Six days later, at dawn, Meren drove his chariot up a side valley of the royal wadi outside the heretic's city of the sun disk, called Horizon of Aten. Charioteers, priests, and guards followed him at a trot, their faces contorted more from fear than from exertion. Meren stopped at the entrance to Akhenaten's tomb, a hole guarded by four men who stood gawking while he threw his reins at a puffing priest.
He didn't expect to see anything, but he strode past the sentries anyway and down a series of steps, into darkness. The chief mortuary priest followed him inside, fumbling with a lamp. Meren waited, his whip slapping against his thigh as the man lit the wick. Then he turned and resumed his descent.
After a few steps, he came up against the blank face of a wall over which plaster had been smeared. The seal impressions of the necropolis. Tracing the impressions of a recumbent jackal over nine captives, and the cartouche of Akhenaten. None had been broken. The impressions were as clear as the day he'd watched them being pressed into the wet plaster.
"You-you see, lord," said the mortuary priest. "Untouched. I am most diligent, er…"
Without a word, Meren turned and ascended the steps. The entrance to Akhenaten's tomb faced east and the rising sun, his god. Meren blinked as he emerged from the tomb and surveyed the valley and the surrounding hills. Pharaoh's tomb lay at the end of a long passage that descended into the hillside. A foot track led up the side of the hill.
His appearance was greeted with a sudden silence from the men who waited outside. Abu separated himself from a group of anxious priests as Meren went to his team of horses.
No one spoke until Abu asked, "All is well, lord?"
Meren whispered to his mare and let her nuzzle his cheek. "The seals are unbroken, but that means nothing. We'll see what's behind the hill." His ka knew he was too late.
Leaving the chariots, Meren and his men scaled the slopes above the tomb until they came out of the wadi. Stones clattered down the side of a hill as their feet slipped on the uneven surface. Meren looked across the expanse of rock and scrub-deserted, lifeless, with no sign of robbers or of excavation. Behind him the sun was climbing rapidly as charioteers spread out in a line to either side of him and surveyed the expanse of wasteland that stretched to the horizon.
Meren shook his head. "We may have to open the tomb."
"Open-lord, are you certain?" Abu asked.
Glancing at his aide, Meren heard him mutter a charm against demons and desert monsters. He returned to his survey of the desert.
"Do you think I want to do it? I tell you I've seen that sandal-"
He stopped as he noticed a shadow, a long one that seemed to grow from behind an irregularity in the desert floor. He started walking, then picked up speed until he was running.
"Lord, wait!"
Abu pounded after him, as did his men. He raced around a large rock and came to a halt. Abu careened to a stop beside him. They both stared down at the shadow, thrown by a wide, almost flat stone that wasn't large enough to hide the hole underneath completely. Meren held up his hand as several men crowded around him, and they stepped back. He examined the ground around the hole, but there wasn't enough dirt to take footprints.
"Move it," Meren said.
Abu and two other men shoved the stone aside to reveal a shaft. It descended at an angle, east, in the direction of the tomb. Meren looked from Abu to the other charioteers who stood around the entrance, taking in their set, taut features. Then he glanced past them to find several mortuary priests stumbling toward them.
"Have you found something, lord?" panted the chief priest.
The charioteers stepped aside to reveal the shaft.
The priest shrieked, while a cry went up among his assistants.
"Silence!" Meren bellowed. He had never seen a priest quiver like a startled hound. "You," he said to the chief priest, "find one of your staff who's slim enough to fit into this shaft and send him in. Also send to the temple for laborers. The tomb will have to be opened."
The priest stared at him, jaw set adrift by horror.
"Don't gape at me. Obey!"
While priests scrambled back to the royal valley, Meren nodded in their direction and spoke to Abu.
"I'm going to leave men here to make sure none of them flees. This tunnel couldn't have been dug without some in the mortuary temple collaborating, especially guards. Before we leave, we'll bring the chariots around and search to the west, but we're going to have a difficult time finding looters."
"Why, lord?"
