‘I have passed on the wishes of King Hurotas and promised that a suitable donation will be delivered in due time,’ Hannu said. ‘A powerful man can buy his way into the presence of the gods here as much as in Egypt.’

  ‘This is not the time for sour words,’ Piay cautioned.

  Hannu shrugged. ‘I am a fighting man. What do I know about anything? But they will provide us with some beast to sacrifice. And we will not have to wait.’ His eyes darted around. ‘And that is good. I do not know these gods. The sooner we are away from here, the better.’

  ‘“In due time.” They are very trusting,’ Myssa mused. She took in the detail of the age-old buildings.

  ‘Would anyone risk the wrath of the gods by failing to pay what is due?’ Piay said. ‘Then let us begin. I am ready to stand before this god of the sun they worship here.’

  ‘Perhaps this god is the same as Ra, but called by a different name.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Piay pondered on this spark of wisdom.

  Ahead, those waiting to enter the sacred precinct lined up to bow their heads to a rock that came up to Piay’s waist, sculpted like a beehive and carved to show a pattern of diamond shapes. The young priest beckoned and Piay walked towards the monument.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked.

  ‘This is the Omphalos.’ The priest’s voice had a faint sibilance. ‘Here, at Delphi, we are at the centre of the world and this stone is the world’s navel. Bow to it. Show respect for this place where the heavens and earth meet.’

  When his turn came, Piay bowed, and then the priest ushered him on before turning to Hannu and Myssa.

  ‘You must wait here,’ he said. ‘Only those who would commune with the Oracle are allowed to enter.’

  Hannu flinched. Piay put up a hand to calm him.

  ‘I will return with the answer we need,’ he said with confidence.

  Piay looked back over the crags and valleys rolling down to the misty, verdant landscape. Shafts of sunlight came through the clouds that had drifted in, as if the gods were shining light upon this sacred place. He felt his heart lift after all the tribulations he had faced since he’d left the comforts of his home.

  P

  iay stirred from a dreamless sleep. His body ached from a night lying on straw on a stone floor. Yet he felt strangely refreshed. Perhaps it was this place, though he couldn’t understand why. The thin light of a silvery dawn broke through the doorway and he looked across a jumble of slumbering bodies – the others waiting to stand before the Oracle. Some would have many nights here.

  Sitting up, Piay stretched. He’d been given a basic meal of flatbread, olives and white cheese the previous evening, but no wine, only a cup of sweet beer. His stomach was rumbling. Pushing himself up, he walked into the chill of the grey morning. The priests were already going about their business, moving from their homes to the temple to the storehouses. The comforting aroma of the day’s bread was drifting from the kitchens.

  Piay wandered until he found the young priest who had been assigned to him. The shaven-headed man had his arms folded around a weight of wood for the kitchen fires.

  ‘Where can I find something to fill my belly?’ Piay asked him.

  The priest shook his head. ‘Not a morsel shall pass your lips until you have had your audience with the Pythia.’

  ‘How soon will that be?’ Piay heard the grumbling note in his voice. Hunger always left him in a bad mood.

  ‘Patience,’ the priest said with a smile. ‘I will come for you when the time is right.’

  He walked away, whistling to himself.

  Piay felt his frustration rise. He’d spent most of his time in this land waiting for something that never happened, it seemed, and he was sick of it. Time was short and too many people were relying on him.

  Taking himself away to the quiet edge of the precinct, he kneeled in the shadows of the branches of an old oak and muttered a prayer to Khonsu. He had no offering to present, but he asked for safe passage through the day ahead. As he closed his eyes, he summoned the faces of the men who had died that night in the fields, as he did every day. He prayed that they would forgive him.

  When he returned to the centre, the young priest was waiting for him. He reached out a hand. On his palm was a short bronze knife, highly polished with a curved blade.

  ‘The hour has come,’ he said. ‘Your journey to enlightenment has begun.’

  The priest led him into the cool confines of the temple. Apart from two other priests standing sentry in the gloom, the temple was empty at that hour. Incense hung in the air and lamps burned behind the altar so that the god’s table appeared to glow with his power. But all around, the suffocating shadows pushed in amid the rising heat of the day.

