City of Dreams (11 page)

‘How long have you been here?’ asked Huy.

‘Thirty days.’

‘And how long will you stay?’

‘Until I am ready to leave. My preparations are well advanced; but there has been other business to attend to here.’

‘What?’ Huy tried to keep the sharpness out of his voice. He regretted the abruptness of the question, but Surere did not appear to have noticed.

‘Simply the question of funds. Even here, I have found there are those who remain loyal to the New Thinking. I am surprised you do not know of them.’

Surere had managed to obtain a wig that rose high on the crown and fell heavily over the back and shoulders. It was raven black and the hair was entwined with a slim rope of gold thread and opals. He wore a light yellow tunic which reached the knee, and on his feet were leather sandals with decorated metal buckles. Whoever was looking after Surere was not short of money, however simply the man was lodged.

‘You are admiring my finery,’ smiled Surere.

‘Your source of funds is a rich one.’

‘There are men here who remember me, who owe me favours and do not forget.’

Huy wondered if the community which was supporting Surere was less one that adhered to the New Thinking in secret than one which simply shared his sexual habits. The Black Land had never condemned men or women who loved their own kind, or those who crossed the frontiers between loving those of the same and the opposite sex; but minorities formed fraternities, and members of the clubs would do each other good turns when they could. Harbouring an escaped
political
of Surere’s importance, though, hardly came under the banner of simple mutual back-scratching.

‘I am surprised that you do not have more enemies than friends here.’

Surere smiled. ‘Does it amuse you to state the obvious? Luckily I have many loyal friends here — more, perhaps, than you do. And in places you would least suspect.’

‘You are more fortunate than most of the survivors of the City of the Horizon,’ said Huy. ‘More fortunate than I am, or Paheri, for example.’

Surere’s eyes gave away his thought before he could stop them. ‘What do you know of Paheri?’

‘Is he here? Ipuky is a powerful man — he could have extended his protection to his son.’

‘Paheri is dead.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Do not talk of him. To speak his name invites evil.’

‘That is not the belief of one who trusts the Aten.’

‘Do not
talk
of him, Huy.’ Surere’s voice was serious, beseeching.

‘And yet you live like this,’ remarked Huy, indicating the room, forced to let the question of Paheri hang in the air. The former nomarch’s panic at the mention of his old deputy’s name was a lead of sorts, but it was a fish that would have to be played.

Surere’s gaze became hard. ‘Yes. It is necessary. Don’t forget that I am in hiding. I cannot start to live again as I used to.’ He broke off, and when he spoke again, his tone had changed. It was as if two
Kas
battled for control of him.

‘There is another reason,’ he continued in a softer voice. ‘I need to harden myself for my new destiny.’

‘For the desert?’ asked Huy cautiously.

‘Yes.’ Huy saw that Surere spoke with absolute seriousness. He thought again about how the changes which had occurred in the Southern Capital, to which Surere had now been exposed after so long away, might have affected such an inflexible heart.

‘But your time in the quarries must have strengthened your muscles.’

‘That is true. But my resolve must also be disciplined. Before my fall, when I was a great man, I was tempted by meat and wine, and by the luxuries my position brought me. But these things belong to the past. I have a new mission.’ Surere leant forward and his head, for the first time, was fully illuminated by the narrow shaft of light that fell through the window. His face was set. There was not a trace of irony in his expression and in his eyes Huy discerned a coldness and distance he had not noticed before.

‘What is it?’ he asked, more cautiously.

‘To bring our people back to the innocence they enjoyed under the old king.’

‘That is dangerous talk. And was it ever
innocence
?’

‘The tree was destroyed before it could bear fruit!’ shouted Surere, gripping the edge of the table and half rising from his seat. He quickly controlled himself, however, and continued more calmly. ‘That is why I asked you to meet me. You could help me. You could be my lieutenant.’

Huy said nothing, pausing a fraction too long, seeking some reply.

