Two Horizons

Chapter 16

  FEVERISH MOON

  During the last days of recession in an evening neither cool nor warm, dark nor bright, Mehi wandered under riverbank sycamores. The Nile shrank from him like his memory of An-khi. He was forgetting her and the Inundation as if they had never existed and never would. Though he clutched at memory of her like bark on a dying tree, he could not stop it from crumbling through his exhausted will. Her raspy voice and singular thoughts receded like the river across the widening shore. He no longer recalled the oil on her fingers, the wetness of her kisses, the sweat of their sex … all that dried. Still, Mehi held on. But soon, very soon, An-khi’s last glimmer, the whites of her eyes deep in their dark wells would irretrievably wither like worms cast into the noon sun, blanking the memory of her he must then make-believe with nerve, hope and lie.

  He and Wabt had worked out things reasonably well. He came home regularly as a husband ought to. Once, he remembered to bring wildflowers to his wife. She sometimes sang—or hummed?—if often the same melody. Tonight, after walking with the sun since it escaped from the ground until it reburied itself in the ground, he’d go home. All in all, a good situation.

  If Mehi had gone to school today, he’d have been whipped for tardiness. For weeks he had been late, if he showed up at all. School could be put off until tomorrow. The other boys had made it clear he didn’t belong. Anyway, royal school wasn’t the place for a tomb-robber’s son.

  The third-quarter moon hanging over him, Mehi veered from the riverbank for a row of sycamores so bare of leaves their limbs appeared to spiral up like smoke. In a small clearing before a village, a crowd gathered around some disturbance. Maybe something there would distract him.

  Mehi heard the crack of a fist on a jaw. Then a cry. The crowd murmured. Some squealed. He thrust himself into the crowd, to the front, desperate to see. Yes, two men fought. The men and their argument meant nothing to him, yet their blur of fists, yelps, and the crowd’s gasps or snickers seized Mehi. His own hand clenched as if he wielded the fist that cracked his opponent’s face, his arm tingling with the resulting vibration. At the same moment, he sensed the crunch across his own jaw.

  When the fight was over—too quickly for Mehi—the villagers walked off, arguing over who had won. With nowhere to go, Mehi lumbered among the village’s ill-shaped, ill-set thatch huts and lean-tos. Broken stone hammers, tattered cloth and stench clogged the alleys. Many villagers glared at him. Poverty prevented them from giving him anything more than their anger, which they gave freely.

  On the stoop of one particularly ragged hut set away from the others, a red-haired woman squatted, dirt hemming her skirt. Pieces of green melon sat on the ground between her splayed legs. The sun had dried them out much earlier today. “Hey, son,” she sang at Mehi. “Come enjoy my fruit.” She pulled back her skirt against her to show the shape of her pudendum. “You can’t get this just anywhere, you know.”

  Her red hair told Mehi that she was alien to Egypt—a strange woman. She shifted position to allow Mehi a broad view of her hair. “You like a bit of something different?”

  He couldn’t help but stare. She was unlike either Wabt or An-khi. Did he want to stay? No, no he couldn’t. He hurried off.

  “Don’t run, little pet,” she giggled. “We just about had a relationship.”

  In his retreat, Mehi felt the woman’s eyes prickling his spine. At least he felt something.

  “Next time you visit, ask for Aatet.”

  Shuffling into his windowless hut the next day near midnight, Mehi avoided Wabt’s room. He simply wanted to lay down a few hours unbothered. Not adapted to the dark, he took in nothing of the house before his back squashed on the floor and his eyes closed. Exhausted but not sleepy, Mehi didn’t expect rest soon.

  How am I going to make this marriage work? It would kill Wabt to know the truth. She doesn’t understand me like An-khi did.

  He heard Wabt pad into the room. He winced. He waited for her to say her usual: Can I get you something to eat? Instead, she lay next to him, clinging to him. Mehi bore her. Her warmth pricked his dull body. He told himself to keep rigid until she slept, then he’d creep from her skin.

  Wabt’s cool hands trickled over his chests and wiped across his stomach. Her fingernails fumbled along his ribs and waist. Her legs scratched his.

  Grieving for his wife’s loss of him, he prayed for his dead body to awaken. Wabt said something. He made out his name. Mehi tried to reply, maybe with her name, but his voice only squeaked. She ducked her face away from her husband while her hand, as if against her will, wormed lower on him. He patted behind her shoulder a little. She buried her head under his arm. Despite her history with men, she was trying. He touched Wabt’s back to soften her embarrassment ... to pretend she wasn’t alone. A husband should make that effort.

