Shadows on the Aegean (45 page)

“Come along, then.”

“Now?”

“You have less than three moon-cycles to learn how to win, to beat Ileana. I assure you, she is out training this morning
and will spend part of the afternoon at it also. Now.”

I hate running, Chloe thought, wincing as she stood. I really,
really
do!

C
HEFTU HAD BEEN UNABLE TO SLEEP
, so after a bath and shave, his body silent and sated, he had broken his fast in the scroll room. He was just finishing a
treatise on the human circulatory system when Dion was announced.

After traditional greetings (Cheftu still didn’t know where these language skills had come from; a sign of approval from the
One God?), the two men sat down. Cheftu waited expectantly. Dion was formally dressed, and only a smudge or two beneath his
eyes betrayed the grape and dance he had reveled in the night before.

“Egyptian, the Council has decided, and I have been chosen to convey, the need for you to undergo some testing.’

“Of what sort?”

“Spiralmaster was expert in all the fields, including:
mnasonry, alkhem
, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, physics, geometry, biology, spirit travel.” Dion licked his lips and smiled sheepishly.
“Because you are an unknown and seek this position, the Council would like you to undergo the testing that Spiralmaster would
have required of any inheritor.”

“When?” Cheftu asked. He dared not even voice the fear that he would fail. Some of the things mentioned by Dion were unknown
to him, at least named as such.

“Dawn tomorrow.”

“I have no time to prepare?” I’ve been ordained to fail, Cheftu thought.

Dion shrugged. “You have today. I—” He held out a hand to still Cheftu’s response. “I am a Scholomancer myself. I can assist
you in anything you want to know.”

Why am I here? Cheftu thought. Can you assist me with that? Why have I been placed in this position of power? Any illumination
there?

Unable to sit, he walked to the window, looking out across the sea. Delphiniums, a shade lighter than the waters, waved in
the breeze below. Cheftu breathed deeply, trying to calm himself. Chloe was here, they had positions in society, he had to
succeed this testing or he might not be able to be with her.

His resolve now iron, Cheftu turned to Dion. He was looking at an Egyptian papryus illustration of the human body. “What is
this?” the chieftain asked.

Relieved to speak of something of which he was actually a master—anatomy—Cheftu explained the Egyptian understanding that
all vessels came from the heart, in the center of one’s chest, but assembled again around the rectum. Hence, all healing required
purging first.

“How is that? You should give a sick person an enema first?”

“Aye. Anything that breaches the anus vessels can be carried anywhere in the body, poisoning the entire body with
ukhedu.
”

“Ukhedu?”
Dion repeated slowly.

“Poison, vitriol, the power of
khefts
and
khaibits
. It can infect man and lead him to intemperate behavior, illness or insanity.” Cheftu realized as he spoke that the Aztlantu
didn’t share the Egyptian ideals of calm and balance.

“Enemas flush this out?”

“Aye, only for a short period of time; but during those moments the body is pure and medicaments can be administered effectively.”

“So what of intercourse?”

Cheftu turned back from the view. “My friend, intercourse is not with a woman’s anus. There is no fear of
ukhedu
from coupling.”

“What about sex with a man?”

Blinking, Cheftu tried to discern what the man was asking. He wanted to be certain, to not offend. “A man … and a man?” he
asked cautiously.

“Aye. Equals. Brothers. Comrades.” Dion crossed his arms. “There are many things women cannot know or understand. Only a man
can truly be the equal heartlove of another man.”

A man and a man. In Egypt, homosexuality was virtually unheard of. The gods—Isis and Osiris, Amun-Ra and Mut, Geb and Nuit—all
showed the pathway to fruitful, marital love. A man and woman producing a child. That was Ma’at, the universal fulcrum that
each Egyptian sought to keep stable.

In other courts, Mesopotamia, Canaan, even the strange land of Punt, men might have been lovers of men, but Cheftu had never
participated and was uneasy speaking of it. “I … have not thought about it,” he stuttered. During his childhood in France,
there was hushed gossip about men who preferred the love of other men. As one who appreciated the differences between the
sexes, two men seemed one man too many to him.

Dion rose. “I gathered from your silence that you had not.” He stepped closer, and Cheftu felt himself drawing taller, defensive.
“What do you find so distasteful, Cheftu? Is not a mouth a mouth and a receptacle a receptacle?”

Cheftu had the sudden urge to laugh, imagining Chloe’s response to being called a “receptacle.” It restored his equilibrium.
“I doubt any of this will be in my Spiralmaster testing,” he said with a smile. “Perhaps we could discuss those things that
might be?” Looking out the window, he gauged his time. “I have less than twenty decans to learn all that Spiralmaster spent
his life studying. I confess I feel a little overwhelmed.”

Dion laughed and clapped Cheftu on the shoulder. “Let us go to the library first, then the laboratory!”

C
HLOE WAITED PATIENTLY, SHE THOUGHT
, to hear from Cheftu.

Nothing.

