Dagger

"Rest here, honored guest," Pre murmured as she handed Samlor onto one of the couches. Tabubu was providing the same service for Khamwas, speaking so softly that only the warmth of her tone was audible across the table.

Servants came out from behind the screens. The two women took cloths and silver bowls from them, then knelt beside the guests.

"Let me wipe away the stains of travel," said Pre. She dipped the cloth into her bowl of rose-scented water and gently swept it over Samlor's hands and forehead.

The awareness of her fingers burned Samlor through the cooling moisture. He reached toward the woman, but she intercepted him with the cloth and wiped his scarred fingers. "Why, we scarcely know each other," she chided with a lilt that ended in a giggle as she whisked away the cloth and herself.

Across the table, Khamwas tried to embrace Tabubu. She nestled closer to him, then twisted lithely away to hand the bowl and cloth back to a servant. One nipple had left a streak of rouge on Khamwas' cheek. "I told your man," she said mildly, "that I'm not a prostitute."

"I know that, I know that," Khamwas said, the words coming out in a series of gasps as though he had been punched in the stomach. "I'll marry you."

"Kh-" Samlor said, starting from his couch. No more of the word came out because Pre seated herself on the cushion so that her hips nestled against the angle of his groin.

"You must be thirsty," she said as she held a cup of wine to Samlor.

He shivered at the contact and touched his lips to the rim. Pre tilted the cup without spilling the rich, undiluted vintage, seemingly unaware of the way Samlor's arm encircled her beneath the crocodile skin and cupped her breast.

Tabubu slipped onto Khamwas' couch in a motion which mirrored that of her maid. Servants passed to and from the screened end of the room carrying dishes, but they were as silent as the breeze and almost as little noticed by the men at the table.

"You'd marry me indeed," said Tabubu with a mixture of scorn and caress in her tone. Carbuncles below the rim of her cup glinted as she held the wine to Khamwas. "And then what, pray tell? As soon as I marry, my father's estate reverts to the Temple of Mnevis and I have nothing."

"But what does that matter?" asked Khamwas dismis-sively. His arms encircled her, and he added as he nuzzled toward her breast, "I can take care of you. I have everything…"

Tabubu moved only slightly, but her guest's lips touched her pendant instead of her nipple as he intended. "You can," she said. "You have, no doubt. Well, before you take your pleasure with me, noble prince, you'll have to make over all your property to me in a deed of maintenance."

For a moment her breast lay on Khamwas' cheek. Then, when his arms tightened and relaxed spasmodically, she was on her feet again and slipping away from him.

"Yes, yes, I'll sign the deed!" Khamwas cried hoarsely. He seemed to be trying to get up from the couch, but his legs were tangled. "We'll go to a scribe, we'll go today. But first-"

"More wine," said Pre, ordered Pre, as Samlor started to speak.

It was a heady vintage, but it did not affect him the way the woman's presence did. He tried to grope between her legs but found his hand caught in the many filmy layers of her skirt.

Pre urged her vulva against his touch, through the soft fabric. "Not in front of the mistress," she teased in a whisper. "At least-not until they…"

Her voice dissolved into a giggle as she spun gracefully to her feet, holding the empty wine cup out to the servant waiting to exchange it for a full one.

Tabubu was standing, a statue limned in the fire of her garments. She clapped her hands sharply.

A servant scampered up the stairs, bobbing his head to his mistress.

"Show up the scribe and the witnesses," she ordered.

"Witnesses?" Samlor muttered. He shook his head, trying to clear it of the wine fumes. Pre swayed near the couch, smiling down at him. He started to rise, but it looked as though the maid were going to seat herself beside him again.

The servant returned. Beside him was a man who mounted the stairs with a sprightliness which belied the age which had reduced his hair to a white fringe. He carried a small writing desk folded and a wicker satchel with rolled paper, brushes, and an inkpot. From his chest on a necklace of turquoise hung a roller seal.

"You summoned a scribe?" he said, seating himself on the floor with brusque assurance. He unfolded his writing desk and set it over his crossed legs. "I am Aper. What is the document I am to draft?

Shuffling up the stairs more slowly, their faces set in expressions of disapproval bordering on fury, were Khamwas' three brothers.

"Prince Khamwas will assign all his property to me," said Tabubu imperiously. "His brothers are here to witness the contract."

The scribe nodded, unrolled a length of well-made paper on his desk, and began writing with quick, practiced brush strokes.

"Khamwas, what can you be thinking of?" demanded Osorkon, halting two paces into the room. He swung his head and glared at Samlor as he added, "And you-you're supposed to be his friend, aren't you? How can you let him commit such nonsense?"

"I-" said Samlor.

Pre eased herself down against him, offering wine and the warmth of her body. "Only a fool involves himself in another's family affairs," she whispered.

The softness of her hips reinforced the obvious truth of the statement. Samlor drank as his hand reached under the crocodile skin.

"Brother, we brought your children with us and they're below now," said Patjenfi. "Surely you can't intend to leave Pemu and little Serpot destitute for-" Words failed, so he flicked his hand through the air in the direction of Tabubu, a gesture as scornful as it was angry.

"Pemu?" Khamwas repeated, his head jerking as if his brother had slapped his face. "Yes, th-"

Tabubu smiled down at him and thrust her groin forward suggestively.

"Do you think you can threaten meT Khamwas snarled at Patjenfi. His hand clasped his sash where it bulged over the crystal book. "I'm a god, do you realize? You will do as I command, or-"

He paused. Instead of leaving the threat unspoken, he added in a voice as quiet and cruel as leprosy, "I will blast you as if you never existed, Patjenfi." His gaze swept his brothers. "I will blast you all."

"I didn't-" said Patjenfi.

Pentweret silenced him in a chopping gesture. "You have the right to dispose of your property, my brother," he said in a voice tremulous with emotions and his attempt to control them. "But for^your sake as much as for your children, think about what you're doing."