‘You hesitate?’ persisted Surere. ‘I thought you were still one of us!’

‘I do not know what I believe,’ said Huy. ‘The New Thinking touched the elite. It made no difference to the people. Now, the Northern Empire is lost, and the Black Land is in a chaos it has not known since Nebphetyre Amosis, two hundred years ago!’

‘Do you think any of this would have happened if Akhenaten had not been thwarted? If it hadn’t been for the machinations of Horemheb…’

Surere broke off in fury. Huy looked round instinctively. His former colleague had been speaking loudly, and his talk was treasonable. He did not have time now to investigate his own feelings, but somewhere at the back of his mind was the thought that he was, himself, no idealist. He had to live with things as they were, and his work, as far as it existed, was on the plane of helping individuals who had to live, as he did, in the society which existed. The idea of going into the deserts of the north to found a new religious colony had no attraction for him, and he was beginning to think that, for all the patina of civilisation which he had reassumed, Surere’s years of imprisonment had cost him his reason. Who was protecting him? If they did not know all of his plans, they would be placing themselves in great danger. If they did know, then perhaps they intended to follow Surere into the desert.

‘When do you intend to leave?’

‘Soon.’

‘When?’

Surere looked at him for a long time. ‘Despite your apostasy,’ he said finally, his mouth twisted bitterly, ‘I do not think you will betray me. Perhaps it is simply that you do not have the courage to do so. But I will trust you, because there are few with whom I can talk as I can talk to you. And perhaps what I tell you will, even now, change your mind. Do not be a disappointment to me, Huy.’

His tone had changed again, and now he spoke like a worried father who still lives in hope for his son. Huy saw that to play along was the only way to get more information, and Surere had mentioned the protection of innocence as the mainstay of his creed often enough now for the scribe to make connections, though they were as yet half-formed, and his heart was inclined, at their birth, to reject them as falling too pat. Had not Paheri broken with his master for relaxing his severity, though?

‘Tell me,’ he asked, feigning submission.

Surere looked at him searchingly before, satisfied that he could place his trust here, and also in need of an audience, he began:

‘Think of our Great Queen, Nefertiti.’

Huy recalled that magnificent woman. The gentle, careful, intelligent eyes that gave nothing away while leaving you with the impression that you and what you were saying were the most intelligent things she had ever beheld and heard. Even the fine portrait bust they had made of her did no justice to her living beauty.

‘She was taken away too early in the Boat of the Night.’ The queen had been twenty-two.

‘Her life here was fulfilled,’ said Huy, repeating the stock formula.

‘You cannot say that! I knew her better than anyone but the king. I was devoted to her, and she rewarded my devotion with her trust.’

Huy pictured the neglected tomb in the Valley, and wondered if Surere was thinking of it too.

‘She had seven daughters by the king,’ continued Surere. ‘Seven daughters and no sons. And yet he never sought another Great Wife. He knew the fruit of their loins was ordained by Aten. Seven vessels of purity, destined to bear great children, to carry the New Thinking throughout the world, even beyond the Great Green, and south beyond the forests to the sea again.’

Huy looked at him. Beyond the Great Green and the lands to the north of it, he knew, was the world’s end. A rocky coast, a scattering of wild islands.

The forests to the south had never been crossed. The world’s end lay there too.

‘And what has happened to them?’ Surere went on.

The last princess had been born too soon and too tiny to live. The oldest, whom the king her father had also married, later took as her husband his successor, Smenkhkare. The second daughter had died in childhood; the fifth and sixth princesses, still children, were virtual prisoners of Horemheb in the royal palace of the Southern Capital, together with their aunt Nezemmut, Nefertiti’s younger sister; and though treated with all the deference their rank demanded, they were never allowed anywhere unattended by a corps of Horemheb’s own men.

The fourth sister, the one who had found the child in a basket on the banks of the river, and insisted on adopting him, had married Burraburiash of Babylon and long since left the Black Land. Her adopted son Ra-Moses was now a junior officer in the Army of the Northern Frontier. 

