Vengeance of Orion Part 37

"And the lady Helen?" I asked.

Nefertu's face took on that blank, expressionless look of a professional bureaucrat who wishes to reveal nothing. "She is well," he said.

"Does she want to see me?"

Turning his eyes away from me slightly, he replied, "She has not said so."

"Would you tell her that I wish to see her?"

He looked pained. "Orion, she is allowing her husband to woo her all over again. The husband that you you sent to her." sent to her."

I got up from the couch and walked toward the terrace. He was right, I knew. Still, I wanted to see Helen one final time.

"Take my message to her," I said to Nefertu. "Tell her that I will be leaving for good once the ceremony with the king is finished. I would like to see her one last time."

Rising slowly from his chair, the old man said tonelessly, "I will do as you ask."

He left, and I stayed on the terrace, watching the evening turn from sunset red to deep violet and finally to black. Lamps winked on all across the city, matched by the stars that crowded the clear dark sky.

A servant from the prince arrived with a set of packages and an invitation to supper. The packages contained new clothes: not an Egyptian-style tunic or skirt of white linen, but a leather kilt and vest similar to what I had been wearing for so many months. I laughed to myself. This outfit was handsomely tooled and worked with silver. It included a cloak of midnight blue and boots as soft as a doe's eyes.

Aramset was becoming a true diplomat. I wondered how my stained old outfit smelled to him. Servants answered my clapping hands and prepared a bath for me. Finally, bathed, perfumed, decked in my new kilt, vest, and cloak-with my old dagger still strapped to my thigh-I was escorted to Aramset's quarters.

We dined quietly, just the two of us, although I saw a quartet of Lukka's men standing guard just outside the door to the prince's chambers. Servants brought us trays of food, and the prince had them sample everything before we tasted it.

"You fear poison?" I asked him.

He shrugged carelessly. "I have surrounded the temple of Ptah with soldiers, and given them orders to keep the chief priest inside. He's in there brooding, and hatching schemes. I have suggested to my father that Nekoptah and his brother officiate at the ceremony three days from now, the two of them together."

"That should be interesting," I said.

"The people will see that the priests of the two G.o.ds are as alike as peas in a pod." Aramset smiled. "That should help to get rid of any plans Nekoptah may have about setting up Ptah above the other G.o.ds."

I bit into a melon and thought to myself that Aramset was handling court politics rather well.

"Your father is... well?" I asked.

The prince's youthful face clouded. "My father will never be well, Orion. His sickness is too advanced, thanks to Nekoptah. The best that I can do is to make him comfortable and allow the people to continue believing in their king."

Aramset seemed in total control of the situation. There was nothing left for me to do here. Within three days I could take up my quest to find Anya, wherever that would take me. Still, I thought, it would be good to see Helen one more time.

A servant came rus.h.i.+ng into the room and fell to his knees, skidding on the polished floor and almost b.u.mping into the prince.

"Your royal highness! The high priest of Ptah is dead! By his own hand!"

Aramset leaped to his feet, knocking over the chair behind him. "By his own hand? The coward!"

"Who shall tell the king?" the servant asked.

"No one," snapped Aramset. "I will see this suicide first." He started for the door.

I went with him, and motioned the Hitt.i.te guards to accompany us. One of them I sent for Lukka, with orders to bring the rest.

We crossed the starlit courtyard and entered the vast temple of Ptah. Up the stairs and along the corridor to the same office where surly Nekoptah had first received me.

He lay on his back, a huge mound of flesh with a deep red gash across the rolls of fat of his throat. In the flickering light of the desk lamp we saw his painted face with eyes staring blankly at the dark wooden beams of the ceiling. His golden medallion lay over one shoulder, blood already caking on it. The rings on his stubby fingers glinted in the lamplight.

I stared at the rings.

"This is not Nekoptah," I said.

"What?"

"Look." I pointed. "Three of his fingers have no rings. Nekoptah's fingers were so swollen that no one could have taken the rings off without cutting off the fingers themselves."

"By the G.o.ds," Aramset whispered. "It's his brother, made up to look like him!"

"Nekoptah murdered him, and he's roaming free in the palace right now."

"My father!"