"The document is complete, lady," said the scribe. He held it up to Tabubu along with the ink-charged brush.

Samlor could not recall ever having seen a smile as cruel as that with which Tabubu gave the deed and pen to Khamwas.

Khamwas tried to smile back, but the expression was not successful and the man's hands were quivering so badly that he could scarcely hold the paper he was to sign.

Tabubu leaned over so that her pendant and full breasts wobbled in front of Khamwas. Her fingers rested on his hands, not so much to guide them as to still their trembling.

Khamwas touched the brush to the document and drew his name with the sure strokes of an accomplished scholar. His face had no expression and his eyes did not appear to be focused.

Beneath Samlor's fingers, Pre's breast was as densely fluid as molten lava.

Patjenfi was muttering unintelligibly to himself; Osorkon's broad jaw was set in grim silence; and the curse Pentweret spoke was fully audible.

The scribe rose, holding his desk open with the ink palette upon it. Crushed stone clung in blue shadows on the back of his thighs. His face was professionally bland and perhaps genuinely bored.

Tabubu dropped the executed deed onto the desk and waved the scribe negligently toward Khamwas' brothers. "The witnesses must sign," she said.

Nodding, the scribe held the desk out for Osorkon to use the brush waiting in the hollow of vermilion ink.

"I thought we behaved badly to you six years ago," said Osorkon. He stared at his lounging brother, then scribbled his signature with disdainful haste. The brush, carefully frayed from the reed which formed its stem, flattened under Osorkon's pressure.

"We were models of familial affection," he added, "compared to the way you're treating your children." He turned his back.

Tabubu was standing at an angle to Khamwas, watching Patjenfi take the brush and fastidiously try to straighten its splayed bristles on the flat of the palette. Her fingertips were massaging the front of her dress, working slowly downward from her navel.

"You'll regret this, my brother," said Pentweret as he took the brush in final turn. "But it won't be undone. It can't." He sighed and turned away.

Pre was touching Samlor, rubbing him with feather-light fingers the way Tabubu massaged herself. His vision was blurring. Khamwas's brothers were trudging down the stairs with lowered heads, but reflections from the surface of the wine kept staining their image in Samlor's eyes.

The scribe had squatted again to roll his inked seal behind each signature on the deed.

Tabubu was kneeling beside Khamwas' couch. She allowed him to kiss her as if the prince were a rambunctious puppy whose affections were too cute to be degrading.

"My lady," said the scribe, holding out the completed document.

Tabubu rose as she took it and slapped Khamwas' hand with the rolled paper as he reached for her.

"You can't deny me now!" Khamwas bleated. His tone made it obvious that he knew she could-and that he expected her to do so.

"Deny you?" said Tabubu, snapping the scroll open angrily. "It's you who're denying me!"

Samlor had not heard an order to the servants, but they were returning up the stairs with-

"Your children haven't signed this yet!" Tabubu was saying. Her voice was as cold and hard as the walls of the crater where Nanefer fought the worm. "Do you think I don't know what will happen? When you're gone, they'll take everything away from me."

"Daddy, what-" said Serpot. She took a quick step toward Khamwas, past a servant whose reaching hand halted when the child and the child's words stopped at Tabubu's glare.

Serpot hopped back beside Pemu. The boy was as stiff as a soldier being cursed by his superior. Tears rolled down Serpot's cheeks although she tried to hold them back with closed eyelids.

"You see?" Tabubu hissed. "They'll ignore any agreement you make!"

Samlor kept seeing Star rather than Serpot facing Tabubu in blind misery. He wanted to get up and hurl a smirking servant through the window to the crocodile pond beneath. . That would show this bitch what the real power was in,this world where women were only toys for men.

He didn't move though, couldn't move, because Pre had given the cup to another of the servants. Now, as she caressed Samlor with one hand, she rubbed her own groin with the other.

"Tell them they must sign the deed," Tabubu ordered as she dropped it on the little desk the scribe carried. He bore it to the children as he had to Khamwas' brothers. His face showed no more emotion than the paper did.

"Father?" said Pemu. His hands were gripping his thighs as if to keep themselves from being dragged upward toward the waiting brush.

"Don't speak, Pemu," Khamwas said. He lay on the couch with his eyes closed and his fists clenched.

"Tell them they have no inheritance!" Tabubu said. Her voice was chilled steel, but her belly thrust and withdrew rhythmically a few inches from Khamwas' face. "Tell them you have beggared them for life and that they must sign their agreement to what you've done!"

"Da-" Serpot pleaded.

"I can't bear your voice!" Khamwas screamed in sudden anger. "Sign it! Sign it! Don't make me hear your voice!"

"I will do as you order, Father," said Pemu stiffly. His cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, at the scene and at his father's behavior.

Serpot turned to hide her open blubbering, but a liveried servant stood behind her and she whirled around again. "I can't," she wailed. "I can't write, I can't I can't I can't!"

As Ahwere couldn't write the symbols that would have protected her, thought Samlor.

Pemu wrote his name with the careful certainty of a child who is well taught but as yet lacks the practice which makes the motions instinctive.

Prince Nanefer had been a scribe and a scholar without equal in his time, and he was dead as surely as Ahwere. Samlor wanted to say that to Khamwas, but only a sigh of pleasure escaped when he opened his mouth.

"Your brother will sign your name, child," said the bland scribe. "Just make a mark on the paper."

Serpot could not prevent her eyes from dripping as she took the brush from Pemu, but she dabbed the tip against the paper with queenly disdain which belied her sobs of a moment before.

They were good kids, royal in the best sense of the word, but Samlor hil Samt couldn't move a muscle to help them. He was kneading Pre's breasts. The crocodile hide was coarse against the backs of his hands, while the skin beneath was as smooth as finest silk save for the erect nipples.

