The Sleeper in the Sands (43 page)

Once he had laid Kiya’s body to rest, King Akh-en-Aten wandered out into the desert alone; and eventually arrived at his own, half-finished, tomb. Within the furthermost corner of its deepest chamber, a portrait of the vanished Queen Nefer-titi had been painted, so vivid and so perfect that it seemed almost alive, and the King, inspecting it alone by the light of his torch, imagined for a moment that it was stepping out from the rock. ‘O mighty Queen,’ he cried out, ‘help me, help me, please!’ No answer came, though -- for in truth nothing had ever moved. All remained as it had been before.

That afternoon, returned to his Palace, King Akh-en-Aten knew what it was that he had to do. Summoning Ay to him, he ordered that Smenkh-ka-Re be crowned as Pharaoh, and that his own death be proclaimed throughout the Two Lands.

‘But what will you do?’ asked Ay in consternation.

‘Journey the world,’ the King answered. ‘Nor shall I rest until I have found Nefer-titi once again, for she alone can spare me - and, maybe, my sons - from our doom.’ And so saying, he took his uncle by the arm and led him across to a courtyard in the Palace, where Tut-ankh-Aten was being taught to ride a chariot by his brother, both of them laughing and shouting at the other. ‘Guard them well,’ King Akh-en-Aten whispered. He turned back to his uncle. ‘For there is no one else into whose hands I dare to trust them.’

Ay nodded deeply, and then the two men embraced. A moment more King Akh-en-Aten gazed at his sons, but he did not approach them, turning hurriedly away instead. ‘Let them think that I am truly dead,’ he told Ay, ‘so that they may never suspect what their own fates may be.’ Only to his mother did King Akh-en-Aten bid farewell; but she seemed barely to hear what he said, muttering instead without meaning to herself, hunched upon a couch and gazing at nothing. King Akh-en-Aten kissed her lovingly upon her brow, then turned back to Ay. ‘Guard her well too,’ he murmured, ‘for I know that she is as precious to you as she has always been to me’; and then he turned and left, and set out into the world, no longer as a King but as a common man.

For many years he wandered, through far-distant lands beyond the Great Green Sea, across mountains which reached up to brush against the sky, and past cities of unimaginable splendour and strangeness. In all of these, Akh-en-Aten would ask if anyone had heard of his lost Queen. Some men, when he described to them her beauty and her powers, would grow pale and accuse him of seeking a god. Some, though, would lead him into their temples, and show him statues of a goddess which did indeed seem like his Queen, save that the colour of her skin and her dress were not the same; and these would vary in turn with every city, so that she seemed to possess a thousand and one different forms. But still, of the Queen herself Akh-en-Aten could find not a trace; and the longer he searched, the more he despaired, for it seemed to him, at length, that he had searched the whole world. So it was, at last, after twelve long years that he found himself drawing back to Egypt; and his heart grew black, for he knew that he had failed.

Even so, as he finally crossed the border into his native land, his spirits lightened at the thought of meeting with those he loved once again. Carefully wrapping a scarf about his head, so that his face and skull were concealed beneath it, he approached a frontier guard. ‘How is Pharaoh’s health,’ he asked him, ‘and that of his brother?’

The guard stared at him strangely. ‘Pharaoh’s brother?’ he frowned. ‘King Ay has no brother, not so far as I am aware.’

‘King Ay?’ Akh-en-Aten gazed at the guard in horror and surprise. ‘But what of King Smenkh-ka-Re?’

The guard laughed shortly. ‘You have indeed been abroad a long while, my friend. King Smenkh-ka-Re has been dead now these past ten years.’

‘And what of his brother? What of Tut-ankh-Aten?’

Again the guard stared at him strangely. ‘King Tut-ankh-
Amen’
he said, with emphasis, ‘died some hundred days ago. There is no one who would name themselves “Aten” now.’ His eyes narrowed even further with sudden suspicion, and he reached up without warning to pull the scarf from Akh-en-Aten’s head. But Akh-en-Aten pushed him away and, urging on his camel, galloped past him and on down the road. No one pursued him; yet so grim had his talk with the frontier guard been, and so laden did he find himself with dark forebodings, that Akh-en-Aten dreaded to remain upon the public road; and so he turned and left it, and passed into the desert. He knew there was no one who would follow him there, and so indeed it proved, for there seemed nothing else living in all those burning wastes. Yet sometimes, even so, he would meet with trains of nomads who would be able to direct him across the seemingly featureless sands. Nearer and nearer Akh-en-Aten drew to his goal; and then at last he saw ahead of him a mighty quarry, its rocks gleaming white with veins of bright pink; and he knew that he was but a days journey from the Dwelling of the Sun.

