'A boy,' I confirmed, and I felt an unexpected tenderness towards this phantom of my mind, as though it were truly flesh and blood. I reached out to it with my heart, but the image faded, and the birth cry receded and was lost in the blackness.
"The dynasty? What will become of my line? Will it endure?' The king's voice reached me, and then was lost in a cacophony of other sounds that filled my head?the sound of battle trumpets, the shouts of men in mortal conflict, and the ring of bronze. I saw the sky above me, and the air was dark with flights of arrows arcing overhead.
'War! I see a mighty battle that will change the shape of the world,' I cried to make myself heard above the sounds of conflict that filled my head.
'Will my line survive?' The king's voice was frantic, but I paid it no heed, for there was a mighty roaring in my ears, like the sound of the khamsin wind, or the waters of the Nile boiling through the great cataracts. I saw a strange yellow cloud that obscured the horizon of my vision, and the cloud was shot through with flashes of light, which I knew were the reflection of the sun from weapons of war.
'What of my dynasty?' Pharaoh's voice tugged at my mind, and the vision faded. There was a silence in my head and I saw a tree standing upon the bank of the river. It was a great acacia in full leaf, and its branches were heavy with fruit pods. On the topmost branch was perched a hawk, the royal hawk, but even as I watched, the hawk changed shape and colour. It was transformed into the'double crown of Egypt,' red and white, the papyrus and the lotus of the two kingdoms entwined. Then, before my eyes, the waters of the Nile rose and fell, and rose and fell again. Five times in all I saw the waters flood.
While still I stared with burning eyes, abruptly the sk;; above the tree darkened with flying insects, and a dens® cloud of locusts descended upon the tree. They covered ii completely. When they rose again the tree was devastate* and bare of the last trace of green. Not a leaf remained on the dry brown twigs. Then the dead tree toppled and fell ponderously to earth. The fall shattered the trunk and thci crown was smashed into pieces. The fragments turned to dust and were blown away on the wind. Nothing remained but the wind and the driven sands of the desert.
'What is it that you see?' Pharaoh demanded, but it all faded and I found myself once more seated on the floor o> the king's bedchamber. I was gasping for breath, as though I had run a great distance, and salt sweat scalded my eyesi and poured down my body in rivulets to soak the linen o) my kilt and to form a pool on the tiles beneath me. I was shaking with a burning fever and there was that familiar sicM and heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach that I knew would be with me for days to come.
Pharaoh was staring at me and I realized what a haggard: and dreadful sight I presented to him. 'What did you see?' he whispered. 'Will my line survive?'
I could not tell him the truth of my vision, so I invented: another to satisfy him. 'I saw a forest of great trees thali reached to the horizon of my dream. There was no end ta their number and on top of each tree there was a crown, the red and the white crown of the two kingdoms.'
Pharaoh sighed and covered his eyes with his hands fon a while. We sat in silence, he in the release that my lie had) given him, and I in sympathy for him.
At last I lied softly. 'The forest that I saw was the line: of your descendants,' I whispered, to spare him. 'They reachi to the boundaries of time, and each of them wears the crowni of Egypt.'
He uncovered his eyes, and his gratitude and his joy were; pathetic to watch. 'Thank you, Taita. I can see how the: divination has taxed your strength. You may go now andl rest. Tomorrow the court will sail for my palace on Elephantine Island. I will have a galley set aside for the safe passage of you and your mistress. Guard her with your life, for she is the vessel that contains the seeds of my immortality.'
I was so weak that I had to use the frame of the bed to lift myself to my feet. I tottered to the door and steadied myself agaiiist the jamb. However, I was not so weakened that I could not think of my duty to my mistress.
'There is the matter of the marriage sheet. The populace will expect to have it displayed,' I reminded him. 'Both your reputation and that of my mistress is at stake.'
'What do you suggest, Taita?' This soon he was relying on me. I told him what must be done, and he nodded. 'See to it!'
Carefully I folded the sheet that covered the royal bed. It was of the finest linen, white as the high cirrus clouds of summer, embroidered with the rare silk thread that the trade caravans occasionally bring in from the East. I carried the folded sheet with me when I left the king's bedchamber and made my way back through the still dark and silent palace to the harem.
My mistress was sleeping like a dead woman, and I knew that with the amount of the-Red Shepenn I had given her, she would sleep the day away and would probably only wake that evening. I sat beside her bed for a while. I felt exhausted and depressed for the Mazes had drained my soul. The images they had evoked still troubled me. I felt certain that the infant I had seen was that of my mistress, but then how could the rest of my vision be explained? There seemed to be no answer to the riddle, and I set the thought aside for I still had work to do.
Squatting beside Lostris' bed, I spread the embroidered sheet upon the floor. The blade of my dagger was sharp enough to shave the hair from my forearm. I picked out one of the blue rivers of blood beneath the smooth skin on the inside of my wrist, and I pricked it with the point of the dagger and let the dark slow blood trickle on to the sheet. When I was satisfied with the extent of the stain, I bound up my wrist with a strip of linen to staunch the bleeding, and bundled the soiled sheet.
The slave girl was still in attendance in the outer chamber. I ordered that Lostris was to be allowed to sleep undisturbed.
Knowing that she would be well cared for, I was content to leave her, and climb the ladder to the top of the outer wall of the harem.
The dawn was only just breaking, but already an inquisitive crowd of old women and loiterers had gathered below the walls. They looked up expectantly when I appeared.
I made a show of shaking out the sheet before I draped it over the ramparts of the outer wall. The bloodstain in the centre of the cloud-white ground was the shape of a flower, and the crowd buzzed with gossip at this badge of my mistress's virginity and her bridegroom's virility.
At the rear of the crowd stood a figure taller than those around him. His head was covered by a striped woolen shawl. It was only when he threw this back and exposed his face and his head of red-gold hair that I recognized him.
'Tanus!' I shouted. 'I must speak to you.'
He looked up at me upon the wall, and his eyes were filled with such pain as I wished never to see again. That stain upon the sheet had destroyed his life. I also had known the agony of lost love and remembered every detail of it even after all the long years. Tanus' heart wound was fresh and bleeding still, more agonizing than any hurt that he had received on the battlefield.
He needed my help now, if he were to survive it. 'Tanus! Wait for me.'
He threw the shawl over his head, covering his face, and he turned from me. Unsteady as a drunkard, he stumbled away.
'Tanus!' I shouted after him. 'Come back! I must talk to you.' He did not look round, but quickened his pace.
By the time that I had climbed down from the wall and run out of the main gates, he had disappeared into the maze of alleys and mud huts of the inner city.
I SEARCHED FOR TANUS HALF THE MORNING, but his quarters were deserted and nobody had seen him in any of his customary haunts.
At last I had to abandon the search, and to make my wajfcback to my own rooms in the quarters of the slave boys. The royal flotilla was preparing to sail for the south. I had still to assemble and pack my possessions if my mistress and I were to be ready for the departure. I forced aside the sense of gloom that the Mazes and my glimpse of Tanus had left me, and I set about bundling up my possessions and breaking up the only home that I had ever known.