"My lady," said the scribe coolly as he returned the document to Tabubu after sealing the new signatures also.

Tabubu sat on the couch, her hips to the curve of Khamwas' lap just as the maid sat with Samlor across the table. Her right hand played with Khamwas' hair while the left gently waved the scroll in his face. Khamwas was trying to pull the woman prone onto the couch with him, but only the dimples in the silk beneath his fingers suggested that she resisted him.

Samlor had expected Pemu and Serpot to be led away. They still stood by the window looking doubtful, frightened-and as resolute as children could be in the face of unspoken threats.

"You've really tried to provide for me, dearest, flower of my life," said Tabubu as she leaned slightly closer to Khamwas. Instead of icy hectoring, her tone was a lover's in the moment following a splendid climax.

"But you can't, you see, darling-" her voice was as soft as the breast which dangled just low enough to brush Khamwas' ear " – so long as the brats are alive. You saw how your brothers hate me. If you were gone, they'd snatch everything away from me and give it to-"

"But they're my children," Khamwas whimpered. His eyes were open, but Tabubu's pendant hung too closely before them for him to be able to focus on it.

"I can give you children," Tabubu murmured, "and I can give you much more."

She leaned still further forward. Samlor thought she was whispering into Khamwas' ear, but instead she was nibbling it. Her tongue was very pink against her teeth for an instant. Then she smiled and purred, "Much more, little flower. Bat first you must kill them."

"Daddy," Serpot cried.

"Silencel" Khamwas shouted back. His face was livid with strain. "I told you to be silent, didn't I?"

"You see how they obey you," said Tabubu, her lips inches from Khamwas' ear. The words drilled through Samlor's brain, but he did not try to move.

"Do the abomination that you demand, then," Khamwas said past the hand that he had thrown over his eyes.

"N-" Samlor stammered, "N-n-"

"No, heart of hearts," said Tabubu. Her hand touched Khamwas' and softly guided it to her quivering breast. The agony of his uncovered expression smoothed to chalky emptiness. "Your man must do it. Otherwise the act will be laid to me. Order him."

"No," said Samlor. He got to his feet, though he could not feel anything below the pulse throbbing in his groin 'Wo."

"You heard her," said Khamwas without emotion. Men in scarlet robes held Pemu and Serpot, but the children refused to demean themselves with vain struggle.

"You can't order me!" Samlor shouted. He had drawn his long dagger. If there had been a servant behind him when he flashed around a fierce glance, the watered steel blade would have disemboweled the man. There was no one.

"Samlor, I beg you," Khamwas whispered. "For our friendship-please. You must understand. .»

Someone did stand behind Samlor now. His motion as he turned seemed as slow as wax melting in the sun. Pre's hands teased open Samlor's sash. She was nude. Her pubic hair had been hennaed to a startling shade of red.

Pre pressed her body against Samlor and kissed him with her whole naked length. "Now. .," she murmured, turning him with her fingertips on his shoulders and the memory of her warmth consuming all choice but obedience to Tabubu's will.

Samlor walked slowly toward the children. He tried to grasp Pemu by the hair, but the boy's head had been shaved to mere fuzz in the fashion of the country. Instead, Samlor closed his hand across the skull with his fingertips on one temple and the pad of his thumb on the other. He turned the boy so that Pemu's tightly-clenched eyes were on him.

The eyelids flew open as Samlor cut the boy's throat from ear to ear. The blade severed all four branches of the carotid artery, bathing both victim and killer in hyphenated spurts of blood. It dripped onto the floor, cratering the lapis lazuli dust and turning it into purple gum.

Pemu's head flopped to the side when the muscles holding it erect were cut, but his eyes were still bright as the servant holding him turned and dropped the dying child out the window. The body splashed in the pool beneath. One, then the other crocodile slammed their jaws on it with a sound like vaults closing. In the room's dead stillness, Samlor could hear the boy's ribs cracking beneath the pressure of ragged yellow teeth.

He looked back at Khamwas. He could feel nothing except Pemu's blood, and that burned like boiling vitrol. "Go on," Khamwas croaked.

Tabubu's dress lay crumpled beside the couch. She wore nothing but the dangling crocodile pendant toward which she drew Khamwas' face.

Samlor turned. His bloody left hand was a claw poised to wrap itself in Serpot's hair and jerk the child's throat up for his blade.

Her face was already lifted to him. Her eyes were glistening with tears, but they were open and her slender throat bobbled as she swallowed a sob.

"Don't you want me?" Pre breathed in Samlor's ear. She was standing behind him, so close that when she lifted herself on her toes the pressure of her body slid Samlor's tunic up on his hips.

He swung the coffin-hilled knife in a short arc that grated on Serpot's neckbone as it tore through everything else, skin and flesh and the tough cartilage of her windpipe. Her tongue stuck out in final terror as the force of the blow flung her sideways, against the smiling servant holding her.

A voice in Samlor's mind screamed "Father!" and his eyes flickered with images of Star, not Serpot, being lifted and hurled through the window to the reptiles waiting below.

His dagger clanged to the floor. There was blood everywhere, ropy trails slung from the blade as it cut clear and great pools splashed on the sparkling dust by the child's jugular emptying her life.

Pre's arms were around Samlor. She kissed him, the touch of her lips beneath his ear drawing his face around to meet them.

"Now," she whispered as she drew Samlor down onto the blood and lapis of the floor with her, "take what you have earned, my hero."

He didn't realize he was tearing the strong linen of his tunic until the fabric ripped. He knelt between Pre's thighs and felt her heels encircle him.

As he thrust forward, her grinning mouth opened wider into bestial jaws… a tunnel of blue fire. . into a screaming void that filled the cosmos. .

Samlor was face down on the ground outside the arbor in Khamwas' garden. Khamwas was within, sprawled across

the curved wicker bench in a pose that must have been as painful as the way Samlor's knee pressed a knotted root in the turf.

