House of Illusions

Praise for Pauline Gedge

“Gedge excels at setting the scene and subtly evoking a sense of the period as she tells a timeless story of greed, love, and revenge.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“Gedge makes the past so accessible. You can imagine walking between the pillars into a magnificent hall and watching it come alive with the smell of the fresh paint on the frescoes.”

—
The Globe and Mail

“Gedge vividly renders the exotic, sensuous world of ancient Memphis, the domestic rituals of bathing and dressing, the social ambience of superstition and spells.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Gedge has such a terrific feel for ancient Egypt that the reader merrily suspends disbelief and hangs on for the ride.”

—
Calgary Herald

“Her richly colourful descriptions … hit the reader with photographic clarity.”

—
The Ottawa Sun

“Gedge has brought Egypt alive, not just the dry and sandy Egypt we know from archaeology, but the day-today workings of what was one of the greatest and most beautiful kingdoms in the history of the world.”

—
Quill & Quire

“Each volume is a carefully devised segment, with its own distinct flavour and texture. When put together, then the skill and workmanship of the whole undertaking stand out clearly. The trilogy is one of Pauline Gedge’s most appealing works.”

—
Edmonton Journal

“Gedge … has the magical ability to earn a reader’s suspension of disbelief.”

—
Toronto Star

“Pauline Gedge’s strengths—imagination, ingenuity in plotting, and convincing characterization—are here in abundance.”

—
Books in Canada

“Gedge draws another vivid picture of Ancient Egypt and skillfully weaves her dramatic tale of intrigue, treachery, and manipulation. Her historical novels have the ability to bring a period fully before us; it is possible to feel the heat and experience the pageantry she so ably describes.”

—
The Shuswap Sun

“Pauline Gedge’s knowledge of Egyptian history is both extensive and intimate, and has enabled her to produce an entire society of the time of Ramses II with admirable vitality. She has a sharp eye for the salient detail, and an evocative way with landscape and interiors. She can produce a mood and suggest an atmosphere … A very good story well told, and it engrosses the reader from the first page to the last.”

—
The Globe and Mail

PENGUIN CANADA

HOUSE OF ILLUSIONS

PAULINE GEDGE
is the award-winning and bestselling author of eleven previous novels, eight of which are inspired by Egyptian history. Her first,
Child of the Morning
, won the Alberta Search-for-a-New Novelist Competition. In France, her second novel,
The Eagle and the Raven
, received the Jean Boujassy award from the Société des Gens des Lettres, and
The Twelfth Transforming
, the second of her Egyptian novels, won the Writers Guild of Alberta Best Novel of the Year Award. Her books have sold more than 250,000 copies in Canada alone; worldwide, they have sold more than six million copies and have been translated into eighteen languages. Pauline Gedge lives in Alberta.

ALSO BY PAULINE GEDGE

Child of the Morning

The Eagle and the Raven

Stargate

The Twelfth Transforming

Scroll of Saqqara

The Covenant

House of Dreams

The Hippopotamus Marsh:

Lords of the Two Lands, Volume One

The Oasis: Lords of the Two Lands, Volume Two

The Horus Road: Lords of the Two Lands, Volume Three

The Twice Born

HOUSE OF

ILLUSIONS

PAULINE

GEDGE

PENGUIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

(a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in a Viking Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada),

a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1996

Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada),

a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2002

Published in this edition, 2007

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (OPM)

Copyright © Pauline Gedge, 1996

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Gedge, Pauline, 1945–

House of illusions / Pauline Gedge.

Sequel to: House of dreams.

Originally publ.: Toronto : Viking, 1996.

ISBN 978-0-14-316743-3

1. Title.

PS8563.E33H69    2007     C813’.54    C2007-903367-9

ISBN-13: 978-0-14-316743-3

ISBN-10: 0-14-316743-X

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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HOUSE OF

ILLUSIONS

Part One

KAMEN

1

IT WAS THE BEGINNING
of the month of Thoth when I first saw her. I had been detailed by my commander, the General Paiis, to escort a Royal Herald south into Nubia on a routine assignment and we were on our way back when we put into the village of Aswat for the night. The river had not yet begun to rise. It was flowing slowly, and although we were making better time on our return than we had on the journey out, we had covered hundreds of miles and were very eager to reach the familiar comforts of the Delta.

Aswat is not a place I would choose to visit. It is little more than a huddle of small mud houses crouched between the desert and the Nile, although there is a rather fine temple to the local totem, Wepwawet, on its outskirts, and the river road wanders pleasingly through shady palms as it enters and then leaves the village. The Herald whom I was guarding had not planned to beach our craft there, indeed he seemed very reluctant to do so. But a frayed rigging rope on which we had been keeping an anxious eye finally parted and that same afternoon one of the crew sprained his shoulder, so with bad grace my superior ordered that the oars be shipped and a cooking fire built on the bank not far from Aswat’s place of worship.

It was sunset. As I alighted I could see the temple’s pylon through the trees and a glimpse of the canal up which visitors to the God might float. The water was red with the glow of Ra’s setting. The air was warm and full of dust motes, and but for the rustle and twitter of nesting birds the silence was unbroken. Unless the peasants here had conceived a violent hatred for Pharaoh’s messengers, I would have no work to do this night. But mindful of my duties I left the beach where some of the sailors were already gathering what wood they could find and the rest were wrestling with fresh rope for the rigging, and I checked the river road and the sparse trees for any danger to my Herald. Of course there was none. If there had been any possibility of real harm on this journey, my General would have assigned a seasoned soldier to guard the King’s man.

I was sixteen years old, two years out of school and into my military training, and had seen no action at all apart from the rough and tumble of the training ground. I had wanted a posting to one of Pharaoh’s eastern forts where the foreign tribes pressed against our borders with longing eyes fixed on the lush fecundity of the Delta. There I might have been called upon to unsheathe my sword, but I suspect that my father used his influence to keep me safely in the city of Pi-Ramses for I found myself a member of General Paiis’s household guard, a position of monotonous ease. My military education continued, but most of my time was spent patrolling the General’s walls or standing outside the doors of his house, watching a steady stream of women come and go, nobles and beautiful commoners, drunk and happily dishevelled or elegant and deceptively cool, for Paiis was handsome and popular and his bed was always full.

I say my father, and so I think of him, but I have always known that I was an adopted child. My real father was killed in one of Pharaoh’s early wars and my mother died giving birth to me. My foster parents had no sons and were glad to take me in. My father is a merchant, very rich, and he wanted me to follow in his footsteps, but something in me yearned for the soldiering life. To please my father I went with him on one of his caravans to the country of the Sabaeans where he trades for rare medicinal herbs, but I was bored and increasingly embarrassed as he tried to interest me in the sights we passed and the subsequent negotiations with the tribesmen when we arrived. We exchanged heated words, and when we returned to Pi-Ramses, he gave in to my begging and enrolled me in the officers’ school attached to the palace. So it was that I came to be walking towards the little temple of Wepwawet, God of War, on a still, warm evening in the month of Thoth, God of Wisdom, the village of Aswat behind me, the Nile rippling quietly on my right and the tiny barren fields of the peasants lying brown and furrowed on my left.