Slayer of Gods (2 page)

Not long after the goose terrorized the kitchen staff the animal’s owner came into the yard, her pace quick in spite of swollen
joints and frail bones. “Beauty, where are you? Come to your mother, my little daub of honey.”

Satet passed among the servants congregated in the kitchen yard calling the goose’s name. She questioned many, always receiving
a wave in the direction in which the goose had traveled, and receiving as well complaints from those ambushed by her evil-tempered
pet.

“You know she’s aged,” Satet replied. “You should get out of her way.”

Hurrying toward the gate, Satet nodded at the guard. “You’re not supposed to go wandering,” he said. “You know Lord Meren
dislikes it.”

“I’m not going to get lost again,” Satet retorted. “I’m searching for Beauty, and she can’t have gone far, so I’ll be back
quickly.”

Before the guard could reply, Satet scurried into the dark street, muttering to herself. “Lord Meren indeed. He cares about
me only because my sister served Queen Nefertiti.”

The old woman took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The furnacelike heat of day had ebbed from the hard ground beneath
her feet, and her mood lightened the farther she walked from the gate. She was weary of being confined to the grounds of Golden
House. True, it was a great estate within the city of Memphis, but Satet liked to travel about, visit the markets, docks,
temples, and the wells at which people congregated to exchange news.

It was also true that her wits tended to wander a bit, but she wasn’t mad and didn’t deserve to be pestered and watched all
the time. After all, it had been her sister, Hunero, who’d been Queen Nefertiti’s favorite cook. Lord Meren said Hunero had
poisoned the queen’s food, but Hunero had been murdered too, and now Meren wanted Satet to tell him anything she could about
Hunero’s life that might be of use. But Satet didn’t remember anything important. How could she? Queen Nefertiti had died
years ago—eleven according to Lord Meren. Or was it longer? Oh, it wasn’t important, because the lives and doings of great
ones had nothing to do with her. Exploration was far more interesting.

Ever since Lord Meren brought her here from the country Satet had taken advantage of the opportunity to see the sights of
pharaoh’s greatest city, the capital of the vast Egyptian empire. Looking for Beauty when she wandered away served as the
perfect excuse to explore the city.

Satet glanced up and down the street. Moonlight showed nothing to her left, but to her right she glimpsed something on the
ground. Satet picked up a scrap of flat bread, the remnants of someone’s meal devoured in a hurry while on the run. Beauty
was following a trail of food. Setting off down the street, Satet shook her head and grumbled.

“Wouldn’t have to sneak off to enjoy myself if that boy would leave me alone.”

She always called Lord Meren “boy,” ever since they’d first met in her sister’s old house. He’d been suspicious of Hunero
from the beginning, and once that boy got hold of an idea, he didn’t let loose until he was completely satisfied he knew everything
there was to know. Only last night he’d been after her again to recall Hunero’s doings when she’d worked for Queen Nefertiti.

It wasn’t fair, because Satet hadn’t been there. Hunero had been far away, in the queen’s household in the city called Horizon
of the Aten. Satet hardly recalled anything her sister said about what went on in that city in the middle of nowhere. Oh,
she knew it had been built by Nefertiti’s husband, the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, who had nearly destroyed Egypt with his
attempts to banish the old gods in favor of his own. But Satet had barely listened to Hunero’s ramblings about the old days
at Horizon of the Aten. It had nothing to do with her.

“Can’t help it if I don’t remember,” Satet whined to herself. “Hunero was always bragging about being in service to the queen—may
she live forever with the gods—but that was years ago. Who can remember all her boasts?”

Satet turned into another street. This one was wider, with old houses on either side that leaned toward each other. Ahead
of her someone stepped into a house and closed the door, leaving the street deserted. If she shouted for Beauty, she’d rouse
the whole street and get into trouble, so she half whispered, half hissed.

“Beauty!”

A flap of wings answered her, and Satet caught sight of Beauty as she snapped up something from the street and gobbled it
down. The little beast had almost reached the well on the far end of the street. Satet hurried. She was approaching her seventieth
year and had to stop a couple of times to catch her breath. The second time, she slowed her pace because Beauty was busy eating
something beside the well. No sense hurrying now.