Samlor had cut the neck off a gourd-two gourds, he saw, when Khamwas sat up. His cock was stuck through the hole, and that hurt also.

"What in the name of heaven are you doing?" demanded Osorkon in amazement. Behind stood the palace children, their game forgotten, and the equally frightened servants who had been watching them. "Are you drunk?"

CHAPTER 29

"COVER YOURSELF, FOR pity's sake," said Osorkon scornfully as he stepped past Samlor to the entrance of the arbor.

Samlor turned toward the wall and tried to blank out the memory of childish faces gaping in amazement at him. The rind was tough enough that the edges scraped as he pulled the gourd off him. That pain helped him-not forget, but at least put aside the shock and embarrassment that made his skin burn all over his body.

"Brother," Osorkon said in cold fury as Khamwas disengaged himself from a similar gourd. "If you've returned to degrade yourself and the kingdom, so be it- your family has no power to stop you, you've made that clear. But tell us now so that we can exile ourselves and avoid watching further disgusting exhibitions."

Samlor squeezed the front of his tunic together. He'd torn it all the way to the waist, despite the brocaded hem. It was an impressive feat of strength-for a singularly unworthy purpose.

"Where-"he said, more to get his voice working again than because he understood where the sentence would go next. "H-how long have we been here?"

Osorkon turned. In his face Samlor saw the concern which Osorkon's personality converted to anger before he could openly display it. "Well, some hours," he said. "You were watching the children play, and then you began to behave, well, oddly."

He blinked, trying to drive away the image of just how oddly his brother and Samlor had behaved. "They became concerned, and your major domo-" that plump servant, sweating with emotion and the sunlight into which only a crisis had drawn him, attempted a smile of acknowledgement " – thought I should be summoned rather than a doctor at first."

Osorkon looked from Samlor to Khamwas, doubtful but obviously hoping that medical attention would not be necessary.

Samlor's dagger lay in the grass. Its blade was stained with the juice and pulp of the gourd.

Khamwas stepped stiffly out of the arbor. He held the Book of Tatenen in his hand. Lights winked and changed in its crystalline interior, but sunshine on the open lawn did not affect the display.

Sarnlor said nothing, but his face grew very still. His eyes met Khamwas' when the book glinted between the men in its own rhythm.

"I think. .," said Khamwas. "What is that thing?" demanded Osorkon. "Is it a jewel?"

"Nanefer won't send us a dream next time. We'll really live it," said Samlor, ignoring Osorkon. "And there won't be a damned thing we can do, even knowing it." His groin ached with the abuse he had just given it.

". . that we'd best return this now," said Khamwas, completing the thought that he did not realize had been interrupted.

"What are you talking about?" Osorkon begged, suffused with the fear that his brother was going to break out into aberrant behavior again.

Samlor and Khamwas were walking toward the house, discussing preparations for their formal return to the Tomb of Nanefer.

As they passed the wide-eyed servants and children, they opened their arms. Khamwas strode on, holding his son by the hand, while Samlor carried the little girl who was not Star.

The manikin Tjainufi capered on Khamwas' shoulder, crying, "Happy is the heart of the man who has made a wise decision!"

The sparks in the crystal's heart had muted to warm pink and a yellow the hue of sunshine.

CHAPTER 30

"THE BOOK," TRILLED Ahwere's ghost. Her form shrank and expanded like a doll twisting on the end of a pendulum, now close to Samlor and now farther away. "They've come back with the book."

"Royal prince," intoned Khamwas, "royal princess, we return to you what is yours."

"Royal Prince Merib," Samlor echoed according to the directions his comrade had given him, "we beg forgiveness for having disturbed your rest."

Thirty musicians were playing on a barge on the river outside, and there was a chorus of over a hundred boys on the strand, chanting a hymn of praise to Tatenen. The music had been loud even while Samlor followed Khamwas up the tunnel; but in the tomb chamber, outside sounds vanished as utterly as if they took place in the crater of the worm.

The corpse of Nanefer laughed.

Samlor was sweating and his nostrils were full of the dry, thick odor of incense boiling from the braziers he and Khamwas bore on their heads. There was no real danger that a quick motion would unlatch the perforated lid and pour burning coals down on the wearer-but it was possible, and the crawl through the tunnel was as abject a means of abasement as any Samlor had undertaken.

"Welcome, Prince Khamwas," said the corpse. "Welcome, noble Samlor."

One of Nanefer's dry, blackened hands gestured. Suddenly no heat came through the thick pad protecting Samlor's head from the brazier. The glow of the similar brass censer which Khamwas wore also cooled.

The room brightened with clear light flooding from the Book of Tatenen. It bathed the sparkling, ethereal ghosts of Ahwere and Merib. Instead of washing them away, the light gave substance to the figures, making them appear solid at a glance and warming their skin and clothing with its natural colors.

"Take off your headgear, my fellows," said Nanefer. "You and I are brothers, Prince Khamwas, and your friend Samlor is a friend to me."

His voice was awkward, as if it were being driven by a cracked bellows which had to be recharged after every few syllables, but his enunciation was so pure that his words were easily understood.

Samlor unlatched Khamwas' chinstrap and set that brazier on the floor before he delt with his own. Khamwas' hands cupped but did not grip the crystal book.

The brass censers were as cold as if they had never been lighted. They looked forlorn, sitting beside the blackened lamp which the men had abandoned on their first visit to the tomb.

Ahwere moved closer to her husband, walking instead of drifting as her shape had done in the past. Merib clutched her chest and shoulder but his chinless face was turned toward the living men with an expression of doubt rather than terror on it.

Khamwas swallowed. He stepped forward as Ahwere put her arm around the shoulders of the seated corpse.

"Prince Nanefer," Khamwas said, "the book is yours. Take it with our apologies." He laid the crystal, cushioned but not enveloped in its silk wrapper, on Nanefer's lap.

