As Meren stepped inside the royal palace he heard the harsh cry of a falcon. If he could have escaped on wings like that bird, he would have. But a summons from pharaoh couldn't be escaped, even if his mood was as foul as a chamber pot. Why had fate thrust upon him this burden of discovering secrets so dangerous that even suspecting them could result in the annihilation of his whole family?
Thus preoccupied, Meren spared no glance at the dozens of guards on alert in the palace corridors and faience-tiled reception rooms through which he walked. Trying to hurry without seeming to do so, Meren reached an antechamber behind the imperial throne room. It was protected by the largest and most formidable of the king's personal bodyguards, under the command of Meren's even more formidable escort.
None of the guards took notice of Meren as Karoya came forward and opened the polished cedar door. The antechamber was filled with more of Karoya's men. Each was armed with a scimitar and a dagger thrust into his beaded belt. All wore engraved bronze-covered leather corselets wrapped across their chests.
Meren felt almost naked without his own armor. He was dressed for court, bejeweled and painted, decked in gold, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and malachite. His own weapon was a ceremonial dagger with a hilt of beaded electrum. A brief thought flitted into his heart. If he pursued Nefertiti's killers-there had to be more than one- and made the slightest mistake, it would take an army of royal bodyguards to keep him and the family safe.
He should be making preparations, not wasting time at court. The moment he'd seen Karoya at his house, Meren knew his plans for the morning were ruined. Karoya only appeared when pharaoh sent a personal rather than official message. He had been summoned to a ceremony he'd thought to avoid-the king's reception of the long- awaited Hittite royal emissary. Meren's own web of informers was convinced that the king of the Hittites, Suppiluliumas, had been using rebellious vassals and disgruntled rival claimants to princely thrones to create unrest at the edges of the Egyptian empire.
Several princes loyal to pharaoh had already been attacked and defeated in their city-states in Syria and Palestine. Ordinarily Egypt would have attributed such events to the perennial eddies and currents of warfare that plagued the region. But Suppiluliumas was a conqueror. If he was allowed to continue his depredations unchecked, Egypt might someday find the Hittite armies at her own borders. It had happened once, with the Hyksos. That humiliating conquest had left Egypt with an abiding determination never again to fall victim to an invasion of Asiatics.
Pharaoh must have decided he needed all his foremost servants beside him to present a united phalanx to the Hittite emissary. Thus it was that Meren had donned court garb and come to the palace. Karoya had taken up a stance beside the door that opened into the imperial throne room, a vast, pillared audience hall fabled throughout the world for its magnificence. Nodding to Karoya, Meren waited for the Nubian to open the door, then sighed and walked into a blaze of gold. Blinking in the light of a thousand tapers and alabaster lamps perched on stands, he entered behind and to the right of the throne itself. Karoya went to his place in front of the right-hand support column of the dais.
Pausing, Meren surveyed a sea of the finest starched and pleated linen worn by dozens of courtiers. Ministers, nobles, and government officials rivaled the raiment of the gods in their stone temples with their plaited and smoothed wigs, their heavy earrings, their collars of gold and electrum. None, however, equaled the splendor of pharaoh.
Tutankhamun was seated on an ebony-and-gold throne, and he wore the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. Though only fourteen, he carried the heavy gold, lapis lazuli, carnelian, and turquoise of his royal costume as if it were unadorned linen. Meren had to stop himself from smiling. It wasn't long ago that the boy-king had complained bitterly of the nuisance of having to wear the tall, heavy crowns, the ceremonial gold beard and cumbersome imperial rings. He'd said it was like wearing the contents of the royal treasury.
A snakelike movement caught Meren's attention. Lying beside the throne and swirling his tail was the king's black leopard-Sa, the guardian. The double crown moved slightly. Meren's gaze flicked upward to meet the solemn regard of pharaoh. Tutankhamun lifted his eyebrows, a signal so fleeting that most wouldn't understand it.
Meren eased his way through the ranks of ministers close to the king and joined the vizier Ay and General Horemheb beside the first step of the covered dais upon which the throne rested. The entire hall gleamed with the jewels of the courtiers, the decorations on the weapons of the guards, the embellishments on the posts and awning over the dais, the throne itself. More royal guards stood in motionless rows against the walls. Behind them rose great painted reliefs showing the king slaughtering his enemies in his golden chariot, the king returning from battle with hundreds of prisoners, the king trampling a Libyan rebel while hacking a Syrian with his war ax.
