Stealing Fire (7 page)

I laughed. “I suppose not,” I said. “Only we cannot geld for bad temper!”

“I'm considering it,” Ptolemy said.

We sailed up the Nile on a fast galley, one of the narrow-draft lateen-sailed ships the Egyptians build for river traffic, and so I returned to Memphis for the second time in my life. Arriving from the Saite branch of the river, the city seemed even more imposing than I remembered. The walls were massive, with enormous square gate towers, and below them the levees that held back the river in the flood season were three times the height of a man.

As we passed the city, ready to come about to the docks below, Ptolemy gestured to a massive iron grate set in the levees. “I wonder what that's for?” he asked.

It looked like it was designed to be lifted, and I said so.

Manetho, who had accompanied us from Alexandria, had come up to us, and he smiled. “That's where the Temple of Sobek is. He's the avenger of wrongs, and takes the form of a crocodile. The grate goes into the pools where the sacred crocodiles live. The small ones can come and go through the grate, but the large ones stay in the temple pool.”

“How big are the large ones?” I asked, as the holes in the grate would have been big enough for a boy to swim through.

Manetho shrugged. “Three times the length of a man, the biggest of them. The oldest are more than a hundred years old. We protected them from the Persians when they were here.”

“I see,” Ptolemy said, and looked impressed.

I didn't particularly think a crocodile a hundred years old and three times the length of a man needed much protecting.

C
LEOMENES WAS ABOUT
Ptolemy's age, which is to say around forty, clean-shaven in the Greek fashion, fit and obviously vain of his appearance. He really had no need to flex his arms so much in his short-sleeved chiton except to show off how much time he spent in the gymnasium, and how he had certainly not run to fat like many men in sedentary jobs.

Ptolemy, who had not made time for the wrestling matches and weight lifting of the gymnasium in years, was irritated, though he hid it well. I had certainly never trained in the gymnasium as a boy, nor been welcome until lately, so I had even less patience for it. I thought that a man who had so much time to spend on the perfection of his muscles must not do a lot of work.

He was very accommodating, helpful and eager to go over the tax rolls with Ptolemy, delighted for us to be his guest at any number of entertainments. There were banquets and symposia, concerts and dancers. Of course Manetho and the other Egyptians were not invited. Cleomenes had kept the Persian custom of not including the natives. I thought that perhaps that was not wise, but Ptolemy kept his own counsel and attended each entertainment, though his good humor seemed to be wearing a little thin. He should rather spend time with the tax rolls and the other work of the governor. I suspected he was being diverted.

The eighth day in Memphis, Cleomenes arranged a hunt in the desert. We left very early. The sun had not yet risen above the wadis of the eastern side of the river and the sky had only begun to pale. The men stood about in little groups, laughing and sharing a jest and bread. I dismounted and left my horse with a groom.

Ptolemy looked up and offered me a flask. “Sport of the pharaohs, eh?” He was dressed in chiton and leather, not full harness. Who could walk about the desert during the day wearing steel?

I took it and drank sparingly. Strong unwatered wine for breakfast made my head spin. I shrugged. “Hunting is hunting, my Lord. And it is best to be seen to do as the pharaohs, of course.” It had occurred to me that at least Ptolemy could appear a proper overlord.

“It will be good hunting, I hope,” Ptolemy said. “But it's the cats I'm not used to.” A short distance away, three cheetahs paced on light leads of scarlet leather, their handlers beside them.

I raised an eyebrow. Their thin leather cords wouldn't stop the cheetahs for an instant if they wanted to go. It was their training that kept them within the bounds of the leads. “I've never hunted with them before,” I said, my eyes following their pacing, lean muscles moving beneath perfect, mottled hides.

“You can see them in the paintings on temple walls, back a thousand years,” Ptolemy said. “But they don't capture the beauty of the animals.”

“Not hardly,” I said, admiring the way one sleek female turned, her graceful tail carried high like a pleased housecat. She looked at me then, and I did not look away. Green eyes met mine, as though it were she who assessed me. I tilted my chin, but did not break the stare.

She moved toward me then, her handler following, telling her to stop. Ptolemy reached for the knife at his belt reflexively.

I looked into her eyes. I thought that she might be the mother of cats herself, so steady and intelligent was her gaze.

