Shadows on the Aegean (19 page)

C
HEFTU PERUSED THE TRAY
. Lancet, ties, honey, fat, and three more blades, should they prove necessary. One to use on himself, he thought wryly. If
this operation were less than successful, he was a dead man. Maybe that would be for the best? He looked up, gauging the best
light, then asked for Pharaoh to be moved.

Senwosret, he thought. The pharaoh in the last dynasty before the Hyksos, known in French as Sesostris. How would this man,
whose careworn face testified to his worry over Egypt, feel to know that centuries of subjugation would be his people’s lot,
until Hatshepsut’s grandfather Ahmose conquered the invaders and ascended the throne? Would he consider the hardships of the
past Inundations a worthy price? Or would he retreat into his own palace, gleaning from the masses’ fields and ignoring their
problems? God knew, pharaohs had done that before. Nay, Egypt was protected by a father in Senwosret, even if Pharaoh could
glimpse the red and black lands’ future.

Cheftu leaned over the man, forcing himself to regard Pharaoh as merely another patient. He stood to the side, allowing the
sun to light the area, seeking his best angle. At Cheftu’s request, the patient had consumed copious amounts of beer with
poppy juice; he was conscious but numb. Cheftu motioned for the priests to tie the patient’s hands to the armrests and hold
his head steady on the headrest.

Cheftu wouldn’t actually remove the cataract. He would simply break it into tiny, unobtrusive pieces and scatter them in the
eye, so vision would once more be complete. Cheftu reached for the delicate knife with his right hand and sent a quick prayer
to
le bon Dieu
for dexterity and nerve. He’d been trained in the House of Life to use both hands with equal skill, but he preferred his
left hand. Though the splint had been removed, his fingers still wouldn’t bend fully.

He closed his eyes, focused all his strength and energy onto the patient, then carefully inserted the lancet into the milky
white between the corner of the man’s eye and his iris. Cheftu blocked out all other sound, listening for the slight crack
and watching for the tears that would indicate he had the cataract. With quick, precise movements, he sliced the covering
into pieces. Finally he laid a linen soaked in honey and fat on the eye and turned his attention to the other.

I
PIANKHU WATCHED THE MAGE’S HAND
as he moved over the still face of Pharaoh. Except for the unconscious gestures of his left hand, the mage’s movements were
artistry. Where did this skill come from? How did he know what to do? Egypt had the world’s finest physicians; the man
was
Egyptian, yet some unnamable flavor of foreignness hung about him. It was as though he were playing a role. This Ipiankhu
understood, having played many roles in his own life. He had yet to figure out the motive behind Cheftu’s careful behavior.
A patch was put on Senwosret’s other eye, and the mage looked up.

“It will be several days before we are certain, but I feel, gods willing, that the surgery has gone well.” The cumulative
exhalation of those watching brought a faint smile to his lips. Ipiankhu stepped forward; Cheftu would be his guest until
Pharaoh was healed. With the appropriate bows and phrases, they left the palace and headed into the city of Avaris. Though
Ipiankhu’s house could be reached by a private thoroughfare from the palace, he enjoyed milling with the
rekkit
. If the mage was surprised, he hid it well.

Mud-brick houses, slanting toward each other and whitewashed time and again, formed archways, pockets of shade for children
to play in during the summer and old men to rest in during the winter. The streets, stone paved in the more affluent parts
of town, were still muddy here. Scrawny fowl pecked at the muck at their feet. Tired housewives ground meal into powder. Children,
their eyes black with flies, romped in the courtyards to the music of slowly dripping water.

Ipiankhu ground his teeth, recalling a verdant, fertile Egypt. It would be so again, this he knew; he just wondered how many
would die while waiting. They walked through the marketplace. Jewelry was cheap, bread expensive. He watched two
rekkit
boys attempt to steal from a fishmonger. They were quick and sly, but the man was angry, and his wrath made him fierce. As
the fishmonger brandished his knife at the skinny, filthy children, Ipiankhu moved instantly to intervene. The vizier of all
Egypt was once again a child, wondering if he would be killed or sold into slavery. At the cost of a month’s wages to satisfy
the fishmonger, Ipiankhu bought the children’s lives. He pressed his lips together tightly. Once again, the Unknown took what
was meant for evil and redirected it for good.

C
HEFTU WATCHED AS THE TWO BEDRAGGLED BOYS
followed the vizier. He didn’t understand him. Until Ipiankhu’s last action, Cheftu hadn’t even tried. At least the mysterious
Ipiankhu provided some distraction from the ache with which Cheftu had awoken, the ache that lasted through every day and
into his dreams. Chloe, Chloe—so vibrantly alive—it was not possible that such a life was gone. He could not think of it,
the pain was too exquisite. Even her body hadn’t been saved, no way to build her a tomb and spend the remainder of his days
waiting to join her.

Why had he gone
back
in time? If he were whisked from Thut’s hands, shouldn’t he have arrived in the future, in his real body? With his real name?

Cheftu was baffled. Not that it mattered, any of it. He was in the wrong time. Wrong place. The Egypt that had been the mistress
of his heart was centuries away. The nobles, houses, and nomes he’d known did not exist. Pharaoh ruled and the priesthood
prayed and each family sought to scratch a living from the sickly soil. In Hatshepsut’s time Pharaoh owned most of the arable
land; in this time even Pharaoh was poor. Cheftu didn’t even
know
Egypt anymore.