  Mehi wondered how this used to feel with An-khi. When in her arms, he had even imagined her thoughts. In this darkness, he might imagine Wabt a different person, one he loved. He blundered forward.

  Eventually, unavoidably, Mehi’s body raked against Wabt’s. They raced to get it over with. His face gnarled. She winced. Their wheezing lessened. They stopped.

  Mehi and Wabt positioned themselves against the other, hoping to sleep. In stages, without a word, they let loose of one another. She picked herself up and retreated to her room. Trying not to puzzle on his spirit fleeing into the dark, Mehi’s sight fell on the crescent moon falling below the high window.

  At twilight in the Ta Manu desert, west of Egypt’s delta, blown sand clawed at the linen tent like jackals. Inside, High-priest Siptah settled on a low stool beside assistant priest Hotep and the glow of a low lamp. Though the two were alone, Hotep whispered, “Could you tell us now, why you met with the nomad chief?”

  Siptah rocked back, his ample throat wiggling. His grin spread as his little eyes closed. “We brought the Tehnu chief the message that Egypt’s aging god on earth weeps and sobs following the injury of one son by the hand of another. Our Khufu is mortal, indeed. And we stressed that Egypt’s drought is the God-king’s failure as an immortal.”

  “Indeed, quite.”

  “The Tehnu chief was further stimulated by my promise of the riches he will attain when he strikes into venerable Egypt protected only by this mortal, feeble King.”

  Hotep’s eyes glinted. “Listen to that wind. Isn’t it exciting that the very dust blowing out there right now could end up in Khufu’s fatal wound?”

  “Even should Khufu not fall, his frailty will be apparent to each and every of his soldiers. They will spread that truth across Egypt. That will be his larger wound. Khufu’s importance to the citizens will blister, flake and blow leisurely away.”

  “Brilliant, Siptah.”

  “Now with the Tehnu in line, I wonder how our southern friends are faring.”

  Twilight. Theormi didn’t feel herself on the donkey. She felt nothing. Never again would she see the man she loved.

  Behind her on the caravan of twenty men and twenty donkeys, mad Prince Merhet muttered on and on. The caravan escorted Theormi with Merhet and his wife Pebatma in the southwest desert, several days from Egypt’s southern border. Their destination was Buhen, in Ta Sety, where Egypt maintained a copper mining outpost.

  A rider said, “During sunlight, it’s the five pits of fire. Now that the sun has dropped, my nose is ice.”

  “Me too, but my butt sores are still burning.”

  “The hours stack up like those tem mountains ahead, but they never get any closer. When will the dragoman make camp?”

  “Quit the complaints,” said the caravan’s foreman Sebek.

  “Heat and cold don’t get to you, foreman? Is that it?”

  “Pain doesn’t matter.”

  The rider snorted. “How’d you get so untouchable?” “Tu, which God are you?” said another. Several riders laughed.

  “The God-king’s goldmines taught me.” That halted the laughter.

  “You were in a goldmine?”

&nbs
p; The first rider said, “Atcha! No one escapes the goldmines except by dying.”

  Sebek didn’t bother to shrug. “Don’t believe me.”

  “Were you a thief or a slave?”

  “That doesn’t matter either.”

  “How’d you get out?”

  At the lead, the dragoman ordered the caravan to stop. Theormi didn’t care why. Stopping, riding on, or disintegrating were all the same to her.

  “Foreman!” called the dragoman.

  Foreman Sebek on his donkey passed her on his way up the caravan line. There, a moment later, he called for a rider who also passed Theormi. She barely heard their donkeys clomp a short distance ahead of the caravan.

  “What is it?” the dragoman called.

  Sebek’s voice came back. “His eyes are open but they only stare. Dirt covers him and the donkey. They must have been sitting here for days.”

  “He’s a ghost,” the second rider yelled.

  “Leave them,” the dragoman said.

  Sebek said, “No, I don’t like it.”

  At this, Theormi roused enough to look around the rider in front of her. In the lamplight twenty yards ahead, Sebek stood over a man sitting cross-legged on the sand, one arm extended with that hand holding the rope of a donkey standing behind him. Man and donkey hung their heads hung at the same angle.

  Sebek said, “Koket, get that animal moving.”

