and let out a shout that was taken up by the men waiting with the horses. Kysen felt a chill run through him, a chill of pleasure. These men were saluting him. With a jolt he realized that they no longer thought of him as Meren's low-born adopted son. When had that happened, and why hadn't he noticed until now?
Yamen was still grinning at him. 'Behold, Kysen.'
The hunters parted to reveal the carcass of a young male lion. He could see his arrow protruding from the animal's chest. A javelin was sunk deep in its back. Meren offered his hand. Kysen grasped it and rose, and together they walked over to the body. Yamen joined them and pointed at several gashes in the lion's fur. They were black with old blood. A part of the animal's muzzle had been ripped away, exposing the bone.
Yamen grasped the blood-flecked mane. 'He must have lost a battle with another male.'
'Such injuries would drive him mad with pain,' Meren said. 'I don't think he would have charged otherwise.'
Kysen tried not to think of those gaping jaws and curved, yellow teeth.
Yamen slapped him on the back. 'You don't look well. You should sit down. He landed on you hard enough to flatten you like a papyrus sheet.'
Kysen sat on a rock. Meren brought an earthenware canteen and made him drink. About them the hunters busied themselves checking reins and examining horses for injuries. Glad not to be the object of everyone's attention, Kysen watched Yamen direct several men in binding the carcass for transport back to Memphis. Then he heard Meren whisper.
'I should kill him at once.'
Startled, Kysen glanced up at the lean, elegant figure of his father. 'Why?'
Meren's gaze-hard as pyramid stone and cold as obsidian-was fixed on Yamen. Without taking his eyes from the officer, he handed Kysen his dagger. It was stained with the lion's blood.
'He couldn't have known the lion would be there,' Kysen said.
Meren shot a severe look at Kysen. 'You defend him?'
'There's nothing to defend. It was chance that the lion hunted the same quarry that we did.'
'I like it not that the first time we seek out this corrupt army officer, he nearly gets you killed.'
Kysen began rubbing his dagger with sand. 'If he'd wanted to kill me, he would have let the lion have me.'
There was silence while Meren continued to shred Yamen with a razorlike gaze. 'There is another possibility.' Yes?
'He deliberately sought danger in order to impress us.'
At Kysen's skeptical look, Meren went on. 'Think for a moment. The man is a place seeker and a purveyor of corruption, and this is the first time he has been invited to hunt in a party of great men, in a group of which I'm a part.'
'You think he wanted to catch your attention.'
Meren nodded almost imperceptibly. Then he smiled. It was a smile that had seen rivers of blood on the battlefields of the empire, a smile that lurked in dark alleys and behind sacrificial altars.
'And if he has put himself to so much trouble, we should reward him,' Meren said.
'We should?' Kysen wiped the dagger on his kilt and sheathed it.
Meren didn't answer. He raised his voice and called to Yamen. By the time the officer was with them, Meren's features had assumed one of the countless masks Kysen had come to recognize. A twinge of pity caught him by surprise as he watched Meren turn upon his victim that disarming and gracious smile that had been the downfall of greater men than Yamen.
'I haven't yet thanked you for saving my son's life, Yamen.'
The officer made a low bow. 'I but assisted Kysen, lord.'
'Without your javelin, I'd be dead,' Kysen said.
Meren nodded. 'And without your skill with the chariot, you'd both be lion's meat.' Hauling Kysen to his feet, he grasped the arms of both men, held them high, and shouted to the hunting party. 'Lion killer!'
The men gave an answering shout. 'Lion killer!' The nobles matched the shout with a salute of dagger and spear.
Meren released them and turned to the officer. 'Come, Yamen, ride back with me. I would know more about the man to whom I owe so much.'
Left to himself, Kysen went over to the team of white stallions, which had been examined by the grooms and pronounced fit. Had Yamen seen the lion and aimed the chariot for it? A shiver rippled through his body. From his record, Kysen had assumed the officer to be cowardly and corrupt, but what kind of madman risked being savaged by such an animal? What ambitions demanded so perverse an impulse? Or so desperate a distraction.
He got into the chariot and drove it over to Meren's. Yamen stood beside his father, smiling. Kysen had seen that same look of glutted satisfaction. Where? Ah, on Isis's pretty face. He'd seen her smile like that when she'd attracted the attention of yet another handsome courtier.
Just then his father laughed at some comment Yamen made. It was an easy, musical laugh that sent warning trumpets blaring in Kysen's ears. Such ease of manner, such charm and courtliness. With that remarkable ability of his, Meren had sensed danger. The laugh, the manner, told Kysen that Yamen's fate had been decided. Deserved as that fate might be, he found himself pitying the man who had just saved his life.
Chapter 8
The hawk had flown to the sun. That was the way one referred to the death of a living god. The royal family had left the isolation of pharaoh's new city and returned to Thebes for the funerary ceremonies of Amunhotep the Magnificent. Egypt grieved, not only for the old pharaoh but for herself.
On the evening after the Magnificent was sealed in his tomb, Nefertiti sat in her personal sailing vessel and watched the black waters of the Nile flow by. Painted red, green, and gold, the boat slid across the water like hot oil on polished granite. Streams of golden light from the boat's torches marked her progress along the canal toward the quay in front of her father-in-law's mortuary temple. The hawk had flown to the sun, and one of the strongest foundation stones of Nefertiti's life had vanished.
So much had happened in the past few years. Fulfilling his promise, Akhenaten had taken her, the family, and the entire government of Egypt to his newly built city, Horizon of the Aten. Her husband's choice of a site for his capital was in keeping with his unpredictability. Instead of selecting a place where there were green fields, a place with access to the busy cities of the delta or the all-important Nubian territory, he chose a barren, empty plain.
Lying between Memphis and Thebes, this plain was startling in its vastness, stretching as it did from the Nile to the distant cliffs of the eastern desert. And it was drab. No starkly beautiful desert reds and creams here, just pale tans and grays, and only the sky offered any color. On the opposite bank lay fields, scattered and sparse. To Nefertiti, Horizon of the Aten was a place of emptiness.
In the past few years Akhenaten had closed many of the old temples, especially those of Amun and his goddess wife, Mut. All work on the Theban Sun Temples had ceased, and Nefertiti feared that many of her predictions were coming to pass. Word reached her from Memphis and other places of the suffering of the displaced and neglected.
She had overcome her disappointment at failing to bear a son, to carry on the royal line; and now she had just learned she was to bear another child. Her daughters were growing from precocious little top-heavy creatures into slim girls. Merytaten, the oldest, already copied the manners of her mother and spoke with becoming gravity and stateliness to her royal father. She and her sisters were golden orbs lighting Nefertiti's days.
The children had provided comfort during the long fading of Amunhotep the Magnificent. Not long ago, the old man had succumbed to a disease of the mouth and gums and to corpulence and old age. To the last, Queen Tiye remained at his side, refusing to allow him to give way to pain and desperation. He left behind a kingdom swirling in a whirlpool of dissent, and two younger sons, the children of his old age. The youngest was but an infant, and Nefertiti had taken over his care when Tiye gave way to despair upon her husband's death.
