“You won’t hand me over?” Khai could hardly believe his luck.
“Little fear of that,” the other answered. “There are no rewards for slaves—especially black ones. No, I’ll not take you in. But come, we’re out in the open and that’s not wise. While I’m a king of sorts, still there are those who would depose me if they could. They wouldn’t take to you as kindly as I do, Khai Ibizin. You can thank your Khemish gods that your father was good tome!”
“He was good to everyone,” Khai answered, turning his face away.
“Ah, yes,” the Nubian rumbled more quietly. “I was forgetting.” For a moment the two were silent and the black man put his arm about the boy’s shoulders. “I, too, lost my father when I was your age,” he finally said. “A stone turned over on the ramp and trapped him. He was worn out, slow-moving and dull-witted. The stone did him a favor.”
Without another word, the black led the boy into the shadows, guiding him through a jagged gap in a wall and along a narrow alley toward a dimly burning oil lamp fixed over a hide-covered doorway. “I’m a Nubian,” said Adonda Gomba, holding the hide cover to one side. “My ancestors always kept lamps burning outside their houses to light them home. As they did in Nubia, I also do in Asorbes,” but he spat out the last word as if it were poison. “This is my house, Khai Ibizin. Not so grand as your own home, I’ll grant you, but if nothing more it’s a safe place to lie your head down for the night. Before that, though, I’d like you to tell me why you ran. And why do you call Pharaoh ‘a monster’?”
“I’ll tell you anything you wish to know,” Khai answered, “but why are you interested?”
“I’m interested in all such things, Khai,” the Nubian told him, ushering him in through the doorway and lifting down the lamp to bring it with him. By its light the boy saw a small room with a wooden table and three makeshift chairs. The ceiling was of stitched hides sagging from old beams, through which the night sky showed in several places. A second covered doorspace led on to the kitchen, from which came the smell of cooking and the rattle of wooden implements.
Adonda Gomba sat Khai down in one of the crude chairs and crossed to the curtained kitchen door. He parted the curtain and put his head through, saying something in lowered tones to whoever it was who worked by the glowing red light of a wood fire. “My wife, Nyooni,” he told Khai as he rejoined him. “Most other slaves are asleep now for they need all the strength they can muster, but I no longer need so much sleep at nights. I only work when I want to, which is when the work suits me and carries small rewards. My masters trust me, do you see, Khai? It makes life easier and gives me time to make plans, for myself and for all of the others.”
All of a sudden, the boy felt perfectly safe, and with this feeling of security came weariness. He was tired, drained—and he was starving. He sniffed at the air, savoring the odor that drifted to him from the unseen kitchen.
“Are you hungry, boy?” the black asked. “I thought so. You’ll have some bread and a piece of lamb in a moment. One of Pharaoh’s beasts,” he grinned, “that got its head trapped in the hands of one of my men!” Finding Adonda Gomba’s grin infectious, Khai attempted a wan smile.
“However,” the black continued, “you’ll have to pay me for your food. You’ll pay with information. We slaves gather all sorts of information about Pharaoh—about his guards and the pyramid—against the day when we strike back!”
“When you strike ? Slaves ?”
“Oh, yes, indeed. That day will come, Khai, believe it. When the time is right, we’ll rise up against Khasathut, and when we do, there’ll be no holding us!” His voice had grown so grim that the youth could only believe him.
“But there,” the black went on, “I’ve told you my secret, and now you must tell me yours. If you truly hate Pharaoh as much as I think you do, Khai, then you’ll tell me all you can of him and his ways. Now then, what do you say?”
PART FIVE
I
Adhan’s Revenge
Now the night was far behind and already the sun climbed half-way toward its zenith. Adonda Gomba, weary but well pleased with himself, hurried through the streets of the slave quarters back toward his poor house. He had made all of the necessary arrangements to get Khai out of the city in one piece, and now only one task remained: to give the boy the latest information about his brother and tell him how Adhan had taken his revenge. It was not a task that Gomba relished, but at least it would be repayment for those things Khai had told him.
The huge black was more than satisfied with the information he had gleaned from Khai. The boy had been able to supply him with details of the pyramid’s internal structure hitherto unknown; moreover, he had updated other information which had been false or inaccurate. Gomba had plans of all the pyramid’s many rooms and passageways, but his drawings of the lower levels— which had been designed and built all of three generations ago—were very sketchy indeed and subject to errors.
Not that Khai had physically been inside those mysterious levels long enough to study them or gain more than merely fleeting impressions, but over the years for as long as he could remember he had been allowed to pore over his father’s drawings; and a great deal of what he had seen had committed itself to his memory. The black “king” of the slaves had kept the boy at it all through the dark hours, tapping that memory, until Khai was quite literally exhausted.
He had questioned him not only with regard to the pyramid but also about Pharaoh himself; about his Vizier or so-called “high priest,” Anulep; also about those dreadful occurrences which Khai had witnessed in the monstrous bridal chamber. Khai had found it strange indeed that Gomba accepted his version of that hideous ritual of blood without reservation—without even registering more than a flicker of surprise at the more grisly details—until the black explained that his story merely confirmed the slave community’s worst suspicions, perhaps the suspicions of all Asorbes. Certainly a large majority of the city’s more privileged citizens suspected that the Pharaoh was a monster (in mind if not in form) and they feared him desperately; but he was their king and a god omnipotent; and as all men know, the gods work in exceedingly strange ways.
What had surprised Gomba was Khai’s account of Khasathut’s physical abnormalities, for these had been a secret kept very closely guarded indeed. It explained, though, why the people had never been permitted to see Pharaoh’s true form, why he had always hidden behind the great, larger-than-life, godlike exteriors constructed for him by his artists and carpenters. And of course those craftsmen were all members of Pharaoh’s personal retinue, dwellers in the pyramid. If, indeed, they still lived!
These many thoughts passed through Gomba’s mind as he neared the rude dwelling he called home. Now, in return for Khai’s invaluable information, he must tell the boy what he had discovered of Adhan: how his brother had crawled home on all fours from the foot of the great ramp, making his way— bloody, delirious with horror and in hideous agony—to this father’s now-empty house near the east wall.
And indeed the house had been empty. Only one of Harsin Ben Ibizin’s paid retainers had remained there after the news had made it swiftly back to the house; the rest had looted the place of everything worth taking and had fled. Possibly they would soon flee the city itself. Better to be well out of it than to have been a member of the Ibizin household! At the last, soldiers had come for the slaves and they had been taken off to the city’s slave quarters, where from now on they would serve only the Pharaoh.