The Seventh Scroll

bridges far upstream. Nothing for five hundred miles except racing Nile

waters and savage black basalt rock." He paused to let that sink in.

"It is one of the last true wildernesses on earth, with an evil

reputation as the haunt of wild animals and even wilder men. I have

marked the main falls that show in the gut of the gorge here on the

satellite photo." With the pointer he picked them out, each circled

neatly in red marker pen.

"Here is waterfall number two, about a hundred and twenty miles upstream

from the Sudanese border. However, there are a number of factors we have

to consider, not least the fact that the river may have altered its

course during the last four thousand years since our friend, "Taita,

visited it."

"Surely it could not have escaped from such a deep canyon, four thousand

feet," she protested. "Even the Nile must be held captive by that?"

"Yes, but it would certainly have altered the existing bed. In the flood

season the volume and force of the river exceeds my ability to describe

it to you. The river rises twenty metres up the side walls and bores

through at speeds 3; of ten knots or more."

"You navigated that?" she asked doubtfully.

"Not in the flood season. Nothing could survive that.

They both stared at the photograph in silence for a minute, imagining

the terrors of that mighty stretch of water in its fury.

Then she reminded him, "The second waterfall?

"Here it is, where one of the tributary rivers enters the main flow of

the Abbay. The tributary is the Dandera river and it rises at twelve

thousand feet altitude, below the peak of Sancai Mountain in the Choke

range, here about a hundred miles north of the gorge."

"Do you remember the spot where it joins the Abbay from when you were

there?"

"It was over twenty years ago, and even then we had been almost a month

down there in the gorge, so it all seemed to merge into a single

nightmare. The memory bluffed with the monotonous surroundings of the

cliffs and the dense Jungle of the walls, and our senses were dulled by

the heat and the insects and the roar of water and the repetitive,

unremitting toil at the oars i But, strangely, I do remember the

confluence of the Dandera and the Abbay for two reasons."

"Yes?" She sat forward eagerly, but he shook his head.

"We lost a man there. The only casualty on the second expedition. Rope

parted and he fell a hundred feet. Landed on his back across a spur of

rock."

i am sorry. But what was the other reason you remember the spot."

"There is a Coptic Christian monastery there, built into the rock face

about four hundred feet above the surface of the river."

"Down the re in the depths of the gorge?" She sounded incredulous. "Why

would they build a monastery there?"

"Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian countries on earth. It has over

nine thousand churches and monasteries, a great many of them in

similarly remote and almost inaccessible places in the mountains. This

one at the Dandera river is the reputed burial site of St. Frumentius,

the saint who introduced Christianity to Ethiopia from the Byzantine

Empire in Constantinople in the early third century. Legend has it that

he was shipwrecked on the Red Sea shore and taken to Aksum, where he

converted the Emperor Ezana."

"Did you visit the monastery?"

"Hell, no!" he laughed. "We were too busy just surviving, too eager to

escape from the hell of the gorge to have any time for sightseeing. We

descended the falls and kept on down river. All I remember of the

monastery are the excavations in the cliff face high above the pool of

the river, and the distant figures of the troglodytic monks in their

white robes lining the parapet of the caves to watch impassively as we

passed. Some of us waved up to them) and felt quite rebuffed when they

made no response."

"How would we ever reach that spot again, without a full-scale river

expedition?" she wondered aloud, staring disconsolately at the board.

"Discouraged already?" He gri

the mosquitoes that live down there.

They pick you up and fly with you to their lairs before they eat you."

"Be serious," she entreated him. "How would we ever get down there?"

"The monks are fed by the villagers who live up on the highlands above

the gorge. Apparently, there is a goat track down the wall. They told us

that it takes three days to get down that track into the gut of the

gorge from the rim."

"Could you find your way down?"

"No, but I have a few ideas on the subject. We will come to that later.

Firstly, we must decide what we expect to find down there after four

thousand years." He looked at her expectantly. "Your turn now. Convince

me." He handed her the silver-headed pointer, dropped into the chair

beside her and folded his arms.

"First you have to go back to the book." She exchanged the pointer for

the copy of River God. "You remember the character of Tanus from the

story?"

"Of course. He was the commander of the Egyptian armies under Queen

Lostris, with the title of Great Lion of Egypt. He led the exodus from

Egypt, when they were driven out by the Hyksos."

"He was also the Queen's secret lover and, if we are to believe Taita,

the father of Prince Memnon, her eldest son," she agreed.

Tanus was killed during a punitive expedition against an Ethiopian chief

named Arkoun in the high mountains, and his body was mummified and

brought back to the Queen by Taita,'Nicholas expanded the story.

Precisely." She nodded. This leads me on to the other clue that Duraid

and I winkled out."

"From the seventh scroll?" He unfolded his arms and sat forward in his

seat.

"No, not from the scrolls, but from the inscriptions in the tomb of

Queen Lostris." She reached into her bag and brought out another

photograph. This is an enlargement of a section of the murals from the

burial chamber, that part of the wall that later fell away and was lost

when the alabaster jars were revealed. Duraid and I believe that the

fact that Taita placed this inscription in the place of honour, over the

hiding-place of the scrolls, was significant." She passed the photograph

to him, and he picked up a magnifying glass from the table to study it.

While he puzzled over the hieroglyphics Royan went on, "You will recall

from the book how Taita loved riddles and word games, how he boasts so

often that he is the greatest of all boa players?"

Nicholas looked up from the magnifying glass, "I remember that. I go

along with the theory that bao was the foreru

I have a dozen or so boards in the museum collection, some from Egypt

and others from further south in Africa."

"Yes, I would also subscribe to that theory. Both games have many of the

same objects and rules, but bao is a more rudimentary form of the game.

It is played with coloured stones of different rank, instead of chess

men. Well, I believe that Taita was not able to resist the temptation to

display his riddling skills and his cleverness to posterity. I believe