Year of the Hyenas (35 page)

By this time
flashes
of light were sparking at the backs of Semerket’s eyes. He had to
breathe, had to inhale. His lungs shrieked for air, but Assai held him
fast. Twisting around, Semerket saw Assai’s grin in the dark water.
Semerket’s lungs were afire. Unable to prevent himself, he opened his
mouth to breathe.

The water
scalded his
lungs, and he choked, but only for a short time. He felt blackness
overtaking him. Through the few cubits of water above him, a pinpoint
of distant light danced overhead, the sun. Though his rebellious body
still feebly struggled to save itself, a strange calmness began to
overtake him. He felt a sublime sense of release transfusing his limbs,
cascading through his body. Fighting the descending torpor, he forced
himself to summon one last bit of strength, and pulled against the
rotting wood of the wreck. The cedar broke jaggedly in his hands. He
pulled again, and felt Assai’s grip loosen. One final kick—and he was
through…

But by now the
black
was all around him, and within him too. He felt himself drifting
upward. And the pinpoint of sunlight—the last thing he saw—burnt itself
out.

WINDED FROM HIS CLIMB FROM THE
RIVER, for
he had run almost the entire distance, Nenry caught his breath at the
southern gate of the tombmakers’ village. He was momentarily astounded
by the bright colors of the houses within its narrow main street. Ketty
had never told him of the village’s odd beauty, or how it was in
reality two buildings, each with their own huge roofs. Yet the
strangest thing about the place was the silence that so profoundly
enveloped it. It seemed a gathering place for phantoms.

Nenry stood at
the
gate, hesitating. “Hello…?” he called into the corridor. No one hailed
him. Tentatively, he stepped inside. At the first door, he tapped
lightly.

“Is anyone
there? Can
you help?”

Silence again
met him.

“Please,” he
pleaded,
“I’m looking for my brother—Semerket. Is he here?”

Only quiet.

Knocking on a
few of
the other doors produced the same result. Nenry was beginning to feel
undone by the place’s eerie stillness. But at that moment he heard the
cries of many people. The voices did not come from within the village,
but from outside.

He retraced
his steps
down the main street and out the gates. The shouts were louder here;
they came from the western side of the village, and Nenry followed the
noise.

Around the
corner he
found a horde of villagers gathered at a far clearing in front of a red
cliff face, streaked and veined like a slab of meat. Nenry surmised
that some celebration or local religious rite was occurring. Perhaps
Semerket was among those assembled, he hoped, and he set off to see for
himself. He reached the edge of the crowd within a few moments. So
intent were the villagers on what was transpiring in the clearing, they
did not turn to acknowledge him, nor even seem to notice that a
stranger was among them.

Through their
crowded
forms, he glimpsed a contingent of grim-faced women shouting angry
accusations at someone. Apparently the person had behaved shamelessly
in some fashion and was undergoing some sort of trial. Despite his
urgent need to find his brother, Nenry paused, fascinated. He pushed
himself through the villagers, and saw that in the center of the
clearing was a woman, hands bound behind her. Tall and oddly beautiful,
she was not gagged, and Nenry was shocked to hear the words she hurled
at her accusers. Never in his life had he heard a woman swear so
lustily as she did. The woman was threatening them with all manner of
punishments if they did not release her at once, and Nenry was
surprised to hear her use the name of his brother, Semerket, as a form
of threat.

“Wait until he
gets
back—you’ll see. He’s gone to the vizier himself, to get troops. You’ll
be lucky if you’re not all thrown into Djamet prison.”

“Semerket—?”
Nenry
said aloud, pushing his way forward to the woman.

When the
hundred or so
villagers at last noticed Nenry standing before them, draped in the
various insignia of his office, they drew back guiltily. Even the woman
in the clearing ceased her invectives.

In the awkward
silence, he made a gesture of greeting. “You speak of Semerket—he’s my
brother. I’m looking for him.”

