The Captive Soul Read online

  “Not alone,” Ahmose said shortly. “I will come, too.” At his brother’s startled glance, the young prince shrugged, “I’ve done it before.” That widened Kamose’s eyes even more, but Ahmose said impatiently, “I cannot gain enough experience of how the common people think if I am cooped up in a palace.”

  “The danger—”

  “Oh, brother, what danger? If we cannot trust our own people…” To Methos he added dryly, “No fear. I shall not be recognized.”

  No, he would not. Methos, eyeing the young “peasant farmer” at his side a short while later, had to admit that the disguise was excellent.

  Until he opens his mouth and spoils the effect with an aristocrat’s accent.

  But as they went down into the crowded, noisy, dusty Theban marketplace, Ahmose said nothing, only followed Methos like a mute younger brother down the rows of stalls shaded by awnings of bright colors and many fabrics, followed and watched with intense interest.

  Methos squatted down in the shade beside a stocky, middle-aged metalsmith sitting cross-legged behind his low table of wares beating the final shape into a bronze ewer. “Nice work.”

  The man grunted his thanks.

  “Can you do other designs? Custom orders?”

  The metalsmith glanced up briefly from his work. “Of course. What smith couldn’t?”

  “How about this? Could you make something like this? Many copies of it?”

  All craftsmen kept piles of broken potsherds and frag ments of charcoal handy: convenient and free materials for sketching trial designs. Snatching up one of the potsherds and a bit of charcoal, Methos quickly sketched what was unmistakably a Hyksos sword and showed it to the smith.

  “Could you, perhaps, work this design?”

  The smith glanced up sharply in suspicion. But then he took a good look at his visitor, and sudden recognition flashed in his eyes.

  Of course, Methos thought. Palace gossip flies like the proverbial wind. By now, everyone is going to recognize the stranger who almost looks Egyptian. Not exactly a comfortable thought for someone who generally preferred not to be recognized.

  Sure enough, the smith was exclaiming, “The man sent by the gods! Damned right I could. Moving against those bastards, are we? This time doing it, God Sekenenre forgive me, right?”

  “I can say nothing.”

  “Of course not. Me neither. Just give me the right dimensions and weight, yes, and enough bronze, too, and I’ll turn out as many swords as the metal will bear!”

  “Excellent,” Methos said, and got to his feet.

  He moved through the marketplace from stall to stall after that, trailed by Ahmose, quietly asking each craftsman or -woman if this or that new design could be worked. And almost each time he received a quick, eager response. A weaver agreed that she could turn out good bowstrings. A maker of furniture nodded with excitement over the thought of bows and chariot wheels. For was the “man sent by the gods” not among them?

  “You see?” Methos asked Ahmose after they had circled the marketplace and returned to the palace entrance. “A good deal of enthusiasm there. Granted, this is only the barest of beginnings, but—”

  “It could be done, oh ‘man sent by the gods,’” Ahmose’s face was carefully blank.

  Ah. The dark god Envy raises his ugly head. “It’s a useful epithet,” Methos said flatly. “That doesn’t mean either of us need believe it.”

  “Of course not,” just as flatly.

  “To continue, Prince Ahmose, you seem to have crafts men aplenty in Thebes, refugees from Memphis as well as your own citizens. What about the raw materials we’d need?”

  “We can get those. The Hyksos expect a steady flow of crafts from us and wouldn’t notice a larger supply of wood or bronze if it came in small but constant shipments.” Ahmose’s eyes blazed in sudden excitement. “We could do this. We really could do this.”

  “Only if your people work in secret.”

  “They can, they will! My brother will issue a secret statement, and the literate will read it to those who cannot.”

  “And your guards will stop anyone leaving Thebes without authorization,” Methos added coldly, “and your bowmen shoot down any bird capable of carrying messages. You cannot risk spies, Prince Ahmose.”

