Dagger

Khamwas' staff lay across the tu

Didn't matter. Couldn't matter. Samlor grabbed the staff and twisted himself around in the tu

Partly because most of Samlor's mind froze in shocked appreciation of the crocodile filling the tu

The beast was not as large as the monster which waddled aboard the yacht in his dreamlife as Nanefer, but it was as large as the stone corridor. The tips of its open jaws touched the floor and ceiling.

Its breath was foul and as cold as Death.

"Will you, by Heqt?" Samlor whispered as he drew his dagger again. He could wedge the jaws with the staff, and then the watered steel blade would carve the beast's palate and white gums like cheese-

Or the staff would shatter and the ragged teeth would crush Samlor's armbones as easily as they tore his flesh. But he could not forget the way Merib, his son in all but present reality, had catapulted into waiting jaws like these.

The crocodile dissolved into whorls of blue sparks. They reformed as the wraith of Ahwere, which swept up the tu

Hunched over-unable to run on all fours because he carried the staff and dagger-Samlor scuttled toward the blazing white square of the tu

"Kham-" Samlor cried as he burst into the chamber.

Khamwas had sunk shoulder deep in the floor. He twisted

his head despairingly toward the opening, but his arm was reaching up against his will to place another bean on the gameboard.

Samlor slapped the staff into Khamwas' lifted hand. Light from the Book of Tatenen seared through him, making the scarred flesh of the caravan master's fingers translucent so that the bones showed gray against pink encasement.

Ahwere glittered into a tigress and leaped at Samlor. He slashed with the dagger in a frenzy of despair and madness burned into him by the white glare.

Khamwas spoke a word. The stone chamber^ glowed green like the moss of a woodland at summer noon, vjien all the light is filtered by leaves above. The tigress disappeared. Ahwere's ghost was a woman weeping as she rocked the babe in her arms.

The crystal was dark. There was nothing white in the tomb except the pieces on the game board, each of which gleamed with the purity of fresh-cut walrus ivory.

Khamwas rose out of the ground as if the staff crosswise in his hand was lifting him. The glow it cast was so uniform that the staff almost disappeared in the perfection of what it created.

"The game is mine, Prince Nanefer," Khamwas said. He struck the board and table aside. The pieces spilled across the floor. All of the beans were white. "Give me the book."

Nanefer did not move or speak.

Khamwas swallowed. He lifted the staff higher, then reached out with his free hand and took the crystal.

Nothing changed, not even the tempo of Ahwere's sobbing.

"We will trouble you no more, great prince," said Khamwas as he backed with formal steps away from the seated corpse. Glancing aside to Samlor, he added, "Precede me. Quickly."

As Samlor scrambled down the tu

And he thought, though he could not be sure, that he heard Nanefer reply, "Do not grieve, my sister, my love. They will return."

CHAPTER 24

"BACK IN THE, you know," said Samlor as the sun glanced from the polished limestone walls of the outer courtyard of the Palace of Napata. "In the tomb. I thought I wouldn't ever get warm again.

"I suppose," he added, fluffing the sweat-soaked tunic away from his chest, "I'm glad I was wrong."

Khamwas turned, but the hooded cloak he was wearing | still covered half his face. He tried to smile, but tension made his expression a frosty one when his intention was warm. "For the way you stood by me then, my friend," he said, "you'll never want for anything. Anything at all."

"I figured you knew what you were doing," Samlor said, looking away. It was easier to tell a half lie than the real truth, that he'd been afraid to think about what he was doing. He'd just plunged ahead on the course he'd set himself when there was time for calm reflection. "Anyway, I told you I'd help."

And that was purely the truth.

Almost no one except Samlor and Khamwas was in the courtyard. The royal levee closed in the hour before noon, and the peddlers who would later turn the courtyard into a fair were held off by the sun though there were no guards to stop them.

There were two guards at the copper-clad doors to the i

Khamwas' face reverted to stony calm. He was too lost in his own plans to care what Samlor had said-or even to have listened to it.

The cloak of a priestly mendicant covered Khamwas to the ankles. It must have been uncomfortable in this heat, but Khamwas noticed discomfort as little as a true religious ascetic would have done. His fingers toyed with the rim of a copper begging bowl which must itself have been hot enough to cook food.

The Book of Tatenen was bound to his bosom, the way Nanefer had carried it when he plunged over the yacht's rail.

A fuzzy glow appeared on Khamwas' shoulder. "If your enemy seeks you," it said clearly in Tjainufi's voice, "do not avoid him." The glow faded as simply as it had appeared.

The copper bowl rang softly as Khamwas tapped it with his fingertips. "Now we will see my brothers," he said.

This moment seemed to Samlor the same as any other in the half hour since they first entered the courtyard, but he was glad to be moving again.

The guards straightened as Khamwas and Samlor strode up to them. They carried long-bladed halbards and wore armor of silvered iron scales.

"Admit us," Samlor said as he had been instructed. He spoke with the assurance of authority-which made him feel that the guards were going to obey, though he couldn't imagine why. "We have business with the kings."

The guards were taken aback, bracing themselves as they would while being inspected by a superior officer, but their orders were clear. "Audience hours are over for the day, yokel," said the senior man. "Come back at dawn-or before, if you want a real chance of getting in."

"And no weapons," added the other guard, nodding toward Samlor's dagger.

Khamwas tapped his bowl. The doors and the guards' armor rang in sympathy. There were sharp clacking sounds from within the doorleaves as the locking bolts withdrew.

The doors opened inward, carrying the bellowing guards with them. Their body armor was stuck to the metal facing. As the men struggled, their halbards touched the copper also-and stuck as if welded.

Khamwas walked on without glancing to either side. Samlor followed with the caution of uncertainty as to just how long the guards would stay trapped.

Long enough, as it turned out. The doors swung themselves closed and bolted again.

There was another courtyard on the other side of the doors, smaller and shaded by a loggia surrounding it on three sides. A few servants glanced from their own affairs toward the intruders, but the fact that Khamwas and Samlor had come this far implied they were where they should be. None of the servants seemed to want to investigate the commotion beyond the gates.