The prince bolted off toward the door. The Hitt.i.te guards cast me a confused glance, but I motioned for them to go with Aramset. He was right: His first duty was to protect his father. Nekoptah could go anywhere in the palace, disguised as his twin brother. I doubted that he intended to harm the king, but Aramset was right to go to him.

I knelt over the dead body of poor Hetepamon for a few moments, and then suddenly realized where Nekoptah would strike next.

I got to my feet and ran for Helen's quarters.

Chapter 45.

I understood the high priest's murderous plan. His goal was to undo the alliance between the Achaians and the Egyptians, to show the king that Prince Aramset had brought the barbarian menace into the very capital of the land. Who knows, I thought as we raced through the palace toward Helen's apartment, perhaps he will get Menalaos to kill the prince.

If he has Helen he has control of Menalaos, I knew. Even if he doesn't murder the prince, if he can get Menalaos to run amok in the palace, Prince Aramset's newfound influence with his father is gone. Nekoptah returns to power with a haughty "I told you so."

Past startled guards I ran, guided by my memory of the palace's layout. But there were no guards at Helen's door. It was slightly ajar. I pushed it open.

Nefertu lay sprawled on the floor, a jeweled dagger sticking out of his back.

I rushed to him. He was still alive, but just barely.

"I thought... chief priest of Amon..."

His eyes were glazed. Bright red blood flowed from his mouth.

"Helen." I asked, "Where did he take Helen?"

"The underworld... to meet Osiris..." Nefertu's voice was the faintest whisper. I could feel his pain. He tried to breathe, but his lungs were filled with blood and agony.

I had no time to be gentle. He was dying in my arms.

"Where did Nekoptah take Helen?"

"Osiris... Osiris..."

I shook the poor old dying man. "Look at me!" I demanded. "I am Osiris."

His eyes widened. Feebly, he tried to reach for my face with one limp hand. "My lord Osiris..."

"Where has the false priest Nekoptah taken the foreign woman?" I demanded.

"To your temple... at Abtu..."

That was what I needed to know. I lay Nefertu's gray head down on the painted tiles of the floor. "You have done well, mortal. Rest in peace now."

He smiled and sighed and stopped his breathing forever.

The temple of Osiris at Abtu.

I went to Prince Aramset and told him what had happened. "I cannot leave the palace, Orion," he said. "Nekoptah's spies and a.s.sa.s.sins may be anywhere. I must remain here with my father."

I agreed. "Just tell me where Abtu is and give me the means to get there."

Abtu was a two-day chariot drive north of the capital. "I can have fresh horses ready for you every ten miles," the prince said. Then he offered me Lukka and his men.

"No, they are your personal guard now. Don't strip yourself of their loyalty. A charioteer and relays of fresh horses will be all I need."

"Nekoptah won't be alone at Abtu," warned Aramset.

"That's right," I said. "I will be there."

Before the sun rose I was standing in a war chariot, light and tough, beside a nut-brown Egyptian who lashed the four powerful chargers along the royal road northward. I carried nothing but the clothes I had been wearing and an iron sword, Lukka's own, given to me by the Hitt.i.te captain as I took my leave of him. And the dagger had been my companion for so long that it had left its imprint on my right thigh.

We raced furiously along the road, kicking up a plume of dust behind us, the horses thundering along the packed earth, my charioteer grunting and puffing with the exertion of controlling the four of them.

We stopped at royal relay posts only long enough to change horses and take a bite to eat and a sip of refres.h.i.+ng wine.

By dawn of the second day my charioteer was exhausted. He could hardly drag his stiff and sore body from the chariot when we stopped at the halfway point. I left him at the relay post there. He protested. He begged me to let him continue, saying that the prince would have him flogged to death for abandoning me. But there was no sense taking him farther.

I took the reins in my own hands. I had watched him long enough to know how to handle the horses. Fatigue clawed at my body, too, but I could consciously damp down its warning signals and pour more oxygen into my bloodstream by hyperventilating as I drove four fresh animals pell-mell into the brightening morning.

The river was on my left, and I pa.s.sed many boats floating downstream on the Nile's strong current. Not fast enough for this mission. I cracked my whip over the horses' ears and they strained harder in their harnesses.

