House of Illusions (11 page)

I began, feeling awkward and foolish, but those emotions soon fled and my voice grew stronger, blending with the warm evening breeze that caressed my face and stirred the Master’s coverings and becoming disembodied so that the words seemed to flow not only from me but from the quiet trees and the stone beneath my feet. Soon there was nothing but my voice and the dream, and the dream and the voice became one so that I was no longer flesh but a vision in the mind of a young man standing in a nighthung garden, suspended between reality and illusion.

The Master raised a hand, shaking back the sleeve of his cloak so that for a brief moment I saw his wrist between cloak and glove, and the skin seemed ashen in the fading light. “It is enough,” he said. “Be silent.” I closed my mouth and the world assumed the sanity of its familiar forms around me.

I waited. I was used to standing still for long periods, and by the time the Seer lifted his head, passing his hands over the vase and closing his fingers in a ritualistic gesture of dismissal, the stars had begun to appear. He straightened and stared at me. “Truly Thoth is he who recalls all that is forgotten,” he said huskily. He sounded very tired, and as he spoke he put out a hand, fumbling for the lip of the pedestal as though he needed its support. My heart leaped. His gift was true. He had Seen for me. He was about to tell me all I wanted to know. Now my knees felt suddenly weak and I realized that my back was aching. “Thoth, the exact plummet of the balance,” he went on, and laughed. The sound was without humour, a bleak, unlovely bark. “My dear Officer Kamen, you are far more interesting than my brother could ever have imagined. I must rest. The Seeing always exhausts me. Come. We will talk by the fountain.”

He turned away and stumbled, righting himself, then strode around the side of the house, tucking his hands into his sleeves and walking quickly, his head down. I followed once more, crossing the courtyard and going through the low gate until we made our way to the little clearing and the seats and the fountain, now spewing a silver stream into its dark bowl. The Master slumped onto one of the seats and I followed suit tensely, my hands locking between my knees. Watching him gradually recover was like seeing a dry, crumpled leaf dropped in water become supple again. I could wait no longer.

“What did you see?” I asked urgently. “Please, Master, do not torment me with riddles!” After a pause he nodded reluctantly.

“Before I tell you anything, answer me one question,” he said. “Why did you decide to become a soldier? Life as your father’s successor would have been easier and more reasonable.”

The only light left in the garden now came hesitantly from the rising moon and from the sifting of stars. The being across from me had become increasingly insubstantial as the daylight vanished. He sat motionless as a corpse, indefinable as a ghost, nothing but darkness within the deep shelter of his hood. There was no face to speak to. I shrugged.

“I don’t know. It was just a strong desire. I always thought it was because my true father was one of Pharaoh’s officers.” The hood moved from side to side.

“Not your father.” The muffled voice was timbreless. “Your grandfather.”

Heat flushed through me. Leaning forward I grasped the Seer’s arm, struggling for breath. “You know who I am!” I shouted. “You know! Tell me what you saw!”

“Your grandfather was a foreigner, a Libu mercenary who took Egyptian citizenship at the conclusion of Pharaoh’s early wars forty years ago,” he said, making no move to shake himself free of my clutching fingers. “He was not an officer. His daughter, your true mother, was a commoner. She was a beautiful creature but ambitious. She rose to wealth and favour.”

“You saw this in the oil? All this?” I was unconsciously jerking his arm, and now he pulled himself away from me. Coming to myself, I regained my seat. I was trembling.

“No,” he replied shortly. “In the oil I saw your dream, but opened out like a scroll. You as a baby, lying in grass outside the place where you lived with your mother. She came to you, kneeling on the edge of the blanket on which she had placed you. She was smiling. In her hennaed hand was a lotus flower. Other lotus blooms were scattered about her. She tickled your nose with the petals and you laughed, trying to catch them. I recognized her face, the flawless oval of it, the bow of her soft mouth. I knew her once, a long time ago.”

“Where? Here in Pi-Ramses? Where did we live? What of my father? What was her name? Is she indeed dead?”

