Year of the Hyenas (2 page)

This
satisfying
thought propelled the old woman up the narrow avenue as if she were
young again. So what if Rami were not with her! Didn’t she know the
Great Place better than anyone? She had traveled between the shrine and
her home every Osiris Day for almost a quarter of a century; she would
find her way. But as she passed through the northern gate, Khepura’s
voice called out to her.

“Hetephras—you’re
not
thinking of going up to the Osiris shrine by yourself, are you? You,
who can’t see a cubit in front of your face.”

“The rite must
be
performed, Khepura, and I’ve no time to wait.” The smell of onions was
stronger, and the squinting Hetephras could almost see the dark form of
her neighbor bending low over an outside griddle. “Rami never came to
fetch me this morning, wicked boy.”

“Then
I’ll
go with you.”
Khepura’s voice was insistent, as always. Wife to the goldsmith Sani,
she had been chosen head woman of the tombmakers’ village in the last
election. To everyone’s regret, she had become quickly used to the
habit of command. “I’ve gotten enough of the feast organized here for
the servants to take over. I’ll just get my shawl. It’s brisk this
morning.” She turned to go back into the village.

“No time,
Khepura, no
time—the gods will not wait! And you’re so fat, you’ll only slow me
down!” The old priestess hurried on impatiently, leaving Khepura to
sputter ineffective protests.

The path up
the Gate
of Heaven was narrow, bounded on either side by limestone chips. The
bright shards, remnants from carved-out tombs, served to prevent the
unwary traveler from straying too far to the edge, where a sheer drop
of some twenty cubits waited. By keeping to the center of the path,
Hetephras was able to ascend quickly. Near the crest of the pathway,
however, a cascade of stones suddenly blocked her way.

“These were
never here
before,” Hetephras thought in wonder, curious not to have heard the
stones tumble in the night. All the tombmakers were keenly alert to
the sounds of shifting rock. Landslides had been known to bury the
village—along with many of the villagers—in distant eras.

Hetephras
edged
forward and gingerly felt her way across the unfamiliar heap of stones.
She looked up toward the sky, fearing that the time for the ritual was
long past. But she felt no light on her face; it was as dark as ever on
this side of the mountain.

She thought
again of
Rami, how he should be helping her, and muttered aloud, “I wish my
husband could see how this pathway has been neglected, and how children
no longer heed their elders.” She pulled herself forward across the
heap of rubble. The irregular limestone rocks shifted beneath her feet.
Hetephras steadied herself, then took a step forward. Another few
cubits and she would attain the smooth, narrow path once again. She
placed a sandaled toe tentatively upon a rock and took a tiny leap—

The unsteady
rocks
gave way. The alabaster chalice flew from her hand, smashing to pieces
on the valley floor below, spilling its lode of oil and sweetmeats.
Hetephras pitched forward, a scream caught in her mouth. The wig saved
her from dashing her brains out on the sharp rocks as she rolled
swiftly downward. The landslide that had caused her accident now served
as a kind of steep, sloping causeway to the floor of the valley. Her
shoulder twinged as she tumbled, and she tasted blood. A rib cracked,
and the sharp rocks stabbed her thin shanks. She landed with a soft
thud on the valley floor.

Hetephras lay
gasping.
Aside from her shoulder and rib, she felt no other injury. She laughed
weakly, weeping too. “I am not dead!” she said in giddy relief. “I’m
not dead!” She moaned as she sat up. She would be horribly bruised,
crippled even, but indeed, she was still alive.

A rustling
from behind
silenced her. Dark shapes began to emerge from the earth itself. Dark,
animal shapes—beasts with ears and snouts. She gasped. Hyenas and
jackals, even the occasional lion, were known to prowl the Great Place
at times. All around her the animals sprang up, and fear cleared the
clouds from her eyes. She opened her mouth to scream—

Yet before she
could
utter a sound, the first true rays of the sun reached their length into
the valley and she saw—
she saw!
—no pack of slavering
beasts but the golden faces of the gods themselves! Anubis the jackal
god, Thoth, Set… Horus the hawk! And everywhere, everywhere the flash
of gold emanated from them as the sun’s rays caught their unblinking
eyes.

