The Shepherd Kings (92 page)

At length the flurry faded. The room had a new center, that
luminous beauty and that serene certainty that the world existed to serve the
Lady Nefertem. Iry let it indulge itself for a little while—not, she told
herself, because her courage was failing, but because her mother seemed so
happy in it.

She could not delay too long. The five Beauties were
restless already. A moment more and their clamor would begin anew.

“My friends and my kin,” she said. Her voice sounded thin in
her ears. She firmed it as she had been taught to do, as a priestess must who
would speak before all the people. “I have brought you here to tell you of a
thing. This morning my lady mother reminded me of my duties and obligations,
not only to rule here in the king’s name, but to consider the proper rule of
these lands and the continuation of the line. She pointed out that in the Two
Lands, a woman holds lordship through and by her men; that the king’s name
alone is not enough, and that certainly he cannot provide her with an heir.”

One or two of the Beauties tittered, till their mother boxed
their ears. When the cries of outrage had died down, Iry went on. “My mother
informs me that, as is proper, she has chosen one to stand beside me in the
ruling of this domain.” She held out her hand. Kemni took it a little warily,
eyes dark with mistrust.

People were beginning to babble, a clamor more joyous than
not. But there was silence behind her, silence as large as Khayan’s body.

Iry met Kemni’s stare. His hand, she could not help but
notice, was well fitted to her own. Khayan’s was easily twice the breadth, so
that if she would take it, she must do it in both of hers. Kemni was a smaller
man by far, but large enough as men went in Egypt. They would look well
together, matched as to height and breadth, and in looks, too, though Iry was
no beauty and Kemni was a great one.

Still with her eyes on his, she slipped her hand free. “I
have heard my mother’s reasons,” she said, to him more than to anyone, “and
considered them with care. They are excellent reasons, most fit and proper. No
one could possibly quarrel with them.

“And yet,” she said, “I can’t marry you.”

He said nothing. He was—relieved? Maybe. He would still
argue with her, if she let him.

Which she did not intend to do. Not with him, not with
anyone. “You see,” she said, “I was born a daughter of this house, a child of
the Sun Ascendant. But when I had come to womanhood, another destiny was laid
on me. I was chosen to serve a goddess whom none of us then knew, a power that
takes shape as a white Mare. That goddess, in choosing me, laid on me other
choices, choices that I cannot refuse. Even if I would, I cannot refuse them.
And one,” she said with beating heart and a prayer for calm, “is this.”

She rose. She took Khayan’s hand in both of hers. It did not
resist her. He was very, very still. “This,” she said, “is the father of my
daughter who is to be born, and the father of the children that I will bear
hereafter. He is my husband by the law of the tribes, my chosen one before the
goddess.”

It interested her to see how little surprise there was, even
in her mother. But shock—of that there was much. Outrage, indignation, all of
that. Even anger.

“That is one of the Retenu!” Mut-Nefer cried.

She spoke for them all, except, Iry thought, the Retenu
themselves, and Kemni who was beginning, rather maddeningly, to be amused. If
he laughed, she would hit him.

“This is a man of the Mare’s people, whose father happens to
have been Retenu,” Iry said. “He is a great master of horses. He knows the
ruling of lands—including these—and the ways of our people.”

“He is not Egyptian,” Nefertem said in a tone of icy scorn.
“Child, truly, he is good to look at, as one of his stallions is, and no doubt
he serves as well as a stallion may, but is he fit mate for a lady in the Two
Lands?”

“Not at all,” Iry said. “And yet he is mine.”

“I forbid it.”

“You cannot. It is done.”

“Then let it be undone. You will take your kinsman as I bid
you, and send this young stallion away. There are mares enough for him, surely,
wherever he may choose to go.”

Oh, she was angry, was the Lady Nefertem, to come so close
to the edge of vulgarity. Iry had never seen her in such a temper.

Fear, as Iry had discovered in the war, could only rise so
high before it either destroyed one’s wits or restored them to a keen and
almost bitter clarity. Iry’s mind was like bright water, that the wind could
touch and ruffle and even shift, but always it flowed back to the stillness in
which it had begun.