“My Lord, don't move,” the handler said as the cheetah reared up on her hind legs, resting her forepaws on my shoulders. Her claws pricked through the linen of my chiton, just barely testing the skin, her green eyes raised to mine, her massive jaws almost at my throat.

I was not afraid, and I did not need the handler to tell me that. She looked at me keenly, measuringly, her hot breath against my face. And yet I felt no menace in her, only curiosity.

“No, my Lord,” the handler said again, as I heard the scrape of Ptolemy drawing. “Wait.”

She bent her head, butting at my chin with the soft fur of the top of her head, nudging at me like a cat. I leaned forward, butting back with my chin at the top of her head, my cheek rubbing against her. For a moment we stood thus, like lovers locked in an embrace.

Then she disengaged, her paws leaving my shoulders as she dropped down and ambled a few steps away, where she sat down unconcernedly to wash.

Ptolemy let out a breath, his sword in hand. “That was… interesting.”

The handler was looking at me closely. “She wanted to see you, my Lord. And you must never run from a cat.”

“I know,” I said, my eyes still following her with admiration. “She's gorgeous.”

The handler said something under his breath, and went to collect his charge.

“What was that?” I asked. I had not quite gotten what he said.

Ptolemy looked amused, and something more. “He says you are favored of Bastet, my friend.”

“Oh,” I said.

We rode into the desert before the sun was high. By noon I had decided this was a rather hopeless endeavor. How any game should be found with twenty men in the party, and a dozen horses, I could not guess. No doubt we looked grand, but in hours we had not seen anything besides a hawk on the wing, far above hovering on the hot air that rose from the desert. Perhaps we weren't supposed to really catch anything. Perhaps it was all to look good.

Cleomenes seemed unperterbed. At midday we halted in the shadow of an overhanging cliff and ate and drank from a fairly sumptuous hunter's spread. Then we rested a while replete in the shade.

Ptolemy was being gracious to Cleomenes, but I thought he was getting annoyed. An entire day lost riding around the desert at a snail's pace doing nothing! Even the cheetahs looked bored and drowsed, washing their paws in a desultory fashion.

Afternoon came on with long shadows. I was fascinatedly watching the trainers with their animals, and only half heard Ptolemy talking to Cleomenes, saying that perhaps we should be getting back.

“But you have not caught anything!” Cleomenes said. “And I have heard that there are lions near here. Men have seen them! I would consider myself disgraced if you returned without bagging anything!”

“You must be easier on yourself,” Ptolemy said dryly. “And anyway, how could we possibly get a lion with all this parade? In Macedon we hunted lions on foot, with five or six men.”

Cleomenes laughed heartily. “You must think us very soft here! I can't bear that! Let us send away the parade, as you call it, and hunt lions as a king should, just us with our spears!”

And dogs, I thought. In most places they used dogs, but we had none with us, as the cheetahs would not abide them. The hairs on the back of my neck rose.

“It's gotten so late,” Ptolemy began.

“It's early yet,” Cleomenes said, and began giving orders to send the cheetahs and their handlers back, as well as the men and horses who had brought our lunches out.

I was not pleased to see the cheetahs go. The beautiful female turned as she was led away and looked at me with a steady gaze, as though in warning. I loosened my sword in the scabbard. It did not escape me that if he wanted to kill Ptolemy, the fewer witnesses the better. I was one he should have to kill, at least.

I was watching Cleomenes and that was my mistake. I hardly noticed as the shadows got deeper. I certainly did not watch carefully where we went.

At last one of the trackers found some dung that he said was that of a lion. It was at the edge of a wadi, a steep ravine of reddish rock with a dry stream bed at the bottom. Perhaps that was why I found it hard to breathe. Perhaps that was why I was not attentive when Ptolemy said that we would go down. I was trying to think of a reason not to.

A dry stream bed, a shaded ravine to camp in during the heat of the day…

My blood ran cold and my breath came in starts. My chest ached with stabbing pains, and my vision swam. I wondered if I were dying just there, and what Ptolemy would say if I did. I would stay on my feet as long as I could, act as though all were normal. And so we were at the bottom of the cliff before I was aware of more than my feet on the path.

“I think we should go around to the left,” Ptolemy said.

This is not the same place, I told myself. This is not that place in Gedrosia. This is not that place. This is another place in another country. It only looks superficially the same. I would be the master of my own heart. I would not let this choking panic make a frightened animal of me, make me prey.

