Pauline Gedge - House of Illusions

Praise for Pauline Gedge

Gedge excels at setting the scene and subtly evoking a sense of the period as she tells a timeless story of greed, love, and revenge.

Kirkus Reviews

Gedge makes the past so accessible. You can imagine walking between the pillars into a magnificent hall and watching it come alive with the smell of the fresh paint on the frescoes.

The Globe and Mail

Gedge vividly renders the exotic, sensuous world of ancient Memphis, the domestic rituals of bathing and dressing, the social ambience of superstition and spells.

Publishers Weekly

Gedge has such a terrific feel for ancient Egypt that the reader merrily suspends disbelief and hangs on for the ride.

Calgary Herald

Her richly colourful descriptions hit the reader with photographic clarity.

The Ottawa Sun

Gedge has brought Egypt alive, not just the dry and sandy Egypt we know from archaeology, but the day-today workings of what was one of the greatest and most beautiful kingdoms in the history of the world.

Quill & Quire

Each volume is a carefully devised segment, with its own distinct flavour and texture. When put together, then the skill and workmanship of the whole undertaking stand out clearly. The trilogy is one of Pauline Gedges most appealing works.

Edmonton Journal

Gedge has the magical ability to earn a readers suspension of disbelief.

Toronto Star

Pauline Gedges strengthsimagination, ingenuity in plotting, and convincing characterizationare here in abundance.

Books in Canada

Gedge draws another vivid picture of Ancient Egypt and skillfully weaves her dramatic tale of intrigue, treachery, and manipulation. Her historical novels have the ability to bring a period fully before us; it is possible to feel the heat and experience the pageantry she so ably describes.

The Shuswap Sun

Pauline Gedges knowledge of Egyptian history is both extensive and intimate, and has enabled her to produce an entire society of the time of Ramses II with admirable vitality. She has a sharp eye for the salient detail, and an evocative way with landscape and interiors. She can produce a mood and suggest an atmosphere A very good story well told, and it engrosses the reader from the first page to the last.

The Globe and Mail

PENGUIN CANADA

HOUSE OF ILLUSIONS

PAULINE GEDGE is the award-winning and bestselling author of eleven previous novels, eight of which are inspired by Egyptian history. Her first, Child of the Morning , won the Alberta Search-for-a-New Novelist Competition. In France, her second novel, The Eagle and the Raven , received the Jean Boujassy award from the Socit des Gens des Lettres, and The Twelfth Transforming , the second of her Egyptian novels, won the Writers Guild of Alberta Best Novel of the Year Award. Her books have sold more than 250,000 copies in Canada alone; worldwide, they have sold more than six million copies and have been translated into eighteen languages. Pauline Gedge lives in Alberta.

ALSO BY PAULINE GEDGE

Child of the Morning

The Eagle and the Raven

Stargate

The Twelfth Transforming

Scroll of Saqqara

The Covenant

House of Dreams

The Hippopotamus Marsh:

Lords of the Two Lands, Volume One

The Oasis: Lords of the Two Lands, Volume Two

The Horus Road: Lords of the Two Lands, Volume Three

The Twice Born

HOUSE OF

ILLUSIONS

PAULINE

GEDGE

PENGUIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published in a Viking Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada),

a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1996

Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada),

a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2002

Published in this edition, 2007

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (OPM)

Copyright Pauline Gedge, 1996

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publishers note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Gedge, Pauline, 1945

House of illusions / Pauline Gedge.

Sequel to: House of dreams.

Originally publ.: Toronto : Viking, 1996.

ISBN 978-0-14-316743-3

1. Title.

PS8563.E33H69 2007 C813.54 C2007-903367-9

ISBN-13: 978-0-14-316743-3

ISBN-10: 0-14-316743-X

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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HOUSE OF

ILLUSIONS

Part One

KAMEN

IT WAS THE BEGINNING of the month of Thoth when I first saw her. I had been detailed by my commander, the General Paiis, to escort a Royal Herald south into Nubia on a routine assignment and we were on our way back when we put into the village of Aswat for the night. The river had not yet begun to rise. It was flowing slowly, and although we were making better time on our return than we had on the journey out, we had covered hundreds of miles and were very eager to reach the familiar comforts of the Delta.

Aswat is not a place I would choose to visit. It is little more than a huddle of small mud houses crouched between the desert and the Nile, although there is a rather fine temple to the local totem, Wepwawet, on its outskirts, and the river road wanders pleasingly through shady palms as it enters and then leaves the village. The Herald whom I was guarding had not planned to beach our craft there, indeed he seemed very reluctant to do so. But a frayed rigging rope on which we had been keeping an anxious eye finally parted and that same afternoon one of the crew sprained his shoulder, so with bad grace my superior ordered that the oars be shipped and a cooking fire built on the bank not far from Aswats place of worship.