"We have bought the Book of Tatenen, my kinsman," said Ah were's ghost, her voice a wistful echo in the minds of the living men.

"We will leave you now in peace," said Khamwas. He backed away stiffly, trying not to rub his left wrist. The corpse's leathery hand had brushed him there as it grasped the crystal.

Nanefer's dark face smiled, but he did not speak in the white, sourceless glow which filled the tomb chamber.

"Let your benefaction reach him who has need of it," said Tjainufi, looking straight into Samlor's eyes.

"What can we do to make amends for the trouble we have caused you?" Samlor blurted, surprised at his words but certain that he was right to speak them.

"You can bring my wife and son to me," wheezed Nanefer.

"You can bring me to my brother, my husband, my life," whispered the words Ahwere had no mouth to voice.

"You are my kinsman, my brother, Prince Khamwas," the corpse said. "Bring my wife and son to me that we all may find peace. After a thousand years we may find peace. .

"Peace. .," echoed Ahwere.

"What you ask, we shall do," Khamwas promised formally. He bowed, rose, and then ducked low again to crawl out the tunnel.

Samlor could hear the music again as he followed, but he could also hear a voice ruurmuring "Peace. …"

CHAPTER 31

SEVERAL OF THE barge's deck planks near the bow had been replaced recently enough that the polished wood shone paler than the surrounding planks. It was the same vessel Samlor had traveled aboard in the dream that ended on Tabubu's bloody floor. When he realized that, he started sharply enough to splash a dollop of fruit juice from the cup a servant had offered to cool him.

"Yes, but it's all right," said Khamwas grimly. "The details were right, even when we didn't know them; but it was only a dream."

"I've had men searching as soon as the messenger brought us words of your requirements," said the sallow priest from the Office of Religious Works. His face was blank and his voice so reserved that his extreme concern was obvious. "I'm very much afraid that-long before my tenure in office, I assure you-property of the temple on this side of the river was converted to private use."

"But you know where the boundaries are?" Samlor said, glowering at the priest. Lost records had a way of turning up when officials weighed the bribe a landowner had given them against the chance of being tortured. Samlor's scowl promised torture and worse if the priest failed.

" 'Ware in the bows!" shouted a crewman at the masthead. "Next landing but one!"

"This is. .," said Khamwas, squinting at the shore the royal barge passed in a controlled drift. The walled enclosures, most of them with private docks for the convenience of Ankhtawi's wealthy residents when they visited the capital across the river, varied only slightly in style from one to the next.

"This is where Tabubu lived," Samlor said, thinking that he was completing his companion's thought.

"Tabubu lived only in our minds," Khamwas corrected. "Look."

The bank here was walled by huge stones so black with age and ages of flooding that the interstices between the blocks had vanished to the eye. The central relief of Tatenen which had grinned, then blazed as Nanefer sailed toward it, was worn to a surface as smooth as the silt covering the wall.

"We believe we know where the temple precincts lay," said the priest who stared at the horizon in front of him so that he needn't meet the eyes of the men who had been questioning him. "The problem is that at one time-very long ago-this whole region was owned by the local Temple of Tatenen. So it's very difficult-even where the records exist-to separate the precincts of the ancient temple from the croplands which supported it."

"The area has changed since we last saw it," Khamwas said. His words were normal enough, though no one alive save Samlor could understand their true meaning. "But I'm sure we can find what we need."

He smiled and stroked the ferule of his staff. Where his hand touched it, the wood shimmered green.

CHAPTER 32

THREE DAYS LATER, Samlor rested on an ornamental urn while Khamwas glared at the back of a grave stele whose face was cemented into the garden wall. A messenger, one of the men whom the Prefect of Ankhtawi had assigned to help the prince, stepped around a terrace of dwarf chrysanthemums. He saw the men and called, "Prince Khamwas? We've-"

Khamwas turned and pointed his staff at the messenger. The man screamed, flung down his baton of office, and ran off. Baby toads were hopping from his hair and bouncing down his face and tunic.

Someone else peered bug-eyed around the terrace, then jerked his head to cover.

"You think I overreacted, don't you?" Khamwas snarled at Samlor, holding the staff crosswise in a white-knuckled

grip-

Samlor shrugged. "Not if you told 'em not to disturb you with search results," he said mildly. He met his companion's eyes without blinking.

"I didn't!" Khamwas said in the same challenging voice.

Samlor shrugged again. "Well, it didn't look like it was permanent. And anyway, life's a dangerous place."

Khamwas' anger melted. The princely scholar sagged without the emotion to sustain him. "It's not permanent," he said. "And of course I overreacted."

Samlor patted the rim of the urn beside the one on which he sat. The broad-mouthed jars made comfortable seats, although they would prove confining after ten minutes or so.

"Your…," Samlor said as his friend did sit down. "Ah, you seem to be in good form. This must be a good place for… what you do."

Khamwas' smile was as tired as that of a man who's carried a hod of bricks all day. "In a way," he said in what was not agreement. "The power in this place is, is beyond…"

When he could not find adequate words, he pointed the end of his staff at the stele he had been examining. The worn surface brightened, then spangled itself with the green, glowing symbols of ancient Napatan writing.

"They're reversed, of course," Khamwas said offhandedly as he peered at the stone. "Everything that was carven on the face shows through the back of the stone. It's easier than ripping it out of the wall."

He grimaced and the glyphs vanished. "Also quite useless. It came from the tomb of a temple scribe who died over a century later than Ahwere. Useless. Like all the others we've found.

"I can do almost anything here," Khamwas went on, letting out his frustration gently instead of in a blast of anger that sent innocent bystanders screaming away. "But I can't look through a, a sea of power like the one that surrounds us."

"There's also the problem," said Samlor carefully, "that most of the tombstones here seem to have been moved. From the tombs."