She might get back to the house and have to talk to that boy again. He’d been around too much lately. Wia, one of the family
servants, said it was because he’d taken an arrow while fighting a traitor. The wound had festered, causing fever, and demons
of infection invaded his body. No doubt the traitor’s evil ka, his soul, had tried to avenge itself upon Lord Meren.

Whatever the case, the boy had been confined to his bed, and the whole family had descended upon Golden House. Fear reigned
for weeks, but he was strong, his ka equal to the challenge of fighting off the demons of disease. Now he was recovering,
which meant that he had the strength to pester Satet. After being subjected to several sessions of his meaningless questions,
Satet had finally lost her temper the previous evening.

“Why do you keep asking me these things? I don’t know if Hunero spoke to any strangers during the queen’s illness. Why don’t
you ask her?” When Meren reminded her that Hunero was dead, she’d fended him off. “Then why don’t you go to Syene and ask
the queen’s bodyguard? Sebek ought to know more than anyone. Quit pestering me, boy.”

Satet was proud of herself for thinking about Sebek. The bodyguard was probably dead, but if a journey to the great southern
city of Syene would take Meren away from the house, she wouldn’t have to listen to him for a good long time. Of course, his
daughter Bener would try to stop him from traveling. She wanted him to rest. She said he wasn’t well enough to walk around
his garden, much less go on a journey. When her father wouldn’t listen to her and insisted on joining his charioteers in the
practice yard, Bener had brought in an ally, Lady Bentanta.

A childhood friend of Meren’s, Bentanta wasn’t intimidated by him as most were. She’d come in response to a message from Bener
and had spoken a few words to the invalid in a low whisper. The great Lord Meren, Friend of the King, warrior and royal confidant,
had immediately left the practice yard and retired.

“Wonder what she said to him,” Satet muttered to herself.

Whatever it had been, it was powerful enough to keep the boy in his bed. Lady Bentanta had remained at his side for almost
a week, and during that time they fought. Then one day shouts had erupted from the boy’s chamber. Lady Bentanta burst out
of the room, turned around and yelled. Satet had never heard anyone yell at Meren. Everyone held him in awe and quite a few
feared him. But not Bentanta. She’d stood in his doorway with her hands on her hips and shouted.

“If you don’t rest, I’ll be back!”

“A fearsome threat,” came the bellowed reply. “To avoid another of your visitations, I’d stay in this bed as still as a corpse
on the embalmer’s table for a year!”

After that scene Meren’s mood got worse. That’s when pharaoh sent a troupe of musicians to cheer his friend. They’d been so
successful that Bener now had them play every night until her father was lulled to sleep. Once he’d regained his full strength
he’d be off chasing murderers and other evildoers. The possibility cheered Satet as she reached the well.

It was so late that no one was around the well, except Beauty. She joined the goose beside the well and saw that her pet was
feasting on crumbled fig bread. Someone had been careless.

Beauty was almost finished eating. Satet tried to pick up a piece of the fig bread, but the goose nipped at her fingers and
honked.

“Naughty girl!”

As she bent to try again, she heard something behind her. Satet turned her head only to encounter a moving shadow. It swooped
at her, and her head burst into dazzling pain. Beauty screeched and flapped her wings when Satet fell beside her. The bird
scuttled out of the way before her owner hit the ground. Dazed, aware of little but the agony in her head, Satet felt her
body leave the ground. She opened her eyes, glimpsed the yawning blackness beyond the spiral stairs leading to the base of
the well, and felt her body drop. She cried out as her head banged against the side of the well. Darkness deeper than that
of the well enveloped her as she hit the water.

In the street above, Beauty the goose fussed and flapped and attacked bare toes. She honked and launched herself out of the
way when her assailant tried to bash her with a long-handled weapon. The blow landed on packed earth with a crack. Beauty
spread her wings, sprang into the air, and flew out of reach. The attacker cursed the goose, looked over the edge of the well
at the body floating in the water, and faded into the shadows.

Meren rose from his bed and shoved aside the sheer curtains that hung from the frame surrounding it. The vent in the roof
caught the night breeze and funneled it into the room as he listened to the quiet. In a house this size, with its gardens,
kitchens, stables, barracks, and servant’s quarters, silence was a rarity. He fumbled around until his hand met a table of
cedar inlaid with ivory. Using it to steady himself, Meren cursed quietly.