He raised an arm and suddenly, terrifyingly, the hood fell back. His features were still completely hidden beneath the tight mask with its tiny slits for eyes and no opening at all for his mouth, but his hair fell in a thick shower to his shoulders and it was the purest white, so white that it seemed to generate a light of its own. Even in the dimness of the hour I could see that no colour polluted it at all. What about the rest of him? I wondered breathlessly. Is that his deformity? To have no colour at all in his skin? What of his blood? “She lived in a place of great comfort,” he said hoarsely, “here in Pi-Ramses. I cannot tell you the name of your father, Kamen, but I can assure you that Takhuru need not concern herself regarding your lineage. It is a high one. Your mother is indeed dead. I am sorry.”

“Then my father is a noble? Am I an illegitimate child?” It would explain much, I thought excitedly. If my real father was a noble, then, of course, my adoptive father would have no hesitation in taking me and Nesiamun no qualms about marrying me to his daughter. Perhaps my father actually knew the man whose seed had given me life. That would explain his reluctance to tell me anything.

“Your real father is indeed noble,” the Seer confirmed, “and yes, you are a bastard. I attended your mother at your birth and she died a few days later.” He ran a weary hand through that alien hair and stood. “I have told you enough. Now you must be content.” I got up and went to him, barring his way, thrusting my face close to the thick mask.

“Her name, Master! I must know her name! I must find her tomb, make offerings, say the prayers so that she will stop invading my sleep!” He did not back away. Instead he stepped closer, and even in my near frenzy I could swear that I caught a glint of red in those eye slits.

“I cannot tell you her name,” he said firmly. “It would do you no good. She is dead. And I promise you that now you know as much of the truth as you need, she will not enter your dreams again. Be content, Kamen. Go home.” He began to walk away. I ran after him.

“Why can’t you tell me her name?” I called furiously, desperately. “What difference will it make if she is dead?”

He stopped and half-turned, speaking over his shoulder so that the starlight fell on his silver head and half the sinister mask, leaving the rest in darkness.

“You are a brave and very stupid young man,” he said contemptuously. “What difference? If I tell you her name your curiosity will be inflamed even further, and dead or not you will still feel impelled to explore her history, find her relatives, drive yourself insane trying to conjure her personality, wonder what traits in you are yours and which hers. Do you want to distress yourself further, Kamen? Disrupt your family? I do not think so.”

“Yes I do!” I shouted. “I must know! If the gift I brought might oblige you to reveal everything you saw, then take it, take it, but please, Master, give me her name!” He put out a gloved hand, an imperious warning.

“No,” he said firmly. “To know it would bring you nothing but grief. Trust me in this. Be grateful for the life she gave you and fulfill your own destiny. Do not ponder hers any more. This interview is at an end.” Then he was gone, melting into the shadows, and I was left shaking with anger and frustration.

I do not now remember walking home. It did not occur to me to doubt the Seer’s vision or his word. His reputation as a genuine oracle and prophet had been established long ago. But his arrogance inflamed me, his haughty words keeping time with the rhythm of my feet, until I came to myself, exhausted and despairing, outside the door to my quarters. I suppose I should have been overjoyed that he had recognized her, had known her, but of what use was such knowledge to me if he refused to share the most useful detail? What was I to do now?

Pushing into my room where Setau had left a lamp burning, I shut the door behind me and stood gazing at things that were no longer familiar. Everything had changed. Only hours ago that was my couch, that my table, that the chest whose lid was left partly open when I removed the dagger. Now they seemed to belong to someone else, to a Kamen who did not exist any more.

I began to pace, too overwrought to go to bed. I wanted to rush to my father’s room, wake him, shout my news into his sleepy ears, but what if I saw the knowledge I had just acquired mirrored in his face? What if he knew about her already? I did not want to see a confirmation of his deceit. There would be time for an explanation from him later. Besides, he was going away in the morning and I wanted to hold tight to my high regard for him a little longer. It was very likely that he knew who my father was too. He was a noble, the Seer had said. Nesiamun would not be ashamed to have me for his daughter’s husband.