Khamwas dismissed the concern with a flutter of his hand. "If we find the stele, I can follow it to where it belongs," he said. "If I had some object of Ahwere's, I could find her. But not blindly. It's-"

He paused, then said in an understatement that proved he had recovered his temper, " – an irritating situation."

"I shouldn't have asked, ah, Nanefer what we could do for him," Samlor said lightly. His face crimped, and his mind wondered what price the mumified corpse would exact for failure.

"You did right," Khamwas replied in a tone of certainty. "There has to be retribution for what we did-I did-"

"We did. You weren't alone."

"At any rate. Retribution whether or not Nanefer wills it." Khamwas smiled wistfully. "The cosmos abhores imbalance. That's what Ahwere was trying to show us, but I was too-settled on my course to listen."

Samlor heard a sound and rose quickly to his feet. He stood between Khamwas and the new intruder. Not that Khamwas was likely to blast the fellow in a flash of anger just now, but-he'd feel really bad about it later if he did, and there was no point in that happening.

Instead of a messenger from the Prefect's entourage, an old man whose robe had been pounded to gauze with repeated cleanings'edged cautiously around a hedge of dwarf acacias to the side. Had the Prefect decided to thrust a beggar into view to determine whether or not it was safe to approach Khamwas yet?

"Heh-'heh-heh," said the old man, a laugh because his mouth was twisted into a grin. "Used t' play back here, but that were a long time since. It were all differ'nt then."

He began a gesture which jerked to a halt short of the hedge. Thorns already plucked his robe, and he began to remove them with patience and concentration.

"What are you doing here, my father?" Khamwas asked, relaxed by the interruption. If it turned out somebody had used the fellow to draw fire, though-that somebody would answer for it.

"Oh, all the commotion," the old man said. He tugged gingerly at his worn hem, then bent to remove the remaining thorn. "Muck-de-mucks from acrost the river, don't ye know? Used to play in this garden-as it is now, but it wasn't, don't ye know? Slipped by in the confusion, I did. Wouldn't 'e hev conniptions if 'e knew I was here, the Prefect?"

The old man turned and straightened. He had begun to laugh again, but now his face turned stern. "They shouldn't build here, ye know. It's sacred. There was a temple here, right here-" he stepped forward so that his sleeve wouldn't snag again when he gestured " – and the ground's sacred."

"You remember when the temple was here, ah, my father?" asked Samlor, copying his companion's use of the local honorific. He spoke with a flash of sudden hope, but Khamwas' wistful smile warned him even before the gesture was complete that it was vain. The time scale they were faced with was much longer than human memory could illuminate.

"Ah, that were long since," said the old man, capping his words with a laugh that disintegrated into a spell of coughing. "D'ye know," he went on when he could raise his head, "that everything you see were swamp long since? But they drained the land, they did, and now there's a city acrost the river-and nobody left as knows there was a temple here as my father's father kept the grounds of."

Neither Samlor nor Khamwas moved.

"Heh-heh-heh," laughed the old man.

"Did your grandfather ever talk to you about the grounds of the Temple of Tatenen?" Khamwas asked in a voice from which he had rigorously purged hope.

"My father did, bless his memory," the old man said proudly. "Many a time, he did that."

"Did anyone ever mention to you the tomb of Princess Ahwere and her son Merib?" Khamwas went on while Samlor tried to blank his mind of the prayer he would have spoken-except that the gods would surely dash this possibility if they were aware of it.

"Aye, aye, so 'e did, my father," said the old man with a nod of cracked solemnity. "It were a terrible thing, 'e said, that they'd build a house on the sacred ground of a temple and set the south corner on the very tomb of that sad young princess ez they did."

He pointed beyond the chrysanthemum terrace. "The very house the Prefect lives in now and thinks 'imself too good to let an old man walk about 'is garden harming no one."

"You're lying," said Samlor quietly. He walked toward the old man with his hands at his sides as if it required all his control not to batter the fellow to a pulp.

"You're lying!" he shouted, inches from the old man's face. "You think you'll get back at the Prefect by having his house down around his ears, don't you? Don't you?"

"If you doubt my word," said the old man, with unexpected dignity and an even more surprising absence of fear, "then hold me for execution if the tomb is not as I say it is."

"We'll do just that, you know!" Samlor shouted, though by this time the noise was self-reassurance. He was disconcerted by the old man's attitude. . and by the information which if true-as he would not believe was possible-meant the search here was over.

With his hand gripping the other's fragile shoulder, Samlor frog-marched the old man up the path toward the house. He was too intent on his business to look back and see how Khamwas was reacting-or even whether he was following them.

This couldn't work, but by Heqt! if it did…

There was a lily pond in the Prefect's garden, but neither it nor the two-story mansion beyond resembled Tabubu's except in basic function. The Prefect, looking stiff in his robes of office, paced beside the pond. He was throwing in bits of a flower his fingers worried. His wife was seated in the nearby gazebo between two of her maids, all dressed in their best.

At a little distance from the pond were two distinct clots of servants-household personnel and those wearing the indicia of the Prefect's office. One of the latter, the messenger, screamed and threw himself behind a rose arbor when he saw Khamwas again.

The Prefect was an obtuse man and much the happier for it. He brightened and came forward, saying, "I trust your highness has met at last with success?" though nothing in the tableau hinted at that possibility.

"You've been directed to afford my master every facility, have you not?" said Samlor brusquely.

The Prefect looked unwillingly from Khamwas to the underling-the foreigner who was addressing him. "Yes, yes, of course. Any help I can give." He paused, frowning as he looked at the old man in Samlor's grip. "But who is this?" he asked. "Was he with you? I don't-"

"We want you to hold him, " Samlor ordered. "Someplace he can't get away."

"At once," the Prefect agreed. He snapped his fingers. A pair of official servants stepped forward with the nervousness of men who had seen their fellow raining toads. "Take this fellow," continued the Prefect imperiously, "and lock him in my basement storeroom."