I followed him.

We went up the dry stream bed. The sun had entirely disappeared behind the walls of the wadi. Dusk was upon us and night was falling.

“I don't see any spoor,” Ptolemy said. He stopped, one foot up on a boulder, and scratched at where one of the high straps on his boots had rubbed his leg. His face was hot with sunburn and exertion. “Chaos take this!” he exclaimed. “I've had about enough of this wandering around. We're going back to Memphis.”

I must have said something appropriate. He had not noticed. Breathe, I told myself. Deep breaths. This is not that place. See how it is evening, not morning?

Night. Night was coming up. I could see the first faint star.

“Cleomenes?” Ptolemy called out. “Tell the trackers we're going back.”

There was no answer. I sat down on a rock. I hoped I only looked tired. There was an excuse for that.

Ptolemy called, and called again.

There was no answer.

He climbed up a little ways that we had come and shouted again. Then he looked down at me, and I saw his face tighten from annoyance into something different. “They've gone,” he said.

I looked up.

Ptolemy came back down, careful on the loose rocks. “They've left us.”

Everything dawned on me. “With no horses and not knowing the way back.”

“And no water,” Ptolemy said.

“Where any accident might happen,” I said. “Snakes, a fall of rocks…”

“A misstep that breaks a bone,” Ptolemy said. “A tragic accident. It could happen to any man lost in the desert.”

I looked at him and he at me.

Somewhere above, echoing off the walls of the wadi, we heard the answering roar of a lion.

UNDER THE MOON

W
e should follow the dry stream bed,” Ptolemy said.

I nodded. A dry stream bed would eventually lead to a larger channel, and a larger channel would lead to the Nile. Once we had found the river, it would be easy to find our way back to Memphis.

We began to walk. The ground was pitted and uneven, littered with fallen stones from above, and the going was difficult, made more so by darkness. We stopped after a little distance when Ptolemy twisted his foot, and I stood by while he cursed and rubbed it.

“We can't wait until sunrise,” he said.

“I know,” I agreed. We did not know how far the stream bed might twist around in the wadis. While as the bird flew we could not be more than half a day's ride from the Nile, it might be much farther as we had to walk following the track. If we climbed up the walls of the wadi and attempted to go over the top, not only would we have a dangerous climb, but we would not then know where we were, except for general direction. And when the sun rose and the heat of the day began we would feel the lack of water. Going on in the cool of the night was the best decision.

I had not heard the lion again. I hoped that meant it was far away and uninterested in us. Unfortunately, I knew perfectly well that the lion you hear is no threat. It's the lion you don't hear that is silently stalking you.

I do not know how long we walked. The moon rose high above the cliffs, a faint crescent in the dark sky, tilted like a reaper's sickle. We came to a place where the stream bed descended steeply, and I thought I heard the faint trickle of water. We climbed down, half sliding on the crumbling red stones. There, at the bottom where another dusty channel joined it, was a thin thread of water. We cupped it in our hands and lapped at it like dogs. I wished that lunch had not been quite so salty, though it was now many hours past.

From somewhere quite nearby a howl went up. Jackals.

“Shit,” Ptolemy said.

Jackals do not normally bother men, but we were two alone and had probably come into their territory.

I could see them slinking along the rocks, not moving at the quick trot they usually do, dark in color. In Egypt, jackals are the color of sand and stone. These were black and they moved like shadows. In the darkness their eyes glowed with an eerie light.

“What are they?” I said. They seemed to gather out of the stones themselves.

“I don't know,” Ptolemy said grimly, and then he shouted, “Back to back!” The first of the jackals leapt.

We stood shoulder to shoulder. I was a little taller than he, but he was more solidly built. If we had been a chariot team we should have been decently matched, I thought irrelevantly. And then the jackal leaped for my throat.

I caught his teeth on my left forearm, feeling the sharp edges score just above the leather wristband I wore, though he could not bite down. The sword in my right hand came up and I struck at him, a blow that should have opened his belly, only he was not there.

Another jackal dodged snarling at my other side, and I hit her backhanded across the face with the hilt of my sword. Behind me, Ptolemy staggered back against me a step as one landed with its full weight against his shoulder. He threw it off with a heave, and it hit the ground with a crunch that should have broken its back.

Only it wasn't there.