Meren gazed down into the dark shaft. "Because I suspect Ahiram sent most of what was stolen out of Egypt when he began to lose his courage weeks ago. And because some of them are already dead. Someone killed them a few days ago near the Red Sea road before I could find them and question them. And now I'm left wondering why a prince like Ahiram would rob the grave of a king."
Over a fortnight after he left, Meren walked into the reception hall of his house in Thebes. He was so weary that he hardly noticed when the porter took his chariot whip. In the half-light cast by alabaster lamps he could see Kysen coming toward him. Behind him he heard Abu murmuring instructions to servants. He leaned on a slim column and pressed his forehead to it.
"Father?"
He straightened and smiled at Kysen. "A long journey. I passed Baht and couldn't even stop to see your sisters."
Kysen studied his face, then dismissed the servants. Abu vanished without being told, and Meren followed his son through the house and out onto the loggia that overlooked the pleasure pool. Moonlight cast a spray of silver across the water. He sank onto a couch with a sigh while Kysen poured a cup of wine and handed it to him. His eyes felt as dry as the floor of a desert valley.
"You look like fiends of the netherworld have been feasting on your ka," Kysen said as he dropped to a cushion on the floor beside the couch.
"I think they may have."
"What's wrong?"
"I found Ahiram. He's dead."
He told the story of finding Ahiram and the royal sandal.
"So you went to the tomb."
Meren didn't answer at once. A maid appeared with a tray of food, but he waved her away, and they were left alone. Someone's pet baboon screeched, and he heard a heron's call as it flew overhead toward the river. Meren lifted his cup and drank until it was empty before he continued.
"Akhenaten's tomb has been desecrated." He didn't want to go on.
Kysen swore under his breath and then swallowed. "By Ahiram?" He made a sign against evil.
Meren could hear the startled disbelief in Kysen's voice.
"Ahiram," he said. "The looting must have taken place weeks ago, because he was wearing the king's sandals. No doubt he had his men bring some of the riches to him in Thebes where he could make use of them. But we found none of it at his house, which makes me think he's hidden it somewhere. He'd hired mercenaries and bribed a few guards and priests. I left some of my men in charge at Horizon of Aten until pharaoh can send a commission there, and soldiers to search for the looters and their spoils."
"But why? Why would he do such a thing?"
Meren rubbed his face and sighed. "I've been thinking about that. You know Akhenaten refused to help Ahiram's father when he was being attacked by those rebels in the pay of the Hittites. He never forgave, and I suppose he thought he could avenge himself on pharaoh's spirit by destroying his body."
"Destroying it?" Kysen's voice had grown rough with apprehension.
Meren nodded. They lapsed into silence again. Of all the fates dreaded by an Egyptian, the destruction of the body was the worst. The body was necessary to the survival of the ka, the spiritual double. Everyone knew that the ka needed the things the body needed-food, drink, clothing, an eternal home, the tomb. With these things one went equipped into the netherworld. But without the body, the soul perished.
Meren closed his eyes against the vision of plastered and painted walls showing the king and Nefertiti. He had stepped on torn bandages and bits of gilt wood from the shrines that had once surrounded Akhenaten's coffin in order to look at the body. The disconnected remains had been gathered and replaced in the stone sarcophagus. Bandages soaked with resin intermingled with bits of hair and bone.
He had turned away on the pretense of inspecting what remained of the tomb's once-luxurious contents. Few portable riches remained, not even the gold finger stalls from the king's hands. Most of the royal jewelry and regalia had been taken, but not the tall jars of oil and wine. Ahiram's hirelings had been interrupted, for they'd left caskets full of fine linen, furniture, and chariots covered with sheet gold.
Meren set his wine cup down on the floor. Slipping his finger inside his belt, he withdrew an object and handed it to Kysen. It was an openwork gold buckle showing Akhenaten worshipping the stylized sun disk, its rays directed toward the king's face and ending in small hands.
He sat up. "I have to tell the king. He'll believe me when I show him that. The thieves dropped it when they fled."
Kysen put a restraining hand on his arm. "You can wait a few hours. You need rest. Look at you. You have hollows in your cheeks and there are shadows under your eyes that look like bruises."
