“Then you love her, and not me?”
That surprised me. For a moment I had no answer. Finally I cupped her chin in my hand and said, “Only a goddess could keep me from loving you, Helen.”
“But I love you, Orion. You are the only man I have given myself to willingly. I love you! I don’t want to lose you!”
A wave of sadness surged through me, and I thought how pleasantly I could live in this timeless land with this incomparably beautiful woman.
But I said, “Our destinies take us in different directions, Helen. I wish it were otherwise, but no one can outrun his fate.”
She did not cry. Yet her voice was brimming with tears as she said, “Helen’s destiny is to be desired by every man who sees her, except the one man she truly loves.”
I closed my eyes and tried to shut out all the worlds. Why couldn’t I love this beautiful woman? Why couldn’t I be like an ordinary man and live out my years in a single lifetime, loving and being loved, instead of striving to battle against the forces of the continuum? I knew the answer. I was not free. No matter how I struggled, I was still the creature of the Golden One, still his Hunter, sent here to do his work. I might rebel against him, but even then my life was tied to his whim.
And then I saw the gray-eyed woman I truly loved, and realized that not even Helen could compare to her. I remembered our brief moment together and my mind filled with grief and pain. My destiny was linked forever with hers, through all the universes, through all of time. If she could not be brought back to life, then life meant nothing to me and I wanted the final death for myself.
Chapter 35
THE next morning we started our river journey to Wast, the capital. I felt drained, emotionally and physically. The long trek across the Sinai had taken its toll of my body, and now Helen’s sad eyes and drooping spirits were assailing my spirit.
Once our broad-beamed boat pushed away from the dock, though, and its lateen sail filled with wind, we at least had the sights and sounds and smells of a new and fascinating land to occupy our minds. If Lukka was surprised at cities without walls to defend them, we were all constantly awed and delighted at what we saw of Egypt on our long trip up the Nile.
Nefertu was our host, our guardian, and our guide. The boat he had requisitioned had forty oars, and enclosed cabins for Helen and me, and for himself. A single lateen-rigged sail propelled us against the mighty river’s current most of the time, driven by an almost constant northerly wind. The rowers were seldom needed. They were not slaves, I noticed, but soldiers who looked for commands not to the ship’s captain but to Nefertu himself.
I smiled inwardly. This very civilized man had brought forty armed men along to make certain that we got where we were supposed to go, without fail. It was a subtle show of strength, meant to ensure that nothing went wrong during this journey, without alarming us or making us feel that we were under guard.
But if Nefertu was capable of subtlety, the land we saw from the boat’s deck was just the opposite. Egypt was big, grand, imposing, awe-inspiring.
The Nile was its life stream, flowing a thousand miles from its headlands far to the south. On either side of the river we could see bare cliffs of limestone and granite, and desert beyond. But along the thin ribbon of the life-giving water, there were green fields and swaying trees and mighty cities.
It took a whole day to pass a typical Egyptian city, stretched out along the river’s bank. We passed busy docks and warehouses, granaries where long lines of wagons unloaded the golden harvests of the land. Imposing temples stood at the water’s edge, their stairs leading down to stone piers where many boats brought worshipers and supplicants.
“This is nothing,” said Nefertu one afternoon as we glided past still another city. “Wait until we come upon Menefer.”
We were eating a light dinner of dates, figs, and thin slices of sweet melon. Being civilized, Nefertu found it pleasant to have Helen dine with us. He spoke the Achaian tongue fairly well, and refrained from using his own language when Helen was present.
She asked, “What are the small buildings on the other side of the river?”
I too had noticed that the cities were invariably on the eastern bank, but there were small structures scattered along the opposite bank wherever a city existed, many of them carved into the rock face of the cliffs that lined the river valley.
“Are they temples?” Helen asked, before Nefertu could answer her first question.
“Of a kind, my lady,” he replied. “They are tombs. The dead are embalmed and placed in tombs to await their next life, surrounded by the foods and possessions they will need when they awaken once more.”
Helen’s beautiful face betrayed her skepticism, despite what I had told her of myself. “You believe that people live more than one life?”
I kept my silence. I have led many lives, gone through death many times only to find myself revived in some strange and distant time. Not all humans lived more than once, I had been told. I found myself envying those who could close their eyes and make an end of it.
Nefertu smiled politely. “Egypt is an ancient land, my lady. Our history goes back thousands of years, to the time when the gods created the Earth and gave this gift of Mother Nile to our ancestors. Some of those tombs you see are a thousand years old; some are even older. You will find that our people are more concerned with death and the afterlife than with life itself.”
“I should think so,” Helen said, gazing back at the distant colonnaded buildings. “In Argos only the kings have such splendid tombs.”
The Egyptian’s smile broadened. “You have seen nothing of splendor as yet. Wait until Menefer.”
The days passed easily. We drifted up the Nile, the steady north wind bellying our sail almost constantly. At night we tied up at a pier, but we slept aboard the boat. Lukka and his men were allowed to visit the cities where we stopped overnight, and Nefertu’s guards introduced them to two of Egypt’s most ancient entertainments: beer and prostitution. The men were becoming comrades, soldiers who would drink and whore together until they might be ordered to fall upon one another with naked swords.
Helen adopted the ship’s cat, a pure white one that sauntered along the deck with a lordly air and permitted humans it especially favored to offer it food. The Egyptians regarded the cat as a mini-god; Helen was pleased that it allowed her to pet it — occasionally.
Then one morning I awoke just as the sun was rising above the cliffs to the east. Far in the distance I saw a glow on the western horizon. For an instant my heart stopped: I waited for the glow to expand and engulf me, to bring me face to face with the Golden One once more.
Yet it did not. It simply hovered on the horizon like a distant beacon. What its meaning was, I could not tell. I had not been summoned to the domain of the Creators since we had left the smoldering ruins of Jericho. I had not sought their realm. I knew I would meet them again in Egypt and either I would destroy the Golden One or he would destroy me. I was content to wait until that moment arrived.
But what was that strange beacon on the western horizon?
“You see it.”
I turned, and Nefertu was standing at my side.
“What is it?” I asked.
He shook his head slowly. “Words cannot explain it. You will see for yourself.”
Through the hours of early morning our boat sailed toward the light. We came upon the city of Menefer, a vast stretch of mighty stone buildings that towered along the Nile’s eastern bank: temples and obelisks that reared into the cloudless sky, piers that dwarfed anything we had seen before, long colonnaded avenues lined with palms and eucalyptus trees, palaces with gardens and even groves of trees planted on their roofs.