Free A God Against the Gods by Allen Drury Page A

torture was administered in two or three cases by our special corps of protectors of Amon, and soon we had the whole story.
    The Crown Prince was to be secretly brought to Thebes, was to displace me and my fellow priests, and was to be given control—the High Priest of Ptah in Amon-Ra’s own temple!—of the ceremony of prayer and greeting for his new brother.
    It would have been a direct insult that Amon could never forgive. It would have meant a constitutional crisis of such magnitude that one or the other must go down before it.
    It could not be permitted to happen.
    For all our sakes, the mad plan of my arrogant fool of a brother-in-law had to be thwarted.
    When word reached me, brought by a courier who had ridden two of his three horses to death along the way in his frantic haste, I made up my mind at once. I went directly to the Good God. I was received with the usual undertone of scarcely veiled insolence. I was pleased to see that it vanished, very soon.
    “Son of the Sun,” I said, after bowing almost to the ground and rattling off his titles according to the prescribed ritual, “I understand the Crown Prince comes from Memphis to attend his brother’s birth.”
    I had the satisfaction of seeing a look of blank dismay touch that round, smug little face for a second. But I will give him credit: he has will power, and with it he mastered his expression almost instantly and returned it to its usual bland serenity.
    “Oh?” he said. “Is this what you hear, Brother?”
    “It is not true, then,” I said promptly, and though he concealed the struggle inside, I knew it was going on. He decided to be honest.
    “Such is my desire,” he said calmly.
    “And plans are well advanced for his journey?”
    “Well advanced.”
    “Would it be too much to ask,” I said, and I am afraid I could not keep a certain dryness from my tone, for contempt breeds contempt, “that Amon-Ra be permitted to do suitable honor to his noble brother Ptah by accompanying the Prince in suitable numbers on his journey?”
    “It is kind of you to ask, Brother,” he said, “but it is not necessary.”
    “Not necessary,” I agreed, not revealing that I knew the monstrous plan behind the journey, “but fitting to the order of things in Kemet—that order which has existed unchanged for thousands of years and will continue for thousands of thousands, into eternity. It is right that Amon-Ra pay respect to Ptah, it is right that priests of Amon as well as priests of Ptah accompany the Prince. To do otherwise would be to violate ma’at , the eternal order of things. The land of Kemet would be puzzled and dismayed were the order of things to be so disarranged that Amon could be deliberately ignored and egregiously offended.”
    He hesitated, and for a second looked uncertain. My brother Aye stepped forward, and whatever his thoughts (and it is not the first time that I have suspected him of plotting secretly against Amon), his voice was grave and decisive as it always is, thereby lending a spurious air of deliberation and authority to one whose ambitions are no secret to me, his brother, however he attempts to dissemble.
    “Majesty,” he said, “Son of the Sun: my brother the Priest of Amon speaks sense. It would be only fitting that Amon, too, accompany the Prince from Memphis. However,” he said, raising his hand a little at my instinctive movement of gratification, “since the Prince is High Priest of Ptah, it would seem right that for every priest of Amon there be two of Ptah; and that in any event there be no more than fifteen priests for such a journey. Otherwise it would become unwieldy and a slow public progress, instead of the speedy journey made necessary by Her Majesty’s imminent confinement.”
    “They should come by water, then,” Pharaoh said. “Ramose”—the Vizier stepped forward, bowed low—“do you send word at once that the Crown Prince be accompanied as the Councilor Aye suggests, and that the company for