Dagger

With a superior.

"Put your trust in god," said Tjainufi, looking back at Samlor still hunched in the passageway.

"Bloody well have, haven't I?" muttered the caravan master. "Coming this far?" But he twisted himself upright in the painted chamber, the lamp bobbing on the end of the wand in his left hand.

His right fist was empty, for he would have looked a fool to threaten supernatural opponents with a knife. .

But the hilt of the long dagger wasn't far from his hand either.

Samlor's first thought was that he'd misunderstood. They were in a temple, not a tomb, with a man-sized idol seated across from them.

The walls were covered with a brilliantly white plaster which brightened the chamber beyond what Samlor thought was the ability of a single-wick oil lamp. The plaster had been used as the base for frescoes whose bright primary colors had been achieved with pigments, of ci

The paints showed men and women carrying out all the ordinary tasks of a village or a great household: food production and preparation; weaving and building construction; unfamiliar sports and war in unfamiliar armor and chariots. Each scene was labeled in delicate script which was as unintelligible to Samlor as the paintings were obvious without it.

The entrance was in one of the longer walls. Large storage jars were lined up along it. Samlor dipped his hand into the nearest, brushing aside the lid whose wax seal had crumbled with time. The jar was filled with millet which still looked and felt wholesome.

"Heqt!" Samlor blurted as his eyes glanced over the furniture aligned with the other wall. His eyes jerked back to the cult statue in the center of the array. "That's a body."

"This is Nanefer," said Khamwas.

Samlor couldn't tell if the statement were agreement or correction.

There was no smell of death in the chamber; only of dryness and a memory of incense too faint to have been noticed under any other circumstances. Khamwas was waiting as if he expected to be summoned. Samlor swallowed his questions and his nervousness, examining the seated corpse as carefully as he could without going closer.

Nanefer had.been a man of average height and slight build in life. His frame was particularly obvious now that desiccation had drawn the skin back against all of his bones, including the ribs which were not covered by the linen kirtle hung from the left shoulder. The garment was cinched with a wide sash of gold brocade, while the straps of the sandals-

"Heqt!"

Samlor didn't recognize the corpse's face, since its skin was sunken in and darkened to the color of fire-hardened wood even though age had not brought decay. But the clothes he did recognize.

They'd been on the stranger who attacked him in the Vulgar Unicorn.

Samlor had the watered-steel blade of his dagger half clear of its sheath before he remembered just where that blade had come from. He shot the weapon home again as if it were red hot. For a moment, he stood so still that no further motion disturbed the regular swinging of the wand and lamp which he held.

Finally, he let his body slip back, not to relaxation but at least to a state of loose watchfulness. Besides the coffin-hilled knife, he had the choice of the boot knife or the push dagger at the back of his collar.

The right choice was to leave his weapons where they were. But locking up like that was a real good way to get killed.

One of the real good ways. Getting neck deep in wizards was even better.

Nanefer's black, wizened hands were crossed in his lap over a parcel wrapped in red cloth. Khamwas looked at it, pursing his lips as he came to a decision.

He stepped forward slowly.

Ten feet, the width of the room, separated Nanefer's corpse from the men who had just entered. The floor was covered with the same dazzling plaster as the walls and ceiling, and there were no frescoes to dim its fire.

When whorls of blue sparks appeared in the center of the room, their reflection from the floor doubled their angry intensity.

Khamwas halted in mid-step, then backed in a perfect reversal of his previous motion. He squared his shoulders and bobbed his chin up and down as if to be sure that it was set in the correct position, firm but not outthrust in challenge.

Samlor was worried about position also. He stooped, setting the lamp on the floor with a delicacy which belied the fact that he never took his eyes off the sparks which grew and, with their afterimages, were begi

down, Samlor dropped the wand also and rose with his boot knife half-concealed by his palm and thigh.

It was something to throw for a distraction. By now he had enough data to know that they might want a distraction which permitted them to get out of the chamber again.

Fast.

The sparks hissed like hot grease as they spread in tight arcs which wove into surfaces. They were not forming a figure but rather two figures; a slender, imperious woman and the babe in her arms nuzzling her bare right breast.

The woman was dressed in much the same fashion as Nanefer's corpse, and her features were similar to those of the stranger in the Vulgar Unicorn.

Similar also to those of Khamwas.

"You ca

The popping griddle sound ceased, but the silence which replaced it was u

"Go back, man of my house," she said. She was a statue of blue fire whose face alone moved as she spoke. The infant squirmed against her and began to cry in a thin, hopeless voice. "The price of what you seek is too high."

"Your fate is accomplished, Ahwere," Khamwas repeated gently. "The price you paid is no part of me. You must stand aside."

He made no attempt to step forward.

Ahwere, who would have been attractive if she were a woman and alive, laughed. The sound began as something nearly human and ended in a clucking, like arpeggios played on dried vertebrae. "You do not think the price is for you to pay, oh man of my house? But nevertheless, you must leam just what the price is, mustn't you?"

Her mouth opened, wide and then wider than life or protoplasm would allow. "Watch!" screamed a voice from the cavern that was enveloping the world. .

CHAPTER 12

"DON'T STAND THERE with yer bleedin' thumb up, Ipis!" screamed Shay, the bosun, to the sailor at the bow line. "Belay the bloody line!"

Shay glanced with a subservient expression toward the woman beside him and the man who Samlor now was. "Beggin' yer pardon sir, madam." he muttered perfunctorily. Then the bosun's face reformed itself into a snarl as he bellowed, "And you lot! Lower the bleedin' mast, don't drop it through the bleedin' bilges!"

At the mainsheets, six squat crewmen-naked except for their breechclouts-hunched themselves against the weight they were supporting. They had furled the sail against the upper yard as the richly-appointed craft neared the quay. The fitful breeze was still making it hard enough to dock that Shay decided to lower the twin-pole mast as well. One of the temple servants on the quay had managed to get a line aboard, but the boat was drifting outward despite the efforts of the three oarsmen at either gunwale.

The baby at Ahwere's breast began to squall because of the shouting. She crooned to comfort the child; and Samlor-whose body knew he was named Nanefer, and which acted outside the control of his Samlor mind- stepped closer and put an arm around both his wife and his son.