Year of the Hyenas (31 page)

He dropped the
torch
to the floor below, a distance of some six or so cubits. Swallowing his
fear, Semerket lowered his legs into the pit. The shallow footholds
allowed him to slowly, if precipitously, climb down. Step by step,
clinging with toe and finger, he at last reached a level surface.
Semerket breathed raggedly, glad to be on even ground again. He seized
his still-burning torch from the floor of the room and held it high
above his head.

And then he
saw.

The glint of
gold was
everywhere. Hammered masks of the gods, vases, cups and goblets, inlaid
chests, necklaces, pectorals, ear loops— riches piled higher than his
head, in a space as big as Hetephras’s entire home. Semerket’s mouth
gaped open. He became dizzy with the spectacle, and had to sit.

Semerket
remembered
the conversation he had had with Qar, the day they had found
Hetephras’s blue wig not more than a couple hundred cubits from this
very room. He had surmised that Pharaoh’s tomb would be the perfect
place to hide the treasure. But the tombmakers had gone one better,
secreting it in this hidden room beneath the tomb. They could come and
go as they wished, innocent to all eyes, observed by the Medjays, the
inspectors, even Pharaoh himself and never be noticed. He had to
compliment them on their devious cleverness.

Semerket’s
wits
returned, and he walked about the room, gazing at the piles of
treasure. As a child he’d read the fables of peasants who stumbled on
the cache of gods and wizards, but his paltry imagination had never
conceived anything on the scale of what he saw at that moment.

Wicker baskets
were
heaped in the room, each brimming with oddly shaped metal discs like
those he had seen above in Pharaoh’s tomb. Semerket fished out one of
the haphazard, oozing shapes. He ran his tongue over it, on the off
chance that it could be brass, but there was no sharp acid reaction.
The disc was surely gold.

Somehow the
precious
metal had pooled like water, then solidified. From the remote edges of
his mind he remembered Qar’s story of how robbers sometimes found it
more convenient to burn a tomb’s contents entirely, and then collect
the melted blobs of congealed gold and silver from beneath the ashes.
The unbidden memory of the boy in the Great Place astride the donkey
came to him, and he heard again his words—“god-skin is made there.”

Semerket gazed
at the
baskets, realizing that the disc he held in his hand was perhaps a cup
that had once touched the lips of a pharaoh or a queen, or a sacred
vessel that had held sweetmeats offered up to a god. Semerket looked at
the rows upon rows of baskets that lined the walls of the room, filled
to overflowing with the melted globules—and only then did he perceive
the true extent of the theft, the waste, and the wantonness of the
destruction that had accompanied it.

Semerket
suddenly
hurled the thin paten of gold across the room. It smashed into glinting
bits against the wall. How could they have done it? These things had
been made by their grandfathers, uncles, and fathers. Now they were
gone, and forever. Were the tombmakers so immune to their own artistry
that they no longer saw it, melting it down because it was easier to
carry away? But then he remembered Paneb, so proud of a jar crafted by
his grandfather. Undoubtedly, it too had been part of the spoils,
claimed by the big, angry foreman in a fit of sentimentality. Semerket
felt his heart soften toward Paneb—at least one of the tombmakers
wanted a treasure for more than its mere value in the marketplace.

Semerket
tipped his
torch to inspect the rest of the room, and the light revealed a doorway
at the room’s rear. Curious, Semerket crossed to it, and emerged into
another hallway. He stared in shock.

This was no
hidden
cellar—but an entirely different tomb! It stretched into the dark in
both directions, for what length Semerket could not imagine. Qar had
told him that Ramses’ tomb above had been pierced thirty years before
by the fathers and grandfathers of the present tombmakers. Seeing how
this tomb thrust forward, he could tell that the two tombs had
collided, the roof of this forgotten tomb intersecting with the floor
of Pharaoh’s newer one, forcing the builders to re-angle it. That
explained why it diverged to the right.