"I can't wait," Meren said. "Ahiram's last words were for me to beware, that 'he'll' betray me too. That means someone we know has conspired with Ahiram in the desecration of a royal tomb."
"Gods," Kysen said.
Meren stood and paced back and forth. "Someone here sent foreign mercenaries disguised as bandits after Ahiram. Someone who saw Ahiram's loss of courage, knew he fled before we did, why, and where he would go. Someone who had been his ally and couldn't afford to have Ahiram captured and questioned."
"Parenefer," Kysen said. "Everyone knows the malevolence the priests of Amun hold for Akhenaten. Who else would have the influence to persuade Ahiram to undertake the desecration? Why else would Ahiram kill Qenamun unless they'd fallen out and he feared the priests of Amun would kill him first?"
"Yes, but why Ahiram? The reach and power of Amun is great enough without enlisting an outsider. Oh, don't tell me. Parenefer planned to blame Ahiram alone if he was discovered. But I don't see the relationship between Ahiram, Qenamun, and poor Unas. By the gods, Ky, I can prove nothing other than Ahiram's guilt."
"We think Ahiram killed Qenamun," Kysen said. "Most likely because they'd fallen out over this tomb desecration. If the priests have done this evil, then perhaps Unas found out and was killed. If Qenamun was the one who ransacked Unas's house and tried to kill me, then…"
"Then Ahiram may have decided to rid himself of Qenamun before he exposed both of them," Meren said. "And we can prove none of it."
He cursed and stalked out to the pool, where he stood scowling at a frog as it hopped along the flagstones. Kysen joined him and dropped down to sit by the water's edge.
"After I tell the king, we must meet and go over everything we know. Without unquestionable proof of Parenefer's involvement, we can do nothing. He's too powerful, powerful enough to raise an army against the king."
"What about those mercenaries who killed Ahiram?" Kysen asked.
"Dead or escaped." Meren lowered himself beside Kysen. "You've had Ahiram's house sealed?"
"Yes, and I've saved the bag of mice and the baskets. But how can we prove him guilty of Qenamun's murder with such objects? You say his servants are being questioned as they return."
"Their words will be much better proof to bring before pharaoh. If they know anything." Meren sighed. "I have to go."
"If you go now, the whole city will know something's wrong."
Meren rubbed his face with his hands again. "You're right. I must be tired not to have considered the stir I'd cause hauling pharaoh from his bed at this hour. Very well. I'll go in the morning."
Kysen jumped to his feet and offered his hand. Meren took it and pulled himself upright. Together they went inside through Meren's bedchamber, and Kysen left him. Meren's body servant awaited him with fresh water in the bathing chamber, and he luxuriated in his first full shower since he left. By the time he was dry and crawled into bed, he'd come awake again.
He'd been this way since he'd divined the significance of Ahiram's stolen sandal-weary and yet unable to sleep for fear of demon-haunted dreams. If he slept, Akhenaten came to him dressed in his finest raiment, wearing the double crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. Once he'd dreamt that the king had suddenly appeared in his chamber while he was sleeping, carrying a white-hot sun-disk brand that he forced into the flesh over Meren's heart.
He had hated Akhenaten. Did the dead king's ka know it and seek revenge? Did Akhenaten know how he'd suspected a plot to kill him and allowed himself to be sent from court rather than try to stop it?
He tried sleeping with a headrest. He'd suffered from a headache since looking at Akhenaten's desecrated body, but the pain had receded to a dull thud. Now it spiked through his skull again. He moved the headrest to the floor, turned on his stomach, and groaned. How could he sleep, knowing the priests of Amun had conspired with courtiers to ravage the tomb of the heretic? Not easily frightened, he nevertheless kept listening for the flap of wings that would signal the appearance of the ba, the aspect of a soul with the body of a bird and the head of the dead man.
Someone knocked, and he called for them to enter. It was Kysen, carrying a small cup of eggshell-thin pottery. He handed the cup to Meren.
"Abu sent this."
"I don't need it."
"He said you would say that. I could call Mutemwia and have her perform a spell to help you sleep."
Meren groaned. Mutemwia was nurse to Kysen's son and a collector of magic spells for all occasions. Her charms usually ended up hurting more than they aided.