She returned from her training with Atenis, threw herself into the bath, rushed through the massage/dressing phase, and made
sure wine and fruit were cooling and on call. The sun sailed farther and farther west, and Chloe sat looking out the window,
drumming her fingers on the window ledge and waiting.

By the time the sun was setting she was fuming. Selena brought her wine and sat with her. “I hear the new Spiralmaster has
been closeted with Dion all since dawn.”

Chloe could have smacked herself for being so dense! He was tested tomorrow! Suddenly her irritation melted into fear for
him.

“I hope for the Egyptian’s sake that they really were studying,” Selena said coyly.

“What happens if he, uh, doesn’t pass?”

“You know, Sibylla. Death in the Labyrinth.”

Oh my God. “That seems unfair, one day to study for a position he didn’t request, then a death penalty if he errs.”

Selena shrugged. “The priests at the pyramid are jealous of their secrets. You cannot go inside and hope to live without becoming
one of them.”

Cheftu once said he’d been inducted into the secrets of Amun in Karnak, hush-hush priesthood rituals. Maybe they were the
same? Please, God, please help him, she thought. Does he need me?

The answer didn’t come from without, it came from within. In her heart Chloe knew that she gave strength to Cheftu, gave him
drive and confidence. Call it chemistry, soulmates, or just lucky, nevertheless they needed each other. He needed her to survive
this. In microseconds Sibylla was complaining of a headache, refusing Selena’s offers of infusions and herbs and locking the
door behind her well-meaning friend and the serf.

Swiping the palace’s floor plan from Sibylla’s mind, Chloe slipped into the corridor. Cheftu might as well be on the moon
for the sense the directions made, but she would find him, she would get there. To think I used to complain about the one-way
streets in Dallas, she thought to herself.

A decan later, she was tapping on his door.

A serf opened it, and Chloe found herself at a loss for words. With a shawl over her head and most of her face, she blinked
at the serf. “Tell Lord Cheftu that his
chérie
is here,” she said, hoping she sounded foreign.

He was at the door in seconds, and Chloe smiled behind her costume as she saw the pulse in his throat beat faster. He dismissed
the serf without even looking at him and pulled Chloe into the room, closing and locking the double doors behind her.

“My
chérie, eee?”
he said, kissing her softly.

“I have been led to believe so,” she said.

He took her hand and led her into the adjoining room. Scrolls and booklike pieces of leather and papyri were open everywhere.
“My preparation,” he said.

“Do you need me to help?”

He sighed. “I can only hope that Imhotep taught Egyptian skills. I do not know what secrets Aztlan guards.”

Rifling through Sibylla’s memory, puzzled, Chloe repeated the answers to herself. “They are these: pouring stone, shaping
rock, and transforming.”

“Where did you learn that?”

Chloe touched her forehead.

“Eee
, you have a spy.” He glanced away. “Do you have her memory?”

“Actually, I think I
am
the spy,” she said. “I only remember a few things. Why?” Sibylla hadn’t spoken in days, and the space felt very … open. Was
Sibylla even there?
If she isn’t, did I kill her off?
But her knowledge was there, intrinsically.

“Pouring stone, shaping rock, and transforming,” Cheftu repeated. “By the gods! I know how to embalm, to do surgery, to pray
to a dozen deities. These skills …” He bowed his head, his hands hanging loosely between his kilted thighs.

“You are tired, beloved,” Chloe said, slipping to kneel before him. “Did you get any sleep?”

“Nay. I cannot sleep now.”

“Do you feel prepared?”

“As prepared as I can get in one day,” he said bitterly. “It is …” Cheftu sighed. “I fear losing the privilege of being with
you. Nor do I want to fail in my duties here.”

“Which are?” she asked, stroking his legs gently.

Cheftu shrugged. “I am not certain.”

“God will help you. Hell, Cheftu, he brought us together in a whole other time! Other bodies. What time is it, by the way?”

He squinted out the window.

“Nay, the time in history. Chronological time,” she clarified.

“Middle Kingdom. The Hyksos will invade Egypt shortly.”

“What years are those?”

He gazed at her, his golden eyes glittering. “The 1850s Before Christ.”

“Holy shit.” Back almost four hundred years? Chloe sat beside him on the stone sofa, staring and wondering. “Sleep, beloved,”
he said, picking up a scroll and bending over it. Chloe watched him, his finger moving over the page, his concentration tangible,
until her eyes closed.

T
HE PYRAMID GRACED THE
N
OSTRIL OF THE
B
ULL
, the largest of the volcanoes scattered through the islands of Aztlan. Priests and priestesses lined the causeway that ran
up at a nearly forty-five-degree angle.

Cheftu would walk the three hundred and sixty-five steps, alone. A step for each day, giving the temple its name. The flat
gold top reflected the limitless turquoise sky. Far below, the water shifted from dark blue, almost black, to silver-crested
waves. Fortunately Cheftu was not required to recite the prayers for each day as he walked up the steps. Phoebus would do
that when it was his turn to submit to the pyramid testing.

He’d had nineteen years to prepare, Cheftu thought, mounting them. I had one day. Licking his lips, he continued walking.