his survey of the desert.
'Do you think I want to do it? I tell you I've seen that sandal-'
He stopped as he noticed a shadow, a long one that seemed to grow from behind an irregularity in the desert floor. He started walking, then picked up speed until he was running.
'Lord, wait!'
Abu pounded after him, as did his men. He raced around a large rock and came to a halt. Abu careened to a stop beside him. They both stared down at the shadow, thrown by a wide, almost flat stone that wasn't large enough to hide the hole underneath completely. Meren held up his hand as several men crowded around him, and they stepped back. He examined the ground around the hole, but there wasn't enough dirt to take footprints.
'Move it,' Meren said.
Abu and two other men shoved the stone aside to reveal a shaft. It descended at an angle, east, in the direction of the tomb. Meren looked from Abu to the other charioteers who stood around the entrance, taking in their set, taut features. Then he glanced past them to find several mortuary priests stumbling toward them.
'Have you found something, lord?' panted the chief priest.
The charioteers stepped aside to reveal the shaft.
The priest shrieked, while a cry went up among his assistants.
'Silence!' Meren bellowed. He had never seen a priest quiver like a startled hound. 'You,' he said to the chief priest, 'find one of your staff who's slim enough to fit into this shaft and send him in. Also send to the temple for laborers. The tomb will have to be opened.'
The priest stared at him, jaw set adrift by horror.
'Don't gape at me. Obey!'
While priests scrambled back to the royal valley, Meren nodded in their direction and spoke to Abu.
'I'm going to leave men here to make sure none of them flees. This tunnel couldn't have been dug without some in the mortuary temple collaborating, especially guards. Before we leave, we'll bring the chariots around and search to the west, but we're going to have a difficult time finding looters.'
'Why, lord?'
Meren gazed down into the dark shaft. 'Because I suspect Ahiram sent most of what was stolen out of Egypt when he began to lose his courage weeks ago. And because some of them are already dead. Someone killed them a few days ago near the Red Sea road before I could find them and question them. And now I'm left wondering why a prince like Ahiram would rob the grave of a king.'
Over a fortnight after he left, Meren walked into the reception hall of his house in Thebes. He was so weary that he hardly noticed when the porter took his chariot whip. In the half-light cast by alabaster lamps he could see Kysen coming toward him. Behind him he heard Abu murmuring instructions to servants. He leaned on a slim column and pressed his forehead to it.
'Father?'
He straightened and smiled at Kysen. 'A long journey. I passed Baht and couldn't even stop to see your sisters.'
Kysen studied his face, then dismissed the servants. Abu vanished without being told, and Meren followed his son through the house and out onto the loggia that overlooked the pleasure pool. Moonlight cast a spray of silver across the water. He sank onto a couch with a sigh while Kysen poured a cup of wine and handed it to him. His eyes felt as dry as the floor of a desert valley.
'You look like fiends of the netherworld have been feasting on your ka,' Kysen said as he dropped to a cushion on the floor beside the couch.
'I think they may have.'
'What's wrong?'
'I found Ahiram. He's dead.'
He told the story of finding Ahiram and the royal sandal.
'So you went to the tomb.'
Meren didn't answer at once. A maid appeared with a tray of food, but he waved her away, and they were left alone. Someone's pet baboon screeched, and he heard a heron's call as it flew overhead toward the river. Meren lifted his cup and drank until it was empty before he continued.
'Akhenaten's tomb has been desecrated.' He didn't want to go on.
Kysen swore under his breath and then swallowed. 'By Ahiram?' He made a sign against evil.
Meren could hear the startled disbelief in Kysen's voice.
'Ahiram,' he said. 'The looting must have taken place weeks ago, because he was wearing the king's sandals. No doubt he had his men bring some of the riches to him in Thebes where he could make use of them. But we found none of it at his house, which makes me think he's hidden it somewhere. He'd hired mercenaries and bribed a few guards and priests. I left some of my men in charge at Horizon of Aten until pharaoh can send a commission there, and soldiers to search for the looters and their spoils.'
'But why? Why would he do such a thing?'
Meren rubbed his face and sighed. 'I've been thinking about that. You know Akhenaten refused to help Ahiram's father when he was being attacked by those rebels in the pay of the Hittites. He never forgave, and I suppose he thought he could avenge himself on pharaoh's spirit by destroying his body.'
'Destroying it?' Kysen's voice had grown rough with apprehension.
Meren nodded. They lapsed into silence again. Of all the fates dreaded by an Egyptian, the destruction of the body was the worst. The body was necessary to the survival of the ka, the spiritual double. Everyone knew that the ka needed the things the body needed-food, drink, clothing, an eternal home, the tomb. With these things one went equipped into the netherworld. But without the body, the soul perished.
Meren closed his eyes against the vision of plastered and painted walls showing the king and Nefertiti. He had stepped on torn bandages and bits of gilt wood from the shrines that had once surrounded Akhenaten's coffin in order to look at the body. The disconnected remains had been gathered and replaced in the stone sarcophagus. Bandages soaked with resin intermingled with bits of hair and bone.
He had turned away on the pretense of inspecting what remained of the tomb's once-luxurious contents. Few portable riches remained, not even the gold finger stalls from the king's hands. Most of the royal jewelry and regalia had been taken, but not the tall jars of oil and wine. Ahiram's hirelings had been interrupted, for they'd left caskets full of fine linen, furniture, and chariots covered with sheet gold.
Meren set his wine cup down on the floor. Slipping his finger inside his belt, he withdrew an object and handed it to Kysen. It was an openwork gold buckle showing Akhenaten worshipping the stylized sun disk, its rays directed toward the king's face and ending in small hands.
He sat up. 'I have to tell the king. He'll believe me when I show him that. The thieves dropped it when they fled.'
Kysen put a restraining hand on his arm. 'You can wait a few hours. You need rest. Look at you. You have hollows in your cheeks and there are shadows under your eyes that look like bruises.'
'I can't wait,' Meren said. 'Ahiram's last words were for me to beware, that 'he'll' betray me too. That means someone we know has conspired with Ahiram in the desecration of a royal tomb.'
'Gods,' Kysen said.
Meren stood and paced back and forth. 'Someone here sent foreign mercenaries disguised as bandits after Ahiram. Someone who saw Ahiram's loss of courage, knew he fled before we did, why, and where he would go. Someone who had been his ally and couldn't afford to have Ahiram captured and questioned.'
'Parenefer,' Kysen said. 'Everyone knows the malevolence the priests of Amun hold for Akhenaten. Who else would have the influence to persuade Ahiram to undertake the desecration? Why else would Ahiram kill Qenamun unless they'd fallen out and he feared the priests of Amun would kill him first?'
'Yes, but why Ahiram? The reach and power of Amun is great enough without enlisting an outsider. Oh, don't tell me. Parenefer planned to blame Ahiram alone if he was discovered. But I don't see the relationship between Ahiram, Qenamun, and poor Unas. By the gods, Ky, I can prove nothing other than Ahiram's guilt.'
'We think Ahiram killed Qenamun,' Kysen said. 'Most likely because they'd fallen out over this tomb desecration. If the priests have done this evil, then perhaps Unas found out and was killed. If Qenamun was the one who ransacked Unas's house and tried to kill me, then…'