Semerket
raised his
torch to the walls to see if he could determine who was the tomb’s
original owner. Though he could clearly see the shapes of the figures
that had once graced the walls, they had been carefully hacked away,
leaving only their ragged outlines.

Semerket
slowly walked
the length of the corridor. Everything had been deliberately stripped
from the walls. At the very end of the tomb, however, he discovered a
bit of mural that still survived. On it was the small head of a
pharaoh, recognizable by the uraeus of asps the king wore on his brow.
Whoever the pharaoh had been, he was an immoderately handsome man, if
the portrait was at all lifelike. Seeing the king’s strong, even
features reminded Semerket of someone he had met recently… who? Perhaps
it was only a trick of his memory; he shrugged away the thought.
Fortunately, a cartouche had been overlooked by the desecrators. The
hackles on his neck rose when he painfully deciphered the faded glyphs
within it—“Amen-meses,” he breathed.

He was in the
tomb of
the accursed usurper, the father of Twos-re, the queen whose name had
come up more than once in Semerket’s investigation. Semerket suddenly
realized how despised Amen-meses must have been to warrant such
terrible desecration. The obliteration of his name from even his tomb
ensured that the rogue pharaoh’s immortal life was forfeit. No doubt
his daughter’s tomb, wherever it lay, had been identically stripped.

The oil in the
torch
was almost spent. Semerket retraced his steps through the room of gold
and climbed the incised, rugged ladder to Pharaoh’s unfinished tomb
above. He once again took his place behind one of the large pillars in
the grand gallery. Soon the torch sputtered and died, and he settled
down to wait for the reappearance of the work gang. He knew that on the
next night the beggars would return—the moon would still be dark—to
remove the remainder of the treasure. But where were they taking it?
And why?

The answers to
these
questions were immaterial. Because as soon as he could slip away in the
morning, he planned to go directly to Vizier Toh. The thieves would be
stopped in their tracks.

ASSEMERKET HAD KNOWN THEY WOULD,THEtomb-makers returned at dawn.
They
strode past him, unaware of his presence, going down into the burial
chamber to continue their work. When he was satisfied they were not
coming back, he slipped up the main corridor and out the entrance—the
door now thrown open to the rising sun—and climbed the cliff to the
trail above the tomb.

Within an hour
he was
snaking his way through Djamet’s makeshift bazaar. Hundreds of stalls
had sprung up outside its walls since Pharaoh had returned. A flash of
his vizier’s badge to the guards at the Great Pylons, and he was
admitted at once into the temple.

It was not so
crowded
within the gardens. Nevertheless a horde of nobles, priests, and
craftsmen swirled around him, intent on their morning duties. Though
acrid smoke from the morning sacrifices hung over the temple compound,
the paved walkways in the garden were perfumed with the scents of
nearby citrus trees and jasmine vines.

At the inner
temple
doors Semerket approached a guard. “The vizier’s quarters—where are
they?” he asked, knowing that Toh had abandoned his offices at the
Temple of Ma’at to be near Pharaoh when he was in Thebes. Again
Semerket held his badge for the soldier to view.

The guard told
him.
“But if you’re looking for Toh,” he added, “he left before dawn for
Erment, with his garrison.”

Semerket’s
expression
was such that the guard quickly added, “But he’ll be back in a week or
so! He went to inspect the new Buchis bull!”

Semerket had
been
aware of the prior Buchis bull’s early death, a horrifying omen of
catastrophe. The bull was considered the earthly manifestation of
Pharaoh Ramses III’s power, and his replacement was a task entrusted
only to the highest official, which explained Toh’s unexpected
departure.

“Perhaps his
scribe,
Kenamun, can help you if it’s so urgent,” the guard said.

Kenamun… yes.
He would
know how to get in touch with Toh by the quickest method. Semerket
nodded his thanks and stalked through the dark halls, the polished
basalt tiles gleaming beneath his rough sandals. But some time had
passed since he had last been inside the temple, and he grew confused.
He recognized the wall of blue faience tiles… but did he take the left
or right hallway?