"Someplace other 'n that," the caravan master said, grinning in spite of himself. "Also, we'll need a hundred men equipped for a digging job. Demolition job, in fact."

"At once," the Prefect repeated. "Where do you want them to assemble, my good man?"

Khamwas said, "At the south corner of your house, my good man." He gestured with his staff. "We're going to demolish it."

For some long seconds, the Prefect blinked and waited to hear the rest of the joke. Only when his wife began to scream did the man realize his lord was quite serious.

CHAPTER 33

THE INNER WALL was too far back to be a threat to the diggers, but it blocked the route up which baskets of earth and rubble were handed to clear the excavation. The mud brick structure toppled backward with a crash and a cloud of white dust from the molded plaster covering.

The team of workmen cheered as they coiled their ropes. The Prefect's wife broke into a renewed set of wails. She had refused to allow her bedroom at the south corner to be emptied in the few minute Samlor allowed for salvage. She might regret the decision later, but Samlor had to admit that when your home was being devastated, there'd be small comfort in preserving your wardrobe.

"You've got that old man locked where he won't get loose?" Samlor asked the military officer standing beside him.

"Yes, sir," the soldier agreed. His ostrich plume headdress trebled the height of his nod. "We put him in an empty cistern-" his short spear pointed toward a back corner of the garden " – and there's a guard at the mouth of it."

"Stone!" called a man from the pit. "Smooth stone!"

"Then bloody clear it!" Samlor bellowed. "That's what we're about, ain't it?"

Khamwas stood silently with his hands clasped and the staff held upright between them. He was facing the excavation, but his eyes were closed. No one came near him. Raised voices dropped if the speaker chanced to glance across the scholar's forbidding figure.

"My lord," the Prefect said to Samlor, wringing his hands. "You have to believe that I wouldn't have occupied a temple site. There must be some mistake."

"That's between you and the Office of Religious Works," Samlor replied with a shrug. "Though. . if it turns out to be what we hope, I think you'll find the Prince-" he nodded toward Khamwas " – is real well disposed toward you."

"We've found a sarcophagus!" called the foreman from the pit, his voice an octave higher than during the previous announcement.

"Oh, I'm ruined!" moaned the Prefect, but Samlor was running toward Khamwas at the edge of the excavation.

It had seemed quickest to collapse the house into its basement and then to cart away the rubble while digging further. As a result, there were plaster chips, fragments of storage jars and even a forlorn piece of statuary at the bottom of the pit.

The house was built on a-brick foundation, but below the corner which had been ripped down was an angle of polished red sandstone, the remnant of previous construction. Samlor whispered a prayer, remembering the lamplit interior of the tomb which Tekhao had offered for the burial of his lord's child and wife. He could almost smell the incense again…

Khamwas pointed his staff.

The crew in the pit was six men whose shovels and mattocks filled baskets for a hundred other men and women. The earth was handed out in long, snaky lines until it could be safely dumped. The diggers scrambled up the sides of their excavation in near panic to avoid whatever the magician was going to do.

Green light flared at the base of the pit.

There were two stone slabs, though only a corner of the second had been uncovered as yet. They were of the same fine-grained sandstone as the blocks of the walls, a striking contrast to the yellow clay in which they were now imbedded.

The cold light which followed the line of Khamwas' staff made the carvings on the stones stand out despite being worn shallow and covered with clay still baking dry in the sun.

"May the god Tatenen be merciful to the spirit of Merib," Khamwas read, chanting the revealed glyphs as loudly as a priest before his god. "May his innocence find peace in the god."

Samlor gripped his friend's shoulder in triumph, then strode back to the soldier to whom he'd spoken earlier. Behind him, Khamwas was reading out the inscription of the second sarcophagus while green symbols blazed through clay and uncleared rubble.

"We're going to let the old bastard go," Samlor said, gesturing sharply enough to catch the soldier's attention and start him moving without hesitation. "I don't guess he's owed much of an apology, but he'll get one. . and he'll get whatever bloody else he wants, or 1 miss my bet."

The guard stood in a nook shaded by Rose of Sharon. The insects buzzing in the rich purple flowers had lulled him into a doze, but he snapped to full alertness when Samlor and the plumed officer stepped into view. "Sir," he said crisply.

"How's your prisoner?" Samlor asked. The cistern's pottery lid was ajar. He bent to remove it.

"Just fine, sir," the guard said to Samlor's back. "Hasn't said a word since we put him down there, except to ask that I put the lid back partway so the sun didn't cook him."

The cistern was a buried terra cotta jar, eight feet tall and five feet at its greatest diameter. Its interior was plastered to hold the water which could be fed in through pipes around the rim. Empty, it was the perfect prison for a frail old man who couldn't climb out unaided.

But the cistern was completely empty now.

Samlor backed away.

The military officer glanced in and gasped. He began shouting threats at the guard who defended himself with blurted astonishment.

But when Samlor thought about it, he realized that the proper place to search for the old man would be in a rock-cut tomb near the ancient capital of Napata.

Which is where he and Khamwas were about to return, bearing the bones of Merib and Ahwere. .

CHAPTER 34

AHWERE'S REMAINS WEIGHED almost nothing after a thousand years in what had been a swamp till silt pushed the Delta further out into the Great Sea. The casket in which Khamwas placed them was very small, but it was made of thick gold and ivory. Supporting half its weight while holding a lamp in the other hand-and crawling up the passage to Nanefer's tomb-made a damned difficult job.

But Pemu and Serpot were struggling along behind with Merib's similar casket. If they didn't complain, then Samlor surely had no right to.

As before, the sound of music outside the tomb dimmed to silence when Samlor and Khamwas stood within the chamber. The lampflame waved languidly, the only light in the room.

The children staggered out of the passage. They were sweating and the crawl had disarranged their garments of blue and gold, but they did their best to look royal and solemn as they caught their breath within the tomb.

