Dagger (31 page)

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

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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

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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.

"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." 231

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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

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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. ..."

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!" 234

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"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.

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

gripSamlor 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." 236

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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

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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."