Day of the False King Read Online Free PDF Page A

he
wandered like a crazed wizard for many years.”
    Semerket was silent for a moment. “Why do
you tell me these things?” he asked.
    “To illustrate, perhaps, that all life is
merely a point of view — that nothing is what it seems.”
    “You tell that to me, clerk of
Investigations and Secrets?” Semerket laughed shortly.
    “I mean it as a warning, Semerket, to guide
you perhaps to where you are going. You must remember that Mesopotamia
is a different world from Egypt altogether. It’s disordered and
chaotic. Often you cannot see what is right in front of you; often you
will see what is not there.”
    There was a sudden yelp of glee from one of
the sailors. He had snagged a large fat fish, enough to feed them all
that night. Others ran to help him scoop it from the sea.
    Elibar pointed. “That’s how it will be for
you, Semerket — like that fish there, ripped from the only world it
ever knew into one it never imagined. Not even the air you breathe will
be the same.”
    “I’m not so complete a fool as you may
think,” muttered Semerket. “I’ve been to Babylonia before, you know,
though not as far as the capital; I can even read their language,
though slowly.”
    “Perhaps that will be enough,” Elibar said
doubtfully.
    They watched the big fish struggle on the
deck, gasping and snapping futilely at its captors. Finally, the
laughing sailors fell on it, clubbing it to death with their oars.
    A tiny droplet of fear crept into Semerket’s
soul. He would have liked to ruminate over Elibar’s words, to twist
them around in his mind and dredge them of their hidden meaning — but
suddenly, from the lookout’s nest above the sail, came the shout:
    “Land!”
    They had sighted the coast of Asia. Semerket
uttered a quick prayer of thanks; at least now, if the ship foundered
there would be a chance of making it to shore.
    By noon, the ship had joined the long line
of others that were crowding into Tyre’s newly built harbor. As the
sailors prepared to moor the ship, Semerket returned to where he had
stored his travel sack. Within it was the glittering badge of office
that Pharaoh had given him, designating him Egypt’s special envoy. It
was a thing of heavy and magisterial beauty, a falcon whose
outstretched wings covered most of his chest. Semerket had not yet
donned it; the first lands through which he would travel had once been
colonies of Egypt and their inhabitants still harbored bitter
resentments toward their one-time masters. Sometimes they killed the
occasional Egyptian wayfarer to settle old scores. “Evil has an
Egyptian mother,” was the saying in these Asian lands.
    Also within the leather pouch, beside the
letters that manumitted Rami and Naia, were five clay tablets that
Pharaoh had given him. Inscribed with the strange, wedge-shaped
characters of Babylonia, they entitled him to draw monies from temple
counting houses throughout Mesopotamia. Each of the five tablets bore
Semerket’s thumbprint, for the Babylonians believed that the swirls and
loops etched into every person’s thumb were unique. The temple priests
believed they could tell if the bearer was truly the person to whom the
monies were entitled. Semerket found this to be an absurd notion, but
if all it took was his thumbprint to freely access Pharaoh’s bullion,
who was he to dispute the custom?
    In the pouch with the clay tablets were the
only other items he had brought along with him. The first was the
brittle piece of palm bark from Rami. The second was another letter,
Naia’s only message to him from Babylon, inscribed on a piece of
papyrus she had filched from the ambassador’s waste pits. Perhaps for
the hundredth time, Semerket unfolded the brittle paper to read:
    My Love,
I have arrived in Babylon, and the Egyptian
ambassador has placed me in his house as a maid. I am well and Rami is
with me. We are content here, though everyone talks of the coming war
with Elam. A merchant who leads a caravan to Thebes promises he