The Sleeper in the Sands (45 page)

Akh-en-Aten’s eyes seemed to flicker and blaze all the more. ‘I wish I could believe you,’ he murmured at last.

‘Why can you not?’ Inen almost screamed now, so great was his fear, so desperate his longing to be released from his nephew’s burning stare. ‘Do you think that if they had indeed borne the marks of the sacred blood, I would have wanted to see them buried before either had in turn fathered sons? What value did the magic of their flesh have to me, compared with the need to perpetuate their line? Within the temple of the sands, far and safe from here, there is magic flesh enough, rows and rows of bodies bound by funeral wrappings -- but upon the throne of Egypt there will sit no more heirs of Osiris.’ He swallowed. His every thought still seemed illumined by the blaze of his nephew’s eyes. ‘Unless Tyi fathers sons. Unless Tyi fathers sons and perpetuates the line . . .’

‘Yes,’ Akh-en-Aten murmured. At last he closed his eyes. ‘I had forgotten. Only she remains.’

‘Why?’ Inen had sought to suppress any note of alarm; but he knew, as he heard his own voice rise and tremble, that he had failed. ‘What will you do with her?’

‘What business is that of yours?’

‘She is my sister.’

Akh-en-Aten laughed in contempt. ‘She is your only chance, you mean, to perpetuate the line. Why else would you care for her?’

‘She was . . . she is . . .’ Inen swallowed, his gaze once again drawn into his nephew’s stare. ‘I have never loved anything,’ he whispered at last, ‘save only her.’

Akh-en-Aten laughed again bitterly. ‘And so you showed your love by snaking back here to Thebes and attempting, no doubt, to persuade her to share the horror of an eternity with you -- to consume the flesh of her own flesh, to become cannibal as you had done.’

Inen gazed at him in surprise; then he smiled very thinly. ‘I brought none of the magic flesh with me,’ he answered.

‘Then why did you return?’

‘I have told you - I hoped to find that Tut-ankh-Amen was the true heir to your blood. But in vain.’ His thin smile broadened. ‘For he was already in his tomb.’

Akh-en-Aten started with an ill-concealed astonishment. Yet that was barely seventy days ago.’

‘Indeed.’

‘You had not returned before that?’

‘No.’

‘Then . . .’ Akh-en-Aten frowned, and the blaze in his eyes seemed suddenly transformed into a blankness just as deathly and grim. ‘Then . . . who was it abandoned my city and my god? Who was it persuaded my son to change his name? Who was it’ -- he gestured with his arm at the darkness all about him - ‘ordered this place of monstrosities rebuilt?’

‘You did not know?’

‘Who?’ Akh-en-Aten’s face seemed etched again with a burning look of pain. Who was it?’

Inen’s laughter was as thin as his smile. ‘Your mother,’ he spat. ‘Your mother, O Pharaoh, my sister, Queen Tyi! All was done by her!’

‘I do not believe you.’

‘And yet it is the truth.’

‘It cannot be.’

‘Look into my thoughts. You know there is nothing I can hide from you.’

Akh-en-Aten stood shrouded in silence a moment. ‘Then I am resolved.’ He said this slowly, as though he were surprised. The gleam in his face was growing icy once again. ‘I am resolved.’ He turned. ‘It must be done at once.’

‘Wait!’

Akh-en-Aten did not pause but Inen, stumbling forward, ran after him and reached out to pull upon his robes. ‘Wait!’ But Akh-en-Aten was already turning round, his face so hideously contorted that Inen, gazing upon him, could barely credit the transformation, for his nephew’s cheeks were growing hectic and his eyes aflame, and his mouth was wide in a trembling snarl. ‘Get away,’ he moaned, ‘get away from me now!’, even as he reached down with his hands for Inen’s throat and Inen, twisting desperately, barely succeeded in escaping. Scrabbling backwards, he gazed at his nephew in disbelief. ‘What has happened?’ he whispered. ‘What have you become?’

Akh-en-Aten breathed in deeply and with evident care, as though too sharp an intake might undam once again the mighty flood of his desire. He smiled horribly. ‘Have you not always taught, O my uncle, how the Lady Isis had the power of the secret name of Amen, and could achieve with it whatever magic she so pleased?’

‘Yes,’ answered Inen. ‘That is what we teach, for she is titled “Great of Magic”.’

‘Then you should know that what she gives she may also take away’

‘How do you mean?’

‘That the immortality of the line of Osiris is no more. That those who share in it at last may be granted their repose. That there is no life so eternal that I may not choose to end it.’

‘You?’

‘Me. For have you not understood?’ Again he smiled horribly ‘I am become Death myself.’