  Koket crept to the donkey. He placed his hand on the animal’s flank. Instantly it shuddered. Koket jumped back. The donkey’s left front leg lifted stiff from the sand and dropped back, then both its right legs tipped up. The animal swayed. Left, right. A bit farther each time. Finally, too far. A coarse moan wrenched from the animal as its right flank slammed to the dirt, its eyes never opening.

  Dust clouded up around the fallen animal. In the next moment, eyes still shut, its legs jolted, jaw muscles bulged and foam spurted between its clenched teeth. The donkey pitched up its head and hoisted itself, groaning and whining, until it was again upright, retaking its previous standing position. The rope still was wrapped around the man’s fingers. He hadn’t budged.

  Koket said, “Let’s run the hell out of here.”

  But Sebek leapt at the donkey. Ripping the rope from the man, he used it to twist the donkey’s head and force the animal down again. It landed in a hollow thud. The donkey stuck onto the ground this time.

  Sebek hurled the end of the rope at it and bent down to the man’s face to scream, “You just sit, waiting to die? Without the guts to kill yourself? I’ll help you.” Sebek kicked the man in the chest. Echoing the animal’s impact, the man thumped the ground backward in a heap, dust powdering up. His arm remained extended as if, even now, holding the donkey’s rope. Sebek said, “Toss their carcasses out of the way.”

  “They’re not dead.”

  “They’re worse than dead. They gave up.” Sebek spat on the man. “There. There’s all the water your life needs now.” He pointed at the donkey. “Drag that corpse. No instinct to rid itself of such a gutless master, it can die with him.”

  Sebek and Koket lugged the animal from the caravan’s path. They tossed the man across its torso. His legs and arms settled around the donkey in a macabre embrace.

  The two riders remounted, and the caravan started up. Their dust further layered man and animal. Theormi and the riders peered at the gray bodies. Sebek did not. He stared forward.

  Theormi gazed at the campfire, flecks flying up but collapsing into smoke before they could warm the stars glistening like ice above. A guard stood watch behind her. Beside her, Prince Merhet snored in his sleep sitting up and cross-legged. His wife had taken a bed away from her husband. Theormi then saw Foreman Sebek standing just at the limit of the fire’s light and warmth. He was eyeing the mad prince’s garnet ring on his left hand as if appraising it. He stepped up nearer the three.

  “Listen to that one,” the guard said to the foreman, indicating Merhet. “He rattles on all night just like he does all day, every day, about the sun’s crawling like a woman’s flow. Imagine a prince blaspheming God Ra. Must be why they exiled him.”

  Sebek glanced at Theormi. She met his eyes. Since the incident with the man and donkey, Theormi had alerted enough to catch Foreman Sebek’s eyes on her.

  The guard sighed. “His noise saps me as much as this tem country. I don’t know which I want to escape most.”

  “His mouth,” Sebek said. The guard snorted his agreement. “Put yourself down. I’ll take watch.” This time when Sebek caught Theormi’s eye, she hitched her brow.

  “Tu? Thanks, foreman. I’ll just bury my bones on the ground.”

  “Good, go.”

  The guard made off.

  Sebek sat by Theormi. She tugged a blanket around her shoulders and stretched her legs toward the fire. She saw his eyes following the orange firelight dancing along her thighs. The fire cooed like pigeons.

  Theormi steadied her eyes on him. “That episode with the man and his donkey. What did you make of that?”

  “He gave up. He took the beast with him.”

  “It angered you that he gave up.”

  “You think I was angry?”

  “The men congratulated you, like men do, for tearing down some defenseless thing. But that’s not why you did it. You hated that man for surrendering.”

  “Harem women are seers, then?”

  “I don’t need to be.”

  Sebek tilted back to gauge her. “You don’t seem like a harem woman.”

  “Is that what you came here to say?”

  Sebek chucked a dung cake at the fire. “Were you with Khufu—as a harem woman?”

  “I loved him as a woman.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You heard my answer.”

  Sebek scowled. “You think you’re different than harem women?”

  “I’m unique in being the only one Khufu threw out of his country.”

  Sebek smiled. But resenting her eyes’ sparkle in response, he shook it off and glared at the fire.

  Prince Merhet’s eyes popped open. “Can’t sleep? Most likely a heavy heart.” He shut his eyes, little smile drawing a curl in his face.

  Sebek stomped a log in the fire between him and the royal prisoner. Sparks fluttered. “What is it with you two? You’re both from the palace but it’s like you hate each other.”