“Oh, thank the
gods!”
the bound woman exclaimed.

The rest of
the
villagers were uncertain about how to proceed. The woman shouted to
Nenry, “You must help me! I’m to be stoned for what I know about
them—about what they did. Your brother said he’d get me out of here if
I told the authorities. Oh, please, my lord—you’ve got to do something,
or else I’m a dead woman!”

Nenry
swallowed,
glancing nervously at the villagers. “I’m sure,” Nenry began, gesturing
ineffectively, “I’m sure if Semerket said—”

A rotund,
intimidating
sort of woman suddenly broke free from the others and pushed her way to
where Nenry stood.

“Your brother
isn’t
here,” said the fat woman forcefully. “And you’re not wanted, either.”

Nenry snapped
his head
in her direction. The woman reminded him so much of his wife with her
rough, intemperate tongue that he was filled with sudden wrath. “How
dare you speak to me in that fashion,” said Nenry. His tone was low and
dangerous, for once, surprising even himself. The woman became
flustered, looking around to the villagers for support, but they still
hung back.

“You’re
trespassing,”
she said, still defiant, though her voice was not as certain as before.
“This village is off-limits to all but—”

“You are
addressing
the chief scribe of Eastern Thebes,” Nenry interrupted. “What is your
name, woman?”

“Her name’s
Khepura!”
the bound woman shouted from the clearing.

“Damn you,
Hunro—!”
the big woman sputtered.

“Quiet!”
shouted
Nenry. To his surprise the woman fell silent. He turned in the
direction of the woman whose name was Hunro, saying, “Release that
woman. Instantly. If my brother said he’d take you from here, then he
had good reason. We’ll go together to find him.”

“Thank you, my
lord…
thank you!”

When none of
the
villagers moved he started forward to untie her himself, but Khepura,
mad rage again claiming her, cast about in desperation. She bent
suddenly to grasp a rock from the pathway. With a scream she hurled it
at the woman in the clearing. The stone struck the side of Hunro’s head
with a thud that resounded through the canyon. Hunro fell to the ground
like a marionette whose strings had been unexpectedly cut, blood
spurting from her scalp.

Nenry had been
so near
to her that his face and cloak were spattered. In a kind of daze he
whirled around, meeting only the flat, expressionless faces of the
villagers. Their eyes were hard and filled with a frenzied hatred.
Nenry had been on the verge of chastising them, but his mouth clamped
shut when he saw their insensate expressions. Instinctively he realized
that his own life was now also at stake. He watched helplessly as the
villagers bent to retrieve rocks from the ground.

Hunro
staggered to her
feet, and looked about at the villagers. She approached one of the men.
“Aaphat?” she asked incredulously. “Will you really do this to me?
After what we were to one another?”

The man looked
awkwardly at the ground. It was his wife, suddenly enraged, who threw
the next stone. It caught Hunro on the shoulder. “You can’t do this,”
Hunro muttered; “it isn’t fair.”

Then the rocks
began
to rain down on her from all sides. The sickening thuds of stone
smashing against bone and flesh filled the canyon. The tall woman fell
and did not move again. Not until her body was an unrecognizable mush
did the villagers cease throwing their stones. At the end, the woman
lay half-buried in rock.

Nenry stared
aghast,
expecting the villagers now to turn upon him. But the feral light in
their eyes had burnt out. Not even glancing at him, the villagers
turned and trudged back to the northern gates of the village. They were
oddly lethargic, as if they were dead to the world around them. Nenry
stood in their midst, hysterical half-sobs emerging from him. He
searched their faces, but it was as if he were invisible to them.
Whatever threat from authorities he represented was simply ignored.
When all of them had disappeared into the village, the gate was closed
and Nenry heard the bolts slide into place.

It was this
noise that
freed him at last to move. He felt the bile rise in his throat. He had
to get away from there. His entire world—indeed, all of Egypt—had been
upended. What had happened, he thought, that everyone’s rage should
suddenly break out, first with his own wife and now here in this
distant village?