The old
priestess was
seized with a holy rapture, which drove away all her pain. Here, today,
after so many years, she was graced at last to meet the gods of Egypt
in their incorruptible flesh of gold!

“Ay-aa!” she
cried out
in reverence.

“It’s
Hetephras!” one
of the gods said. He seemed to be in as much wonder as the old woman.

“Yes! Yes! I
see you,
August One! I know who you are!” Hetephras burbled. “My eyes see
everything now!” But somewhere at the rim of her consciousness another
thought nagged. Curious that the god—she believed it to be ibis-headed
Thoth—curious that he reminded her of someone she knew, someone against
whom she held a recent grudge…

“What will we
do?”
Thoth faced the other gods, his youthful voice querulous. For gods they
seemed extremely perplexed. But Hetephras had not much time to wonder.

It was the god
Horus
who walked decisively to where Hetephras lay. She raised her face to
him with a smile so completely believing, her cloudy eyes turned so
joyously upward, that for the briefest moment the god hesitated. And
then he reached into his belt. He held something high. Hetephras could
vaguely see the flash of cold blue metal in the sun’s rays before it
came down.

The axe bit
deep into
her neck, tearing across her throat and spilling blood down the front
of her linen sheath. Her blue wig was knocked from her head, and it
tumbled down the rest of the sloping valley like a weed in a windstorm.
The bald old woman raised her hands in feeble supplication. The axe
raised high again, and once more descended.

Hetephras,
without
further sound, entered the Gates of Darkness.

IT WAS THE LAST NIGHTof the Osiris
Festival, and bonfires lit every street corner in Thebes. The avenues
overflowed with riotous Egyptians. Foreigners were there, too, invited
by Pharaoh from tributary nations to attend the Osiris festivities.
They were easily distinguished from the Egyptians—their dress was
barbarously colored, the men were bearded, and their women did not even
shave their heads. The fastidious Egyptians averted their noses at the
outsiders’ oily reek. The foreigners were barefaced, too, not
intelligent enough to know that during the Osiris Festival one went
about sensibly masked. It was the only time of year when Osiris allowed
his dead subjects to revel with the living. Practical Thebans wore
masks lest a resentful spirit, the enemy of some ancient ancestor, had
come to the festival to harm them. Unconcerned, the foreigners instead
gazed at the wonders of Thebes, barefaced and unprotected.

They pointed,
amazed
by the size of the glittering temples and by the long blue and crimson
pennants that undulated in the night breezes, flying from high poles
whose spires were tipped with crystal and gold. They were stunned by
the vastness of the temples’ gates, sheathed in silver and bronze,
encrusted with gems. They marveled at the height and girth of the
temple pylons on which painted carvings depicted Pharaoh’s greatest
triumphs—triumphs over their own peoples.

Down at the
harbor,
crowds of families carried tiny reed boats to the Nile, each containing
a wax candle shaped like an enthroned Osiris. In each miniature barque,
according to ancient custom, the families had placed a limestone chip
or piece of papyrus bearing a written prayer asking Osiris to grant
their most cherished wish. At the Nile’s edge, where the tall reeds
grew, each family’s eldest child lit his or her candle and launched
their little ship. The current took the fleet of offerings north, to
Abydos, where Osiris’s body resided in a magnificent tomb. The entire
breadth of the Nile was choked with thousands of the glittering
miniature craft. Slowly the gentle Nile god gathered them up in his
arms and bore them northward until their lights drifted out of sight at
the bend in the river. At the river’s edge families gazed at the little
ships with avid eyes, for surely the good god would grant them their
wishes.