  The glance the prince shot him was just as cold. “There shall be none. So, now: Our craftsmen shall turn their hands to making weapons, and our workers all to learning weaponry. But military training takes space. And if the Hyksos send envoys…”

  Methos shrugged. “What will they see but normal, everyday life? Keeping your army-in-the-making a secret isn’t that great a problem—always assuming, of course, that your people are trustworthy and sufficiently disgusted by Hyksos rule.” His gesture took in the vast expanse of desert beyond the city walls. “There’s more than enough emptiness out there.”

  Ahmose laughed. “We could hide an entire army and no one would be the wiser. And yes, our people are trustworthy, and oh yes, but they are weary of Hyksos rule! We can do this. And,” he added, voice tight with excitement, “we will. This time we will bring the battle right to Apophis’s door!”

  Methos held up a warning hand. “All the weapons and warriors in the world aren’t going to mean a thing unless you have matching military intelligence. Do you know the layout of Avaris? No? Then you don’t know how much force is surrounding King Apophis, either, or how to get at him. Before you can plan any kind of an attack, someone is going to have to get into that Hyksos stronghold.”

  The boy’s face had fallen, for an instant making him look very much only his age. “Yes….” Ahmose agreed pensively, and the boyishness slid away once again. “But… a common spy would never be allowed into Avaris. We need someone who would have a very good reason for being admitted—someone who is aristocratic and urbane enough to pass as… to pass as an emissary suing for peace.”

  “Oh now, don’t look at me! I’m not even an Egyptian.”

  Ahmose’s smile was predatory. “All the better.”

  “Because no one will mourn me if I don’t come out again? I’ll mourn me!”

  I suppose I should be flattered that the boy trusts me so fully, Methos thought.

  Does he?

  Should he?

  And is this his way of devious revenge on the “man sent by the gods”?

  Whatever the motive, the idea was logical enough. Clever and Immortal both, was he not more likely than some poor mortal spy to survive, and to succeed?

  Heroes, Methos snapped at himself, get monuments. Which they usually don’t live to see.

  But it wasn’t safe to leave the young prince holding the whip hand, as it were. Methos smiled his most carefully enigmatic smile at Prince Ahmose and bowed ever so graciously. “If you wish me to visit King Apophis, honestly wish it, why, who am I to deny a royal request?”

  That had exactly the desired effect, clearly making the young prince wonder, Was he too swift to accept? And why?

  Always keep your hosts off balance, Methos repeated to himself with an inner laugh. It truly is safer that way.

  More entertaining, as well.

  Heroes, Methos kept reminding himself through the following days, as the embryonic Egyptian army made its first tentative moves, don’t live to admire their monuments.

  But he saw more and more examples of how the Hyksos were hurting trade, culture, the very life of Egypt: a farmer begging in the streets of Thebes because his land had been confiscated in King Apophis’s name, a woman weeping silently, agonizingly, because her man had been slain by a Hyksos soldier for failing to show proper respect—small matters, small lives, adding into a tragic whole.

  These are not my people. This is not my affair.

  Yet the idea of worming his way into Avaris and King Apophis’s confidence, of doing what no one else could do, was growing so very… intriguing.

  “I don’t want you to go,” Tiaa pouted in his ear late one night. Stroking his chest with a warm little hand, she added, “You should
stay here. With me. Where you’ll be safe.”

  Methos caught her hand before it could stray any farther south. “With you, my sweet, I am hardly safe. And if I stay here, Egypt is not safe.”

  “Huh? What does that mean?”

  But he didn’t answer her. Staring blankly up into space, Methos realized with a start that, illogical or not, he had come to feel almost proprietary about Egypt.

  Now, isn’t this ridiculous?

  But, more perilously, he was actually angry that Egypt, his Egypt, the tranquil, seemingly eternal land that was his occasional sanctuary, should have been so harmed. And was it arrogance to feel that he could restore it? Or was it merely fact?

  Of course. They can use that as your epitaph: “He lost his head over Egypt.”

  “Never mind,” Methos told Tiaa. “Now, my dear, where were we…?”

  Dowager Queen Teti-sheri had come to the royal court as she did from time to time, presumably, Methos thought, to admire her grandsons—and to be sure they did nothing that was not correctly pharaonic.