Khayan’s hand was still in hers, her small fingers
stretching to clasp his large ones, but well content to be so overpowered. “I
will not send him away,” she said to her mother out of the deep quiet in her
center. “If his presence here offends you, then I will give you a holding of
your own, a place where you may rule to your heart’s content. For you will not
rule here. I am the lord whom the king set over these lands, the ruler whom he
has chosen. This is my lord whom I have chosen, with the goddess’ blessing.”

The Lady Nefertem sat mute. Iry did not know that anyone had
ever defied her before. It was a terrifying thing, but Iry could do nothing but
what she did.

Nefertem spoke at last in a soft, still voice. “You are
determined in this?”

“I can do no other.”

“I will not leave,” Nefertem said.

“Then you will accept my choice.”

Nefertem shook her head. But she did not speak further. Iry
took that as assent, or as close as that proud lady was going to come.

~~~

“Will she ever accept me, do you think?”

Iry sat in the wide and lordly bed, clasping her knees and
enjoying the simple pleasure of Khayan lying naked before her. He had stretched
out on his side, lazy as a lion in the sun, but his eyes on her were clear
amber, almost gold, and very keen.

“Do you think she ever will?” he asked again.

“Probably not,” she said. “My mother is almost as stubborn
as I am, and very proud. But she won’t conspire against you, or try to have you
driven out or killed. That much she’ll do for me, because I am her blood kin.”

“I’ll win her over,” he said with surety that in another man
would have been arrogance. But Khayan might actually do it. “She may never
accept me as your husband, but she might, in the end, grant that I have a right
to live here.”

“That would be a victory,” Iry conceded. Then, after a
pause: “Are you regretting what I did? If you don’t want to be—”

“That depends on what you’re asking me to be. Can a woman
here marry a slave?”

“You were never a slave,” she said. “Never in my heart. You
are my lord and my beloved.”

“I am an exile in the country in which I was born. People
spit in my tracks when I pass.”

“That will end,” Iry said with calm conviction. “We shall be
bold, you and I, side by side as it is done in Egypt. Will you do that, my
lord? Come out with me in the morning, dressed as a lord should be, and walk
beside me as proudly as you ever did, and sit in a chair equal to mine as we
share the morning’s judgments. Side by side, my lord. Hand in hand. Can you do
that?”

“I can try,” he said.

“You will do it.”

“As my lady wishes,” he said.

“No,” she said. “As my lord wishes. Side by side.”

“Side by side.” He spoke the words as if he did not quite
understand their meaning, but was willing to learn.

She smiled. “Side by side, and proudly.”

“Proudly.” Now that, he understood. “Yes. I can do that.
With joy, even. Bravado. Defy them to hate me. Dare them to love me.”

“And when they succumb,” she said, “let them see your great
heart and your strong spirit. Maybe I’ve forced you on them—but in the end
they’ll be glad of you.”

“I can hope so,” Khayan said, a little doubtfully still; but
she knew no doubt at all.

Kemni dreamed. He was his winged self, his
ba
-spirit, riding the winds of heaven
above the visions that the gods wished him to see.

He looked down on white walls, blinding in the sun, and the
white mountains that men’s hands had made to be the tombs of kings: Memphis at
the gate of the Lower Kingdom, and the Pyramids beyond it, rising tall out of
the Red Land. It was a day of festival, the festival at the height of
Inundation, when the king came to the white city and stood with the priests of
Ptah beside the ancient measure of the river’s flood, and marked it with great
rite and ceremony.

This was the first time in a hundred years that the king at
that rite wore the Two Crowns, white within red, and bore the blood of royal
Egypt. The foreign kings were driven out, their kingdom in Canaan defeated,
their cities broken. Their names were expunged from the annals of the Two
Lands. All that they had done was unmade, their monuments broken or taken back.
Even their great city, their capital of Avaris, was given as gift by the king
to his queen from Crete.

Ariana was present at this rite, beside and slightly behind
the Great Royal Wife, the Queen Nefertari. There was a crowd of princes about
them, lords and ladies and their kin and servants and children. Joy sang in
them, the joy of victory.

The wind bore Kemni in a spiral downward, the better to see