‘No,’ Inen stammered, ‘no, I do not understand.’

‘I am hungry for life -- and what is Death, in the end, if not such a hunger?’

‘Then you . . .’ Inen recalled the snarl of desperation he had seen on his nephew’s face, the burning, quivering gaze of desire. ‘You were hungry for me? Hungry for my . . .?’

‘Taste.’ Akh-en-Aten spoke the word softly; and yet to Inen, the sound seemed to spill throughout the darkness. ‘And so it is, O my Uncle, that you should keep far from me. As before, so now, I would have you live for ever -- for there can be no more terrible nor more truly deathly fate. Yet draw near me, and all the same I will drain you of your life, for it is sweet and golden, and precious to me, and I will no longer fight against the lure which it extends. All life is a temptation to me now, but yours, O my Uncle -- yours especially so.’

As he said this, his eyes seemed to open upon a darkness that was infinite; and Inen, gazing upon it, sought to break his stare away, lest he be lost within anything so eternal and cold. ‘Why?’ he whispered softly. ‘Why should mine be so precious to you?’

The darkness in Akh-en-Aten’s eyes seemed to cloud. ‘I am Death,’ he said again. ‘I am not permitted what for mortals is the dearest prize of all - the love of family ... of a mother, a brother, a sister, a child . . .’

‘Of a mother?’ Inen whispered.

‘Of course.’ Akh-en-Aten smiled. ‘For even more than you, Tyi is life of my life - and she, for that reason, will taste the sweetest of all.’ His smile faded, and for a moment he stood frozen; then it seemed to Inen that he started to flicker, as though he were made of the darkness which lined the wash of the candle flame. ‘Leave me well alone,’ he whispered. ‘Depart Thebes today. For should I ever meet with you again, then I swear it -- you will die.’ His final word lingered as an echo in the air, sounding again and again through Inen’s mind; yet the figure of his nephew seemed already disappeared. Inen stepped forward. ‘Die,’ he heard, ‘die’; yet there was no one there with him. There was no trace, no other sound of Akh-en-Aten at all.

Quickly Inen gathered his possessions together, then hurried from the temple almost at a run. The single word, strangely echoing, still sounded through his head. He would leave, he decided, that very afternoon. Leave across the deserts. Leave, if it had to be, regrettably, alone. Before departing, however, he sought out his sister, pacing through her quarters and visiting her every favoured haunt and spot, desperate for her son not to have found his mother first. Inen rehearsed what he would say: ‘Come with me,’ he muttered, ‘come with me, let us live with each other and be happy for all time.’ Suddenly the thought that he might not find her, that her son might kill her after all, struck him as a horror too great to be borne; and he remembered, as though understanding them for the first time, the words with which his nephew had sentenced him to life. ‘There can be no more terrible, nor more truly deathly fate.’ ‘No,’ Inen thought to himself, ‘no -- not if my sister, not if Tyi can be found.’

But it happened, even as Inen was searching through the Palace, that she was already riding with great speed towards the Valley. For King Ay, upon his return to Thebes, had at once sought his sister out and given her the tidings of her son’s return; but Tyi, to the King’s surprise, had displayed no joy but only dread. ‘You were certain,’ she had pressed him, ‘certain it was my son?’; and her mood, as King Ay had nodded, had only darkened all the more. She had risen at once and scuttled from the room, and when King Ay had sought to follow her, she had screamed at him in fury to leave her well alone. So the King had not seen her give orders to the captain of his guards, nor witnessed the gathering in the forecourt of some twenty men, mounted on horses and laden with picks. Nor had he seen her leave the Palace, leading her party along the road towards the Valley; for it was now growing dark, and the sun was near to setting.

Tyi herself rode well apart from her horsemen, for she could not endure to be stared at by those whose limbs were not like hers, whose bellies were not swollen, and whose skulls were not hideously distended and vast. It had been her habit now for years to swathe herself in black, so that even her eyes were concealed beneath a veil; yet even so, it discomforted her to be abroad upon a public road, and away from the protecting walls of her quarters. Nevertheless, she had no difficulty in outpacing the men behind her: for the more that the stamp of her blood seemed upon her, so the greater she found that her strength had become.

