Black Ships (26 page)

“I am,” Neas said.

I mused, looking out over the waters at
Seven Sisters
riding high at the dock, empty of stores and crew. “The only person who can countermand Basetamon’s orders is Pharaoh.”

“And Pharaoh wants Neas in Sais, leading his ships. After all, that’s what he’s paying him for,” Xandros said reasonably.

“So we send a message to Pharaoh saying that Neas regrets that he will be unable to come to Sais in person because Basetamon requires he remain in Memphis,” I said. “I can write out a message. I’ve learned enough scribing for that.”

“And then Pharaoh orders him to Sais,” Xandros said.

“I go to Sais, we settle in, and then those of us who are going just sail away.” Neas turned and clapped Xandros on the shoulder. “Thank you for your counsel, my friend. And for yours, Sybil. That is what we shall do.”

He turned and walked away into the night.

I watched him go. Xandros sighed and leaned on the rail, looking out across the river.

“What happened?” I asked. “Have you been out here talking to Neas all this time?”

He nodded. “He asked me not to speak of it to anyone.” His face was troubled. I stood beside him, my shoulder almost touching his. “He asked me, on our friendship, to keep silent. We need to leave, Gull.” His arm went around my waist, seeking warmth. “Soon, for his sake, not ours.”

I leaned against him. “I’m glad he talked with you.”

“I’m glad he’s finally come to this,” Xandros said. “Does your Lady bless this endeavor?”

I took a breath. The wind that blew across the river was just the wind, pulling at my hair and setting ripples to dancing on the water. There was no strangeness in it, no sense of Her at my sleeve. “She says nothing,” I said. “I do not know.”

“We have to leave, Gull,” Xandros repeated.

I closed my eyes and said nothing. I still did not know what I would do. The People would go with Neas, and those who remained would become something else. I could stay. No harm would come to me. I would be safe and welcomed at the temple. The choice was still mine.

And She was silent.

A FALCON TO THE SUN

I
wrote the letter from Neas to Pharaoh and saw it sent southward to Thebes in one of the courier boats in the service of Amon. A week passed, and the order came for our ships to sail for Sais. We were granted permission, by authority of Princess Basetamon, to take our families and goods with us to Sais, where we should live. Instead of barracks this time, we were free to take up abodes within the city in such places as we should wish. Prince Aeneas, however, would remain in Memphis and attend upon Princess Basetamon.

When I came to the Temple of Thoth the next morning it was with a heavy heart. I walked with Hry beside the pool and sat at last in the morning shade. “I do not wish to leave,” I said.

He thought I meant only Memphis. “Daughter of Wilusa, it is not so far. Even for an old man like me. And you are not ordered to Sais. You could stay here.”

“I cannot,” I said. “She has given me this responsibility, don’t you see? If it were only for myself, there is nowhere in the world I would rather stay, but I did not enter Her service lightly. She has sent me to serve Her People, and I must go.” I bent my head and blinked back tears.

“Perhaps you will return from Sais at the end of the summer,” Hry said. “When the Libyans have been defeated.”

I could not speak and lie to him, so I only shook my head.

Hry put one hand on my shoulder. “Perhaps it is not to Sais that you go,” he said.

I looked up at him, startled.

He smiled at me. “Dear Daughter, do you think old age has robbed me of my wits? I knew Wilusa of old, remember.” He dropped his voice. “And I have spent my life in the service of the gods. I know what they can ask of you. What is it you see, Daughter of Isis?”

“I see a city in a distant land,” I said. “I see young olive trees growing on a hillside above a river, a stag breaking through the brambles and leading the hunt, a she-wolf howling on a crag for her lost pups and laurel trees beside a Shrine.” There were shapes in the water of the pool, as though I had been holding them back for months, keeping the future at bay. “Fire leaping on a pyre, grain ripening in the field. But the way there is not easy. The waters are dark, and there is a mountain crowned in smoke, a path that leads down into the darkness.” I shivered.

Hry’s hand was on my shoulder, and for a moment I thought it was She Who Was Pythia who spoke to me. “You do not fear the darkness, you who dwell in darkness. You of all mortals need have no fear of Her sacred places. When the time comes you will know what to do.”

“He is a king,” I said. “And I know how kings are made.”

Hry nodded. “In every land it was thus. I too had my part when Ramses came to the throne eight years ago. I know the journey, and the price to come forth by day.”

He kissed me on the brow. “Go in peace and with my blessing, Daughter of the Gods. When the time comes for you to return to the Black Land you will do so, and live here in peace all the days of your life.”