  Theormi shrugged. “As a prince, he assumed he owned me.”

  “Like his father?”

  “Is that disapproval?”

  “The King must be another madman.”

  “I’m not surprised by your nerve. But you’re wrong. You don’t know Khufu.”

  “I know him by his rat-child, ” Sebek said, nodding at Merhet.

  “Khufu might agree with you about that. He blames himself when his children prove to be something other than the heroes he imagined they would become. Especially this one. Exiling Merhet tortured Khufu.”

  “He couldn’t believe this one could be a hero. Khufu deserves torture.”

  “Are you referring to your time in the goldmines?”

  “Who else did Khufu imagine about?”

  “Do you mean me?”

  Sebek didn’t react.

  “He imagined me a queen.”

  Sebek hissed.

  Theormi smiled. She propped herself on her elbows behind her, scanning at the stars dispersed across the sky and wondering whether Khufu was looking at them. “A God-king must be perfect to muster the magic that raises the Nile each year. Life doesn’t encourage perfection. People disappoint. Khufu exiled me to protect me, but perhaps also—at least partly—to ward off the disappointment of someday discovering I wasn’t perfect.”

  Sebek scanned her head to toe. “How could you be with them?”

  “You believe I’m above that sort of thing? You shock me with a compliment.”

  Sebek jerked away.

  Theormi picked out Sba amenti. “To be precise, I was with Khufu, not his family.”

  M
erhet chose this moment to again strike open his eyes, wide as a lunatic’s. “You two are so sweet together. Will you rut now?”

  Sebek barked, “Crawl back into your cave.”

  “Be mindful, peasant. Remember me. I bring death. I can kill a prince.”

  Theormi said to the prince, “You swung a knife. Easily accomplished by anyone. A madman, for example.”

  “Beware of me. I am Prince of Shadow.” Merhet angled his face toward the sky and screeched like a jackal. Several men moaned in their sleep. The prince grimaced. “Voices, voices.” His eyes shut. He resumed his stoniness.

  Foreman Sebek edged closer to Theormi. “I’d gag him if the dragoman’d let me.”

  She thought that Sebek lingered near her to breathe her fragrance.

  He pulled away. “He thinks he’s noble. Spit.”

  “You don’t respect much, do you, foreman? Respect seldom given must be prized to receive; is that your philosophy? What do you think of me?”

  “You’re a whore.”

  Theormi didn’t flinch. She expected the foreman meant only to display his strength to her. She’d seen men do this so many times before.

  Sebek added, “I never would have thought of you at all.”

  “Oh?”

  Sebek squared back to the fire as if focusing himself by it. An ember flamed into the air before crumbling away.

  At the next sunfall, cold pouncing on the caravan like hawks, Sebek willed himself to consider something other than Theormi’s hips rocking before him. Throughout another long day, hour after hour, her movement had swayed dreamful and demanding. He was not in control. As the caravan closed on a pass in the gray mountain range where he’d come upon Khufu two months earlier, he finally found something to rescue him—suspicion.

  Silence was Sebek’s first warning. No sound of bird or insect. He squinted at the canyon walls awaiting them. About a mile ahead, they narrowed to a pass that would require the caravan to funnel into single file. He assured himself that his lack of sleep wasn’t affecting his perception of danger.

  With knees and hands, Foreman Sebek erected himself higher on his animal. “Halt!”

  Everyone in the caravan complied except for the dragoman at the lead. He pulled back his donkey’s reins a few feet ahead. “What’s this?”

  “Sir,” said Sebek, kicking his donkey past Theormi and the others to the ruffled leader, “this pass is wrong.”

  The dragoman gazed along the cliffs. “Nothing but rock.” He looked at his foreman but Sebek firmed his jaw and stared back. The dragoman paused. “What would you do?”

  Sebek called for Koket. “Lead ten men up the pass. Whistle when you get through.”

  Koket eyed the dragoman, questioning. The dragoman dipped his long head. Koket ambled out with his men and donkeys. The donkeys’ clopping quieted until the pass devoured it, and silence once more shrouded the caravan.

  Nobody made a sound. Except Merhet. He hummed.

  Koket’s whistle rang back across the rock. The dragoman and the now thirty riders prepared their mounts. Sebek, head cocked, stared at the pass. Darkness began to harden around them. “Topel. Twenty riders. When you get halfway, send ten back, and take the others through.” More quizzical expressions went unanswered.