Samlor had worried that the chamber would glow in an unearthly fashion, frightening the children. . and reminding him of their terrified faces as he cut their throats from ear to ear in his dream, only a dream. Perhaps Prince Nanefer had shared the same concern, because the tomb was as cold and dark as a cavity in rock should be.

Nanefer wouldn't have been a bad guy to know.

Nanefer hadn't been a bad guy to be, though he sure wasn't Samlor hil Samt. . and anyway, that had been a dream, too.

"Prince Nanefer," Khamwas intoned, "my kinsman, we have come to reunite you with the Princess Ah were."

There was no echo, none at all.

Speaking together-Serpot starting a half syllable ahead of Pemu, but the two of them coming into synchrony almost at once-the children said, "Prince Nanefer, our kinsman, we have come to reunite you with the Prince Merib."

"Your little boy," Serpot said in a piping solo.

The children, sagging toward the heavy casket between them, looked at their father. Khamwas nodded, and the party advanced as evenly as possible.

The adults set Ah were's coffin to the right of the throne and the seated mummy. Pemu and Serpot managed to put their burden down on the other side without dropping it, but the boy heaved a great sigh of relief and began kneading circulation back into his right palm.

Nanefer's corpse was as still as carven wood. With luck, Pemu and Serpot thought the ill-lit form was indeed a statue.

Khamwas bent over his children and hugged them. "You can go out now, darlings," he said. "Samlor and I will be with you very shortly."

Serpot turned, but Pemu tugged her around again. They made deep bows toward-Nanefer? The caskets? Samlor couldn't be sure. Only then did they back to the passage and duck away.

Samlor wasn't surprised that his lamp snuffed itself as soon as the children disappeared, nor that the frescoed walls took on a pale, shadowless light.

"Prince Nanefer," said Khamwas, bowing to the seated corpse. "We will leave you to your peace."

"You have done well, my kinsman," the corpse rasped softly.

A point of white light sparkled on the surface of either casket, then expanded solidly into the living form from which the bones within had come. Ahwere stepped, in front of her husband, lifted Merib onto her hip, and placed her free hand on the mummy's shoulder.

"Go in peace, kinsman," Nanefer said.

"Go in peace," echoed Ahwere, smiling warmly. She and the infant faded away, but for a moment the translucent memory of her lips hung in the air.

Samlor turned to follow his companion out of the tomb chamber. He had expected his tension to release when the corpse had accepted their offering, but his gut was no less tense than it had been when he steeled himself to enter the tomb for the third time.

"Wait with me, Samlor hil Samt," said the leathery voice.

Great. He could trust his gut. As if that was news.

"Prince Nanefer-" said Khamwas as he whirled.

"You told your kids you'd come out quick," said Samlor; fear made his voice snarl. "Get out with 'em, then!" His big hand closed on his companion's shoulder, forcing Khamwas to meet his eyes.

"But-" Khamwas said, begging his friend to be allowed to plead with the corpse at whom neither of them dared look for the moment.

"Don't speak when it's not the time for speaking," said Tjainufi sharply from the opposite shoulder.

"Your kids need you," Samlor said harshly. "I don't need nobody t' take my heat."

Khamwas clasped Samlor's hand, then bowed with cold formality toward the seated corpse. He ducked down the passageway, leaving Samlor in a chamber which contained no other living thing.

"How can I serve you, your highness?" Samlor asked. His voice sounded reedy in his own ears, but at least it didn't break.

"You have served me, Samlor hil Samt," Nanefer whispered. "Do you recognize me?"

"I know who you are," Samlor replied as coldly as if he were disposing a caravan against foes sure to overwhelm it.

The horny flesh of the corpse began to soften and swell like a raisin dropped in water. The skin lost its wooden swarthiness and paled to a warm, coppery tone much like that of Khamwas and his brothers.

There could be no doubt that this was the man Samlor had met in the Vulgar Unicorn; but there had been no doubt of that anyway.

Samlor drew the coffin-hilled dagger. "Look," he said, beyond fear and beyond even resignation. "The night I took this, I did what seemed like a good idea to do at the time. I don't expect you to like it-but I'd do the same thing again if I thought it'd do a damn bit a good."

Nanefer gave the laugh of a happy, healthy man. "You did what I wanted you to do," he said easily. "What I chose you to do."

Samlor said nothing, because his lips clamped shut on, "I don't understand-" which was too evident to need stating.

"My kinsman is a good man," said the figure which had been a corpse, "and a great scholar. But without a friend like you, Samlor, he would have left his bones to be gnawed by the rats of Sanctuary. He couldn't have taken the Book of Tatenen from me."

The crystal in his lap blazed, visible through the silk and the hands grasping it, though the sunwhite radiance didn't change the illumination of the rock chamber.

"But you fought him?" said Samlor, uncertain in his own mind as to whether he was really asking a question.

"With all my strength," Nanefer agreed. "No one else could have defeated me-nor Khamwas had he been alone.

"And until I was truly overborne, neither I nor my wife and son could ever find peace."

"I… see," said Samlor when he was sure that he did.

"A thousand years isn't a very long time," Nanefer murmured. His well-shaped hands caressed the crystal whose effulgence glowed through him. "When it's over."

"Then I'll give you back your knife," Samlor said, "and leave you to your rest. You-"

He paused, then blurted out the observation he knew he had no right to make: "You're a pretty good man, your highness. I'm glad to have known you."

"Keep the knife, Samlor," said the seated form. "May it serve you as well as you served my kinsman."

The light began to fade from the walls. Nanefer's features shrivelled and darkened away from the semblance of life. The entrance to the passage was a square of light trickling from the rockface beyond.

When Samlor bent to crawl out of the tomb chamber for the last time, his eyes fell on the blade of the dagger bare in his right hand.

Letters wavering in the steel read, Go, blessed of the Gods.