"These are the slaves that our king Merneptah drove across the Sea of Reeds?"

"The same," I said, "although they say that they fled Egypt and your king tried to recapture them but failed."

The shadow of a smile flickered across Nefertu's thin lips. It pa.s.sed immediately and he asked with some earnestness, "And now these same people have conquered Jericho?"

"They have. They believe that their G.o.d has given them the entire land of Canaan, and their destiny is to rule over it all."

Nefertu smiled again, slightly, like a man who appreciated an ironic situation. "They may form a useful buffer between our border and the tribes of Asia," he mused. "This news must be pa.s.sed on to the pharaoh."

We talked for hours, there in the shaded corner of the courtyard. I learned that pharaoh, as Nefertu used the word, meant essentially "the government," the king's house, his administration. Egypt had been under attack for years now by what he called the Peoples of the Sea, warriors from the European mainland and Aegean islands who raided the coastal and delta cities from time to time. He considered Agamemnon and his Achaians to be Peoples of the Sea, barbarians. He saw the fall of Troy as a blow against civilization, and I agreed with him-although I did not tell him how I had defied the Golden One to bring about Troy's destruction.

Nor did I tell him that the woman who traveled with me was Queen Helen, nor that her rightful husband, Menalaos, was seeking her. I spoke only of the wars I had seen, and of my band's desire to join the service of his king.

"The army always needs men," Nefertu said. Our wine was long gone, nothing was left of the olives but a pile of pits, and the setting sun was throwing long shadows across the courtyard. The wind had shifted; flies from the stables were buzzing about us pesteringly. Still, he did not call for a slave to stand by us with a fan to shoo them away.

"Would foreigners be allowed in the army?" I asked.

His ironic little smile returned. "The army is hardly anything except foreigners. Most of the sons of the Two Lands lost their thirst for military glory long ages ago."

"Then the Hitt.i.tes would be accepted?"

"Accepted? They would be welcomed, especially if they have the engineering skills you spoke of."

He told me to wait at the inn until he could get word to Wast, the capital city, far to the south. I expected to stay in Tahpanhes for many weeks, but the following day Nefertu came back to the inn and told me that the king's own general wanted to see these men from the Hitt.i.te army.

"He is here in Tahpanhes?" I asked.

"No, he is at the capital, at the great court of Merneptah, in Wast."

I blinked with surprise. "Then how did you get a message..."

Nefertu laughed, a gentle, truly pleased laughter. "Orion, we worship Amon above all G.o.ds, the glorious sun himself. He speeds our messages along the length and breadth of our land-on mirrors that catch his light."

A solar telegraph. I laughed too. How obvious, once explained. Messages could flash up and down the Nile with the speed of light, almost.

"You are to bring your men to Wast," said Nefertu. "And I am to accompany you. It will be my first visit to the capital in many years. I must thank you for this opportunity, Orion."

I accepted his thanks with a slight bow of my head.

Helen was overjoyed that we were going to the capital.

"There's no guarantee that we will see the king," I warned her.

She dismissed such caution with a casual wave of her hand. "Once he realizes that the Queen of Sparta and former princess of Troy is in his city he will demand demand to see me." to see me."

I grinned at her. "Once he realizes that Menalaos may raid his coast in his effort to find you, he may demand that you be returned to Sparta."

She frowned at me.

That night, though, as we lay together in the sagging down-filled bed of the inn, Helen turned to me and asked, "What will happen when you deliver me to the Egyptian king?"

I smiled at her in the shadows cast by the moonlight and stroked her golden hair. "He will undoubtedly fall madly in love with you. Or at least marry you to one of his sons."

But she was in no mood for levity. "You don't really think he would send me back to Menalaos, do you?"

Despite the fact that I thought such a move was possible, I answered, "No, of course he wouldn't. How could he? You come to him seeking his protection. He couldn't deny a queen. These people regard the Achaians as their enemies; they won't force you to return to Sparta."

Helen lay back on her pillow. Staring up at the ceiling, she asked, "And what of you, Orion? Will you stay with me?"

Almost, I wished that I could. "No," I said softly, so low that I barely heard my own voice. "I can't."

"Where will you go?"

"To find my G.o.ddess," I whispered.

"But you said that she is dead."

"I will try to revive her, to return her to life."

"You will enter Hades to seek her?" Helen's voice sounded alarmed, fearful. She turned toward me again and clutched at my bare shoulder. "Orion, you mustn't take such a risk! Orpheos himself..."

I silenced her with a finger against her lips. "Don't be frightened. I have already died many times, and returned to the world of the living. If there truly is a Hades, I have yet to see it."

She stared at me as if seeing a ghost, or worse, a blasphemer.

"Helen," I said, "your destiny is here, in Egypt. My destiny is elsewhere, in a domain where the people you call G.o.ds hold sway. They are not G.o.ds, not in the sense you think. They are very powerful, but they are neither immortal nor very caring about us humans. One of them killed the woman I love. I will try to bring her back to life. Failing that, I will try to avenge her murder. That is my my destiny." destiny."