  The twenty proceeded. Sebek turned to the dragoman and the remaining ten riders behind him. “Be ready to gallop when I signal.”

  The dragoman gazed while Prince Merhet quivered like papyrus in unsteady breezes.

  When Topel’s ten returned, Sebek listened still. “Tu,” he said at last, starting these last twenty. He set a brisk pace, the dragoman guarding the rear.

  In the pass, rocky cliffs rising thirty feet above them, the donkey’s hooves on the rocky ground struck stark echoes. Wind trapped in the pass swirled tiny dust tornadoes that shimmered in the lamplight. The twenty advanced into the pass’s depth, its rock high above their heads. The whole of Sebek’s body strained to hear something. Something he expected. He leaned over his donkey’s head. He looked behind him. Where was it? What was it?

  Quick as panic—men screamed and hooves boomed. Fifty shrieking nomads set on them.

  “Ambush!”

  “Fly, fly,” Sebek shouted. The Egyptians kicked their donkeys. Howls and cries.

  Each Egyptian cursed the rider before him to ride faster.

  Sebek hollered over the din, “Head on.”

  The shrieks and hooves stormed closer.

  “Harder.”

  The donkeys ran at full speed.

  The Egyptians reached the pass’ end where Koket with his twenty men battled hand-to-hand with a second squad of nomads. The nomads’ two squads clamped the caravan between them.

  Sebek risked a glance back. Nomads overtook Egyptian riders at the rear. Spears flew. Riders fell. The dragoman rode back there. Slanted forward, Sebek cried, “Fly, fly.” His mind raced to find escape. Cliffs pinched in on both sides. Forward was the only chance.

  As Sebek’s group rushed ahead, nomads broke through Koket’s line. Sebek pulled out his club from his side basket. “Don’t stop. Right through. Right through.” Only one way would get them out of this. Directly into the fray ahead, Sebek aimed his men, those still alive. The nomads who had broken through drew up on their mounts, but before they could fight back, Sebek’s group swept through them. Clubbing one nomad to the ground while the other nomads regained control of their animals, Sebek yelled at Koket, “Follow me.” Koket’s group kicked their donkeys. They chased after Sebek. The nomads in front of them reacted in time only to join their mates clipping at Sebek’s group.

  The Egyptians’ donkeys bellowed with fatigue. They bashed against one another, the pass widening enough for three to run side by side. Sebek heard more death cries behind. The caravan cleared the pass. He had to get the caravan off the main trail. He saw and pointed to a path on the left that led to a sharp rise. “There. Keep on.” If from the top they spun and raced down on the nomads, they’d have a chance. The Egyptians lashed their animals. Donkeys squealed, exhausted, slipping on the rocky ground. “Keep their heads up.”

  At the rise’s peak, Sebek pivoted his donkey. “Follow. Go, go.” The caravan chased Sebek’s path up and around the rise. He sucked air from his stomach to scream his defiance. His scream ignited the men, each whooping with him. At full speed, he hurtled down the rise. Egyptians were the attackers now.

  But the nomads had vanished.

  Where he expected surprised nomads, Sebek saw nothing but scrub brush. The nomads hadn’t followed. They’d guessed Sebek’s tactic and peeled off.

  The Egyptians yanked their animals to awkward stops, donkeys braying their irritation. Riders cheered. They assumed they’d driven off the nomads.

  “Shut up,” Sebek ordered. He listened. He knew the nomads were near, waiting. His stomach tightened.

  “The dragoman’s not with us,” a rider said.

  “He got it,” said another. “In the pass.”

  “And maybe ten others.”

  The thirty surviving riders looked to Foreman Sebek, he who escaped the goldmines. They were Sebek’s responsibility now.

  He ordered them to their bellies in the bowl-like area inside the rise. It afforded some defense. He brought Theormi as well as Merhet and Pebatma beside him. The prince, mumbling, lay on his back, arms crossed on his chest like a mummy. His wife sobbed.

  The riders flattened on the rise’s slope, holding the rein of their donkeys standing behind them and trying to calm their breathing. Some sneezed or coughed with the dust in their nostrils and throats. Sebek told them to muzzle themselves and focus on the surrounding rim of the rise. “If we’re ready, we’ll equal any attack.”

  Theormi whispered, “When will they return?”

  Not removing his eyes from the sandy hill above them, Sebek said, “I’m counting on soon.”

  “Why soon?”

  “Because we can’t sleep.”

  Theormi gulped.

