Khaemwaset met his glance with an impatience that quickly turned to bewilderment Those eyes seemed familiar. A fellow priest? he thought, from On or Memphis? Then why so poorly dressed? He could pass for a peasant. One of my back-room servants, those on whom I rely but rarely see? Then what is he doing in Pi-Ramses, and how, for that matter, did he obtain leave to enter here? If he is a servant, often seen but not consciously acknowledged, I had better have a word with Nubnofret about retiring him. The poor man looks as though he already has one foot in the Judgement Hall. He repressed an urge to embrace the stranger that was followed by a sudden cold shudder of what felt like repulsion. Wennufer, seeing his friend’s abstraction, had fallen silent and was sipping his wine and staring into the dishevelled crowd, ignoring the petitioner altogether— for Khaemwaset was sure the man was a petitioner of some kind. For medicine, I expect, he thought.
Khaemwaset began to grow sober under the stranger’s level stare, yet he could not look away, and gradually he saw something in those depths, a lurking terror quickly masked. At last the man spoke. “Prince Khaemwaset?”
The question was a formality, Khaemwaset knew. This man was perfectly aware of his identity. He managed to nod. “I cannot examine or treat you at this time,” he got out, surprised to hear himself whispering. “Petition my Herald for an appointment.”
“I do not want to be treated, Prince,” the stranger answered. “I am dying and I have little time left. I come to ask a favour of you.”
Favour? Khaemwaset saw that the full lips were trembling. “Then ask,” he urged.
“It is a very serious matter,” the man went on. “I beg you not to take it lightly. The fate of my ka hangs in the balance.”
So it was an affair of magic. Khaemwaset relaxed. The old man wanted a spell of some kind, either chanted for him or written down to take away, but even at the thought the man was shaking his head.
“No, Prince,” he said huskily. “It is this.” He looked down, the torchlight sliding over his bald scalp, and fumbled at his waist, withdrawing the scroll. Carefully he held it out and Khaemwaset, his interest piqued, took it, turning it over in his practised hands.
It was obviously very old. The papyrus had a brittle fragility that made his fingers suddenly gentle. It was quite thin, perhaps not more than three revolutions, yet its weight was curiously great.
Around them the feast swirled. The musicians kept up a loud harmony of harp, lute and drums, whose rhythms shook through the tiled floor. The revellers shrieked and danced. But around the two men, standing half in the shadows sweeping through the doors, there hung an aura of timelessness.
“What is it?” Khaemwaset asked.
The old man coughed again. “It is a thing of danger, Prince,” he said. “Danger to my ka, danger to you. You are a lover of wisdom, a great and well-respected man, devotee of Thoth, god of all wisdom and knowledge. I beg you to perform a task that I in my arrogance and stupidity am not allowed to accomplish.” His eyes had gone very dark, and Khaemwaset could see a pleading in them that was almost painful. “I am running out of time,” the man urged. “Destroy the scroll on my behalf, and in the next world I will prostrate myself before mighty Thoth a thousand thousand times for a thousand thousand years on your behalf. Please, Khaemwaset! Burn it! Burn it for both our sakes! I can say no more.”
Khaemwaset looked from the agonized face to the wound scroll in his hands, and when he glanced up again the man had gone. Annoyed yet oddly feverish, he hunted through the people with his eyes but caught no glimpse of a naked, freckled skull, a bowed chest. He became conscious of Wennufer at his elbow. “Khaemwaset, what are you doing?” the priest asked testily. “You are too drunk to go on discussing, perhaps?” But Khaemwaset muttered a quick apology and walked away, out the doors, past the surprised salute of the guards and onto the dew-soft darkness of the lawn.
The uproar behind him slowly receded until he was pacing the dim greyness of the path that doubled back along the north wall of the palace to a place where he could reach his quarters quickly. As he went he held the scroll gingerly, afraid that it might crumble if he tightened his grip.
Such nonsense, he thought. An old man is dying and wishes for a few moments of recognition before he goes. He plays a silly game with me, knowing that I, even with holy blood in my veins, am the most approachable of my family. The scroll is probably no more than the names of his servants and what they are paid. A joke? Hori’s joke? No. Wennufer perhaps? Of course not. Is it some kind of a test my father has prepared for me? He considered that possibility for a few moments, his gaze on the indistinct path blurring beneath his feet. Ramses did test the loyalty of his subordinates at unexpected times and in odd ways. He had done so periodically every since the top echelon of the army had been dismissed following the debacle of Kadesh. Khaemwaset, however, had never been the object of such a trial. Neither had any other members of the family.