The Shepherd Kings (27 page)

She would not ride back with him. “I can walk,” she said.

He opened his mouth to object, but wisdom silenced him. It
was full morning now. If he rode back with this of all women in his chariot,
all the household would know that something was afoot. Or, more aptly, ahorse.

He held his tongue therefore, sprang into the chariot and
took up the reins. Iry was on her way already, walking easily with her long
stride. She did not glance up as the horses trotted past her, or meet Khayan’s
gaze. She might have been alone under that endless Egyptian sky, for all the
notice she deigned to take of him.

~~~

Khayan should have known better than to think that he
could conceal anything from his mother. That very day, the day he began to
teach Iry to ride the Mare, he received a summons into her presence.

Two such, so close together, did not bode well. He had a
brief, wild thought of disregarding it, but lord of the domain or no, he had no
power to match that of the Lady Sarai.

He chose therefore to go at once, leaving Teti the steward
to settle yet another tedious and tangled dispute. Teti’s lot was lighter,
perhaps, but Khayan had hopes of escaping sooner.

His mother waited for him in her place of audience. She was
alone but for a single servant. That servant made Khayan pause the fraction of
a step, then sigh ever so faintly and advance to stand before his mother.

Iry did not know why she was there. Khayan would have
wagered silver on it. She seemed bored and considerably annoyed, though she was
hiding it rather well. Khayan wondered what his mother had been doing to vex
her. Nothing, most likely, beyond having summoned her and kept her standing
there with empty hands and no visible task.

Iry was no better a servant than her mother Nefertem. Khayan
bit back a smile before either of them saw it. He bowed to his mother as was
right and proper, and waited to be acknowledged.

She looked him up and down. “My son,” she said. “You are
well?”

“Most well,” he said serenely. “And you, lady mother? Do I
find you well?”

Had her brow twitched? “Very well,” she replied. “Your
domain: how does it fare? Are your people pleased with you?”

“No more or less, lady mother, than they believe they should
be.”

“Ah,” she said. And let him stand there, waiting upon her
pleasure.

He was content to wait. He did not even mind that he had
been left to stand, with no chair fetched for him, nor any to fetch for
himself. He had been sitting for much of the time since noon. He was rather
glad to be on his feet.

At length Sarai said, “I asked you to discover a thing for
me, not long ago. Did you discover it?”

Khayan was almost taken aback. That was striking directness,
and very sudden. But it was like her. He answered honestly, “Yes. I did.”

“And what did you discover?”

“I do think you know,” he said.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because,” he said, “you are my mother, the Lady of the
White Horse people.”

“Why did you wait so long to tell me?” she inquired.

“Because I am a coward,” he said. “And because it seemed too
preposterous to believe.”

“And yet it is so,” she said.

All the while they tested one another like warriors in a
battle, neither glanced at Iry. Khayan was aware of her, keenly. She had roused
a little when his mother asked after his people, but had subsided once more
into boredom. She did not know that they spoke of her. How could she? Her
people knew nothing of the Mare, or of the Mare’s servants.

Now Sarai turned to her and said, “Girl. Who are you?”

Iry stared at her, astonished. “Who— What does that matter?”

“Answer my question,” Sarai said, cold and clear.

Iry shrugged in something very close to insolence, and said,
“I am your son’s slave.”

Sarai’s hand swept that nonsense away. “Don’t play me for a
fool, girl. I know what you and your mother are in this house. Tell me who you
are.”

“If you know what I am, you know who I am,” Iry said. By the
gods, she was fearless. Perhaps it came of caring nothing for her life. It was
worth so little, after all, slave that she was.

“I would prefer that you tell me,” Sarai said.

Iry shrugged again. One must indulge the old, her gesture
said, and the feeble of wit. “My name is Iry. I am the daughter of the Lady
Nefertem and of the Lord Meren-Ptah, who rests now among the justified of
Osiris. They were lord and lady of the Sun Ascendant, children of children of
the first lord and lady, of kin who have ruled here a thousand and half a
thousand years. And who,” she demanded with a flash of heat, “are you?”

