He forced himself to his feet and staggered for a moment while once more the night sky seemed to revolve. Then, crouching low and heading south, he ran as fast as he could over rough and pitted earth. In a matter of minutes he had left the shadow of the pyramid behind and the jagged silhouettes of the tumble-down slave quarters loomed ahead. At last Khai began to breathe more freely and he had to repress a mad urge to shout for joy. He was free of the pyramid, free—at least for the moment—of the Pharaoh, and in his freedom his heart soared like that of a small bird.
His mind was so full of plans that its thinking was no longer completely lucid, so that soon only the wild joy of freedom remained, and a natural directional instinct which took him straight through the heart of the rambling slave quarters. Part of his mental fatigue sprang from the fact that his stomach was empty, had been empty for much too long, and the rest of it was rooted in the mind-wrenching horror of his recent experiences, which surely would have stunned far more mature minds than Khai’s.
Now the low, dark brick buildings had closed in on him and he trotted silently through winding alleys awash with filth and crawling with vermin. In all Asorbes, this was the one region where sanitation had been allowed to fall so drastically into disrepair, so that the sewers situated immediately beneath the streets functioned poorly and the water supply was just as unsafe as was its continuity uncertain. An eerie, unnatural silence shrouded the place, whose stillness was such that the patter of Khai’s feet sounded clearly audible in his fear-sensitized ears.
He must by now be in the center of this region from which, through countless generations, the Pharaohs had drawn their polyglot work-force of menials and laborers. Just how much blood, he wondered, had these people given to raise Khasathut’s monument to the sky? And with his thoughts returned morbidly to the pyramid once more, Khai paused in his running to cast an anxious glance back at that monstrous moonlit tomb whose silhouette loomed over the rooftops. One day, he promised himself, he would see that now-hated symbol of perverted power reduced to tumbled ruins. But for now—
He turned his face to the south once more—and ran straight into the arms of a huge black man!
VI
King of Slaves
“Oh? And what’s this?” the great black rumbled, holding Khai’s head and turning it until the moonlight shone on his pale face. “A boy, running in the night streets with the rats? Aye, and a boy with meat on his bones at that. No slave’s son this one, I’ll warrant, but the well-fed pup of some bitch of Khem! Who are you, boy?”
At first Khai had thought himself caught by one of Pharaoh’s black guardsmen, but now he could see that his captor wore only the threadbare rags of a slave and that he bore the ankh brand on his forehead. “Let me go,” he gasped, wriggling and squirming, trying desperately to free himself from the man’s grasp. “Let me go!”
“And where would you be going, young master? Hasn’t your father warned you against entering the slave quarter at night?” The black man’s voice was full of a wry cynicism, as if he already knew the answers to his questions and much more.
“I’m on my way to the house of Arkhenos of Subon,” Khai answered, trying his best to sound affronted and failing miserably. “I decided to take a short-cut.”
“A short-cut, indeed!” Again the black peered into Khai’s face, a grim smile playing at the corners of his thick-lipped mouth. “And why, I wonder, did I see you pausing to shiver and tremble and look back over your shoulder—as if you feared that perhaps you were followed? Hardly the act of a boy brave enough to enter the slave quarter late at night, eh? And how is it you come from the direction of the pyramid?—but then, why shouldn’t you. After all, it was your father built the thing!”
Khai shrank back in shock and astonishment, unable to believe his own ears. Had Anulep already discovered his absence, then, alerting all of Asorbes to keep watch for him? Were people already searching for him in the city? It did not seem possible. And yet, how else could this black slave know of him ?
The Nubian chuckled as if reading his mind. “It’s in your eyes, lad,” he said, “written all over your face. Damn me, but you’re a poor liar! Oh, I know you all right, Khai Ibizin, and I know of you. Didn’t I spend a whole week building a wall around your father’s garden? Ah, I see you remember me now.”
Khai’s mouth had fallen open. He did indeed remember the man. He and one other slave had been given the task of constructing a many-arched wall around the perimeter of the garden, so as to partially seclude it from the view of tradesmen coming into the courtyard. They had been tasked by virtue of their skill at stoneworking. It was a job which could have been completed in two or three days, but Harsin Ben Ibizin had gone very easy on the slaves and had made sure that they got their rest and were well-fed.
“Yes,” the black continued, “you surely know me now. Well, I’ve been waiting for you since first I noticed you preparing your escape route.”
“What?” Khai gasped again. “But how could you possibly have seen—” he began.
“Look!” the other commanded, cutting him off, forcibly turning his head in huge hands until the boy’s eyes stared back the way he had come. At first, he saw only the littered street, the crumbling walls, huddled buildings and black shadows. Then his eyes went above and beyond these to the looming man-made mountain that was Khasathut’s pyramid.
“The south face,” said the black man by way of explanation. “It’s in shadow now, but when the moon was on it—why!—at first I thought that the pyramid wept! It was the water that gave you away, Khai, the water you used to make your slide smooth and cool. It crept down the south face like a little silver river, like the tears of the moon!”
“But if you saw it,” Khai gasped, “then perhaps—”
“Others?” The Nubian shook his head. “A few slaves, perhaps, but they would most likely come to me before doing anything or telling anyone else. As Pharaoh is the king of Khem, I, Adonda Gomba, am king of the slaves. You were wise, Khai, in choosing the south face, for it overlooks the slave quarter and little else.”
The boy nodded. “I know. But you said you knew who I was before you saw me. How could you have known?”
“You’re not the first one to run from the pyramid, boy. But you’re one of the first to make it. Oh, you’re not out of the fire yet, not by a long shot. But at least you’ve made a good start. As to how I knew it was you: you were the pyramid’s most recent prisoner, and one of the youngest. Only a boy would have dared such a wild escape, and it would have to be a boy who knew the pyramid’s innards better than his own.” He shrugged. “Who else could it have been ?”
Khai said nothing, and eventually Adonda Gomba continued:
“Well, boy, and things have gone badly for you, eh?”
Khai could only hang his head and nod. “I… I’ve run away from the pyramid, yes. From the Pharaoh’s high priest, Anulep. He … he is horrible! And Khasathut is a monster!”
“Oh? And you’ve only just learned that, have you?” Sarcasm dripped from the black’s tongue.
“What will you do with me?” Khai asked, his eyes searching the streets and shadows, his mind racing to discover a way out of his predicament.
“That depends on you, boy,” the other answered. “On what you want to do now that you’ve broken out. One thing is certain: you can’t stay in Asorbes, and certainly not here in the slave quarter. And as for Arkhenos of Subon—a friend of your father?—why, his house is the first place they’ll look for you!”