  But it was he she was watching this morning, her eyes stabbing at him, and Methos dipped his head to her in courtesy.

  “Come, approach.” Her voice was autocratic. “Away from the rest. We must talk.”

  “About… Avaris?” he hazarded.

  “Precisely that.” The queen looked up at him. “You have not yet decided what to do.”

  Either her Gift was very real, or she was an amazing judge of even the slightest hint of expression. “No, I have not. Queen Teti-sheri, I—”

  “You must go. You cannot die as other men.” Ignoring his involuntary start, the queen continued, “You will be quite safe.”

  “Your Majesty, believe me, I can die, and I would just as soon go right on living!”

  She shook her head. “You are the man sent by the gods. They will protect you.”

  And do the gods know that?

  But it was useless to argue with this small, determined, Gifted woman. “Tell me, if you would, Queen Teti-sheri,” Methos began, not quite sure if he was being facetious, “has your Gift shown me surviving Avaris?”

  A pause. “It does not show you dead.”

  “Which isn’t precisely the same thing.” He already knew that the Hyksos were not precisely gentle. And the thought of an Immortal’s endless capacity for healing and, with that, the endless capacity for torture…

  “You will be protected,” the queen said stubbornly, and would say nothing more.

  But then a flurry of excitement shook the court as a mes senger came running, throwing himself down, panting, at Pharaoh Kamose’s feet. Kamose, Methos knew, had inherited his father’s lookout system, whereby word would be sent from man to man up the Nile to Thebes. And now the message was:

  “There is a Hyksos ship on the Nile, great pharaoh, heading toward Thebes! It bears a Hyksos envoy—a tribute collector, oh pharaoh. More, with that one is King Apophis’s own half-brother, the royal Prince Khyan!”

  Khyan? Methos remembered the street gossip he’d over-heard when he had first arrived in Egypt, the discontented murmurings in port. There’d been something about that name… Ah yes, the crazy prince. Not that street gossip about enemy royalty is going to be exactly reliable.

  “So be it,” Kamose said regally, and if he was disturbed, not a trace of that showed on his face. He was, Methos thought, learning—on the job, as it were. “We shall,” the pharaoh said with only the faintest hint of anger in his voice, “be ready.”

  Within a few days, the Hyksos envoy arrived, all striped finery and fringes about a stocky form and cold, broad face. With him came a sizable entourage of servants and hard-eyed guards.

  But Methos, coming starkly alert, hardly noted any of them, for the last sensation he would have wanted just now was suddenly blazing through him, warning:

  An Immortal! Here—where?

  There.

  Beside the envoy stood a tall young man, more slender than the Hyksos norm, his dark robes glittering with gold. He was olive-skinned and handsome in a sharp-boned way—and as he stared at Methos, his dark eyes were fierce with an eerie fire that could only mean one thing.

  Just what I didn’t need, Methos thought. The king’s ‘half-brother’ is both an Immortal and—oh yes, the gossip was right after all—quite insane!

  Chapter Eight

  Egypt, Thebes, and the Nile Valley: Reign of

  Pharaoh Kamose, 1573 B.C.

  This, Methos thought, staring at Prince Khyan, who looked as fierce and dangerously fragile as a glass blade, really wasn’t the time or place to meet another Immortal. It really, truly wasn’t.

  Particularly not an Immortal with Hyksos sensibilities and such blatantly shaky mental health.

  He dared not wait for Khyan’s first move—which was almost certainly going to be a mindless attack.

  When in doubt, bluff.

  Forcing his most charming smile onto his face, Methos stepped forward with open arms (and a readiness to duck should Khyan lunge). “Why, is this not the famous Prince Khyan? How wonderful to actually meet you at last!”

  All about him, he could hear startled, uneasy murmurings from Egyptians and Hyksos alike, but he ignored them, concentrating only on his target. The prince drew back from him as he approached, blinking and confused, and Methos stopped, continuing in a rush of smooth words, not wanting to push too hard or give the man room to draw his sword, “But you do not know me. Of course not! How could you?

