And perhaps he sees, by what had been his own torchlight, the looming scaled shapes around him. The slitted eyes glinting from beneath ridges of flint. Then the torch is rudely snuffed, and whatever the young guard may have seen, he now sees nothing more.
The men are dead, their breath stolen, their lives swallowed, but this will be much harder to conceal. Time is of the essence, time and speed.
From The Book of Beginnings:
Then, when the first floodwaters receded, there arose from them a primal mound of rich, red earth. Atop this mound sat a goddess, who soon gave birth to the sun.
This newborn sun blazed so brightly, he blinded his mother with his brilliance. The goddess, unable to see her child, to find and hold and care for him, began to weep. Her tears fell. Sorrow filled her heart and despair filled her throat.
Before she choked, she spat out that black bile of despair. She spat it into the vast waters surrounding her mound of earth. And as she did so, it became an immense snake, with a head of ridged flint and a long, scaly body.
“Why do you weep, oh goddess?” asked the snake.
“The sun,” she said, “my child, burns too bright to look upon! His brilliance blinds my eyes! What mother would not weep?”
Meanwhile, the child, who also could not see through his own brightness, cried tears of his own as he wailed for his mother. His golden tears, when they fell onto the earth, would become the seeds from which men and women sprung.
“Ah!” said the snake. “If that is what’s the matter, it is easily remedied!”
So saying, the snake unwound his mighty coils to stretch his length up from the sea. Water sheened and glimmered like oil on his scales. Swift and silent, sinuous, he moved toward the young sun.
“What are you doing?” asked the goddess, who was of course still blinded.
But the snake did not answer, for he had gaped wide his jaws, gaped them so wide he closed his mouth around the sun and swallowed him down whole.
Then, the burning brilliance gone — gone down the snake’s vast dark gullet — the goddess blinked her eyes and found she again could see. When she realized what had happened, she let out an anguished cry.
“You have devoured my child!”
“Now you are no longer blind,” said the snake.
“Give him back to me, you monstrous beast!”
“This is some gratitude to show me; I shall do no such thing!”
As it was, however, the sun yet lived, and went on to fight and force his way through the snake’s seething innards — which caused the snake no small amount of discomfort — until he emerged from the other end. Much of his light had been dimmed by the difficult journey, so that his brightness was no longer blinding his mother.
The goddess was overjoyed to be reunited with her child, but the snake warned her he was far from finished with them.
“I will swallow him again!”
“And he will win free again!”
“I will keep swallowing him!”
“He will keep winning free!”
So they said, and so it was, and so has it ever been, and so there are day and night.
While Bennu consults with the physicians, Sennu gathers the folds of his yellow skirt-robe to his bony knees and makes haste up a sloping corridor.
His sandals slap flat echoes of his footsteps. The walls are tight-fit blocks of stone, covered floor to ceiling with sacred writings from The Scrolls of the Arisen Sun. In alcoves spaced at intervals, bronze sun-disk dishes hold burning candles.
He reaches the inner gate, puffing and sweating.
It is night. It is dark. He does not want to go out there, even bearing with him the fire of Ut-Aten in one of the sun-disk candle holders. The blackness looms so large, so ominous and deep.
But, Sennu reminds himself, it will not last for long. Soon, the sun will shine eternal. Soon, the serpent will be banished forever into chaos, and order will rule all.
Comforted by these thoughts, he passes through the gate.
Once, the pillars supporting the roofs of the walkways edging the courtyard were statue-images of the old beast-headed gods; their features have been chipped and chiseled into anonymity, awaiting the sculptors who will remake them in more appropriate design.
As the work continues.
As the money is brought in.
As the fame and power of Sefut-Aten rises, gaining strength.
Everywhere are piles of materials, skeletal cages of scaffolding, stacks of bricks, slabs of stone, beams and winches, casks of oil and lime and river-water, half-hewn obelisks, levers, ladders, tools. A crude and temporary arrangement of slats and rope serves as the outer gate until the massive bronze one can be finished, the massive bronze gate with its sun-disk of gold and rays of precious gems, which will surely dazzle and humble all who come to this place.
Sennu’s feet grind and crunch on grit and gravel, pebbles, dust, debris. He crosses the courtyard — it will be a lush garden when all is said and done, perhaps with a menagerie to rival those of the greatest Nubian chiefs — and enters that section of the structure given over to the royal living quarters.
Pharaoh has been calling again for her.
His Lily-of-the-Nile, his flower, his golden lotus.
Personally, privately, Sennu considers the woman to be something of a she-jackaclass="underline" clever, opportunistic and sly. But, even in his priestly celibacy, he cannot deny her striking beauty… and she is a devout worshiper of Ut-Aten, her influence even having helped convert Pharaoh himself to the true faith.
Her chambers are guarded by two of her own hand-picked warriors, who wear leopard-skins, gold pectoral collars set with polished onyx, and very little else. They wield long, thick, stout staves capped with sharp-edged disks of burnished bronze.
The Lily-of-the-Nile claims that they are eunuchs. No one dares suggest otherwise.
They smirk as Sennu scurries past. He wakes a round-faced, round-bodied slavewoman, who goes to fetch her mistress.
Left briefly alone, feeling out of place and out of sorts, he wanders the room. It is opulent. There are palm fronds and feathered fan-plumes, hangings, cushions, decorative chests and coffers. He frowns briefly over a shelf of small jade figurines, but they are merely trinkets.
The sudden creeping sensation of no longer being alone, of being watched, makes him turn. Too fast, the candle jitters in his hand so that its light flickers.
The child stands there. His pudgy body is half-hidden by the shadows of a luxurious reclining-couch, but his wide and wide-spaced eyes catch the candle’s flame like yet more polished mirrors. Unlike most boys his age, his head is not shaven into a side-lock; his hair tumbles in sleep-tousled ringlets to his naked, dimpled shoulders.
Sennu twitches. He has never been much at ease in the company of children. This one, least of all. Soft of feature, full of lip, weak of chin, bow-legged, with smooth and chubby little fingers…
They look at each other. Man and boy, priest and prince.
Silence hangs between them, a thick and tangible thing, growing and swelling, the gas-gut bloat of a waterlogged corpse, a hippopotamus left to rot in tepid river shallows.
Where is that wretched slavewoman? What is taking her so long?
He manufactures what is meant to be a reassuring smile, wondering which of them he’s trying to reassure.
Those wide and wide-set eyes stare, unblinking, filled with mirrored fire. A fat pink tongue squirms between full lips. One of his chubby fingers pokes into his navel. His other arm, he slowly raises, and extends. Something dangles from the child’s hand. A length of cord, a strip of cloth, some sort of toy, Sennu thinks.