One family,
that of
the stonemason Kaf-re, had at last reached the river after a tiring
walk from the masons’ quarter. Kaf-re’s wife, Wia, held their baby girl
in her arms, while their son, four years old, gripped a tiny reed
barque in both hands. The children’s eyes glowed from behind their
palm-bark masks, entranced by the sights they had seen on the way here,
and their bellies were full of the honeyed cake their father had bought
them with a precious copper.

“Light the
candle,
sweetheart,” Wia urged her son. She pointed to the charcoal brazier
placed there for the purpose.

“No,” the
child said.
Wia saw the stubborn line to his jaw harden beneath the palm bark. She
knew that line; it was his father’s.

Her voice
became a
little sharper. “Go ahead, silly, or the god won’t grant our prayer!”
The family had asked for a larger wheat ration from the temple
guardians, for Wia was again pregnant.

“No.”

“But there’s
nothing
to it! Just hold the wick to an ember, and set the boat free by the
reeds over there. The river will do the rest. Then we can go home.
You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“No.”

“Light… the…
candle,”
his father said between clenched teeth.

The little boy
screwed
up his face. “Don’t want to! Not while
she’s
there!” He pointed
to
something in the dark water. “Scary. Ugly.” The child exploded in tears.

“A crocodile!”
screamed Wia. Kaf-re lunged forward and caught his son in his arms so
swiftly that the child’s mask was knocked from his face. Now the boy
wailed in earnest.

Wia’s panicked
screams
attracted the attention of a guard at a nearby wharf. He ran to where
the family stood, holding high a long spear as he made his way through
the throng. At the water’s edge, peering into the dark reeds, he aimed
the spear carefully. Then he looked closer, slowly lowering his arm.

“Why do you
just stand
there?” Wia shrieked. “Kill it! Kill it!”

The guard did
not
answer immediately. “It’s not a crocodile,” he answered almost
apologetically. “And it’s already dead.”

He called for
a torch,
and someone brought one from a nearby stanchion. The crowd gathered
round and stared. The guard held the torch close to the water…

The linen-clad
body of
Hetephras bobbed before them, face down, caught in a thicket of reeds.
She still wore her gilded pectoral, but her skin was a ghastly,
puckered white. In the wavering torchlight, the second gash made by the
axe at the back of her skull was clearly visible. Blood and matter
oozed from the wound, and a small cloud of tiny minnows darted in and
out, feasting. One of her arms was outstretched, seeming to point
accusingly toward the city itself. A chorus of gasps and screams filled
the quay.

Though no one
knew it
at the time, the Year of the Hyenas had begun.

AFEW STEPS AWAY FROM WHERE HETEPHRAS’Sbody floated, a man stumbled
from a
waterfront tavern, oblivious to the screams from the nearby quay. Slim
and long-limbed, he roughly shoved aside those trying to make their way
to the river’s edge to see why people were yelling. The hardness of his
black eyes and the determined line of his mouth were enough warning to
those in his way to step quickly aside. He seemed to tempt someone,
anyone, to cross him.

“A follower of
Set,”
they whispered to one another as he passed, meaning that he looked as
if he loved the chaos and recklessness of that god whose kingdom was
the fierce alien desert.

Hot-eyed women
in the
crowd shot him glances from beneath their lowered lids. He refused to
notice them, despite the provocative messages they sent him. As he
staggered past, the women turned to stare.

The man was
not
handsome. Neither was he plain. His narrow face was arresting, the more
so because beauty was not a part of it. It was the intensity of his
black eyes that overcame the women. They were a luminous jet in which
lights moved and swirled, where intelligence warred equally with
passion. The swarthiness of his skin, the height of his cheekbones, and
the drawn set of his full lips met in tense collision; the man’s
emotions were as apparent as a bloody gash on his face.

Soon the
dark-eyed man
reached the boulevards of outer Thebes. Here no festive bonfires lit
the streets, only the odd meager torch. He plunged fearlessly into the
dark, however, heedless of the thieves who might be loitering in the
shadows.