  “Come, come, will you not walk with me? Leave these petty matters”—his sweep of an arm took in the Hyksos envoy and entourage—“to underlings.”

  Get this weird-eyed prince onto Holy Ground as quickly as possible. And hope he knows what that means.

  One of the many royal chapels stood nearby; he wasn’t sure which god it honored, but he wasn’t going to be picky. Any Holy Ground was good enough right now.

  He actually did get the prince walking with him, heading toward the chapel—for a few precious steps, at any rate. But then Khyan stopped short, frowning. “Why did I feel… that weirdness…?”

  “Of course you felt it! You are like me! Yes, yes,” Methos rushed on, “we are of the same sort. Isn’t that splendid? Now, just a little farther and we can have the privacy to talk—”

  “Wait,” the prince said firmly. “If you are like me, then that can only mean that you, too, have been singled out by a god—” Khyan broke off abruptly, hand closing about sword hilt. “By an enemy god!”

  Damn. “Now, why should you think it an enemy deity? Methos purred. “Am I an Egyptian?”

  “Yes—”

  “No. I am not Egyptian, no more than are you! I am not an Egyptian, Prince Khyan, and my gods are not their gods.”

  That confused Khyan enough to make him slowly let his hand slip from the sword. Good, Methos thought, very good. He added in a conspiratorial whisper, “Who are they back there? Insignificant little mortals.”

  Khyan snickered at that, and Methos smiled thinly and continued, “The two of us are so much more than those petty little people. Have we not both been touched by Divine Forces? Neither of us can die! That makes us brothers, Prince Khyan, not enemies!”

  The prince straightened. “I already have a brother.” That was said, unexpectedly, in a perfectly sane, cold voice. “He is King Apophis, whom all hail.”

  “Whom all hail,” Methos agreed. “A most mighty king, a brave and honorable king—one whom I would dearly love to meet.”

  And I have just committed myself to it, haven’t I? Or at least, he added thoughtfully, up to a point.

  So now, in for the kill: “Prince Khyan, your coming here is a stroke of the best good fortune for me, for us both. You can get me out of this snare and take me to King Apophis.”

  “Why?”

  “Why!” Why, indeed? “Why, because…” Methos continued after the smallest of hesitations, letting his voice drop once more to that conspiratorial whisper, “because I am, as I say, not an Egyptian. I have been c
aught here, among these lesser beings, for far too long. You understand that, surely!”

  “Yes, yes! Continue!”

  “I am weary of this place, weary of giving them smooth words—weary of wasting my talents! I could be so useful to King Apophis, so helpful to your brother—and I don’t wish to be trapped here, not when there is such power as there is in Avaris!

  “In short, I wish to join the winning side, Prince Khyan, the one for whom my powers can do the most good. And… oh, but I do admire King Apophis.” Hah. “What a fine, intelligent, noble man he must be!”

  Ah yes, he had gambled correctly. Those had been exactly the right choice of words, because Khyan’s eyes blazed with delighted excitement. “It’s true!” he exclaimed. “My brother is the finest of men, the truest of brothers—he loves me. Even when I… when I am sometimes… troubled, when other men might shun me, he—he never shuns me. Not even…” the prince’s voice shrank to the barest murmur, “not even when he learned the secret.”

  “That you cannot die?”

  “No! No one knows that. Save for you.”

  Then there could be only one other possibility. Greatly daring, Methos said, in his most mysterious voice, “But there is something else… I sense it now… a dark secret surrounding your birth.”

  “You can’t know that!” It was nearly a shriek. “Only my brother and I know it!”

  Gently, now, before he panics. “Ah, but remember that you and I truly are of the same kind! You are not of the royal blood—no shame in that,” Methos continued soothingly. “This is nothing more, nothing less, than one of the signs by which one can know he has been ‘touched by the gods.’ A being with our divine might can never be born of mere mortal man and woman. He must always be found as a babe, raised by those who do not know his power.”

  That sounds too bizarre for even a madman to believe. And yet… well… we all are foundlings.