Why the stampede had not killed him, he couldn’t imagine. What had he sacrificed for this shadowy world? The stench of the
dying marketplace brought him out of his reverie, and he surveyed the broken stalls and refuse standing in the open, gathering
flies. Senwosret’s Egypt with its disease and filth bore a resemblance to the Egypt of Cheftu’s modern time instead of the
glorious Egypt of Hatshepsut, with its sewage systems, temple distribution centers, and education. He stepped over an indistinguishable
rotting carcass and averted his eyes from the thin women nursing from sagging breasts.

Ipiankhu changed direction, and the whitewash grew whiter, the streets wider, and the people healthier. The air cleared, and
Cheftu saw sandbags protecting the larger estates. Three Inundations of over-flooding had brought the famine, he’d learned.
Egypt had been prepared, however, stockpiling seeds, grains, and dried produce from Inundations before. Cheftu shrugged. The
events sounded familiar, but he didn’t care enough to pursue it.

After entering a low doorway, Cheftu followed Ipiankhu into a courtyard. He knew that once it had been beautiful. Now mud
bricks shored up the house against stagnant green water. A dying tree stood in a mosquito-covered pool, and the stink of rotting
vegetation hung thickly over the estate. Servants moved slowly before the oven, its gray smoke fading beneath the blue sky.
Fowl was roasting; Cheftu’s stomach rumbled, and Ipiankhu turned. “My servants will show you to your quarters,” he said. “Bid
them anything, anything you desire, and it is yours.”

“Save my freedom?” Although he knew the answer, Cheftu perversely wanted confirmation.

Ipiankhu smiled, a politician’s smile that stretched his lips and narrowed his eyes. “I would wish for this famine to end
at dawn, yet my wish is also impossible.”

Cheftu nodded and followed a wraith of a slave through the sunlit chambers of banquet hall and baths, up several flights of
narrow steps to a doorway. She opened it, and Cheftu stepped into the Egypt he’d once known.

Walls painted with flowering vines and multitudes of birds provided a brilliant backdrop to a footed couch and trunk. Cheftu
pushed aside a curtain and found the bathing alcove. No plumbing, he noted. He stepped to the balcony door, halting when he
saw the guard. The man saluted politely enough, yet his gaze never moved from Cheftu.

Weary and head aching, Cheftu sank onto the couch. The woven mattress creaked beneath his weight. Three days to wait. Would
Pharaoh see? Would Cheftu live?

Did he care?

Three days.

CAPHTOR

“I
N THREE HOURS, THE MOON WILL BE IN POSITION
,” observed the Daedaledai, a student of the Daedaledion. Chloe looked up at the sky. The ancients were obsessed with astronomy
and astrology. Chloe had occasionally checked her horoscope in
TV Guide
or read her “animal” off the Zodiac in a Chinese restaurant, but these people ordered their lives around the stars.

What did they do on a cloudy day?

“I wish you luck,” said the scrawny, cloaked boy. With a gentle push Chloe found herself standing inside an alcove. “Sibylla,”
she called inside, “is this ritual?”

“Aye,” Sibylla answered tersely. “It is, but I am too tired to do it.” Hanging a mental “Do Not Disturb” sign, Sibylla left
Chloe alone.

Alone had grown to have many meanings for Chloe. But this “alone,” away from Sibylla’s controlling consciousness, was really
eerie. Where was she? What was she supposed to do? Sibylla’s door cracked open. “It’s the Daedaledion Pavement. It’s a training
ground for your race with Ileana.” She shut the door firmly, and Chloe was certain that if mental door chains existed, Sibylla
had used one.

Chloe stepped farther into the darkness. Three hours until the moon was in position. Just so. Position for what, she had no
idea, but obviously getting to the other side was the point. Walls ran on both sides, and she followed them, walking determinedly
until she walked into a dead end.

Cursing, Chloe turned around. Where had she missed a turn? Retracing her steps, she discovered she was farther than she thought.
She ran into another dead end.

Clenching her fists against unreasonable, growing panic, Chloe fought not to scream. She was in a maze of some kind. She’d
been to Kew Gardens, those playful twists of yew; it couldn’t be more complex than that. Where’s the cheese? she wondered.

Okay. Mazes are often motifs. Patterns employed by the Aztlantu flickered through her mind. Spirals, Greek keys, stars … a
dozen others that didn’t have easy names. She turned around, looking at the walls. Long, straight, built at angles. Chloe
narrowed her eyes, intent on the opposite wall. She crossed to it, running her hands over it carefully.

A passageway. Narrow, but deliberate. Was this a pattern within a pattern? How could she find her way out? “Where is a skein
of yarn when you need one?” she murmured. With a last backward glance, she stepped into the adjoining pathway. She walked
straight, crossing two intersections that ran at near right angles. The path turned sharply left, and she walked straight
for what seemed like an even longer time.

Moonlight painted the maze with shadow and silver. It was a waning moon, the goddess was in her blood, her phase as midwife,
before she died as hag. Another sharp turn, also left. Chloe raced down the straight passage, turning sharply left again.
She was trapped in the same pattern.