  Following the priest, Piay stepped up to a circular channel cut into the flagstones by the western wall. The priest pressed the knife into Piay’s hand and said, ‘Wait here.’

  He vanished into the dark and returned soon after, dragging a goat. Once the beast was in the centre of the circle, the priest urged, ‘Make your sacrifice. The lifeblood will open the way.’

  Piay steeled himself. Men he could kill, but beasts made him squeamish. He slashed the short blade across the poor creature’s throat. The blood spurted over his hand and his tunic and splashed into the circular channel, where it drained away. Once the goat’s convulsions had ended, the priest eased the knife from his hand and led him out into the bright sun. Blinking, Piay felt disorientated, heady.

  On the edge of the precinct, water sprang from the limestone of the mountainside and formed a small pool before streaming away and down.

  ‘This is the Castalian Spring,’ the priest said. ‘Here you must purify yourself so you may stand before the eyes of the god untainted by the corruption of this world.’

  Piay stripped off his tunic and stepped into the pool. His legs quickly grew numb from the cold. Under the gushing spring, he washed the blood from his hands and cleansed the dirt of the road from his body. Shivering, he stepped into the rays of the rising sun, closed his eyes and allowed himself to dry.

  ‘It is time,’ the priest murmured.

  Once he had slipped his tunic back on, Piay strode behind the priest to the shrine – a circular domed building barely large enough to house fifty people. Columns supported the portico that ran around the dome, and the shrine had been painted white so it shone when the sun’s rays struck it. Despite himself, Piay felt his heart beat faster as he neared it.

  The priest stopped at the entrance and ushered Piay in. Piay stepped into a small hall well lit by a succession of tall windows. He expected to be struck down the moment he crossed the threshold into the domain of this god he did not worship.

  A scribe stood beside an arched doorway. He was an austere man, with a face as hard as granite, hollow-cheeked and thin inside a heavy robe lavishly embroidered with coiled serpents rising open-mouthed to swallow the sun. His hair was silver. The scribe was holding an unfurled scroll on his left hand; his right was poised with his brush.

  ‘Do not step forward. You must not enter the adyton,’ he intoned. ‘Ask your question.’

  Piay frowned. Who was supposed to hear his petition? He peered through the doorway into the deep shadows beyond. Blinking, he realised someone else waited there. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he watched the figure emerge from the surrounding dark.

  The Pythia sat on a tripod above a fissure in the rough bedrock of the mountain. Her heavy robes were maroon, edged with white and gold, and she had pulled a cowl over her head so her eyes remained lost to the shadows. She might as well have been carved from the rock itself, so unmoving was she, what little of her face he could see below the shade of the cowl expressionless. Her skin was pale, almost grey, and wrinkles were beginning to form around those rigid, bloodless lips.

  ‘Ask your question,’ the scribe repeated.

  Piay steadied his heartbeat. He had thought long and hard about this question on the journey from Lacedaemon, weighing each word until he felt certain the question would be precise enough to elicit an answer from the gods.

  In a clear voice, he asked, ‘How can I save Egypt from its enemy?’

  At first the Pythia did not move, nor did she respond. Piay wondered if she had heard his question, although he had said it loudly enough. Then she began to breathe deeply and faster with each passing breath until she was panting. As suddenly as she had started, she ended the inhalations with one long, juddering draught and her head flopped back.

  What am I seeing? Piay wondered.

  The Pythia sat motionless once again, her face turned towards the heavens. Then her lips trembled and words began to emerge.

  Piay leaned forwards, straining to hear. The scribe scowled and held up a hand to warn Piay not to move from his place. The attendant moved closer to the doorway, listening. Piay caught fragments, but not all of what the Oracle was saying, but the scribe heard everything. Once the Pythia’s low voice died away, the scribe wrote down the message from the gods with rapid brushstrokes on his scroll.

  The scribe tore off the papyrus and handed it to Piay.

  ‘Your question has been answered by the gods, and the answer is this – tame the beast that is both serpent and bull.’