As Nenry ran,
he never
noticed that he was now in the center of the Great Place. He darted in
and out of the protruding crags, following the serpentine path at the
top of the cliffs. Nenry might have run into the western desert had it
not been for the two black Medjays who intercepted him as he came
hurtling around a boulder. Bracing themselves, they caught him in their
arms as he flew past.

Seeing the
insignia of
the Eastern Mayor’s office around Nenry’s neck, the Medjays did not
instantly arrest him as a trespasser in the Great Place, nor prod him
in awkward places with the points of their spears. Instead they allowed
Nenry to pour out his tale—how he had crossed from Eastern Thebes just
an hour before, only to see a woman stoned to death at the tombmakers’
village, when all he’d done was to ask after his brother, who was in
terrible danger, Semerket was his name—

“Semerket?”
Medjay Qar
interrupted, staring at the man whose face was indeed a parody of his
friend’s, though it was fraught with frightened tics and twitches.

“I have to
warn him!”
the man pleaded.

“Why?”

Nenry blinked.
Should
he trust these men? Perhaps they were also involved in the plot that
threatened Semerket’s life. Finally, simply because they were Medjays
and black-skinned, he felt he could tell them the truth.

“He’s in
danger from
Queen Tiya,” he said, “something to do with what he’s discovered here.
Today she plans his death. I have to warn him.”

Qar addressed
the
other Medjay. “Thoth, go back to headquarters and tell the captain to
take some men into the Place of Truth. See what has happened. If
they’ve taken matters into their own hands—”

“Too late,”
muttered
Nenry, “too late.”

“What about
you, Qar?”
asked Thoth.

“I’m going
with this
man to Djamet. If there’s a plot against Semerket for what he knows,
we’ll all be next.”

Qar seized
Nenry by
the arm. As they walked swiftly down the limestone-strewn path in the
direction of the temple, a sudden gust of fierce wind caught them. Qar
sniffed the air, and turned with a worried glance to the west. A black
ledge of clouds hung at the fringes of the Great Place.

A distant
flash of
silent pink lightning threw the crags behind them into sudden soft
relief. Nowhere but in the deserts surrounding the Great Place was
there to be seen lightning of such a hue, Qar explained to the numbed
and silent Nenry.

“But it can
kill you
just as quickly as the other kind,” he added. The Medjay held the
copper head of his spear to the ground.

They had
reached the
crest of the cliff and Nenry stared ahead to the ribbon of blue that
was the distant Nile. The horror of what he had just seen was at last
claiming him and he began to shiver uncontrollably.

A wall of wind
caught
them there at the crest. Wrapping their cloaks about themselves,
accompanied by the acrid smell of the approaching storm, Qar and Nenry
walked swiftly down the path that would take them to the Great Temple
of Djamet.

HE VAULTED TOthe surface of the
lagoon. Vomiting water from his lungs, he sucked in the dank air.
Though it stabbed like cold fire, he filled every part of his chest
with it. Only then did Semerket open his eyes.

Panic was his
first
reaction. He lashed out blindly, feeling Assai’s hands still clutching
him. But it was only a tangle of wet leaves that had wrapped itself
about his arm. Assai was not there.

Semerket
gulped more
air into his lungs and sank again into the waters, searching, expecting
Assai to loom from the green water at any moment. But the water
revealed nothing. He was alone. Taking another gulp of air into his
chest, he swam down the few cubits to the wreck caught in the
underwater thicket. Assai was snagged by the neck of his linen habit,
pinned by the jagged cedar planks of the yacht’s hull. Pentwere’s
favorite twisted and turned frantically, hacking at the linen with his
curved knife. In his hysteria, his movements were ineffective, and the
water was fast becoming red with the wounds he inflicted on his own
flesh. Still the wreck would not release him.