasped in amazement, seeing that her cheeks were already growing fuller, and her limbs were no longer so thin upon the bones. ‘What sorcery is this?’ she whispered. ‘Is it my imagination, or do I see my lost beauty restored?’

‘Yes, O my sister,’ Inen smiled. ‘That same for which Pharaoh made you his Queen.’

Tyi stared at him dumbly.

‘Wash yourself,’ he whispered. You know you must do it. You know you have no choice.’

She stood frozen a moment more, gazing up into her brother’s eyes; and then she knelt and bowed her head, as more blood splashed from the channel down upon her. She reached with her hands to soap her belly and breasts, and as she did so she felt a golden warmth as sweet as a rush of love, tingling and spreading very deep into her bones. She moaned softly. All sense of time, all sense of space, seemed dissolved upon the pleasure. She barely felt the stream of warm blood start to cease, and then be replaced by a flow of clean and cleansing water. Only as Inen helped her to emerge from the bath, and to dress her in her scattered jewellery and robes, did the pleasure of the trance at last begin to fade. For a moment she smiled, gazing at her reflection in the mirror he was holding; and then she remembered. She staggered backwards, turned round and ran.

In the chamber beyond the magic doors of iron, she saw the High Priest standing by the side-wall, barely illumined in the faint wash of the candles. He smiled at her, then vanished into the shadows. Tyi ran on and, as she did so, heard footsteps behind her echoing upon the stone, drawing nearer. She glanced round, and saw Inen. Stumbling on, she knew that she would be caught, but still she continued, for she did not want him to think that she was his willing accomplice. Then at last she felt his hand reaching out to touch her arm, and then she was stopped and pushed against the wall.

‘Let me go!’ she screamed.

‘There was no choice,’ Inen hissed.

Tyi shook her head wildly.

‘You knew,’ Inen repeated, ‘that there was no choice, not if you wished to avoid the Harim. So do not blame me, O Tyi, for it was all as you desired.’

‘The blood, though,’ she whispered, ‘the blood, it was warm. How many of Pharaoh’s prisoners, O my brother -these captives he has brought back with him here to Thebes -- had to be slain so that my beauty could be restored?’

Inen smiled grimly. ‘You will soon learn to forget such considerations.’

‘Never.’

‘Oh, but you will.’

Tyi gazed at him with hate, then twisted suddenly and broke from his grip. She began to run again.

‘Wait!’

Despite herself, she froze. Such had been the note of agony, such the longing of Inen’s tone, that she could not help herself. She turned again. Inen gazed at her a moment in silence, then drew near to her once more and whispered in her ear. ‘I have already told you,’ he whispered, ‘how everything I do here is for you.’ He breathed in deeply, then glanced about him. ‘And in token of that promise . . .’ - he reached within his cloak -- ‘I give you this.’

It was a bottle, which Tyi took.

‘Please,’ Inen whispered, ‘you must keep it hidden. Do not tell a soul. It is forbidden for me to give it to such as you.’

‘What is it?’ Tyi asked.

‘You have had it before, when I came to you and applied it to the wounds of your whipping, and then again to the bruises of your fall.’

‘What should I do with it now?’

Inen smiled. ‘If you would keep your beauty,’ he whispered, ‘then drink it with your wine.’

He kissed her fleetingly, brushing her lips, then turned and walked away, back into the temple. Tyi watched him go. She touched the bottle which she had concealed beneath the folds of her gown, and despite herself, as she did so, felt a flickering of joy and fierce excitement.

That night, when King Amen-hetep returned, Tyi was ready to welcome him. The sight of her beauty, restored to a loveliness which he had almost but never quite forgotten, dizzied him utterly. All duly happened as had been read in the stars by Lady Tiya. Nine months later, Tyi gave birth to a son.

But at this point, Haroun saw the approach of morning and broke off from his tale. ‘O Commander of the Faithful,’ he said, ‘if you would care to return here tomorrow evening, then I shall describe to you the adventures of Queen Tyi’s son, Prince Amen-hetep.’

And so the Caliph did as Haroun suggested; and the following evening he returned to the mosque.

And Haroun said:

Prince Amen-hetep’s earliest memory was of being kissed by his mother, but the second was of being licked by the tongues of her three lions. He had not known at the time that they were lions, of course; that only came later, when he had learned to understand his nurse’s shrieks and her repeated insistence that lions liked to eat small children. The Prince was not a little startled by this warning, for until that time he had rather assumed that they were creatures like himself; and certainly the lions, who continued to groom him, appeared to believe that the Prince was just like them. Nor him alone, for they also tended his dearest comrade, Kiya, the daughter of the Prince’s Uncle Ay, who had been born (so his mother said) on the very day that he had, and whom the Prince therefore assumed had been created just for him. Wherever they went to play, there the lions would pad about them, growling lazily at anyone who dared to draw near; and at night when they slept together, the lions would lie in a tangled ring about the children’s bed - a circle of fur, and manes, and twitching tails, guardian spirits such as none of the nurses dared disturb.

It was not surprising then that it was soon widely claimed, by those who saw the two children abroad, that they were protected by a strange and dangerous magic, and had been marked out by fate for miraculous things. In their faces there was a beauty such as it was said inspired the nightingales to sing, and in their limbs a radiance which rendered many afraid, for it seemed bright like the sun or the stare of a god. Some people, meeting with the Prince as he clung to a lion’s mane, riding on the beast’s back as though it were a horse, or with Kiya as she ran with the creatures by the lake, imagined indeed that they were glimpsing gods, and grew perturbed when later they discovered the truth. A few complained to the Keeper of the Harim that it was not proper for a girl of Kiya’s age to run about so freely; and the Keeper, who agreed, ordered her to remain henceforth within the Harim, along with the Prince’s younger sisters.