‘One of them is married to our present king,’ Huy said quietly. The third sister, Ankhsenpaaten, had been given as a child bride to Tutankhaten. When he became pharaoh, they changed their names in honour of the Old Religion — he to Tutankhamun, she to Ankhsenpaamun. The old god of the Southern Capital, Amun, with his wife Mut the Vulture and his son Khons the Moon Sailor, had returned in triumphant trinity.

‘Yes!’ said Surere bitterly. ‘And see how she has rewarded the memory of her father. It would be better if she had died.’

‘You cannot say that.’

‘I can! I can say it with authority.’

‘Whose?’

Surere’s voice dropped. ‘I will tell you. The king’s.’

Huy looked at him closely, unsure how to react, even what to think. Surere was returning his gaze out of candid, friendly eyes; convinced eyes. The eyes of a madman.

‘On the authority of which king?’ asked Huy carefully, not wanting to break the fragile atmosphere.

‘Akhenaten.’ Surere’s stare did not waver. It became more triumphant. ‘You see? He has not abandoned us. Huy, abandon your cynicism. Do not go back to the old gods.’

Huy sat fixed to his stool, his heart still. It could be that the king had returned. But why now? And why to Surere?

‘You are sure?’ He knew how banal the question was as soon as he had asked it, but it did not affect Surere’s mood. ‘I am as sure of it as I am of this water.’

‘What did he look like?’

Surere made a gesture of impatience. ‘Like himself. Do you think I only saw his
Ba
? Do you think the king would have a mere
Ba
? A little feathered thing with a human head? No, it was himself, in his body, the Eight Elements reunited.’

‘Where did you see him?’

Surere suddenly looked crafty. ‘Too many questions, little brother. No; now it is for me to speak and you to listen.’ Huy spread his hands submissively, but then winced in pain as Surere suddenly leant forward and seized his shoulder, the strength of ten men in his large, bony hand. 

‘His daughter has disappointed him; that is why she has no children,’ continued Surere. ‘That was the first thing he told me. He is distressed by what the Black Land has become, so soon after his departure for the Fields of Aarru. That is why he cannot rest there. He hears the voice of his people constantly, calling him. And now he has returned to help them, through his chosen disciples.’

Surere stopped, to see what effect his words were having on Huy. Huy sat in silence, hoping that his expression betrayed nothing of his thoughts.

‘My own instincts were correct, little brother,’ continued Surere, repeating the term of endearment. ‘I had strayed from the path of true justice, and used people for my own ends. I see now how wrong I was, and yet when I told the king that without resorting to such action I would still be in the granite quarries and so unable to do his bidding, he understood and forgave me. I even believe he sent Khaemhet the boatman to be my lover and my liberator.’ He paused for a moment, looking past Huy’s shoulder, far away, before continuing, but without releasing his tenacious grip.

‘I was right about the Black Land. Without the moral strength of the New Thinking it will fall back into the old corruption. Imagine, Huy. For two thousand years we lived in darkness. The light dazzled us for a bare ten years with its brilliance, before it was extinguished. Our task is to rekindle it. Will you not help me?’

He paused again, this time clearly waiting for an answer. ‘Gladly,’ replied Huy cautiously. ‘But my place is not in the desert. Surely, there is work to do here too.’

Surere made a dismissive gesture with one elegant arm. ‘The capitals are doomed. This Southern Capital especially, the seat of — I can barely bring myself to utter the name — Amun, the False One, the Pretender. It is a city of futile dreams, my friend. And without the True Light, the Black Land is doomed.’

‘And the king told you all this?’ Huy felt cold. Outside, the sun still shone, though with the approach of evening the light had lost some of its force and the room grew dimmer. It was cold here. He watched a lizard scuttle furtively along the join between wall and ceiling, and disappear into a crevice.