  “You can. Sleep, I mean.” Sebek
adjusted himself for a better view of the rise’s ridge.

  “Why did you expect an ambush?”

  Eyes scanning her, the foreman didn’t mention the pulsing of her hips. “That pass was perfect for an ambush. Wait ‘til we’re in it, trap from both ends. That’d be my plan.”

  “By sending various groups through,” said Theormi, “you prevented the nomads from trapping us.”

  Sebek looked at her. She had a quick mind. A king’s woman. He turned away, not wishing to linger on her eyes or for her eyes to probe his. “What I wonder is how they knew we were coming.”

  “You think their ambush indicates they knew?”

  Sebek nodded. “Anyway, stay close. I’m tethered to the mad boy.”

  “No respect for a prince, but at least you respect an enemy.” Theormi hesitated as if thinking. “The Hituptah priests. It must be them.”

  Sebek swiveled to her.

  She said, “The priests constantly pursued Khufu. They tried to poison him in the Per-O.”

  “Are they rich enough to direct nomads this far away?”

  “They’re the only ones who are strong enough. They also attacked Khufu in the delta. They hired these nomads. I’m sure of it.”

  Sebek settled back. “Impressive.”

  Even before Merhet and Theormi had left the palace, Khufu secluded himself in his suite. He believed he couldn’t bear a single vibration from the caravan’s donkeys. After the caravan’s departure, he shuttered his windows against the passing of day or night and propped his bed, tables and chairs against the wall so nothing obstructed his pacing in circles around the stone pond like a caged lion glaring into shadows on every side shed by a single lamp. He couldn’t stop the hammering into his bones of Merhet’s and Theormi’s steps receding into distant sands where he had cast them. To escape their steps, Khufu again and again threw himself to his knees on the floor’s tiles. Immobile and gasping for breath like a fish out of water, he bolted up and resumed pacing. He must do something; there was nothing to do. His son was gone and his lover could not comfort him; his lover was gone and his son could not comfort him. After the few bare minutes in which he managed to sleep, he woke in constant night, spine frozen to the floor, sweat reeking, and mind racing with nightmares of sandstorms. He resumed pacing.

  I have no connections now. Not to children. Not to queens. No one. “No one can touch me. I’ve separated from mortals.”

  Through the dark, Chamberlain Ramose announced Prince Hordedef. During these days, Khufu admitted only his second son.

  After kissing the earth, the prince said, “Senbeb, Sire, please dine with family tonight. I worry for you.”

  “So you have all your life. You needn’t now.”

  “Sir?”

  Khufu lifted heavy eyes. “I need nothing save peace.”

  “Yes, Father. Don’t you wish to come join family?”

  “Join your mother? She is a demon. See what she’s done. That soulless husk. Enemies, enemies.” Khufu shook his head. “You bled for me. Hordedef. I am a horrid father.”

  “No, Father, no. I’m well. I am proud that you are my father. I wish peace for you. Let it begin with family.”

  Khufu looked about the chamber’s shadows. He stepped across the tiles and again felt the footsteps of his two loves. He halted so the vibrations could cool. Then he stalked on.

  “Father, please.”

  “I exist.” Khufu punched his right arm down at his side with each word. “I continue as much as any god.”

  “Yes, Father. Yes.”

  “Hordedef, when I sleep in the sarcophagus, I will sleep in the peace of gods.”

  “Come out of your rooms, Father. Enjoy the garden with me.”

  “Enemies invade me but my luscious realm seduces them. I satisfy them in my flesh. They gain what they originally sought—to be part of me. Their bones become mine to erect my pyramid. We will build. That’s what I do. I hate this inaction. Avert me from oblivion.” The God-king pounded his chest. “I’m free. I am the god on earth. It is time to strike out. Hordedef, we will go to the gold mines of the Wawat.”

  “Father!”

  “This will regain my sanity. Forward motion again. Time is new. Enough of shielding me from my kingdom. Enough of this cage.”

  “This will end peace.”

  Leaving Hordedef behind, the God-king rushed out of his dark suite and through the corridor, waving his arms and striking his feet down. “Wake up, wake up. The day is bright.” Panicked staff hustled in the corridors. “Wake up. The Gods assign our work. Conscript an army. Awake, awake. A new day. Everyone awake.” Khufu headed for the front courtyard, his guards now catching up. When he burst through the exit doors and into the court, his heart rapped in his chest.

  Down the starlit sky a crescent moon was falling.

  Part 3

  DROUGHT SEASON