"Then you love her, and not me?"

That surprised me. For a moment I had no answer. Finally I cupped her chin in my hand and said, "Only a G.o.ddess could keep me from loving you, Helen."

"But I love you, Orion. You are the only man I have given myself to willingly. I love you! I don't want to lose you!"

A wave of sadness surged through me, and I thought how pleasantly I could live in this timeless land with this incomparably beautiful woman.

But I said, "Our destinies take us in different directions, Helen. I wish it were otherwise, but no one can outrun his fate."

She did not cry. Yet her voice was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears as she said, "Helen's destiny is to be desired by every man who sees her, except the one man she truly loves."

I closed my eyes and tried to shut out all the worlds. Why couldn't I love this beautiful woman? Why couldn't I be like an ordinary man and live out my years in a single lifetime, loving and being loved, instead of striving to battle against the forces of the continuum? I knew the answer. I was not free. No matter how I struggled, I was still the creature of the Golden One, still his Hunter, sent here to do his work. I might rebel against him, but even then my life was tied to his whim.

And then I saw the gray-eyed woman I truly loved, and realized that not even Helen could compare to her. I remembered our brief moment together and my mind filled with grief and pain. My destiny was linked forever with hers, through all the universes, through all of time. If she could not be brought back to life, then life meant nothing to me and I wanted the final death for myself.

Chapter 35.

THE next morning we started our river journey to Wast, the capital. I felt drained, emotionally and physically. The long trek across the Sinai had taken its toll of my body, and now Helen's sad eyes and drooping spirits were a.s.sailing my spirit.

Once our broad-beamed boat pushed away from the dock, though, and its lateen sail filled with wind, we at least had the sights and sounds and smells of a new and fascinating land to occupy our minds. If Lukka was surprised at cities without walls to defend them, we were all constantly awed and delighted at what we saw of Egypt on our long trip up the Nile.

Nefertu was our host, our guardian, and our guide. The boat he had requisitioned had forty oars, and enclosed cabins for Helen and me, and for himself. A single lateen-rigged sail propelled us against the mighty river's current most of the time, driven by an almost constant northerly wind. The rowers were seldom needed. They were not slaves, I noticed, but soldiers who looked for commands not to the ship's captain but to Nefertu himself.

I smiled inwardly. This very civilized man had brought forty armed men along to make certain that we got where we were supposed to go, without fail. It was a subtle show of strength, meant to ensure that nothing went wrong during this journey, without alarming us or making us feel that we were under guard.

But if Nefertu was capable of subtlety, the land we saw from the boat's deck was just the opposite. Egypt was big, grand, imposing, awe-inspiring.

The Nile was its life stream, flowing a thousand miles from its headlands far to the south. On either side of the river we could see bare cliffs of limestone and granite, and desert beyond. But along the thin ribbon of the life-giving water, there were green fields and swaying trees and mighty cities.

It took a whole day to pa.s.s a typical Egyptian city, stretched out along the river's bank. We pa.s.sed busy docks and warehouses, granaries where long lines of wagons unloaded the golden harvests of the land. Imposing temples stood at the water's edge, their stairs leading down to stone piers where many boats brought worshipers and supplicants.

"This is nothing," said Nefertu one afternoon as we glided past still another city. "Wait until we come upon Menefer."

We were eating a light dinner of dates, figs, and thin slices of sweet melon. Being civilized, Nefertu found it pleasant to have Helen dine with us. He spoke the Achaian tongue fairly well, and refrained from using his own language when Helen was present.

She asked, "What are the small buildings on the other side of the river?"

I too had noticed that the cities were invariably on the eastern bank, but there were small structures scattered along the opposite bank wherever a city existed, many of them carved into the rock face of the cliffs that lined the river valley.

"Are they temples?" Helen asked, before Nefertu could answer her first question.

"Of a kind, my lady," he replied. "They are tombs. The dead are embalmed and placed in tombs to await their next life, surrounded by the foods and possessions they will need when they awaken once more."

Helen's beautiful face betrayed her skepticism, despite what I had told her of myself. "You believe that people live more than one life?"

I kept my silence. I have led many lives, gone through death many times only to find myself revived in some strange and distant time. Not all humans lived more than once, I had been told. I found myself envying those who could close their eyes and make an end of it.

Nefertu smiled politely. "Egypt is an ancient land, my lady. Our history goes back thousands of years, to the time when the G.o.ds created the Earth and gave this gift of Mother Nile to our ancestors. Some of those tombs you see are a thousand years old; some are even older. You will find that our people are more concerned with death and the afterlife than with life itself."

"I should think so," Helen said, gazing back at the distant colonnaded buildings. "In Argos only the kings have such splendid tombs."

The Egyptian's smile broadened. "You have seen nothing of splendor as yet. Wait until Menefer."

