It didn't strike Samlor as a particularly reassuring comment.
CHAPTER 11
THE PASSAGEWAY SLANTED upward at a scarcely perceptible angle. The rise was enough to have trapped entering sand fairly close to the entrance. The floor and a slanting line down both sidewalls had been polished by the grit to a finish much smoother than that which the workmen had left.
That circumstance, brought out by the way light reflected from stone as the lamp wobbled forward, made Samlor feel the age of this tomb as nothing else had done.
He almost bumped Khamwas again-and almost cursed aloud. The Napatan scholar shuffled forward at an irregular pace-halting repeatedly for no reason Samlor could discern, and then sliding on another ten feet or more as blithely as if his only concern were the strait surroundings.
Khamwas knew what he was doing-Samlor had accepted that as an article of faith when he agreed to enter the tomb. Samlor didn't know what his companion was doing, though. It made it a bitch of a job to follow closely enough to keep the lamp bobbing ahead of them and still to avoid stumbling into the man in the lead.
He should have found a larger pole on which to hang the lamp, so that he needn't stick so close to the Napatan. He should have stayed back at the entrance. He should have stayed in Cirdon and gotten on with his own life.
And he really shouldn't think about what was waiting at the far end of this passage. The little quibbling frustrations, about the way Khamwas moved and about how hard the stone was on his knees, were just what Samlor needed to keep in a state of murderous readiness without dwelling on the sort of major threats that could make him panic. He knew how to handle himself from having spent most of his life in the business.
The business of taking damn-fool risks for no good reason.
"There. .," said Khamwas in a tone of wonder and satisfaction. He had stopped again.
Samlor grimaced and leaned to peer past Tjainufi on his companion's shoulder.
The lamplight wavered over the intricately painted wall of a room. They'd reached the end of the passageway at last.
Samlor held his breath, fearful of disturbing his companion.
Instead of going through an involved procedure-a chanted spell, a progressive unveiling of some amulet or talisman-Khamwas stepped directly into the tomb chamber. There, where there was enough room to stand upright, he shrugged his shoulders and straightened the folds of his cloak. It was the sort of motion a man makes before he has an important interview.
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 cinnabar, Sapis lazuli and finely-divided gold.
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 beginning to sketch a figure. When the earthenware lamp-bowl was safely
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 cannot prevent me, Ahwere," Khamwas said in a clear voice that bespoke enormous control. "Your fate is accomplished."
The popping griddle sound ceased, but the silence which replaced it was unnatural. When the woman began to speak, her voice did not echo. It was as if they all stood on a mighty plain instead of in a stone chamber from which sound dissipated only after hundreds of reverberations.