He resolved to travel on, for all that it was growing late, but even as he approached the quarry the winds began to rise, and a stinging veil of sand to blow against his face. Desperately he struggled to continue on his path, but the winds were soon shrieking as though in violent agony, and the sands seemed almost an impenetrable wall. Swept backwards upon the gusts, Akh-en-Aten wheeled his camel round and, dismounting, sought sanctuary in the massive gulf of the quarry. Yet however deep inside it he retreated, however high the cliffs rose above him, still the sands whirled and burned against his face, and not even in the narrowest ravine could he escape them. Despairingly he gazed back at the swirling darkness, and then ahead at what appeared to be a cliff at the end of the ravine. Even as he stared at it, however, it vanished from his view, blotted out by a black cloud of dust. Akh-en-Aten shivered. As the dust swirled upwards, it seemed to form, just for a moment, the figure of a woman with arms outstretched, her hair blowing wild, and then it was gone and he could see the cliff again. He stumbled towards it. Again, though, it seemed to vanish, and Akh-en-Aten imagined that he saw the woman a second time, still formed of black dust but now also streaked with gold, and he cried out almost without thinking, ‘O my Queen!’ There was no answer. Akh-en-Aten rubbed his eyes. He could still see the flecks of gold, flowing into crimson, dying the currents of the blackness on the winds, and he imagined at the same moment that he heard a whispering of his name. ‘O my Queen!’ he cried out again. Answer me, I beg you! Show yourself to me!’ But the winds, as though in mockery, began to shriek even louder. All was black again now, for the gold and the crimson seemed utterly lost. Akh-en-Aten moaned in confusion. He felt that he was dissolving upon the storm, that the gales were blowing from within his skull, that he was made of nothing but swirling dust himself. ‘What must I do?’ he screamed. He moaned again, and closed his eyes. ‘What must I do?’

‘I told you long before what it was you had to do.’

Upon her voice, at once everything had plunged and grown silent.

Akh-en-Aten opened his eyes.

She was standing before the cliff. All was perfectly, unnaturally still, as though frozen within a moment outside the flow of time. In the sky, a narrow strip between the edges of the ravine, the stars blazed distantly.

‘And I did it,’ he answered. ‘I loved you.’ He took a step towards her. ‘But I could not do it at the expense of everything else I ever loved.’

‘Yet that was what you promised me.’

‘Then I did not understand what it was you were demanding.’

‘So much, at least’ - she laughed contemptuously -- ‘was evident.’

‘What are you,’ Akh-en-Aten asked slowly, ‘to have set so cruel and impossible a requirement? I had thought you were good. I had thought you brought life.’

‘And so I did.’

‘Yet you also brought death.’

She laughed once again, but with less bitterness now, and she seemed suddenly to flicker as she reached out for his hand. ‘It is the way of things, O my husband, that I shall always offer both.’

‘Why?’ Akh-en-Aten frowned. ‘I do not understand.’

‘Why should you?’ she answered. ‘You are not from the stars.’

‘Is it so different, then, in the realm of the heavens?’

‘Indeed,’ she laughed, ‘for it is a realm of infinite power, where things may be achieved impossible to recount, and marvels of a kind which you have witnessed for yourself and yet still will never understand, for you are intermingled with the dust of this world.’ She seemed to flicker again suddenly and to rise, partaking of the blaze of the tapestry of stars. ‘I am spirit and flesh, dissolution and control, life and, yes . . .’ - she paused -- ‘death as well. Within the realm of the Heavens, this would seem no wonder - yet on this world it is a mystery which no one can endure.’

‘Why, then,’ asked Akh-en-Aten, narrowing his eyes yet determined to continue meeting with her gaze, ‘do you not return to the stars?’

‘I cannot,’ she answered shortly; and in her stare, for just a fleeting moment, there seemed to stretch again the expanse of an icy loneliness. ‘I have said,’ she murmured, ‘that my powers are infinite -- and yet in truth they are not, for I cannot escape from this narrow world, this place of exile to which long ago I plunged from the Heavens and which now, I dread, will serve me as my prison for all time.’

But Akh-en-Aten frowned and shook his head. ‘All things are possible by the will of the All-High. If you fell then so also you may be raised. If you were exiled, then so also you may be summoned back to your home. Do not despair, O my Queen. Walk in the paths of goodness, and much may be achieved.’

