Scroll Of Saqqara Part 29

"So I am not forgiven," Khaemwaset said dully. "It has been over twenty years since I gave myself into the hands of Set on that dreadful day. Twenty years, and Sheritra still drifts about the house like a quiet, timid ghost. Nubnofret moves amid a panopoly of royal duties so rigid and complex that I cannot pierce it. She has forgiven but she cannot forget. Every summer at the Beautiful Feast of the Valley the three of us make offerings at Hori's tomb and say the prayers for the dead, but even that sad ritual does not unite us." A wave of dizziness made him close his eyes, and when he opened them again Thoth had not stirred. He seemed to be waiting. "As for myself," Khaemwaset went on in a harsh whisper, "for years I have been Set's champion. I have poured gold into his treasuries. I have bowed before him every day in adoration. I have given him the dark sacrifices he most desires. His presence has been in my food, my nostrils, the folds of my linen, like the taste and odour of some rotting beast lying undiscovered within my walls. Yet I have not complained. My wors.h.i.+p has been unstinting. Every day I asked myself, Is the debt discharged? And every day I would know in my heart that it was not." He looked across at the calm face of the G.o.d. "Is such a debt ever discharged?"

An expression of mild disappointment flitted across Thoth's ibis face. "Are you asking me if you are forgiven for calling upon Set, or for stealing the Scroll, or for wreaking such a terrible vengeance on the magician Prince and his family?" he asked.

"For all of them!" Khaemwaset almost shouted, the effort sending spasms of fiery pain through his lungs. "I called upon Set because you had betrayed me. I stole the Scroll out of a little greed and a monstrous ignorance for which, surely, I am not responsible! And my vengeance ... my vengeance ..." He struggled up. "Of what use was my vengeance when the l.u.s.t for her has never died? When every night, though I know she has vanished from this world and the next as though she had never been born, I sweat and groan and cannot sleep for wanting the feel of her skin under my fingers, the touch of her hair brus.h.i.+ng my face, the sound of her laughter as she turns towards me? That is your vengeance, O G.o.d of Wisdom! I hate you!" He was afraid, yet full of fury. "All my life I wors.h.i.+pped and served you, and you rewarded me by tearing apart my life and the lives of those who were dear to me. I did what had to be done, and I am not ashamed!"

"You speak of the discharging of debts," Thoth replied, seemingly unperturbed. "My debt to you for your service, your debt to Set for ridding you of the curse I laid upon you. Yet I see that you are still proud, Prince Khaemwaset, still unrepentant. For under all these things lies a greater sin, your sin, and after all these years of suffering you still can neither see it nor be humbled by it. Hori was sacrificed to it. Ahura, her husband and her son were p.a.w.ns to it." He leaned over Khaemwaset and, in spite of himself, Khaemwaset felt a thrill of terror. "If you can name it, magician, even now, you might be forgiven."

The G.o.d drew back. Khaemwaset concentrated on his breathing. Pull the air in, hold it, let it out, while all the time the baboons snuffled and fidgeted in the dimness, and Khaemwaset searched frantically for the answer Thoth expected. What sin? What sin? I have served, he thought resentfully. I have suffered. What else can be expected of me? "I cannot name it," he said at last, "for I do not believe that it exists. I have fulfilled that which the G.o.ds exact, and I have tried to do right in their sight. What more could be asked?"

Thoth nodded, his long beak moving thoughtfully over Khaemwaset's face, and behind him the baboons chittered in a sudden flurry of discontent before subsiding into la.s.situde. "Debts and owing, services rendered and spells to compel," the G.o.d said softly. "None of them touches the vast dark lake of spiritual pride lying undisturbed in the essence of your being. Duty has not touched it. Your suffering has not put a ripple on its surface. You still believe that as long as you discharge your spiritual obligations there should be a reward, whether of the cancelling of a debt or the cessation of a suffering you still regard as unjust. You have learned nothing but resentment over the years, Prince."