An old nightmare had torn him from sleep as it had many times since his eighteenth year. Usually his own gasps and moans jolted
him to consciousness while at the same time pain lanced through his wrist. Now he turned his face to the cool wind issuing
from the vent and gulped in air. He tried to calm the racing voice of his heart. Sweat covered his body, and he shivered.
In the darkness his fingers searched out the scar on his wrist; it always hurt after he had the dream.

In the night vision he was back in Horizon of the Aten, and his father had just been executed for refusing to abandon the
old gods in favor of the pharaoh Akhenaten’s new one, the Aten, who was the sun disk. It had been midday, but the city had
fallen silent in the way that small creatures do when they sense the presence of a predator. Meren was alone in his house
except for a few servants, and his father hadn’t been dead more than a few days. Without warning shouts broke the unnatural
silence, and Akhenaten’s guards burst in and dragged him into the streets.

They took him to a cell near the palace. For days they’d beaten him and asked questions to which he had no answer, certain
he was a traitor to pharaoh’s new religion. Suspicion had become a sickness with Akhenaten, for Egypt refused to believe in
the Aten and clung to the old gods who had created and governed her for thousands of years. As the firstborn son of a traitor,
Meren was suspected of aiding the rebellious priests of Amun, the king of the old gods.

After days of starvation and beatings, he hadn’t cared when his tormentors came into his cell to kill him. He lay on the floor,
naked, his wounds caked with dirt, his vision blurred with sweat, and watched several pairs of feet walk toward him. Rough
hands lifted him, and he bit his lip to keep from crying out at the pain. They dragged him into another room where dancing
shadows cast by torches made him dizzy.

A cold hand lifted his chin, and Meren opened his eyes to stare into those of Akhenaten. Black as netherworld darkness, brittle
as obsidian, those eyes raked him as if trying to divine the very essence of his ka, his soul. Then Akhenaten began to speak,
saying that Queen Nefertiti’s father had defended Meren.

“Ay speaks on your behalf. He says you’re young enough to be taught the truth. My majesty thinks not, but the One God, my
father, commands me to be merciful to our children.” Akhenaten toyed with a lock of Meren’s hair. “We will ask once, Lord
Meren. Do you accept the Aten, my Father, as the one true god?”

Meren blinked and swiveled his head. There was Ay, standing silent, looking hard at him. Meren stared into the eyes of his
mentor and gave his head a slight shake. Ay was asking him to bring damnation upon his ka. Father had died rather than risk
his eternal soul; could he do less? But Ay wanted him to live; Meren could see it in his eyes. And may the gods forgive him,
Meren wanted to live.

That was when he’d opened his dry cracked mouth and said, “The Aten is the one true god, as thy majesty has pronounced.”

Ay nodded to him, but the movement was so slight that Meren could have imagined it.

“Words come easily for you,” the king said as he turned away, “but my Father has shown me a way to claim your ka for the truth.
Bring him.”

The guards dragged him after the king and stopped before a man who crouched behind a glowing brazier. Meren’s vision filled
with the red and white glow of the fire. Without warning, he was thrown to the floor on his back. This time he couldn’t stop
the cry that burst from him as his raw flesh hit the ground. A heavy, sweating body landed on his chest. Meren bucked, trying
to throw the man off, but the guard was twice his weight.

He could see the brazier and, beyond it, the fine pleats of pharaoh’s robe and the edge of a gold sandal. He fought the guards
when they spread out his right arm. In spite of his resistance, the arm was pinned so that his wrist was exposed. The man
behind the brazier lifted a white-hot brand. A guard knelt on his upper arm, making it go numb.

Although he couldn’t see his arm, Meren felt a wet cloth wipe the flesh of his wrist, saw the brand lift in the air. It was
the Aten, the sun disk, whose symbol was a circle with sticklike rays extending from it and ending in stylized hands. The
glowing sun disk poised in the air, then the guard pressed the hot metal to Meren’s arm.

There was a brief moment between the time the brand met his flesh and the first agony. In that moment, Meren smelled for the
first time the odor of burning flesh. Then he screamed. Every muscle convulsed while the guard held the brand to his wrist.
When it was taken away Meren broke out in a sweat, and he shivered. Pain from his wrist rolled over him.