He took the cup and downed the potion in one gulp. Tart and peppery, it burned down his throat and into his chest, but in a few moments the ache in his head faded. He lay back and closed his eyes. Then he heard Kysen's voice.
"Don't worry. Abu set guards all around the house and your chamber. I know how you hate being dosed senseless, but you can't go on without sleep."
Meren nodded without opening his eyes. "Be careful, Ky. There's more afoot than just murder. And anyone who would loot the tomb of a pharaoh, the living god's brother, wouldn't stop at killing both of us."
Meren arrived at the palace before the king began to dress and found him listening to Ay read a list of the day's tasks. He sensed among the guards and servants an uneasiness he attributed to the sudden change of the duty assignments. Ay had relieved all of Ahiram's men, an entire squadron of royal guards. These men were now being questioned. He entered the royal apartments to pharaoh's cheerful greeting.
"Ah, Meren, Ay tells me you found Ahiram," Tutankhamun said. Lounging sideways in an ebony-and-gold chair, the boy was finishing a meal of spice bread and fruit.
Meren glanced at Ay, but as usual, the old man's faded brown eyes revealed nothing. The vizier's swollen fingers curled around his walking stick like gnarled grapevines. Meren had sent a message to Ay with news of Ahiram's death, but had committed nothing else to writing.
He studied Ay's face. It was a long one, with folds and creases like cracks in the mud of a sun-baked canal. He owed Ay his life, for the vizier had interceded with Akhenaten for him when the old pharaoh would have killed him for having a father who defied him.
"Prince Ahiram is dead, golden one, set upon by bandits on his way to one of the Red Sea ports."
The king dusted bread crumbs from his hands. His body servant Tiglith produced a moist cloth.
"And did you find out why he fled?" Tutankhamun asked quietly.
Meren glanced at Tiglith. "The garden is still cool, majesty."
Tutankhamun had been wiping his hands. He looked up quickly at Meren as he continued to ply the damp cloth. After a short silence, he tossed it to Tiglith, turned on his heel, and left the bedchamber. Ay followed him, but hesitated, allowing Meren to catch up as they entered the king's pleasure garden.
"You look like you haven't slept since you left. Was it that terrible?"
"I have slept, and it does no good. No, don't ask. I want to tell this tale of evil only once."
They joined the king beneath an ornamental trellis, festooned with grapevines, that sat in isolation in a part of the garden reserved for it. Around it were low-growing flowers and shrubs, but there were no high walls or trees nearby, lessening the chance that they could be overheard. Tutankhamun sat on a folding stool and motioned for his guests to sit. Ay took another stool, but Meren drew near the king and knelt on the woven mat beside him.
He'd tried to think of a way to tell this news that would lessen the king's fear. He decided simply to tell the story from the point where he set sail. The king listened in silence until Meren came to the discovery of the looters' tunnel. Then he interrupted.
"How bad is it?" he asked, his gaze fixed on a row of incense trees.
Meren felt the corner of his mouth jerk in a downward spasm. "They meant to destroy the body. They almost succeeded."
Tutankhamun turned wide, startled eyes in his direction. He wet his lips and spoke in a faint voice.
"What you mean is that Ahiram's hirelings looted my brother's tomb and then ran away. They violated the eternal house of pharaoh?"
Hearing the disbelief in the king's tone, Meren produced the belt buckle and dropped it into the boy's hand. Tutankhamun stared at it, turning it over and over while shaking his head. Meren waited.
Tutankhamun had been the youngest of three sons born to Amunhotep the Magnificent, far younger than Akhenaten. He'd lived with his mother, the great and powerful Tiye, and only went to Horizon of Aten when he was five. Smenkhare, a youth, had watched over Tutankhamun at the heretic's court. Akhenaten had been much too preoccupied with his sun-disk god to pay much attention to the boy. However, he'd been kind when he remembered Tut.
Still, Meren realized that Tutankhamun's greater distress arose from the horror of sacrilege, and a realistic fear for himself. The king recognized how short a distance it was to sail from doing violence to a dead king to doing violence to a living one. When the king asked, Meren went on to detail his suspicions regarding Qenamun, the priests of Amun, and the death of Unas.