I looked up at him. “Do you know this is true?”

“You will return,” he said, “though a hundred years should pass, for your
ba
yearns after knowledge like a falcon for the sun. The doors of this temple will be open for you.”

“I will come,” I promised, “if it should take me a hundred years.”

There was the sudden scattered sound of feet on stone, and one of the young door wardens hurried in. “Hry,” he said, “a message has come from the palace. The Princess Basetamon requires your presence along with the Denden oracle. She wishes the oracle to tell her future and do magic for her.”

Hry gave me one quick glance. “We shall come with all haste,” he said.

I wrapped my black veil about me. “Do you have any paint?” I asked, and my voice was steady. Whether she knew what we intended or not, I should face her as what I truly was, as my Lady’s voice.

W
E WENT
in a litter together, Hry and I. We did not speak. The bearers belonged to the princess.

The chamber where we were ushered in was nothing like the grand halls of the palace where I had been before. It was a small inner room. The walls were richly painted, every inch from floor to ceiling carved and covered in writing. There were no windows, and the room was lit only by a brazier in the middle of the floor and a pair of oil lamps hanging on chains. The floor was strewn with cushions. At one end an incense burner gave off a cloud of thick scented smoke. It was very close and very dark. Perhaps she thought this was a suitable place to greet an oracle, but it made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

My face painted black and white, my black veil swooping behind me like a vulture’s wings, I bowed in front of her.

Behind her I heard a faint shuffle, like padded feet. One of the cheetahs stood up from where she had lain among the pillows, her handler silent in a corner. The great cat’s ears pricked forward.

“You may rise,” the princess said, and I looked into her face. Close up, she seemed anxious, and her eyes were the color of honey.

“How may I serve Your Majesty?” I asked.

“Aeneas says you can tell the future,” she said. “I want you to tell the future for me.”

“Your Majesty, have you not foretellers in Khemet?” I asked. “Surely you do not need me.”

Basetamon paced like a restless cat. “Of course I have foretellers. I have dozens. But none of them tell the truth. They cast lots and tell me platitudes. ‘Caution is wise. The gods hold us in their hands.’ They have no power. Aeneas says that you do.”

“Your Majesty,” I said carefully, “I am my Lady’s voice. But I do not bid Her to speak, any more than your handmaidens may bid you. It may be that the Lady of the Dead has words to impart to you and will use me thus, or it may not. She does not speak at my command.”

The princess waved my words away. “Of course. I know one does not bid the gods to speak. But I want you to try for me.”

“That I will do with a will, Your Majesty,” I said. There was no other answer I could make, not to her, no matter how reluctant I might be.

“What do you need?” she asked keenly. “A snake? A dove for sacrifice?”

“I need nothing other than what you have here,” I said. “Just the fire. There is no more to my magic than that. She will speak or She will not.”

“There was a man in Great Ramses’ reign who could prophesy and turn rods into snakes,” she said. “He turned the river to blood.”

“I will turn nothing into blood,” I said, thinking that must have been quite a trick. I settled down on the pillows before the brazier, but my heart was beating fast.
Patience,
I thought.
If She does not speak I must do as Pythia taught me and use my eyes and my own mind, as I have again and again.

Basetamon sat opposite me. I could see her pulse jumping in her throat. She was nervous too. Her hands twisted together.

“What knowledge does Your Majesty seek?” I asked, dropping my voice low.

“I want to know what will happen,” she said. “I want to know if I will be happy.”

“Are you not happy now?” I asked. Surely in all the wide world if any woman had cause to be she did, who had beauty and birth and power, respect and good servants and Neas for a lover.

Basetamon shook her head, and her honey-colored eyes were distant. “I have never been happy. But lately it is worse and worse. My dreams are troubled and I cannot sleep. I have no desire for food, and it seems that my skin crawls. I dream of snakes.” She looked into the brazier. “I was married to my uncle when I was nine. I was fifteen when he died, when he tried to kill my brother. Our son, my son, is thirteen and away learning war from my brother. My brother thinks this is best.”

“It must be hard, to be parted from your son,” I said.

She shook her head. “Not really. He never loved me enough. He grieves me.” Basetamon looked into my face. “I want to know if Aeneas loves me. He says he does. I love him more than heaven and earth. He’s my life. He’s the only one who has ever belonged to me, body and soul.”

She reached over and stroked the long ears of the big cat. “I will keep him at my side forever. He need not fear I will cast him off. He will be mine forever, and when I die he will be entombed with me.”