I did not lose it in the movement of the battle. I saw it falling, and then I saw bare ground.

“They're not real!” I shouted, stepping around in guard.

“They really bite,” Ptolemy replied, though I heard the incredulity in his voice.

They did bite. The cuts on my left arm were bleeding, not badly but enough to notice.

For a moment they backed off, circling. We stood together, our shoulders almost touching.

“There are too many of them,” Ptolemy said. His breath was coming in quick gasps. Jackals hunted in small packs, but I had never seen more than six or eight together, including pups. There were at least twice that number now, lean black jackals with eyes that reflected the nacreous sheen of the moon.

“They're not real,” I said. There was something in this that reminded me of my dream in Pelousion, of the Sphinx. I felt something click into place like a sword sliding home in its scabbard. “They're creatures of the mind, come to feed on our blood and fear, monsters we imagined.”

“And how do you suggest we get rid of them?” Ptolemy said, turning to keep his blade on one lean dark form that ventured close.

“Stop fearing,” I said.

Ptolemy laughed grimly. “You first.”

I took a deep breath and straightened out of guard. Somewhere, sometime I had known something like this, had been someone who could have dismissed them out of hand.

Once, I had been someone who did not fear the dark places. Sati had told me that—that all I had ever been lived still in me, like a bird's memory of the egg, or a butterfly's memory of the caterpillar it had once been.

Somewhere within me was everything I needed.

My heart beat in my throat. I looked into the eyes of the nearest one, dropping the tip of my blade. “You have no right to touch us,” I said. “We are Companions of Alexander the Son of Amon, he whose word bound you. We do not fear death.”

The creature snarled, stalking to my left.

I followed him around. “Go back whence you came. You cannot harm us.”

Beside me Ptolemy straightened. There was a bleeding scrape down the side of his face, but it didn't seem serious. “You cannot touch us,” he said. “Go back to the deep desert and do not trouble us!”

The creature laughed, hyena rather than jackal, and it seemed to me that it spoke. “You are not Pharaoh, Ptolemy son of Lagos. Alexander lies unburied in Babylon, and we are free!”

“They're not attacking,” I whispered.

He nodded. “Keep them at bay,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “Try to work downhill. I'll keep talking.”

“You have it,” I assented grimly.

“You were bound by Alexander,” Ptolemy ventured. “So you must obey his men. I am one of the Regents for his son.”

It snarled. “Son there may be, but Alexander is not Osiris descended. He lies still in Babylon, and there is no kinsman to escort his soul to Amenti or to open his stoppered mouth. Until that happens, only he can bind us, and we are loosed upon the world.”

I inched downhill, Ptolemy retreating with me. Ahead, beyond the edge of the wadi wall, I saw something I could have sworn was not there before. A house stood in the shelter of the cliff, a plain mud-brick dwelling such as the peasants build, but it had a low wall with a gate about it, and from the high narrow window I could see the glow of firelight.

The jackal laughed again. “It will be many years before we are bound, son of Lagos! That child in Babylon may never set foot in Egypt, or if he does it will be twenty years before he can wield the power of Pharaoh, before we have Horus and his bright eyes to fear!”

There was something queer in Ptolemy's voice. “But only his heir may bind you? Surely more than once in the past there has been a pharaoh who was a child.”

Closer. I could see the house more clearly now. I could smell the scent of the smoke. The house had a stout door, and the windows were all small and high. I wondered whether if we ran the pack would be on us before we gained the gate.

“In the past when the King was a child, a kinsman walked the paths of Amenti in his stead and helped Osiris descend. But there is no one who can thus speak for Alexander. We are free, and none can bind us!”

“The house,” I said low. “We must run.”

I saw him nod, and then as one we turned and ran.

A howl went up from the pack, but we did not heed it, only pounded for the house as quickly as we could with them in full pursuit. I could almost feel their breath on my heels. I ran over the uneven ground, sure that if I fell they would be upon me, hearing Ptolemy behind me.

I reached the gate first and flung it open, Ptolemy passing me and pounding on the door. “Let us in! Let us in!”

I threw the gate shut, catching the pack leader in the chest as I did.

The door to the house swung open under Ptolemy's hands, and I plunged after him, almost colliding with him as he spun about to shut the door and drop a bar into place. I leaned against it, listening to the thud of a heavy body against it, the throbbing of the blood in my temples.

