As the whining continued, Abu kicked the huddled mound of grease, string, and amulets. Tcha fell silent.
'Where have you been, and why are you following us, you addled dung beetle?' Kysen asked.
'Been with the great master. He sent me. Wants to see you at once.'
'Now?'
'He says it must be now. Already it may be too late, he says. Oh, what a day of misery and woe. Poor Tcha, poor wretched Tcha. No guards for him. No protection, only orders and threats, orders and threats.'
'Here's another,' Abu growled. 'If you don't stop whining, I'll cut out your tongue.'
Wiping the hand that had grabbed the thief, Kysen said, 'I'm not going anywhere with you, Tcha. You're coming with me to answer some questions about your friend Pawah.'
There was no answer at first. Tcha worked his way to an upright position, which put his eyes level with Kysen's chest. The thief took a couple of wary steps away from Abu. Fishing among his amulet draperies, he took one of the talismans in both hands. He held it close to his body while he turned in a circle and muttered incomprehensible phrases. Kysen sighed and was about to interrupt, but Tcha broke off his incantation.
'Othrys says if you don't come, he will take wagers that neither you nor Eyes of Pharaoh will live to see Inundation.'
With deliberate slowness, Kysen swung toward Tcha and spoke quietly. 'If you're lying, I'll give you to Abu.'
The thief shook his head violently, but it seemed Othrys was the greater peril, for he began to trot down the path. He beckoned to Kysen.
'Come, lord. We must go to the pyramid city.'
'At night?'
'At night.' Tcha whimpered and danced from one foot to the other. 'No one cares if a demon eats Tcha's heart. No one cares if Tcha is eaten. Go to the pyramid city, Othrys says. Go to the pyramid city. In the dark, in the
Abu joined Kysen. 'Don't go, lord. You can't trust that bag of grease and misery.'
'I have to,' Kysen said as he watched Tcha scuttle away. 'You heard what Othrys said. Father's life may be in danger.'
'Yours as well.'
'I'm not fearful for myself.' Kysen set off after Tcha.
Abu kept pace at his side and glanced at Kysen. 'That is what worries me. A little fear would benefit you, lord, by making you more cautious. Then perhaps I'd get a little rest.'
Kysen pulled a fold of his headcloth over his nose and mouth and turned east, away from the malicious desert wind. In the darkness, hot gales soared in from the west, hurling their vast stores of sand. Millions of tiny spikes scored his legs, and he closed his eyes as the storm whirled around his body. He could feel dust cake his skin and embed itself in the linen of his kilt.
With surprising suddenness, the wind ebbed, the incessant wailing faded, and Kysen was able to stand erect. Walking between Kysen and the thief was Abu. They climbed another rise. At the top, Kysen called a halt and approached Tcha. The thief seemed unconcerned about the necropolis police. Either he was practiced at avoiding them or they had been bribed by someone else, probably Othrys.
'I don't like strolling through the city of the dead at night, Tcha.' Kysen swept an arm around, indicating the endless conglomeration of burials that stretched far to the north and south.
'We're almost there, lord.'
Kysen planted his fists on his hips and stared into the night. Now he could distinguish the outline of the step pyramid. Six rectangles with sloping sides rose high above, each successive stage smaller than the previous one. The burial place of King Zoser was at least twelve times the height of any of pharaoh's palaces. With a buttressed and recessed facade, a vast enclosure wall surrounded the tomb and its complex of buildings.
Meren had taken Kysen into the place when he was a boy. Within the enclosure wall lay another, smaller pyramid and replicas of palace ceremonial buildings the king would have used in life, such as those for his thirty- year jubilee. There were also storage buildings to house the king's possessions and food and drink to provide sustenance and comfort to pharaoh's spirit. But the most valuable of these lay with the king beneath the massive house of eternity-pristine in its coat of polished limestone-in a vast complex of galleries and chambers.
Kysen had explored some of the storage buildings. One great magazine had been filled with the remains of grain sacks looted long ago. Others were shells filled with rubble. He remembered the reedlike columns; they had been carved from the surface of the stone walls so that they were still engaged to them. Meren had told him that the whole complex had been built to imitate an ancient royal palace, but in stone, the building material of eternity, not brick, the ephemeral substance used by the living. Kysen hadn't asked his father if he thought the king and his treasures still lay beneath the mountain of stone.
Zoser must have been a mighty god-king to have ordered the construction of so vast a house of eternity. The step pyramid even dwarfed the straight-sided pyramid of a later king sitting beside it. Yet it lay deserted now, its storehouses empty, its endowments turned to other uses by succeeding kings. No great staff of mortuary priests and attendants performed the offering rituals for this once mighty ruler. Kysen assumed the royal spirit had to rely on the magical sustenance of food, drink, and provisions carved and painted on the walls of his tomb.
'Lord,' Abu said. 'We should go.'
They followed Tcha down the slope. Farther to the south and also near the pyramid of Teti to the east lay the new cemeteries. All around them rose countless chapels, some still with their stone facades, others stripped down to their brick cores, and still others that appeared little more than mounds of dried mud. The city of the dead had been here as long as Memphis, its origins stretching so far back in time that no one knew its true age. It was said that the first king of Egypt had founded the city. How many dynasties had succeeded him?
Tcha scrambled over and around a group of aged and crumbling tombs. These clustered in rows, rectangular with sloped sides, plain but once filled with riches. Many still sealed within their underground shafts the princes, ministers, and their wives and families who once served the god-kings. These old ones lived so long ago that no one remembered their names.
A blur of movement raced across Kysen's path. He and Abu both crouched and drew daggers. A black silhouette leaped on an overturned statue and hissed at them. They waited, not daring to move. A black cat. Was it someone's prowling pet, or a disguised spirit of the netherworld? The cat hissed again and fled.
Kysen let out a long breath while Abu growled his irritation. They kept their weapons unsheathed. Tcha appeared around the corner of a tomb.
'Come, lord. We're almost there.'
'We'd better be,' Kysen replied. 'And I'm not staying long.'
He climbed over a pile of rocks left from long-dead robbers' invasion of a tomb and followed the thief. Tcha scurried across one of the few clear areas between the nobles' tombs and the bastion wall of the step pyramid. As they walked, Kysen could discern the top of the steep-sided pyramid to the south. In daylight, if he stood on some vantage point, he would be able to see farther, to distant pyramids up- and downriver, even to the greatest of them all on a plateau guarded by the sphinx of Khafre.
Abu stumbled, and Kysen turned to see the charioteer pick up something. He went closer and barely made out the remains of a boning rod, one of a pair of wooden pegs tied with string. Masons used them to make blocks of stone perfectly smooth by resting the pegs on the stone, stretching the string tight, and chiseling away any imperfections. It had probably been here for centuries.
Abu tossed the peg at Tcha's head as it appeared out of the ground several paces away. 'This way, lord.'
Kysen walked over to the thief and looked down the slanting ramp upon which Tcha stood. The walkway pierced the ground between piles of rubble that looked recent, and then plunged beneath the ground to disappear into complete blackness.
'I'm not going in there,' Kysen said.
Tcha knelt and fumbled with something on the ground. 'I have a lamp-' Tcha stopped when Abu suddenly loomed over him. 'O great master,' he added with a gape at the charioteer.
Abu snarled at him. 'The lord will not go down into a hole to be trapped and slaughtered. Where is Othrys, you sniveling little carp?'
