The Twice Born (25 page)

He had just finished his letter to Khenti-kheti’s priest on the following evening, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his cell with the lamp beside him and Thothmes on his cot, rattling the pieces of the sennet game they were about to play, when a servant Huy had not seen before entered and beckoned him with a peremptory wave. Huy had time to recognize the hawk tattoo on the man’s upper arm before scrambling to follow him into the early evening twilight. This was a servitor to the priests of Ra, and Huy’s surmise was borne out as the arrogant figure quickly left the premises of the school and entered the priests’ quarters, a place where Huy had not been since the day when, fleeing from Pabast, he had found himself in the presence of the Ished Tree. “Are you sure you have summoned the correct student?” he called uncertainly to the straight back, his mind briefly full of the confusion of that time. He was not answered. The man turned into the corridor lined with priests’ cells, now quiet, strode past them all, and halted before double doors Huy remembered only too well. Knocking, he turned, gave Huy an unexpectedly warm smile, and disappeared the way they had come.

“Enter.” The voice was muffled but recognizable. Swallowing, Huy pushed open one of the thick wooden doors and walked into the High Priest’s rooms.

Two people glanced up at him. One was the High Priest himself, sitting behind a table littered with scrolls. The other was the Rekhet. With an exclamation of pleasure Huy bowed profoundly to the bright eyes, the wizened fingers folded on the ornate wand lying across her white-clad thighs. She nodded briefly in return, the cowrie shells tied into her grey braids clacking gently. Repeating his bow, this time to the High Priest, Huy stood and waited. “You may bring forward that stool and sit, Huy,” the High Priest said. “I have been listening to a strange and compelling story about you, and before I proceed I would like to hear it told to me again, this time from your own mouth.” Huy did not need to ask what story. Anxiously he met the Rekhet’s eye.

“It’s all right, Huy,” Henenu said. “The High Priest and I are not only old friends, we also work together in the service of the gods. I have told him everything, and Methen has added his words to mine in a letter. Don’t be afraid.” She lifted the wand and placed it deliberately on the floor. “I need no protection from you nor you from me.”

“I’m not afraid, Rekhet,” he answered, and found that it was the truth. Dragging forward the stool, he lowered himself onto it and raised his eyes to the aristocratic face across from him. The High Priest waited impassively, his ringed fingers relaxed on the table before him. “You must have already known of the accident that befell me on the verge of the lake in front of the temple, Master,” Huy began, and continued to recount the events whose details were as vivid in that gracious, dimly lit cell as if they had just occurred. The High Priest’s gaze did not waver, showing neither shock nor surprise as Huy stumbled over his horrific waking in the House of the Dead and his rescue in Methen’s arms. It was the only moment he faltered in the telling, and when at last he fell silent the air seemed to hold the echo of his voice. Then the High Priest pushed a jug of water towards him. Huy rose, drank thirstily, and resumed his seat.

“If you touch me, you will know my fate?” the man said quietly at last.

“Yes, Master.”

“Will you do so?”

Huy cringed. Both pairs of eyes, so similar in their knowledge, so appraising, were fixed on him steadily. He shook his head. “No. Forgive me, Master, but … no.”

“You have done so for others,” the High Priest pressed. “Why not for me?”

“I have only acceded to one such request, from my friend Thothmes,” Huy replied, dry-mouthed in spite of the water he had drunk. “The other times it just happened. It was … it was sad and draining and somehow wrong, and I will not repeat it except from choice.”

“So you have no control over the gift?”

“No. That is, yes,” Huy floundered, “that is … I think I may be able to make it my servant, but not yet.”

“You are still afraid of it.” The voice was Henenu’s.

Huy turned to her. “Afraid, yes. Because I never know when it will strike me. Because it is doing things to me, changing me in my soul, perhaps even in my ka, my ba, my shadow. Everything I look at seems different from the way it was before … before …”

“Before you died.” The High Priest spoke calmly. “Without the witness of so many people, including the servants in the House of the Dead at Hut-herib, I would not only doubt the account, I would attribute it to an evil and blasphemous young man who craved an ignominious notoriety. But the fact of your death is too well attested. As for the rest, I trust the testimony of this woman”—he indicated Henenu—“in her capacity as the most famous Rekhet in Egypt. Her gift lies in the discerning and control of demons and spirits. According to her, you are possessed by neither. It remains to be seen whether the gift that has possessed you speaks truth.” His gaze narrowed. “You were right to refuse my request. The faculty that has been given to you must not be used lightly or frivolously.”