A familiar
voice
caught his ear, and across the courtyard he glimpsed the lean figure of
Mayor Pawero. The mayor did not exhibit his usual hauteur, instead
amiably chatting with some other person, even laughing uproariously.
Semerket was intrigued; never before had he seen the Mayor of the West
so relaxed and approachable. He moved down the hallway to better see
who the other person could be.

It was Mayor
Paser.

Semerket could
not
have been more surprised. What had become of their famed distaste for
one another, their ill-concealed enmity? Had the stoat and the cobra
become lovers?

Semerket
approached
them stealthily, hoping to overhear their conversation. Unfortunately
Pawero shifted his weight at that moment, and spied Semerket. The
Western Mayor flinched when he realized who it was, and the color
drained from his face. Seeing his colleague so undone, Paser turned to
see what disturbed him.

They leapt
apart like
guilty children, Semerket thought.

“You!” Pawero
said,
barely able to speak. “But you’re supposed to be…” He swallowed, unable
to go on.

Paser shot an
alarmed
glance at the tall mayor. Instantaneously he took up the Eastern
Mayor’s words. “…supposed to be at the tombmakers’ village, we
thought.” The tall mayor nodded dumbly in agreement, his face still
pale.

“Why are you
here,
Semerket?” Paser asked.

“The
vizier—I’ve come
to see him.”

He saw the
quick
glance between the mayors. “Have you solved the murder of the
priestess, then?” Pawero asked faintly.

Semerket
studied the
pair of them through narrowed, critical eyes. Something about them was
not authentic. He shook his head gravely. “I merely came to get my pay
from Kenamun, lords.”

Instantly, the
two
mayors’ spirits lifted. Paser even smiled. “Do you mean you’ve already
gone through all that silver I gave you?”

Semerket
smiled. “Wine
costs dearly these days, Mayor,” he said, winking.

Paser
guffawed, but
his eyes remained coldly appraising. Pawero, on the other hand, had
become once again his rigid former self. Without another word he fled,
rushing to his chambers, occasionally looking back at Semerket and
shuddering.

“He’s heard of
the
disturbances in the tombmakers’ village,” Paser explained. “You can’t
blame him for believing you to be the cause, Semerket.”

“They caused
it
themselves,” Semerket answered shortly, then added, in a tone less
harsh, “Excuse me, lord, but I must find Kenamun. Can you tell me where
the scribe might be found?” Paser pointed down a hallway. Semerket
stretched his hands at knee level, and left the mayor there.

Kenamun was at
a
table, writing upon a scroll. When he saw Semerket enter the room, his
eyes widened, and Semerket noted how he turned the papyrus over.
Semerket fancied for a moment that the vizier’s scribe, too, was not
happy to see him.

Quickly he
told
Kenamun of finding the gold in the forgotten tomb in the Great Place,
of how the tombmakers had attempted to kill him, and that somehow he
felt it was all connected to the murder of Hetephras. He asserted that
Hunro’s arrest and the theft of her jewels had effectively stymied his
inquiry. “I want her freed,” Semerket demanded, “and placed under the
vizier’s protection. And tonight, a squadron of men must be dispatched
to capture the beggars who plan to remove the treasure.”

Kenamun’s face
paled.
He paced back and forth in shock. “Oh, my…” he said raggedly, thinking
quickly. “I could certainly order the woman’s release—that’s no
problem—but I’ve no authority to obtain a military escort for you.”

“Who has that
authority?”

“In the
absence of
Vizier Toh, only Pharaoh, I’m afraid.” Kenamun shrugged his shoulders
helplessly.

“Then we must
go to
him,” Semerket declared.

Kenamun
appeared
horrified by the suggestion. “One simply can’t demand an audience with
Pharaoh, Semerket. There are intricate ceremonies, a thousand rules—”