The days pa.s.sed easily. We drifted up the Nile, the steady north wind bellying our sail almost constantly. At night we tied up at a pier, but we slept aboard the boat. Lukka and his men were allowed to visit the cities where we stopped overnight, and Nefertu's guards introduced them to two of Egypt's most ancient entertainments: beer and prost.i.tution. The men were becoming comrades, soldiers who would drink and wh.o.r.e together until they might be ordered to fall upon one another with naked swords.

Helen adopted the ship's cat, a pure white one that sauntered along the deck with a lordly air and permitted humans it especially favored to offer it food. The Egyptians regarded the cat as a mini-G.o.d; Helen was pleased that it allowed her to pet it-occasionally.

Then one morning I awoke just as the sun was rising above the cliffs to the east. Far in the distance I saw a glow on the western horizon. For an instant my heart stopped: I waited for the glow to expand and engulf me, to bring me face to face with the Golden One once more.

Yet it did not. It simply hovered on the horizon like a distant beacon. What its meaning was, I could not tell. I had not been summoned to the domain of the Creators since we had left the smoldering ruins of Jericho. I had not sought their realm. I knew I would meet them again in Egypt and either I would destroy the Golden One or he would destroy me. I was content to wait until that moment arrived.

But what was that strange beacon on the western horizon?

"You see it."

I turned, and Nefertu was standing at my side.

"What is it?" I asked.

He shook his head slowly. "Words cannot explain it. You will see for yourself."

Through the hours of early morning our boat sailed toward the light. We came upon the city of Menefer, a vast stretch of mighty stone buildings that towered along the Nile's eastern bank: temples and obelisks that reared into the cloudless sky, piers that dwarfed anything we had seen before, long colonnaded avenues lined with palms and eucalyptus trees, palaces with gardens and even groves of trees planted on their roofs.

All this we hardly noticed. One by one, every person on the boat turned eyes to the west and to the incredible sight that stood there.

"The great pyramid of Khufu," said Nefertu, in a whisper. Even he was awed by it. "It has stood for more than a thousand years. It will stand until the end of time."

It was an enormous pyramid of dazzling white, so huge and ma.s.sive that it beggared all comparison. There were other pyramids nearby, and a great stone carving of a sphinx rested to one side, as if guarding the approach. Colonnaded temples flanked the road that led to the great pyramid; they looked like tiny doll houses next to its ponderous immensity.

The pyramid was faced entirely with gleaming white stone, polished so perfectly that I could almost make out the reflection of the sphinx in it. The cap, big enough to hold Priam's palace, but merely the tip of this awesome structure, blazed in the sunlight. It was made of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver, Nefertu told me. That is what had caught the morning sun when it had first arisen.

This was the place where I was to meet the Golden One. This is where I had to be to revive Athene. Yet our boat glided past.

As I watched, the dazzling white surface of the pyramid facing us slowly began to change. A great eye appeared, black against the white stones, and stared directly at us. A moan went up from everyone aboard, including me. Several of the Hitt.i.tes fell to their knees. I felt the hairs on my arms standing on end.

Nefertu touched my shoulder, the first time he had put a hand on me.

"Do not be afraid," he said. "It is an effect caused by the sun and certain small stones that have been set out along the pyramid's face to cast a shadow when the sun is at the proper angle. It is like a sundial, except that it shows the Eye of Amon."

I tore my gaze away from the optical illusion and looked down at Nefertu. His face was grave, almost solemn. He was not laughing at the awe and fear he saw in the faces of his barbarian visitors.

"As I told you earlier," he said, almost apologetically, "there are no words that can explain the great pyramid, or prepare you for your first sight of it."

I nodded dumbly. It was difficult to find my voice.

The great Eye of Amon disappeared as quickly as it had opened, along about noon. Shortly afterward, the figure of a hawk manifested itself on the southward face of the pyramid. We spent the entire day watching the pyramid; not one of us could tear our eyes away from it for very long.

"It is the tomb of Khufu, one of our greatest kings, who lived more than a thousand years ago," Nefertu explained. "Within its mighty stones is the king's burial chamber, and other chambers for his treasures and retainers. In those bygone days, the king's household servants were sealed into the pyramid along with his embalmed body, so that they might serve him properly when he arose."

"The servants were sealed in alive?" I asked.

Nefertu said, "Alive. They went willingly, we are told, out of their great love for their master, and in the knowledge that they would be with him in the afterlife."

The expression on his lean face was difficult to read. Did he believe these stories, or was he merely transmitting the official line to me?

"I would like to see the great pyramid," I said.

"You have just seen it."

"I mean close up. Perhaps it is possible to enter..."

"No!" It was the sharpest word Nefertu had ever spoken to me. "The pyramid is a sacred tomb. It is guarded night and day against those who would defile it. No one may enter the tomb without the special permission of the king himself."

I bowed my head in silent acquiescence, while thinking to myself, I won't wait for the king's permission. I will enter the tomb and find the Golden One waiting for me inside it. And I will do it tonight.