There was a silence. Khaemwaset, still angry, stared into the darkness. Then the G.o.d stirred. "Tell me, Khaemwaset," he said conversationally, "if I gave you a chance to undo all the havoc you have caused, to change your memories, to wipe those things that happened from your past, would you take it? Think carefully. Will you learn the lesson, or erase it away?"

Khaemwaset stared at him, The G.o.d stood patiently, his white cresting feathers quivering in the night air, his tiny black eyes alert, yet full of an odd humour. The offer was not as guileless as it seemed, Khaemwaset knew. There was something else, something pitiless, in Thoth's steady gaze. He is laughing at me, Khaemwaset thought in despair. There is something here that I ought to be able to see, something that would save me, but I do not know what it is. "This is another torment," he retorted after a while. "You are trapping me yet again." But he lay back and closed his eyes. To go back ... to undo that moment when he held the knife poised over the Scroll sewn to that anonymous, dead hand. To obliterate his memories and reform them so that Hori was now a mighty prince, married, fulfilled, enjoying his rightful place under a Ramses who grew older but did not die, so that Sheritra had found a man who would love her and appreciate her unique qualities, so that he and Nubnofret might grow old together in mutual respect ... His chest began to tighten again and he nodded. "I will hear," he said.

He opened his eyes, and now Thoth was holding the Scroll, the curse, the evil thing that had lain all these long years in his chest, untouched.

"I will give you strength for one hour," the G.o.d said. "Take the Scroll, Khaemwaset, to the time when your younger self was in Pi-Ramses, at dinner in Pharaoh's great hall, talking to your friend Wennufer. You remember that, don't you? Take it back, and see what happens. I will wait for you. There is no time in the Judgment Hall."

Khaemwaset took the Scroll. It was the first time in more than twenty years that he had handled it, but it felt familiar, familiar and terrible. The memories came flooding back, of Tbubui, his l.u.s.t, his blindness, the disintegration of his integrity. "I am not strong enough," he whispered. "My body ..." But all at once he heard the drunken shouts, the singing, the clash of music over the pandemonium in the great feasting hall at Pi-Ramses, and his nostrils were filled with the reek of wine, of hot bodies, of mountainous banks of flowers. It was all far away and faint, but as he concentrated on it, clutching at its vitality in his last extremity, it rapidly grew louder, more immediate, and all at once he found himself standing just inside one of the doors of the hall, the Scroll tucked into the belt of his kilt. One hour, the G.o.d had said.

Anxiously he scanned the naked, weaving dancers, the laughing revellers, the servants threading their way through the crowds with trays of steaming food held high. Where am I? he thought Where was I? What was I doing? All at once he spotted Wennufer by the far entrance, his slightly pompous face solemn. He was talking earnestly to a well-built, tall, handsome man with an arrogant, dark face, heavily painted and sparkling with jewels. Is that me? he thought, amazed. Was I ever that commanding of presence, that good-looking?

He began to make his way across the room. No one seemed to notice him, though he knew he was clad in nothing but his kilt and the belt. Before long he was standing beside this perfumed, dark stranger. And in that moment, when the man held out his cup negligently for a slave to fill it, and Khaemwaset touched his arm, he knew the trap the G.o.d had laid for him, knew it and was horrified, but his younger self was already turning and it was too late.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

The verses at the beginning of each chapter are taken variously from Margaret Murray's Egyptian Religious Poetry Egyptian Religious Poetry (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980) and (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980) and Life Under the Pharaohs Life Under the Pharaohs by Leonard Cottrell (London: Pan Books, 1955). by Leonard Cottrell (London: Pan Books, 1955).

ALSO BY PAULINE GEDGE.

Child of the Morning

The Eagle and the Raven

Stargate

The Twelfth Transforming

The Covenant

House of Dreams

House of Illusions

The Hippopotamus Marsh:

Lords of the Two Lands, Volume One

The Oasis: Lords of the Two Lands, Volume Two

The Horus Road: Lords of the Two Lands, Volume Three

The Twice Born