Sarai laughed, sweet and clear as a girl. “Oh, girl! What a
spirit you have! My name is Sarai. I am the daughter of Sadana, the daughter of
Sarai, the daughter of Savita, the daughter of Sadana, daughter of the
daughters of the granddaughters of Sarama of the White Mare’s people, who have
ruled in the east of the world for a thousand and a thousand and yet again a
thousand years. And so, child, since my line is older than yours, suppose that
you put aside your impudence and answer me a question.”

“Ask it,” said Iry, undismayed, and not visibly awed by lineage
so demonstrably ancient. No doubt, in Egypt, it was reckoned merely venerable.

“Do you know what the Mare is?” Sarai asked her.

She frowned. “So that is what this is for,” she said. “She’s
a goddess—a goddess’ image. Your son told me. He said you would be angry.”

“That is not exactly what I said,” Khayan interposed.

But they were not listening to him. As always when women
dealt with women’s matters, the mere male was forsaken and forgotten.

“Why would I be angry?” Sarai wanted to know.

“Because I am Egyptian.” Iry spoke as to a child.

Sarai’s eye sparked at that, but she forbore to be provoked.
“That is irregular,” she conceded. “More than irregular. Do you understand what
you have done?”

“I suppose,” Iry said bitterly, “you want me to stop
answering when the Mare calls me, and let someone proper do it instead. I could
try. But when she calls, I go. I can’t help it.”

“No one can,” Sarai said. “No, you don’t understand. The
Mare chooses her servant. None of us has a say in it. What it means . . .
girl, it is an omen. Never in thrice a thousand years, and in years beyond
count before that, has the Mare chosen any but a daughter of one kindred. It
was regarded as a great omen when the last Mare brought her servant into Egypt,
and a greater one when this Mare brought her kin to live here. Now she has not
only chosen a servant of another clan and kindred, that servant is not even of
our people.”

Iry’s head had come up. Perhaps in spite of herself, her
eyes had begun to blaze. She knew what sort of omen that was.

“We will fight this,” Sarai said. “Be well aware of it. The
Mare may be telling us that Egypt is truly ours; that we have taken it as she
has taken you.”

“Or,” said Iry, almost too low to be heard, “that we will
take it back, and drive you out.”

She paused. Sarai let the pause stretch. Iry said, “You
can’t get rid of me, can you? If you kill me—what will the Mare do?”

“That would be sacrilege,” Sarai said. “No one will kill
you. But because the Mare has chosen you, you belong to her, and therefore to
us. There is much that you must learn, and much that you must do; duties,
obligations, offices that you must fill.”

“And if I won’t?”

“You will,” Sarai said with terrible gentleness. “You begin
now. Part of the day, you belong to the Mare—and to my son, who has taken on
himself the task of teaching you to be a horseman. The rest of the day, and the
night, you are mine. You will do as I say, when I say it, without question.”

“I will be, in short, a slave.”

“You will be a priestess,” Sarai said, “whether you will or
no. This is the Mare’s doing, her choosing. For her you do it. For her you
suffer it, and perform it as best you may. Any less dishonors her.”

“I’ll run away,” Iry said. Was she perhaps growing
frightened?

“The Mare will bring you back,” said Sarai. “Endure it,
girl. You’re hers now, and have been from the moment you answered her call.”

Iry lowered her head. It only looked like submission. Khayan
saw how she glared up under the black fringe of her hair. “Do I have to wear a
robe?” she asked: startling question, and he thought she knew it.

“When you are among my people,” Sarai said, “you will
observe the proprieties. For the rest, you may do as you please.”

Iry kept her head lowered. She would be among Sarai’s people
now, and not her own—that much she had to understand. But she said nothing. One
might almost think that she had surrendered to necessity. Except for those
eyes. There was no submission in them.

And people said that Egyptians were servile. Khayan would
have laughed if he had been alone. As it was, he made his escape as soon as he
might, and perhaps cravenly left Iry to his mother’s mercy. It was justice of a
sort, as insolent as that child was, and as thorough a stranger to submission.
Sarai might never teach her to submit—but, like the Mare herself, she might
learn to obey.

Kemni sailed into Thebes on a morning of blessed, searing
heat, somewhat after the Inundation of the Nile had crested. They had fought their