Was the one who had given me life a friend of my adoptive father? I began to consider the men with whom he conducted business, those, like the Seer, who bought from him, those who invested in his caravans, those he welcomed into our home to dine. They all treated me with a more or less disinterested politeness. Was any one of them warmer in his conversation than the rest? Did any one of them take more trouble than the others to enquire into my doings? What about General Paiis? He was a notorious womanizer and had surely produced more than one bastard in the course of his second career. I rather fancied myself as his son. But he and my father did not move in the same circles, although my father had used his influence to procure my position in Paiis’s household. Had he used more than just influence? Perhaps a small blackmail? At that thought I laughed aloud, pausing by my window and mentally shaking a finger at my own foolishness. Such conjecture would lead nowhere but into the wildest fantasy.

Then what of my mother? Should I return to the Seer and pester him until he told me everything he knew, for I had a strong feeling he was withholding much? But I did not think that the mighty man could be either bludgeoned or coerced into saying or doing anything more for me unless he himself chose to do so. I could tell Akhebset and my fellow officers at the military school the whole story and ask them to circulate in the city, alert for any clue that might lead me to her. Yes, I would do that, but Pi-Ramses was vast and such a method of detection had very little chance of success. I could do what Takhuru might even now be doing. I could search the scrolls in my father’s office. After all, he would be away for several weeks. The thought of rifling the contents of his chests left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. Such underhandedness was abhorrent. I would speak to him first, and investigate his records only as a last resort.

At that I yawned, the fever giving way to a sudden fatigue. I did not yell for Setau to come and wash the kohl from my face. Stripping off my linen and my jewels, I tossed them all in a heap on the floor and swung onto my couch, drawing up the sheet. For a while the evening’s events rolled through my mind—the massive bulk of the Steward Harshira and his black eyes, my first sight of the Seer behind his desk, his white-gloved hands folded on its surface, my shock when he pushed back his hood to reveal hair like solid moonlight, then one of the servants running after me as I was making my way back through the garden, my dagger in his hands—until it all dissolved into unconsciousness.

I did not dream. Something in me knew that I was now forever safe from that particular haunting and I slept deeply until the moment when I found myself wide awake and sitting up, my hands gripping the sheet. The lamp had gone out, leaving a stale aroma of spent oil in the air, and all I could see was the faint square of my window, but it did not matter. It was not fear that had jerked me back to consciousness, it was the sharpness of a revelation. I knew now what it was about the small door in the right-hand wall of the Seer’s office that had disturbed me earlier. At the time I had been unable to explain the moment of dislocation, but as I sat there staring into nothing I could see it clearly, the neatly packed shelves, the plain cedar of the door, the hook on its edge aligning cleanly with the hook sunk into the wall, and the rope passing through both hooks to hold the door closed.

Rope. And knots. Many knots, complex and impossible to undo unless one knew how they were tied, knots that ensured the security of whatever lay beyond. Or within. Everyone used knots to fasten chests and boxes. I did so myself. Usually they were simple, tied quickly to keep lids tight against dust, sand and vermin. If added privacy was needed, one smothered the knots in wax and left the impression of one’s ring pressed into it. But the knots holding that door in the Seer’s office closed were so intricate and elaborate, an ordered tangle of convolutions, that it would take many minutes to pry them undone. Worse, one would never be able to retie them in the same pattern. They were unique. And I would have staked my life on a wager that the knots I had seen out of the corner of my eye were woven by the same person who formed them to hold closed the cedar box I had so resentfully carried from Aswat.

I was afraid to move. I sat frozen on my couch, terrified that with even the twitch of a finger the direction of my thoughts might be lost. The same knots. The same person. The same person? But it was not possible that the Seer had tied the ones I examined so carefully on the box the madwoman had pushed into my unwilling hands. She had told me that the box contained the story of her life. Then logically she herself had laid the contents inside, closed the lid, and tied the rope. There was not even a hint from her that the Seer had given the box to her already secured, or that she had found it, on the riverbank say, after nobles from Pi-Ramses had stopped at Aswat. She had not deviated from her insistence that inside the box was her story, a story of poison and exile for which she wished to be pardoned.