“But why me?” Huy burst out. “Master, I do not want this faculty! I ask only to be allowed to finish my schooling in peace and become a good scribe!”

The Rekhet leaned forward and placed a hand on his stiff shoulder. “Stop fretting, Huy,” she soothed him. “The reason why will become apparent in time. Until then we also want you to finish your schooling. The gift is raw in you. It must mature. So must you, in ways that are acceptable to the gods. It is our duty, mine and Ramose’s, to help you learn not only the skills your teacher wishes to instill in you, but also the ways in which you may govern the emotions the gods do not trust. Anger. Envy. Lust for power. The things that will blunt and pervert the ability to See.” She patted him and withdrew. “The gift must not control you. It must become your servant.”

“The Overseer’s report on your academic progress is excellent,” the High Priest put in, holding up a sheaf of papyrus. “You learn quickly and retain what you learn. Your hand is neat and sure. You are swimming again. That took courage.” The coldly unapproachable features broke into a smile. “I am putting you under the care of the architect, who will teach you the rudiments of his craft. You will continue at the bow. And every day you will come here. What was the choice Osiris Imhotep placed before you under the Ished Tree?”

Huy felt a strong reluctance to say the words again, as though the more he repeated them the tighter his decision would hold him. “He asked me if I wished to read the Book of Thoth,” he half whispered.

“And you did so wish.”

I am not being given a chance to retract anything
, Huy thought dismally.
The High Priest is simply testing the particulars of my encounter
. He nodded.

“Very well,” Ramose went on crisply. “The gods have willed that such knowledge be shared with you, a most rare and extraordinary opportunity for someone so young and untried. Half of the Book of Thoth is here. It is kept hidden in the Holiest of Holiest within the temple. The other half lies safely in Thoth’s temple at Khmun. The succeeding High Priests of each temple are responsible for the safety of the portions of the sacred Book in their keeping.”

“So it really exists?” Huy was more shocked than amazed. Despite his utterly futile efforts to relegate the Tree, the Judgment Hall, even the faces of the gods themselves, to the realm of indistinct memory, to pick up the threads of a normal school life, he had continued to hope secretly that it had all been some great cosmic mistake on the part of Ma’at and the Book was nothing but legend. Yet here, in this warm, shadowed room, its existence was being confirmed in quite ordinary language.

The High Priest’s lips twisted in a thin smile. “You doubted. Or rather,” he added with shrewd perception, “you found comfort in doubting. Indeed it exists, and you will begin to study it. I will decide later whether or not I will allow you to open the other half. As far as I know, the only man who acquired full mastery over its mysteries was the mighty Imhotep himself, which was probably why he was chosen to speak to you. And I should warn you”—he hesitated—“the Book is a maze, and it is said that any man who is able to decipher it and reach the heart of its mysteries will know the nature and mind of Atum himself.” He paused, running a hand along his jaw. Half stupefied, Huy watched the lamplight glint briefly upon one ring after another until the long fingers passed across the mouth and came to rest on the table once more. “And that, my young Huy, means instant madness.”

“But the great Imhotep did not go insane,” Huy croaked. “He was deified. He became a god.”

“Indeed.” The High Priest rose. “Which will it be for you? I wonder. Madness or deification? I will leave you to spend a few moments with the Rekhet, then off to your cell and a good night’s sleep.” Gathering his linens around him, he stalked towards a small door barely visible in the uncertain light, but on reaching it he swung back. “I have refused Methen’s offer to assist in the support of your education. This temple will bear the cost itself. Methen is a true friend to you and you would do well to listen carefully to his advice. It will be most cogent for a chosen one. I will send for you.” Then he was gone, the door closing gently behind him.

Huy looked at Henenu. “‘A chosen one’?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You, of course. Do you think that the gods make a habit of carelessly scattering their gifts over the youth of Egypt like indiscriminate farmers sowing seed? Abandon false modesty, Huy. It does not suit you.” Her tone was sharp.

“It is not modesty, Rekhet,” Huy blurted. “It comes from a sense of unreality. Somehow I must learn to accept this foreign thing lodged like a … an unwanted parasite inside me.”