way upriver, laboring under oar and sail, and thanking the gods that the
foreign kings had not known or stopped them. Even so, they had crept through
Memphis at night, sailing by the stars, and trusting to the ocean-width of the
river in that season. The cargo that they carried was far too precious to risk.

Kemni had been heart-whole again from the moment he passed
the first green reedbeds of the Delta. Here at last, in the royal city of the
Upper Kingdom, he was home. He had never been gladder to see those towering
walls, or to look out on the bare bleak hills beyond them. His eyes had looked
on a foreign sky, and his body known the chill of an outland air. If he never
left Egypt again, he would be more than content.

Ariana came up beside him as he stood on the prow. If he
could have braved the crocodiles, he might have leaped into the river and swum
to shore. But he was prudent. He yearned, but he kept to the ship.

He glanced at her. She did not speak, not at first. She was
rapt, staring at the city that would hereafter be home to her. The voyage had
seemed easy enough for her. She had not pined visibly for Crete, nor, once she
had taken ship, fallen back into that strange, remote stillness which had so
alarmed him. Her laughter had brightened that whole voyage.

He was heart-glad to be home, but he would be sorry to lose
her to the queens’ house. Not that she had ever tempted him, or allowed him to
take liberties. He had not even presumed to dream of her. But he had had long
days of her company, and long evenings of her stories and songs, jests and
sallies and wickedly clever games. A voyage that might have been unbearably
tedious had been remarkably pleasant, even with the need to skulk and hide as
they passed through the foreign kings’ lands.

And now it was ending. She said to him, “Promise me
something.”

“Anything I can,” he said cautiously. “If it’s honorable.”

She made as if to strike him. “Oh, you! Of course it’s
honorable. Promise you’ll be my friend when we’re shut up in the palace.”

“I’ll always be your friend,” he said.

“Of course you will,” she said a little impatiently. “That’s
not what I meant. I meant, my friend. Someone who comes to visit me, and keeps
me company, and—”

“The king might have something to say of that,” Kemni said.
“The queens don’t have the freedom that a princess has in Crete.”

“Why not?”

They had spoken of this before—never so directly, but she
knew perfectly well how a queen was expected to conduct herself. She had never
objected to it before.

He did his best to answer her question. “Queens are more
than mortal. Queens are divine. As are kings. They live as gods do, constrained
within the bonds of rite and ceremony. They can’t sully themselves with mortal
men.”

“I am not an Egyptian queen,” Ariana said; and for an
instant he saw all the arrogance of divinity in her. He remembered, then, that
she was an image of her own great goddess.

But that was not a goddess of Egypt. “You are Egyptian
here,” Kemni said, “if you marry the king of Egypt.”

She set her chin and firmed her lips and said nothing. He
knew better than to think he had won the skirmish. He could never win a battle
with a goddess.

~~~

Thebes opened its arms and gathered them in.
Dancer
came to haven at last, weary and
tattered but indomitable as ever. Kemni bade farewell to her with genuine
regret.

Her cargo he had thought to leave behind, but Ariana had no
such intention. “We go together,” she said. “All of us.”

She would not even hear of his sending a messenger, nor wait
for the harbormaster to come, but swept him off the ship, with Iphikleia silent
in their wake—but Naukrates held his ground. He had to stay with his ship. Even
the Ariana of Crete could not shift: him.

She sighed and shrugged and left him, but made him promise
to come to the palace the moment
Dancer
was inspected and secured. He agreed to that, or at least did not disagree.

Kemni almost envied him. Any wise man would have sent a
messenger to warn the king of what came to trouble his peace. Kings did not
like surprises. And such surprises as this . . .

If Kemni had been fortunate, Ahmose would have been
elsewhere, traveling about his realm or hunting down the river. But the king
was in residence. His guards stood at the gate in all their finery. His
chamberlains barred the way within, and swept them smoothly and irresistibly to
the house of the foreign envoys, which just then was not, quite, bursting at
the seams; and there left them to cool their heels in royal luxury.