"I'm not sure who else may be involved. Qenamun seems to have had dealings with several of thy majesty's chief servants."
"Who?" Tutankhamun snapped.
Meren hesitated, but when the king asked a question, one answered. "Rahotep, Djoser, and then there are the priests, especially Ebana. Ahiram's servants are being questioned. I should know more by the end of the day."
The king jumped up from his stool and circled a support post of the trellis. "I should arrest them all!"
Ay spoke for the first time since they began. "Tut, I have sent soldiers in pursuit of the desecraters, but you can't arrest princes and priests without great consideration and proof of their crimes. There would be riots."
"Who would dare riot against me?"
"Parenefer would arrange it," Ay said.
Tutankhamun pounded his fist into his palm. "I'll arrest him too."
Standing, Meren went to face the king, blocking his harried pacing. The boy stopped short and glared at him.
"It would be better to wait until we have unquestionable knowledge of what happened and who was responsible, divine one."
"We know already," the king said.
"No, majesty, we suspect. At the moment, the only persons who we know committed this evil are dead. But there is at least one other person involved, the person who sent those so-called bandits to kill Ahiram. Remember what he said, 'he'll betray you too.' "
"Which means," Ay said, "that we must take care to find this man, for no doubt he's the leader of these traitorous criminals."
Tutankhamun pounded on a trellis post. "It has to be Parenefer!"
Meren's voice cut through the king's muttering.
"What if we're wrong?"
Boyish curses faltered. "Then I'd let Parenefer go."
"Yes," Meren said. "But he would hate you."
"He hates me now."
Ay pulled himself to his feet by bracing against his walking stick. "The wrath he cultivates and hoards for Akhenaten spills over onto you. If you humiliate him, the greatest priest in the kingdom, he'll hate you for yourself, and then he will begin to plot your death."
Tutankhamun turned on Meren. "So you wish to risk my life so that Parenefer isn't offended?"
"No, majesty, I-"
"Oh, never mind. If I must wait out this threat, at least I'll distract myself. I'll go on a raid against these bandits that plague the village of Long Shadow."
Meren wanted to groan. "Thy majesty should delay such outings until I've had time to solve this mystery."
"Damn you, Meren, this is another trick to keep me from becoming a man!"
The gods should protect him from young bulls anxious to test their horns. Meren thought of all the logical reasons why the king shouldn't leave Thebes and knew Tutankhamun wouldn't listen to them. So he only had one choice left-the most unpleasant.
"Forgive me, divine one, but thy majesty has forgotten an urgent problem that requires royal attention."
Tutankhamun folded his arms over his chest. "Oh?"
"Thy majesty must repair the damage to his brother's body and then find another house of eternity for him, Queen Nefertiti, and all the other royal family who are buried at Horizon of Aten. And this must be done in secret, so that his enemies do not attack him again, and so that none ever learn of this unspeakable transgression. I'm sure thy majesty realizes how dangerous it would be if his subjects were to learn that a pharaoh's tomb had been violated."
A startled glance. A dazed silence. Then curses, a loud, resentful string of them. The king understood. He would comply, and he was blaming Meren for his sudden disappointment and for his renewed fear. Nevertheless, Meren was startled when Tutankhamun darted at him. So abrupt was the movement, he did nothing to avoid the blow when the king backhanded him.
"May the gods curse you, Meren. Get out, get out!"
His jaw stung, and he tasted blood. Meren straightened, raised his arm, and touched the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand while he gazed at the boy. Tutankhamun was breathing hard. His gaze dropped to Meren's hand as it touched his mouth, then to his inner wrist.
Meren stiffened; he had forgotten to wear a bracelet or wristband to cover the sun-disk brand. Ay was remonstrating with the king, but neither pharaoh nor Meren heard him. Tutankhamun narrowed his eyes as he stared at the scar. Meren dropped his hand to his side. The king's gaze met his.
"I'd forgotten," he said.
Ay fell silent.
Tutankhamun went on in a suddenly flat voice. "Parenefer isn't the only one with cause to hate my dead brother."