An Omen in the Place of Truth

Usir knew perfectly well that the council of state had not let go of its demand to send in a unit of the Medjay from outside. Nor was the argument without merit. The artisans, bent on taking commissions beyond the walls and building their fortunes, were growing slack in their true work—the tombs of the king and queen, and the grave goods meant to furnish them—and it was only right that the royal tombs be guarded with rigor, so the craftsmen might fix their minds upon that labor.

Even so, he could not brush aside the threat they had flung down. Tighten the villagers' coming and going still further in the name of security, they said, set a watch upon their lives, and they would suffocate; let an outside Medjay unit set foot among them, and they would strike before the day was out.

"I will consult the village's own soldiers and do what I can to strengthen our security. First, if you would care to look over the village."

With the matter of security closed, Usir led the pharaoh's party inside the stout walls that ringed the settlement. Within those walls lay an entirely different world.

From the village gate, priestesses of Hathor welcomed the pharaoh's coming—long linen gowns, pleated capes over their shoulders—drawing music that seemed to fall from heaven itself. Past those priestesses, goddesses stepped down to earth, the artisans came into view, foreheads pressed to the ground as they waited upon Pharaoh Narmer. They paid no mind to the dust staining their brows. They poured out the long chain of the king's throne name and sang the praises of his reign.

"Carry on with the work appointed to you, as you always do. We mean only to look about, like a wind passing through, and then be gone."

Only when Akh, Grand Vizier of Upper Egypt and the mouth that spoke for the king, had finished did the artisans lift their bowed heads and return to their places.

In the artisans' village, simplicity and splendor lived side by side. The houses of the guild were not large, yet their interiors, shaped by craftsmen's hands, were more finely and beautifully made than the mansion of any noble. Walls of clean plaster without a flake missing anywhere, delicate murals, floor tiles in daring and brilliant color—everything was worthy of the finest artisans in Egypt.

So too with the people themselves. Gifted with an exceptional eye and knowing how to adorn themselves so as to stand out, they wore clothes more handsome, and paint more refined, than the men and women of splendid Thebes who dressed with deliberate extravagance to flaunt their wealth.

Tang, tang, tang! Somewhere metal was being struck. It was the hammer of a goldsmith intent upon beating out ingots of the finest Nubian gold. Gold hammered thin would be born anew as a pectoral, as the mask laid over a pharaoh's face, as the fine work on furniture destined for the grave, or as ornaments such as bracelets.

"This way, if you please."

Following Foreman Usir around a turning in the lanes, they found the mood of the village had shifted. Unlike the noisy, lively alley behind them, this quieter street held an embroiderer's workshop at its head. Setheph watched in silence as lotus and papyrus bloomed along the hem of a pure-white shroud beneath the bronze needle in the embroiderer's hand—and saw that Foreman Usir's gaze had fixed upon one of the weavers.

"This is my wife, Iset."

Iset's hands, closed on the shuttle, flashed between the warp at a speed the eye could scarcely follow, laying in the weft. Each time those hands moved, sheer white cloth spilled from the loom and gathered in soft folds upon the floor.

"A formidable passion, all of them. Formidable enough to drive out the unworthy thought I had of blaming them because my tomb is not finished sooner."

"In the raising of an eternal dwelling, time is of no importance. We pursue nothing but what is flawless."

Even beneath the barb in Pharaoh Narmer's words, Foreman Usir answered in a calm voice, unruffled, as befitted the leader of the village.

"I know. It was a jest. Still—how much better, if one might pursue the flawless and be swift about it."

"We will do our utmost to make it so."

"Thigh of ox ought to put strength in the hands and quicken the work, should it not? Vizier, take particular care that the gifts want for nothing in the way of food."

"I shall see them assembled to a standard beyond any reign before this."

While foreman, pharaoh, and vizier conversed in that easy warmth, the back of a woman caught Setheph's eye as she stepped into a house whose terrace was striking for its awning of pure white linen. Her retreating figure closely resembled the woman in his memory—the one with whom he had shared so brief a time before losing her.

"I should like to see the tomb that is to be mine."

"I will conduct you this way."

He wanted to go after her. But the office given him was that of the pharaoh's guard, and duty required him to keep close to the king, so Setheph followed Foreman Usir toward the Valley of the Kings.