But the Queen laughed at these words with a deathly bitterness. ‘There was one once,’ she answered, ‘who did try to walk along the paths which you advise -- one of my fellows, for when I fell to this world I did not come alone. It was he who first taught the arts of living to men, who sought to raise them from their brutish state and reveal to them the wonders of the universe of things. Everywhere, all across the world, he travelled -- and yet his true home, the realm which he most loved, was this of Egypt.’

‘Then I know his name,’ said Akh-en-Aten, speaking very quietly. ‘His name was Osiris.’ He swallowed, his horror intermingled with awe. ‘And I know now that you,’ he continued, ‘should be truly named Isis, and that it was you -- you and Seth -- who caused Osiris to be slain.’

‘So it was.’ The Queen bowed her head. ‘And yet . . .’ -- she raised her eyes to gaze at him again -- ‘it was not done in the sense which the High Priest doubtless told you.’

‘Then in what sense?’

Still she gazed at him, and it seemed to Akh-en-Aten that she did so now almost with pity. ‘O my husband . . .’ she murmured at last. She reached out gently to pull the scarf from his head, then to stroke the distended curve of his skull. ‘As I told you,’ she whispered, ‘he sought to do good, the first King of this land, for his heart was filled with the love of all things - and yet soon he was betrayed by the nature of this world, for it is not like the Heavens but ages and grows old, hurrying without break towards decrepitude. The King sought others to love -- but in vain! -- for whatever is loved upon this world must fade and die. And so at last he declined, and grew sapped by despair and came to loathe his own nature, for he longed himself to die. He came to me, the wisest of his fellows, as I was also the dearest to him, and asked me to achieve an impossible miracle -- to dissolve him into mortality’

Akh-en-Aten gazed at her in wonder. ‘And did you achieve it,’ he whispered, ‘this impossible desire?’

She smiled very thinly. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ she replied.

‘Then it was true what the priests always claimed, that you had the mastery of the magic of the Secret Name of Amen?’

Her smile grew broader. ‘Anything may be called magic,’ she answered, ‘which one cannot understand.’

‘Very well.’ Akh-en-Aten frowned. ‘What, then, did you do?’

‘Can you not guess?’ She raised her other hand and clasped both his cheeks. ‘Can you truly not guess?’ She kissed him softly, as she had kissed him long before, on the first time of their meeting in the Dwelling of the Sun. ‘Osiris was dissolved,’ she whispered, ‘into the line of Egypt’s kings. It might be said, therefore, O Pharaoh -- he was dissolved into you.’

‘No.’ Akh-en-Aten shrank back. ‘No. But I . . . No.’

‘Yes.’ She smiled, and kissed him once again.

‘How is it possible?’

‘You share in his essence. What he was, his nature, helps to form what you are now. You demonstrate in your very being the miracle I achieved.’

‘And yet, in truth,’ said Akh-en-Aten slowly, ‘the miracle -- it failed.’

The Queen froze a moment, then arched an eyebrow. ‘Indeed?’

‘We age, that is true - yet still we never die. It was not a prize, then, that you granted your fellow but a curse, a cruel and hideous curse. What a fall, O my Queen -- to have been a creature as great and mighty as yourself, and then to be transformed into a pitiful creature like me, a creature like all those Kings who came before me, who are nothing now but the playthings and the secret food of priests.’

The Queen smiled. ‘It was what he desired. For the fate you have described ... is it not, after all, a form of extinction?’

‘And yet you loved him.’

‘Loved?’ Her smile grew more cold. ‘You think I was a fool like him, to repeat his mistakes?’ She shook her head. ‘I have never truly loved. I have seen what it may bring.’

‘And yet he was not mortal. He was a being like yourself.’

‘What of it?’

‘I know that you loved him.’

She smiled again. ‘How?’

Akh-en-Aten gazed at her in silence a moment. ‘Why did you come to me?’ he asked her at last. ‘Why, of all my line, did you come to seek me out?’

‘You dared to penetrate my sanctuary and shatter my statue.’ She shrugged. ‘I was - I confess it - diverted . . . intrigued.’

‘And yet it was also -- I am certain - something more than that.’

‘Oh?’ She smiled. ‘Indeed?’

‘I dare to believe -- in my ambitions, in my hopes -- that you caught an echo of the ambitions and hopes of someone else.’

The smile remained frozen a long while on her lips. ‘That is indeed,’ she murmured at last, ‘a great presumption.’