At a bend in the road I happened to turn and glance back behind me. Another rooster tail of dust rose behind me, far back at the horizon. Someone was following me in just as mad a hurry as I was. Had the prince sent troops to back me up? Or could it be Menalaos rus.h.i.+ng to rescue his wife? Either way, it would be help for me. Then another thought struck me: Could it be followers of Nekoptah, rus.h.i.+ng to back him him?

As the sun set, I drove madly through a village of small houses, scattering the few people and children on the main road, and past a mile or so of precise formal gardens bordered by rows of trees and gracefully laid-out ponds. The temple of Osiris stood in their midst, facing a long rampway that led to the river. A single boat was tied up at the pier.

A half-dozen guards in bronze armor stood before the temple's main gate as I pulled up my lathered horses and jumped from the chariot.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" demanded their leader.

I was willing to fight them if I had to, but it would be quicker and easier if I could avoid it.

"On your knees, mortals!" I boomed, in my deepest voice. "I am Osiris, and this is my temple."

They gaped at me, then laughed. I realized that I was caked with dust from the road, and hardly the glorious radiant figure of a G.o.d.

"You are one of the foreigners that my lord Nekoptah told us would try to enter the sacred temple," said the guard leader. He drew his sword and the others moved to surround me. "For your blasphemy alone, you deserve to die."

I took a deep breath. There were six of them, wiry little Egyptians with deep-brown skins and even darker eyes, their chests protected by armor, conical bronze helmets on their heads, and swords in their hands.

"Osiris dies each year," I said, "and each time the sun goes down. I am no stranger to death. But I will not be killed at the hands of mortals."

Before he could react I s.n.a.t.c.hed the sword from his hand and threw it toward the river in a high arc. Its bronze blade caught the last rays of the dying sun. They stared as it arced high overhead. Before they could react I threw their leader to the ground and reached the next man. He went down with a blow to his head. By the time their leader had risen to his hands and knees I had decked all the rest of them.

I pointed at their leader, recalling the imperious tones that the Golden One had often used on me. "Stay on your knees, mortal, when you face a G.o.d! And be glad that I have spared your lives."

All six of them pressed their foreheads to the dust, trembling visibly.

"Forgive me, O powerful Osiris..."

"Stand watch faithfully and you will be forgiven," I said. "Remember that to tempt the wrath of the G.o.ds is to court painful death."

Into the temple I strode, wondering in the back of my mind if a G.o.d ever ran. Not in front of wors.h.i.+pers, I supposed. Not bad for a man sent to this time as a mindless tool, a servant bereft of memory. I had risen to a maker of kings and a pretender of G.o.dhood.

Now I was bent on vengeance once more, this time not for myself but for an innocent fat priest and a faithful old bureaucrat, both murdered because they stood between Nekoptah and the power of the kingdom. I drew my sword and hunted the chief priest of Ptah in the temple of Osiris.

Through courtyards lit by the newly risen moon and past colonnaded halls lined with statues of the G.o.ds I strode, sword in hand. I came upon a row of small chambers, sanctuaries for various G.o.ds. Nekoptah was not in the shrine of Ptah, where I looked first. Then I saw that the shrine of Osiris had a small doorway at its rear. I went to it and pushed it open.

The three of them were there, standing beside the altar of Osiris, lit by the flames of lamps set into the walls: Nekoptah, Helen, and Menalaos.

The erstwhile King of Sparta was in full bronze armor, his heavy spear gripped tightly in his right hand. Helen, in a s.h.i.+mmering gown of silver-blue, stood slightly behind him.

"I told you!" shouted Nekoptah. "I told you he would come seeking the woman."

The priest's face was unpainted and his resemblance to Hetepamon was uncanny. Yet where the brother was smiling and amiable, Nekoptah was snarling and vicious. I noticed that his hands were bare, except for the three fingers where rings were imbedded too deeply in flesh ever to come off.

"Yes," I said, more to Menalaos than Nekoptah. "I seek the woman-to return her to her husband."

Helen's eyes flared at me, but she said nothing.

"You took her away from me," Menalaos growled.

"He slept with her," said Nekoptah. "They have made a cuckold of you."