Even as they crossed a barren desert where not a blade of grass looked likely to live, he could not shake from his mind the woman with whom he had spent the Night of Hathor. Was she alive? The river of that day, taking into itself undimmed the madness of the unquiet Mediterranean, had raised great waves and a vortex of chaos and swept away the woman with whom he had shared the first pleasure of his life.

And so, through the rite of darkness handed down in secret at the temple of Seth, he had entered her spirit to learn whether she lived or had died. Her spirit had been wandering in Nun, the sea of the beginning. He had struggled to draw her out of that primordial water, the passage into the world of the dead, but the time the dark rite allowed had run out, and he had been flung from her spirit. The next day he performed the secret rite again, only to find the way into her spirit shut fast.

To refuse another entry meant one of two things: that she had boarded the bark of Osiris and gone on to the far shore, or that body and spirit had recovered health enough to suffer no intrusion.

Which of the two was it?

"From here there are many vipers. You must take care."

They passed along a winding track where the dry, crumbling sand seemed to hiss with the breath of snakes, and at last entered the Valley of the Kings, wrought of red sandstone. At a gesture from Foreman Usir, guards bearing spears came forward.

"It is the hour of the shift, so things are a little crowded. I ask your understanding."

The artisans' guild of the Place of Truth, a community likened to a single bark, was divided into two crews—Port and Starboard—who worked by turns. At the mouth of the workplace, where the artisans of the Port crew were coming out and those of the Starboard going in, a scribe kept a strict tally of the lamps and palettes carried in and out, the length of mural completed, and the depth and height of tomb excavated, so as to lessen the chance of anything going missing.

"Please, go in."

Dozens of lamp flames burned within the tomb. Because powdered salt had been mixed into the oil so the lamps would give no soot, the interior was as bright as if it had taken the light of the sun.

"The signs are speaking to me. Every one of them..."

Overwhelmed by walls packed tight with thousands of hieroglyphs, Pharaoh Narmer murmured as if spellbound. Before a beautiful and sacred image of Horus—so fitting for a man whose throne name meant that Horus holds festival—tears even gathered in his eyes.

"It is perfect. I am no longer afraid of death. I could almost look forward to it."

While the pharaoh lavished his praise, Setheph sank into thought before a mural of the world of the dead. That woman might be there even now.

Before the excitement stirred by Pharaoh Narmer's progress had fully faded, a black shape appeared in the village.

Gather the villagers' testimony, and it came to this: the black shadow had long ears that did not stand broad and full but rose to sharp points; its fur stuck out every which way, far from tidy; and wherever it passed, there lingered the rank, raw stench of rotting flesh. The people's conclusion was of one accord. The ill-omened creature that had come among them was surely one of those that herald approaching misfortune—a wild dog, a hyena, or a jackal—and misfortune would soon find the village.

"Most likely it was a manifestation of Anubis, the god who protects the dead and presides over the embalming of the corpse."

In the hall where the villagers had gathered, only Foreman Usir insisted that the ominous presence was a manifestation of Anubis.

"Our village, which makes the tombs and the grave goods that go into them, is closely bound to Anubis, who guides the dead to the underworld. Yet we have devoted ourselves only to two gods, Hathor and Meretseger, and so we have drawn Anubis's wrath."

It was strange to see. Usir, who until the people's will gathered into one had mostly been content to listen, was now, unlike himself, driving the current of opinion. Even so, this was no talk into which Pesejet could dare to step—Pesejet, whom a god had cast off.

"There is no time to hesitate. We must make an image of Anubis at once and clothe it in a shroud sewn with all our care."

Iset, Usir's wife and a weaver, who had been listening in quiet, tilted her head and asked.

"If you mean at once—do you mean we are to begin the work this very day? Surely you do not mean we are to sew a shroud when there is not even a finished statue."

"If the statue is made to my own measure, the shroud will not be difficult to sew, will it?"

At Foreman Usir's words, demanding that the work begin at once and yielding not an inch, a murmur spread through the hall. Members of the guild of the Place of Truth held the right to refuse an excessive demand of labor, and the right to strike if proper compensation did not follow. A few did voice their discontent. But because Foreman Usir had never pressed an opinion so forcefully before, no one offered a view against him.

They turned imploring eyes upon Amonuasu the scribe, another elder of the village, waiting for him to step forward and bid them abandon the excessive work. He only plied his reed pen in earnest, setting down the course of the meeting, and offered no opinion of his own.