“Lodged inside you? A parasite?” She cocked one bright eye at him. “Dear Huy, this ‘foreign thing,’ as you so blasphemously describe it, is more a part of you now than the blood in your veins, more real than anything you may see or hear or feel for the rest of your life.” She leaned urgently towards him. “You must begin to understand it, to welcome it, become familiar with its purpose. If you continue to struggle against it, it will destroy you.” Bringing up a linen bag from the shadows beside her chair, she undid the drawstring. “I have made two amulets for you. The Soul Amulet protects you from any permanent separation of spirit and body until the proper time for your Beautification. The Frog is the symbol of resurrection. You need nothing else.”

Reverently Huy received the bundle she dropped into his palm, then he cried out, “Rekhet, they are made of gold! Inlaid with red jasper! And the frog—”

She laughed aloud with delight. “I inlaid the kerer’s eyes with lapis lazuli. Did you not tell me that as you walked across the temple concourse after leaving the lake your hair ornament turned from a wooden frog into one of gold with lapis eyes? It is fitting.”

Huy turned the lovely images over and over. The human head of the Soul Amulet with its sleek hawk body smiled knowingly up at him. Finally he placed both rings on the fingers of his left hand.

“You need not worry about the cost,” Henenu went on briskly. “I am a wealthy old woman. The High Priest is my brother as well as my friend, and our blood is noble. Not that it matters to me. Like him, like you, I care only to serve the gods. If you want to repay me, you can prophesy on behalf of any patron I send you, but later—later. When you have learned discretion.” She stooped, retrieved her wand, and got up. Stepping to him, she laid a hand gently on his cheek. “I am a simple woman, and concern myself with my own simple gift,” she said softly. “The matter of the Book of Thoth is too high for me. Yet my task is your protection. I add my warning to that of Ramose. Be no man’s toy—not his, not mine, not even Pharaoh’s. Many will try to manipulate the gift, use it for their own ends, and sometimes it will seem to you that the ends are benign, but your ultimate Mistress is Ma’at and your Master Thoth. Run along to your couch now. Remember my words.”

“Rekhet,” Huy said clearly, “you have a boil about to appear at the base of your spine. Mix one ro of oil of mandrake root with two ro of palm wine. Anoint the place each day for seven days, then apply a salve of myrrh and honey. You will be cured.”

There was a moment of stunned silence, then Henenu blew out her breath and nodded. “That’s why I’ve been feeling a stiffness. So the gift has revealed another dimension! Thank you, Huy.” Huy had felt nothing but the grip of a dull fatalism as the knowledge, clear and unequivocal, poured from her fingers and the remedy was forced out of his mouth. Bowing politely to her, he hurried from the room.

His cell was dark as he wearily entered it, but Thothmes stirred. “Oh, the lamp has gone out,” he said sleepily. “Sorry, Huy. Where have you been?”

Pulling off his kilt and loincloth and dropping them on the floor, Huy climbed gratefully between his sheets. “In the quarters of the High Priest. It seems that my education is to be fully provided by the temple.”

“Good! That saves me from threatening to put a spell on Father if he doesn’t step in to help you! Not that I would need to. Father has already discussed the matter with Mother and his treasurer.” There was a pause. Huy’s grip closed about the two amulets. “Is it because of your gift, Huy?”

“Yes.” Huy’s jaw was clenched. “I am to study the Book of Thoth under the High Priest’s direction.”

Thothmes whistled. “So it exists! Just as Imhotep spoke of it when you met him! It’s here at Iunu?”

“Yes. Half of it.” Huy peered across at his friend. Little more than Thothmes’ eyes could be seen, glinting in the weak starlight filtering through the open doorway. “Thothmes, promise me that you will always love me, no matter what fate the gods have decreed for each of us!” he said in a low voice, unable to hide a spasm of panic. “Promise me!”

“I have already promised,” Thothmes hissed back. “Now go to sleep. Between a delicious three days at home, you and I on the river and eating until we burst, there’s another week of slavery. Good night.”

Huy murmured a reply, the fingers of his right hand still tight around the amulets, conscious of an aura of peaceful security emanating from their already familiar contours. But it seemed to him that the gods were watching him, their unblinking gaze fixed on him alone. The Chosen One.
Your choice was free, Great Atum, unclouded by the fog of any human frailty
, he thought bitterly.
But I was a boy cast like a pebble from a slingshot into a world of magic and mystery I could not hope to understand. My choice was innocent but flawed
. The comfort of the amulets notwithstanding, he felt exposed and very vulnerable. He could not sleep.