“They don’t believe that now?” I asked.
He shook his fat wattles. “The king is the gods’ representative on Earth, the mediator between the gods and men. He becomes a god when he dies and enters the next world.”
“Why does your brother want you under his power?” I asked suddenly, sharply, without preamble.
“My brother…? What are you saying?”
Taking Nekoptah’s carnelian ring from my waistband and showing it to him, I said, “He commanded me to bring you to the capital. I doubt that it was for a brotherly visit.”
Hetepamon’s face paled. His voice almost broke. “He… commanded you…”
I added, “He is telling the king that you are trying to bring back Akhenaten’s heresy.”
I thought the priest would collapse in a fat heap, right there on the stone floor of the temple.
“But that’s not true! I am faithful to Amon and all the gods!”
“Nekoptah sees you as a threat,” I said.
“He wants to establish the worship of Ptah as supreme in the land, and himself as the most powerful man in the kingdom.”
“Yes, I believe so.” I said nothing about Prince Aramset.
“He has always felt badly toward me,” Hetepamon muttered unhappily, “but I never thought that he hated me enough to want to… do away with me.”
“He is very ambitious.”
“And cruel. Since we were little boys, he enjoyed inflicting pain on others.”
“He controls the king.”
Hetepamon wrung his chubby hands. “Then I am doomed. I can expect no mercy from him.” He gazed around the huge, empty temple as if seeking help from the stone reliefs of the gods. “All the priests of Amon will come under his sword. He will not leave one of us to challenge Ptah — and himself.”
He was truly aghast, and seemed about to blubber. I saw that Hetepamon was neither ambitious nor ruthless. How he became chief priest of Amon I did not know, but it was clear that he had little political power and no political ambition.
I was certain now that I could trust this man who looked so like my enemy. So I calmed him down by telling him how Aramset was returning to the capital with power, and the burning ambition to protect his father and establish his own place as heir to the throne.
“He’s so young,” Hetepamon said.
“A prince of the realm matures quickly,” I said. “Or not at all.”
We left the great temple and climbed a long flight of stone steps, Hetepamon puffing and sweating, until we reached the roof of the building. Under a swaying awning I could see the sprawling city of Menefer and, across the Nile, the great gleaming pyramid of Khufu standing white and sharp-edged against the dusty granite cliffs in the distance.
Servants brought us chairs and a table, while others carried up artichokes and sliced eggplant, sweetmeats and chilled wine, figs and dates and melons, all on silver trays. I realized that we had never been truly alone, never unobserved, all through our wanderings through the temples. I felt sure, though, that no one had dared come close enough to overhear us.
I was amused to see that Hetepamon ate sparingly, almost daintily, nibbling at a few leaves of artichoke, avoiding the meats, taking a fig or two. He must eat something more than those nuts he carries with him, I realized, to keep that great girth. Like many very overweight people, he did most of his eating alone.
We watched the sun go down, and I thought of their Osiris, who died and returned just as I did.
Finally, as the last rays of sunset faded against those western cliffs and even the gleaming pinnacle of the great pyramid at last went dark, Hetepamon heaved his huge bulk up from his chair.
“It is time,” he said.
I felt a trembling through my innards. “Yes. It is time.”
Down the same stairs we went, through the vast darkened main temple, guided only by a few lamps hanging from sconces in the gigantic stone columns. Behind a colossal statue of some god, its face lost in shadows, Hetepamon went to the wall and ran his stubby forefinger against the seam between two massive stones.
The wall opened, the huge stone pivoting noiselessly, and we stepped silently into the chamber beyond. A small oil lamp burned low on a table next to the door. Hetepamon took it, and the stone slid back into place.
I followed the fat priest through a narrowing corridor, our only light the small flicker of the lamp he held.
“Careful here,” he warned in a whisper. “Stay to the right, against the wall. Don’t step on the trapdoor.”
I followed his instructions. Again, farther down the corridor, we had to keep to the left. Then we went down a long, long flight of stairs. It seemed interminable. I could barely make them out in the flickering lamp’s flame, but they seemed barely worn, although heavily coated with dust. The walls of the stairwell pressed close; my shoulders grazed against them as we descended. The roof was so low that I had to keep my head bent forward.
Hetepamon stopped, and I almost bumped into him.
“It becomes difficult here. We must skip over the next step, touch the four after that, then skip the one after those four. Do you understand?”
“If I miss?”
He puffed out a long breath. “At the least, this entire stairwell will fill with sand. There may be other punishments that I am not aware of; the old builders were very careful, and very devious.”
I made certain to follow his instructions to the inch.
Finally we reached the bottom of the stairs and started along a slightly wider corridor. I was starting to feel relieved. The worst was over. No more warnings about trapdoors or steps to avoid.
We stopped and Hetepamon pushed against a door. It creaked open slowly and we stepped past it.
Suddenly light glared all around us, painfully bright. I threw an arm over my eyes, waiting to hear the mocking laughter of the Golden One.
Then I felt Hetepamon’s hand tugging at me. “Have no fear, Orion. This is the chamber of mirrors. This is why we could not approach the tomb until after sundown.”
I lowered my arm and, squinting, saw that we were inside a room covered with mirrors. On the walls, on the floor, on the ceiling, nothing but mirrors. They were not flat, but projecting outward at all sorts of weird angles, everywhere except for one zigzag path across the floor. The light that had shocked me was merely the reflection of Hetepamon’s lamp, dazzling off hundreds of mirrored facets.
Pointing upward, the fat priest said, “There are prisms above us that focus the light of the sun. During daylight hours this chamber would kill anyone who stepped into it.”
Still squinting, I followed him across the polished, slippery path, through another creaking door, and back into a dark narrow corridor.
“What next?” I growled.
He replied lightly, “Oh, that’s the worst of it. Now all we must do is climb a short staircase and we will be in the temple of Amon, beneath the pyramid itself. From there it is a long climb to the king’s burial chamber, but there are no more traps.”
I felt grateful for that.
The temple was a tiny chamber, buried deep underground, barely large enough for an altar table, a few statues, and some lamps. Three of the walls were rough-hewn from the native rock; the fourth was covered with faint carved reliefs. The ceiling seemed to be one enormous block of dressed stone. I could sense the tremendous weight of the massive pyramid pressing down upon us, oppressive, frightening, like a giant hand squeezing the air from my lungs. A shadowed alcove hid the flight of almost vertical steps that led upward to the king’s burial chamber.
Wordlessly, Hetepamon lifted his lamp over his head and turned toward the wall of carved pictures.
He pointed with his free hand. “Osiris,” he whispered.
It was my portrait. And beside it stood the picture of my Athene.