Dagger

"Yes," agreed Khamwas, too calm to have been aware of any other possibility. "But mostly because I know the tomb is here, and that assurance gives me a, a base to probe more precisely than I could otherwise."

He paused. "Except," he said, "I'm losing my assurance. If the tomb were within a mile of this temple, I should have a hint of it. But there's nothing."

"Look," said Samlor, surprised at the way his voice echoed here when anger raised and whetted it. "We didn't go through that in Sanctuary for a no-show. You found what you needed. By Heqt and all the gods, you're going to learn to use what you got if it takes till we're both old and gray!"

Khamwas blinked, his face turned upward. Only then did Samlor realize he was standing again.

Tjainufi was nodding. "It is in battle that a man finds a brother," he said.

"Du

"In any case. ." said Khamwas, accepting the hand Samlor offered as he started to rise. "In any case, you're acting as a brother. No, I'm not-we're not-going to give up. There's something odd about the results of my location spells. It's as though the tomb didn't exist at all."

Samlor cocked an eyebrow.

Khamwas shook his head forcefully. "No, there's no question whatever of Nanefer's death and burial. He might not be in the tomb, but the tomb exists."

He bent and retrieved his staff from the floor. "I think I'll learn why that's happening."

The lamp was guttering near the end of its oil. Samlor nodded toward it and asked, "Are you coming out? Or do you want me to fill it?" His greater strength and dexterity made it easier for him to collapse and lower the tripod without disaster.

"Neither, I think," said the Napatan with a smile. "The darkness may prove a benefit."

Samlor ducked his way into the great hall and strode past the royal caryatids. They had stem, solemn features now that his eyes were adapted to the amount of IjghLspilling through the doorway.

Outside he sneezed, even though his eyes were slitted. He slid his cornel-wood staff from his belt to give his hands something to do. Probably he ought to busy himself with meal preparations, but there was no way to judge how long Khamwas would want to remain in the temple. Good that he had,his enthusiasm back. Without it they were-

Well, not lost. But Samlor certainly didn't want to spend the rest of his life in a place where he, at least, had nothing in particular to do.

The sun was low, hammering a golden oval across the brown river. The landscape was almost as bright as that of noon, but there would be no twilight to separate it from the darkness to come.

Samlor walked slowly cross the great facade of the temple. Sand blown around the cliff stung his cheeks and the back of his hands. His eyes had readjusted to the light, but now he slitted them against the grit.

Shadows thrown by the low sun gave texture to what seemed smooth surfaces earlier in the day. The sandslope which had drifted across the feet, then knees, of the eastern pair of reliefs provided the path to the top of the escarpment. Samlor toiled up to it, more hindered by the soft footing than the gentle angle.

There was a slight swale in the sand beside him, next to the stone.

Samlor paused, his left hand on the knotted rope which took enough of his weight that his feet didn't slide him back toward the river. Pursing his lips as he wondered what he was trying to accomplish, Samlor reached across his body with the wand in his right hand and probed the swale.

The iron ferule slipped through drifted sand, then scraped to a halt a foot or so beneath the surface. A pock in the stone, reasonable enough and of no interest. . but Samlor shifted his stance slightly, wiggling the slender staff; and, when he put his weight on it again, the tip slid until Samlor's hand touched the sand.

Samlor withdrew the wand so that the black handle stood out against the gold sand while he considered the situation. If there were a hole that deep in the rock face, it wasn't natural. Nor was it very large, because his probe had wedged against the side until he shifted it to get the angle just right. Unless-

The caravan master grasped his wand again and this time tried to work it down in a sawing motion as if cutting a vertical line in the rock face. The sand resisted, shifting like a heavy fluid away from the thrust of the wood. Occasionally the ferule scraped rock, but only sand hindered the general downward motion of the wand.

Samlor had found a crack in the rock, and it was damned likely that he had broken their impasse as well.

Leaving his wand as a stark marker, Samlor slid the twenty feet back down the slope at a rate controlled only by his willingness to kick his feet forward more quickly than his body's impetus could topple him head over heels. Sand and gritty dust sprayed in a dry parody of a duck landing on the water.

"Khamwas!" he shouted, even before he reached the entrance. "Khamwas. Come here!"

The Priest of the Rock was no longer huddled in his doorway. Samlor blinked when he noticed that. It should have been good news-in a small way-because of the way the priest bothered him.

Somehow it didn't seem good, though.

He had to stop when he plunged into the hall of the temple. He was too excited to trust himself to run through the darkness when a misstep into a caryatid would batter him as thoroughly as ru

"Khamwas!" Samlor bellowed and began to shuffle forward, his hands stretched before him.

"Samlor!" bellowed Khamwas, so shockingly close that Samlor's hand cleared his fighting knife by instinct. "I've found it! It's east of the main temple just a little ways."

"Buggered Heqt," muttered Samlor under his breath. In a more normal voice, he said, "Yeah, I found it too-on the ground. Let's go take a look."

He tried to sheathe his dagger, but the darkness and the way adrenalin made him tremble prevented him. After he-pricked his left index finger twice while it tried to steady the mouth of the sheath, he lowered the blade instead so that a flat was along his. right thigh.

Khamwas had the advantage of seeing Samlor against the lighted doorway, so he had been able to dodge from the collision course the two of them were otherwise following. He put his hand on Samlor's shoulder and guided or directed his companion outside with him.

"All that it took," Khamwas bubbled happily, "is one more try. If you hadn't braced me, my friend, we'd…"

"It's up the slope," said Samlor, pausing briefly to put his weapon back where it belonged when talking to his friend and employer. In slightly different circumstances, that reflex could have caused a very nasty incident indeed.

"Oh," he added, pointing across the curve of the cliff to the smaller temple. "Our friend's finally gone away."

Khamwas, already grasping the rope as he strode slushily up the slope, glanced in the direction of Samlor's gesture. As a result, they were both looking toward the relief when the spider-limbed monster shuddered away from it. The movement came a fraction of a second before the echoing crackle of rock breaking.

"Earthquake!" cried Samlor. He turned to be sure the escarpment and carvings towering beside them were not also toppling to crush them across the sand and into the nearby river.

The cliff above was as solid as it had ever been. The river was a brown stream. It was vaguely streaked by its current, but it had not become a mass of whitecaps dancing to the rhythm of the underlying strata.

The monster had not fallen from the other relief. It had walked. And it was walking toward Samlor and his companion.

Khamwas slid back to firmer footing, where sunbaked mud cemented the sand into a narrow shoreline around the face of the cliif. "Don't worry," he said with structured calm. "I'll stop it."