  Piay stared at the piece of papyrus. His thoughts circled, but he could find no answer to this riddle. It would come. He had to believe that. Given enough reflection, enough application of his great mind, it would come, as if he were dragging a carved block of stone from the mud of the Nile. This was the way it was meant to be. Knowledge had to be earned.

  Piay peered back into the dark of the inner sanctum. The Pythia was sitting erect and unmoving once more. Could she see him, or were her eyes fixed on the realm of the gods?

  The scribe flapped his hand to dismiss Piay and he stepped back out into the morning. The young priest was waiting, hands clasped.

  ‘You have your answer?’ he asked.

  Piay nodded.

  The priest tightened his smile, no doubt reading Piay’s confused expression.

  ‘You do not comprehend your answer. That is understandable. The gods are testing you.’

  ‘They are testing me well.’

  Piay wished Taita was there. His master would know the solution to this conundrum, he was sure.

  ‘You must take care,’ the priest said. Piay thought he saw pity in the other man’s face. ‘It is your responsibility to interpret the message of the gods correctly. This is the path to wisdom that the gods have chosen for all men. If your answer is not wise, you will follow the road which ends in destruction.’

  The door to glory or the door to destruction – that was what Taita had told him.

  ‘I accept this gift of the gods and all that goes with it,’ Piay said. ‘I will choose the road wisely.’

  P

  iay trudged down the Sacred Way beside Myssa. Hannu rode at their side. Now he could understand the taut features of those people he had seen returning from their audience with the Oracle. Every one of them must have been tormented, struggling not only with the confounding riddle the Pythia had delivered, but also with the burden that reaching the wrong conclusion could lead to the end of their dreams – perhaps even to the end of their lives.

  ‘The gods will not make it easy for mere men,’ Hannu said. ‘We have to prove ourselves worthy.’

  ‘The answer is there to be found,’ Piay replied. ‘It is within our powers, or the gods would not have delivered it to us.’

  Myssa’s eyes shone. The riddle and its solving had excited her in ways Piay had not seen before. She had opened a flood of ideas even before they had begun the journey from the sacred precinct.

  ‘We know the answer refers to a beast . . .’ she began.

  Piay shook his head before she continued. ‘There is no beast that is both serpent and bull.’

  Hannu shrugged. ‘Perhaps there is one we have not yet discovered. In distant lands, they say dragons fly through the sky in the east, and to the south there are desert cats that speak with the voices of men.’

  ‘And we should search the four corners of the earth until we find them?’ Piay said. ‘No. The gods would not give us an answer that relies on knowledge we do not have. Why would they torment us so?’

  ‘Sport?’ Hannu replied.

  ‘Let us draw our attention first to the word “beast”,’ Myssa pressed. ‘“Tame the beast” and you will defeat the enemies of Egypt. But what kind of beast matches this description?’

  ‘There is the beast,’ Piay said, ‘and there is what lies behind the beast. A man who is brave in battle is said to be a lion. A man who is cowardly or untrustworthy is a dog. Both are beasts. Both are men.’

  ‘Then tame King Hurotas,’ Hannu said. ‘He has been a lion in battle. Tame him and he will become the ally you require.’

  ‘But that only answers one part of it,’ Myssa said. ‘How is Hurotas at once like a bull and a serpent?’

  ‘He has broad shoulders and he is strong like a bull,’ Hannu said. ‘And if beneath his tunic there lies a big—’

  Piay eyed his assistant and Hannu fell silent.

  ‘It is not Hurotas, I am sure of it,’ Piay said. ‘I know I have to convince him to become an ally. The gods would not tell me something I already know. Where is the wisdom in that?’

  ‘We will find the answer,’ said Myssa. ‘The riddle tantalises, but a sharp mind will solve it.’

  Piay felt pleased that he had bought a slave with such a mind, and that for once the burden would not be his alone.

  ‘We have five days to find the answer before we are back in Lacedaemon.’ Hannu pushed himself up on the horse’s back so he could scan the land ahead. ‘That should be more than enough time.’