A chill ran down my back that had nothing to do with Her presence. “Tell me about the dreams of snakes, My Lady,” I said gently.

“I dream of snakes,” she said. “Twining around my body. Pressing my limbs. I dream my bones crack. I cannot eat. You would not know to look at me that I was fat once.” She spread her long thin arms in the firelight. “When I was a girl. When I was married. But now I cannot eat and I am beautiful. And I cannot sleep, and my eyes are bister. I am holy and wondrous.”

“Did you tell Prince Aeneas that he should share your tomb?” I asked carefully, knowing that the Egyptians would consider such a very great honor, but that Neas should certainly feel otherwise.

Basetamon smiled. “I did. Not long before word came from my brother that your ships should go. I told my brother that Aeneas must stay with me because I am lost without him. I told Aeneas that he would be entombed with me, to lie beside me forever in the tomb, that our
kas
should dine together in the darkness. And then I bade him lie beside me and pleasure me with his tongue, and told him that when we are both corpses we will do the same.”

I understood, then, why he had sought out Xandros. And what Xandros had not told me.

I struggled to keep my face bland, and keep the horror I felt from shading my voice. “Your Majesty,” I said, “you do him too much honor. Your beauty must be as blinding to him as that of Isis! Remember he is only a mortal man!”

“I do remember,” she said. “I wring him dry with my hands and he will not rise for hours. I wish he had Osiris’ golden member, so that he might last forever in my power.”

“But Osiris was dead,” I said. “And His manhood was made of metal, not flesh, because Isis could not find all the parts of Him that Set cut apart and cast about the land.”

“And one day Aeneas will be dead as well,” Basetamon said. “And so will I. We are all going to be corpses, waiting for the natron. But he will be as fair on that day as ever. I told him that if he dies first I will keep him embalmed in my room until I die, so that we might lie together in one tomb.”

“You do him too much honor,” I said. “He cannot have ever aspired to your companionship in the next world.” Indeed, I was not certain that he greatly desired it in this one.

“Why not?” she demanded.

“You are as far above him as the sun is above the hills,” I said. “You are the highest-born lady of Egypt. I am sure Aeneas feels that he is unworthy.”

Basetamon flipped her braids back from her long, smooth neck, her beautiful hands restless. “He has the body of a lion. And he is as fair as the desert falcon. He is mine. And I make him worthy. Now prophesy for me, Oracle! Tell me if I will be happy!”

I bent above the brazier, muttering nonsense words, my mind working furiously. I did not think she could ever be happy, because the snakes were within her, not without. She walked in a darkness I could not penetrate.

“Great Lady,” I said in my own mother tongue. “Healer of hearts and minds, in Whose darkness we are all born, walk with the Lady of Egypt and lead her to the fields of peace.”

Basetamon watched me, and the cheetah’s eyes gleamed in the dark.

I looked into the fire.

“What do you see?” she demanded.

If I had been at my own hearth I should have snapped that I saw nothing because she would not be quiet for two breaths. But I was not. And she was the ruler here. I simply took a long breath and exhaled it.

“I see fire,” I said.

“And?” she asked breathlessly.

“I see flames rising,” I said. “Smoke twisting in the air.”
From a brazier,
I thought.
That’s sitting right in front of me. Will she not be quiet if she wants me to see?

“Like a sacrifice at our shared tomb?” she asked.

“Like a sacrifice,” I temporized. “Smoke heavy with precious resins.”

“What else do you see?”

“Wailing mourners,” I said. “Throngs of wailing mourners. Priests and musicians. Even Pharaoh himself.” I had never made up a prophecy out of whole cloth before. But as I spoke I could almost imagine it, Pharaoh standing by in his linen skirt, his face a mask of grief.

“Is he very sad?” Basetamon asked eagerly.

“Terribly,” I said. “His face is stern and stricken. I can see that he suffers.”

Basetamon put her hands together. “That’s wonderful! A sacrifice at our shared tomb! Is it true that in your country you burn the dead?”

“It is,” I said. “We build no such monuments as you do. Instead we build a funeral pyre.”

Basetamon shivered. “How grotesque! Do you actually watch them burn?”

“We sing,” I said, “and praise the dead. We offer libations and incense. And then we dance.”

Basetamon shook her head. “How bizarre! But poor Aeneas will never endure that. He will lie beside me forever.” Rising, she thrust a bag into my hand. “You have done me a great service, Oracle! You have my thanks!” The princess stood, her linen robes flaring around her. “Now go! And go to Sais with my blessing!”