As she passed between the cliffs which led into the Valley, the last light of the sun disappeared behind the hills. Tyi reined in her horse and glanced behind her. The guards had stopped as well and were busy lighting torches. Tyi smiled. She had no need of flames to illumine her path, since for many years now she had seen better in the dark than in the fullest light of day. She called out impatiently to her men to follow her, then wheeled her horse round and continued along the path. There was not far now to go. She studied the contours of the rocks ahead, and made out her twin destinations with ease. To her left the hurriedly prepared tomb of Smenkh-ka-Re; to her right that of her younger grandson, Tut-ankh-Amen. There was nothing to indicate where either tomb lay, yet Tyi had chosen the spots herself with great care, and she knew exactly where the work of excavation would have to begin. Only the choice of the first tomb to open made her pause; then she smiled and nodded, and turned to the left. ‘Let he who has lain longest be recovered first.’ She clambered up the rocks; then stood above the doorway to the tomb of Smenkh-ka-Re.

Tyi bent down, scooping up pebbles and dust, then allowing them to slip through her long, curling fingers. She glanced down at her hand, withered and claw-like as it was, with a disgust which she had never quite learned to master, then turned impatiently to look for her men. But all was dark, and of the torches which they had been lighting there was now not a trace. In a fury of disbelief, Tyi cried out to the guards to join her -- but only the echo of her own voice replied. She stood motionless, listening to the sound fade away into the night; and then suddenly she shuddered, and knew that she was not alone after all.

She turned and gasped, an exclamation of mingled horror, and fury, and dread. ‘You!’ she whispered. He was standing above her on a flat ledge of rock; his face bare and his head uncovered. The marks of his blood, she saw, seemed touched by some other, even stranger stamp.

‘Draw near to me,’ he smiled, holding out his arms. ‘For do you not wish, O my Mother, after so long, to embrace me?’

‘Ay told me . . .’ she stammered, ‘. . . said you had returned.’

‘And so you rode out here to the valley of the tombs?’

She laughed bitterly. ‘Why should I not?’

‘It is an accursed place.’

‘Then it is all the more fitting a place for me.’ She fumbled suddenly with the veil across her face, pulling it away and turning back to face her son. ‘See!’ she cried out, ‘how ugly I have grown! I, who was once so beautiful and desired, am become a thing of horror, and people shrink and look away should they ever see my face!’ She swallowed, trying to choke back her sobs, then her misery was consumed by a scorching blast of rage. ‘I must keep to my rooms, I must never walk abroad, I must shroud my face and limbs beneath veils and scarves and robes. It is worse, O my Son, than any Harim -- yet as I escaped the latter, so also I shall escape this prison of disgust.’

‘How?’ he whispered.

‘You may join me,’ she told him suddenly. ‘Yes,’ she nodded with a furious violence, ‘yes, yes, you must.’

‘What must I do?’

‘Why’ she answered, ‘rule with me as King. For as I am immortal now, so soon I shall cease to wither and grow old, and who then would there be who could stand in my way?’

Akh-en-Aten shook his head slowly. ‘How will you cease to wither and grow old?’

But Tyi ignored him and spoke on wildly almost as though she were arguing with herself. ‘It had been my intention,’ she muttered, ‘to wait until Ay’s death, for I loved him, I loved him . . . But why should I wait?’ She laughed even as she also began to sob again, her fingers twitching as they plucked at her robes, tearing them away to reveal the withered, distended limbs beneath. ‘When I am King,’ she choked, ‘when I sit upon the throne, there will be no one who will dare to look away from me again. And I shall be loved. And I shall be loved. And all shall be as it was before.’

But Akh-en-Aten shook his head very slowly once again. ‘How,’ he repeated, ‘will you cease to grow old?’

She gazed up at him, startled, then gestured with her arms. ‘Here, beneath the sands, there waits a wondrous prize!’

‘No,’ said Akh-en-Aten gently. He half-raised his hand as though to reach out for her, even though he still stood high upon the ledge. ‘The bodies of the Kings have been removed, O my Mother. Removed and replaced. Do you not remember? Inen told us so.’

‘Then he lied.’ Tyi bent down suddenly, scrabbling with her hands and scratching at the pebbles piled upon the rocks. ‘He lied!’ She laughed again, gazing up and beckoning to her son, only to find that he was already coming, descending from the ledge, walking with a measured step down the face of the slope. Some four paces from her he tensed, then stopped once again; and Tyi saw suddenly that his eyes seemed like bright points of fire.

She gazed down at the dust in her hands, then scattered it and slowly rose to her feet again. She had been ready to tell him, she realised suddenly, ready to betray her most precious secret; but now, gazing upon his face, there seemed the hint of such a danger that it froze her dumb with shock. How pinched his cheeks appeared, how parted his lips, how mobile, and restless, and hungry his stare! ‘What is it?’ she whispered, rediscovering her voice. ‘O my Son, tell me what has happened to you, for I have never seen such a strange look in anyone before.’