Tutankhamun complained increasingly that Meren and his other ministers wouldn't let him go into battle and make these brilliantly executed paintings more than examples of royal aspirations. The boy was growing more and more impatient to measure up to the warrior-king images with which he was confronted daily. Soon Tutankhamun would make Meren fulfill his promise to take him on a raid against one of the bandit gangs that plagued the more isolated Egyptian villages.
An abrupt silence fell over the assembly. A hollow pounding echoed through the hall and bounced off the high walls. The overseer of the audience hall paced slowly down the long avenue formed by column after column, each in the form of a bundle of papyrus plants. Meren had to stop his thoughts from wandering back to his own troubles as the overseer stopped some distance from pharaoh.
'Mugallu, prince and emissary of the king of the Hittites prostrates himself and begs to come into the presence of the living Horus: Strong Bull, Arisen in truth, Gold-Horus: Great of strength, Smiter of Asiatics, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Nebkheprure Tutankhamun, Son of Ra, Lord of Thebes, beloved of Amun-Ra.'
The elderly Ay left Meren's side to stand before the throne. He would speak to the Hittite prince, for pharaoh never deigned to engage in personal speech with mere emissaries, even if they were princes. Trumpets blared, and the towering double doors, each encased in gold, swung open. Mugallu strode quickly into the hall. His clothing gleamed strangely, and Meren swore under his breath. The emissary was wearing Hittite silver.
From head to foot, the man was wearing the white metal that rivaled gold in its beauty, the metal that, unlike gold, pharaoh did not control. It was a reminder of the richness of the Hittite mountain kingdom. A deliberate challenge it was, for much of pharaoh's vast power stemmed from control of Egyptian and Nubian gold. The emissary's kilt was embroidered with roundels in the shape of lions' heads, his cloak with lozenge-shaped plaques in the same design. Even his boots with their curled-up toes reflected silver. Two thick coils of hair on either side of his face hung past his shoulders. The rest of his long, wavy hair was kept back from his face by an engraved silver diadem.
Meren edged nearer the throne and cast a covert glance at pharaoh. The king understood this challenge. Unfortunately, he had allowed it to annoy him. Those large, solemn eyes narrowed. He clenched his scepters, the crook and the flail, until his knuckles turned white. Meren covered his mouth and coughed. Pharaoh's gaze slid to him, then snapped back to the Hittite, who was receiving the formal greeting from Ay.
During this ceremony, Mugallu waited with an uninterested expression on his face. He was a young man, a warrior of the Hittite court and a relative of King Suppiluliumas. Like most Hittites, he was stocky, like a zebra, and bore a pyramid of a nose that jutted out from his face with an aggression that mirrored the character of his people.
Meren remembered Mugallu from other visits; his most common facial expression was a sneer, and unlike pharaoh's subjects or his vassals, he didn't hold Tutankhamun in reverence as a living god. To Mugallu, pharaoh was another prince like himself, and he stood in the way of Hittite ambitions of conquest. Of all the peoples of the world, only a Hittite would dare approach pharaoh so insolently.
Ay was concluding his speech. 'The emissary may kiss the foot of the Lord of the Two Lands, the living god, son of Amun, the golden one, the divine Nebkheprure Tutankhamun.'
Mugallu swaggered forward, his gaze fixed on the young king rather than on the floor, as that of any mannered ambassador would have been. He almost bounced up the stairs of the dais, over the inlaid figures of the bound and subjugated enemies of Egypt that decorated the platform. When he reached the king, he dropped quickly to his knees, bent his head over pharaoh's golden sandal, and straightened almost immediately. Backing down the stairs, bowing slightly, he returned to his place. Pharaoh barely nodded, granting permission for the ceremony to proceed, his expression blank.
Mugallu clapped his hands once. A slave hurried forward, bearing an object covered with a cloth. The slave knelt on the floor before pharaoh, proffering the gift with his head bent. Mugallu removed the cloth. A stir moved through the throng of courtiers and ministers that filled the hall. Lying on the cushion was a king's dagger with a