They howled, but the door did not give. It was good, solid wood, and the bar was strong.

“I do beg your pardon,” Ptolemy said, and I turned to see who he was talking to.

Beside the hearth was the house's only inhabitant, a young woman in the late stages of pregnancy, wearing a printed linen shift. She looked up serenely from the chair beside the fire.

“We mean you no harm,” Ptolemy said, sheathing his sword. “We would not have broken into your house like that except that we were in peril of our lives.”

I sagged against the door. Surely she should be terrified, screaming? A woman alone in such a vulnerable state, with two bloody armed men bursting in suddenly, the hounds of Chaos after them? And yet her beautiful face was untroubled, the firelight playing across her honey skin.

“Come and sit by the fire,” she said. “You must be tired. There is water.”

She lifted a painted pitcher and poured some out into a clay cup that she held, offering it to Ptolemy and me.

He took it, a curious expression on his face. Ptolemy's eyes met hers over the rim of the cup. “What is in it?”

“Only water,” she said. Her hair was done in dozens of tight braids, and the beads on the ends of them rang as she moved her head.

He drank and handed the cup to me, though his eyes never left her.

I looked down at it and then up at her. “From what river?” I asked her.

She smiled then, a delighted smile like a young girl given a present, or a mother when her child has done something especially clever. “From the Nile,” she said. “Would you remember all, Lydias?” Her eyes were like a thousand stars, and I knew Her.

“Gracious Queen,” I said, and sank to my knees.

Ptolemy wavered beside me. “Who are you?”

Her eyes flickered over his face. “Lydias can name me, can't you, Lydias?”

“You are Isis,” I said, and my throat was dry. “You are the Lady of the Living and the Dead, the Mother of the World.”

“Mother of the World,” She said, “and of worlds unborn, desirer of all the things that may yet be.” She looked up at Ptolemy, who still stood beside me. “Come and sit by me, Ptolemy of Egypt. The gods of the Black Land have a proposition for you.”

He put his head to the side, considering. “I will hear your proposal, Lady. But first I want to know if you are real.”

Isis laughed. “You may touch me, and I will seem real to you. And tomorrow I will seem like a dream. What is real, Ptolemy of Egypt?”

“Are you really here, or are you in my mind?”

She laughed again, and Her voice was pure delight, like water over stones in the desert. “You are very stubborn. I am real, and I am in your mind. Cannot both be true at once?”

“I don't know,” he said.

Her beautiful face was serious. “Should I tell you that you created the gods from your thoughts and gave us life? That we are the mirrors of your souls?”

“I should ask you then what a soul is,” Ptolemy said.

Isis’ eyes sparkled. “Aristotle has taught you well in disputation. And so I will answer you as best I can, knowing that one day you will understand the answer. A soul is a unique quantum pattern, both energy and matter, formed and deformed by physical energy.”

“Like the creatures outside,” I said. “They exist because people dreamed them and gave form to their night fears.” I did not understand her words, but I thought I understood her meaning.

Ptolemy looked at me sharply.

She laughed, and Her eyes fell on me. “This is one who sees in metaphors and does not doubt his own senses. Welcome, Lydias, you who have been priest and priestess in years past. The Black Land has need of you, and you of her.”

I dropped my gaze. Hers was too bright.

I heard Ptolemy sit down on the rude bench beside the hearth. His voice was steady, serious and unafraid. “What is your proposition, Lady? I will consider it with good will, provided it does not conflict with other oaths or duties.”

“Very well,” She said, and it seemed Her words hung in the air as She said them. “Here is what we offer. The gods of Egypt will give you the power to subdue the creatures unbound by Alexander's death, and to hold Egypt against all contenders now and throughout your lifetime. We will make you Pharaoh, Lord of the Two Lands, and establish the children of your body as the legitimate royal house of Egypt. In exchange, we require that you be Pharaoh in truth, that you seek no sovereignty outside the ancient borders of Khemet, and that you keep faith with the people of Egypt as a shepherd should, ruling the land for the benefit of My children.”

Ptolemy took a ragged breath and I raised my head.

His eyes were on Her. “All my life,” he said, “I have not coveted a throne. I have seen the misery it brings, and how grappling after the wheel of fire brings men and women to ruin.”

“It did not bring Alexander to ruin,” She said.