  W

  hen Lacedaemon rose on the plain beside the river, Piay felt his heart sink. On the long journey back, he had convinced himself that if he had not solved the riddle before he breathed in the woodsmoke hanging over the city, he never would. The three of them had talked all day and deep into the night until his head hurt. Myssa had dazzled him with strange notions, taking their search into areas he had not even imagined. Hannu, too, had offered extravagant thoughts that surprised him for a simple soldier. But in the end it was all for naught. They had come no closer to the answer.

  ‘Do not be despondent,’ Myssa said as she walked beside him while he rode. ‘Though you have set this limit for yourself, this is not the end of it.’

  ‘Where else can we find an answer if not in our own minds?’ Piay felt surprised to hear the concern for him in her voice.

  ‘The gods,’ Hannu grunted from where he sat behind Piay. ‘Khonsu has answered your call before. He could do so again.’

  ‘You must not blame yourself,’ Myssa pressed.

  She reached out a reassuring hand to his thigh, then pulled it back as if it had been burned, recognising that she had crossed the boundary that lies between slave and master. Piay wished she had continued with her touch. He yearned for some human comfort to ease him.

  When he glanced at her, she was muttering to herself with a furious intensity. Still trying to find the answer in the short time before they reached their destination, Piay thought. He was warmed by that.

  They trekked across the plain until Piay could hear the din from the workshops. A hornet swooped from the sky and droned around them. Piay flapped his hand to drive it away but that only angered it more.

  ‘It will leave us be when we pass through the Gate of the Moon,’ Hannu muttered.

  ‘The Gate of the Moon,’ Myssa repeated. ‘A name filled with beauty.’

  ‘The moon is the mistress of mystery,’ Hannu said.

  Piay narrowed his eyes at his assistant’s poetic turn.

  ‘The moon is our guardian,’ he added. ‘We travel under Khonsu’s gaze.’

  ‘There are times in my life conducted under the light of the moon that burn brightly in my mind,’ Hannu said, ‘as if that light alone had fixed them in my head. Some of them I would not wish to remember, it’s true. But others . . . those moments that fill the heart with joy, I am pleased to carry with me forever.’ He paused, adding, ‘The first time I kissed the woman who became my wife.’

  Piay stirred the pot of his memories. He recalled saying farewell to his parents under the glow of the moon. He chose to say, ‘The first time I met my master, Taita.’

  Myssa cast her eyes down. From the tautness of her face, she was recalling some troubling incident. But then she nodded and forced a smile.

  ‘Remember the moments that fill your heart with joy. Yes, that is good advice. There was a time . . .’ Her words trailed away and her brow furrowed.

  Piay glanced down at the quizzical tone in her voice. Some thought was working its way through her. Then her eyes opened and she stabbed a finger in the air.

  ‘I have it!’

  ‘You have what?’ Piay asked.

  ‘The answer!’

  The hornet buzzed closer. Piay lashed at it, driving it away once more.

  ‘By Ra’s flaming chariot,’ he said, ‘tell me, before this thing drives me mad.’

  Myssa clapped her hands, laughing. In that moment, Piay thought she seemed like the woman she had been before the slaver had dragged her away from her life.

  ‘Hannu’s words!’ she said. ‘My mind leaped back across the years to when I was a girl. I stood outside my father’s house, watching the full moon shining in the sky above the trees. I heard a terrible sound blaring through the night – the cry of some huge beast. It filled me with terror and I ran to my father. He grabbed his spear and he raced into the night to protect me.’

  Again the hornet attacked. This time Piay flapped at it half-heartedly. He was entranced by Myssa’s story and her smile. As the furious hornet buzzed louder, the horse danced and Piay fought to keep the skittish beast under control.

  ‘I stood in the door quaking as I peered into the dark,’ Myssa continued, ‘and after what seemed like an age I heard footsteps approaching. My heart leaped with joy when I saw my father striding towards me, but I was puzzled. He was laughing because it was not some beast come to devour us. A merchant was bringing a present for the king of Kush along the road that ran near our house. A gift from a land beyond ours that would amaze and delight our ruler.’