the faces of those about the king. He found those he looked for, and quickly,
too: Iry his cousin in the gown and wig of an Egyptian lady, but the headdress
that crowned the wig was the golden crown of the Mare’s priestess. A towering
figure stood beside her, not behind her, in lordly garb and a great weight of
gold. A smaller one clung to his leg: small naked girlchild, her head shaven as
children’s were, save for the sidelock which, even plaited, let slip a vagrant
curl.

She looked remarkably as Iry had when she was small, but her
eyes were light, almost gold, and her skin was not quite the warm red-brown of
Egypt. Instead of the blue bead that children were wont to wear for luck, this
child wore an amulet: a plump white horse on a string of plaited horsehair.

They stood close, the three of them, and Kemni could see
that in a little while there would be four. Even as he watched, Khayan laid his
arm about Iry’s shoulders, and she leaned lightly against him.

Kemni’s spirit knew a moment’s regret, and a moment’s
jealousy. To see two who loved each other so, and could defy the whole of their
nation and kin and blood, and came to joy for it, and he—he had nothing—

He called himself to order. He would be glad to see them so
glad. More so for that the Lady Nefertem stood not far from them, and not as
one who set herself apart. Indeed, when her glance fell on her grandchild, it
grew almost soft. Nefertem might never accept the father, but Kemni would wager
that the child was the light of her grandmother’s eye.

There were others near them, too. Iannek in armor like a
guardsman. A number of Sadana’s warrior women. Even Kemni himself half-hidden
behind the bulk that was the young Retenu.

The sight of his own body sent him spinning down into it.
Eyes that had seen the whole throng, now saw only what a man on foot could see,
and that only what the mind behind them willed. Kemni’s spirit had no power
over this body.

Still, he could see what it saw, and feel what it felt. It
was dizzy with joy, and not only to be present at this rite. Something else had
befallen it. Something wonderful. Something to do with the warmth beside it,
which it refused to glance at, as if the sight of it would make it vanish. It
was a woman, his spirit knew. Who she was, he was not permitted to know.

His spirit stiffened in dismay, and in a kind of horror. The
love of his heart was dead. How could he turn to another, even after the
passage of years? Was he then so inconstant?

It seemed that, at least in dreams, he was. It was sweet,
that joy; sweeter than he had ever thought to know again. He was not even
afraid to lose it. That fear had tormented him, his spirit knew as spirits
could, but he had grown into calm. What the moment offered him, he would take.
He would be a fool to do otherwise.

He was almost sorry to wake; but a voice was calling him. He
opened his eyes, blinking, half-blind with sleep.

Sadana stood over him. He gasped in startlement, then in
sudden relief. “Is it morning already?”

“It’s dawn,” she said. “The lame mare foaled in the night.
Her sister has been pacing for an hour and more.”

Kemni sprang up, staggering but keeping his feet, and
scrambled for his kilt. “An hour? She’ll have foaled before I come there!”

“I think not,” Sadana said. “She’ll wait for you.”

~~~

She had waited. She was in the stable as certain of the
mares were who were nearest their time: favorites, or mares of the Mare’s kin.
Her sister nursed a fine tall colt, dark and spindly against his dam’s
moon-pale bulk. She was still pacing, lashing her tail, glaring at her sides.

Kemni settled quietly outside of the stall, as he had
learned to do when mares foaled. “Does Iry know?” he murmured into Sadana’s
ear.

Sadana raised a brow. “Why, should she?”

“These are the Mare’s kin.”

“But not that Mare,” Sadana said. “And she may be
preoccupied.”

Kemni bit his lip. Preoccupied. Indeed.

Sadana folded her arms on the breast-high wall that marked
the stall, standing almost close enough to touch, but not quite. Kemni followed
suit, resting his chin on his arms, waiting in quiet for the mare to get about
her business.

As he stood there, intent on the white mare but aware in his
skin of the presence beside him, it came to him: he had felt this before. This
warmth, this presence. This gladness so deep he had not even been aware of it.

In this waking world, he could command his eyes; he could
glance at her. She seemed unaware of him. She was watching the mare.