PART SEVEN
I
Deathspell
As Khai entered the Kushite encampment slumped over the shoulder of Ephrais the sentry, downriver in Asorbes Anulep prostrated himself before Pharaoh in his pyramid audience chamber and suffered a tirade of threats and accusations.
“Gone!” Pharaoh whooshed from behind a smaller, more portable miniature of his ceremonial gown and mask. “The boy Khai, gone?” He sat on a small throne and his impatience and irritation were apparent in the way his robes twitched and shivered. “Missing for several days, you say—and yet I have learned of it only this morning? What sort of intrigue is this, Anulep? I have asked to see the boy—and you cannot produce him!”
“Run away, Omnipotent One,” Anulep gabbled, his bald head close to the floor and his eyes fearfully upturned to gaze at the small but menacing figure of Khem’s God-king. “On the night following the Royal Procession. Run away and fled upriver.”
“But why was I not informed sooner?” Pharaoh whooshed.
“I had hoped to find him, fetch him back,” the Vizier answered. “I would have punished him, made him repent, and the matter need never have concerned Your Most Perfect Being.”
“But it does concern me!” cried Khasathut, “How could he flee? And where is he now? Call the Dark Heptad at once. They will tell me where he is.”
“I have been to the Dark Heptad, master,” Anulep crept fractionally closer. “I have been in constant consultation with them since the boy disappeared. Even they cannot say how he fled—but they do know where he is now.”
“Ah!” Khasathut leaned forward, his octopus eyes boring through the slits of his gilt mask. “And where is he?”
Anulep trembled from head to toe. “He … he has met up with a band of Kushite raiders to the south. They have taken him. The Dark Ones saw it in their scrying, and—”
“Kushites!” Khasathut hissed. “Again the damned Kushites!” His good hand crept out from under his robe to grip the arm of his throne until the flesh of his fingers turned completely white.
“The Dark Ones say,” Anulep gulped, “that Melembrin himself commands this party. As you know, Omnipotent One, the Kushite Fox has been raiding in Khem for months.”
“Months? It seems like years!” came Pharaoh’s answer in a whoosh of rage. “And what have we done to put an end to it? Nothing!”
“Master, the hour of reckoning is surely at hand for Melembrin,” Anulep quavered.
“What? How so? Say on, Vizier, while I yet deign to listen.”
“Why, you yourself have lately ordered troops westward, Son of Re!” Anulep answered, straightening his back a little as he gained confidence. “Those same troops you sent out to protect the forts and reinforce the border with Kush. And they close on Melembrin even now.”
“And you say that Khai is with this Kushite king?”
“So the Dark Heptad tell me, master. The raiders have taken him within this very hour.”
Khasathut sank slowly back into his chair and grew silent. “Kush,” he finally mused, his voice a poisonous hiss. “Always Kush! Must every other word I hear be Kush?” He sat up again and his voice was loud once more. “Let there be an end to it. I want the tribes of Kush destroyed and scattered to the winds. Let my army work for its keep. Khem has suffered parasite neighbors long enough. Let war be waged. I don’t care if it takes ten years and fifty thousand trained soldiers to do it, but Kush must be whelmed. Let Pharaoh’s might be seen!”
“It shall be as you command, master,” Anulep touched the floor with his forehead.
“Get up, high priest, and be about your work,” Khasathut said. “Speak to one of my commanders and tell him what I want. We’ll deal with this Kush once and for all, and after that—who can say? I do not like this black upstart N’jakka. Aye, and there’s gold in Nubia, much gold for my pyramid.”
“Master, I go,” Anulep began to back away. “I go to hasten your word. I—”
“Back here, Vizier,” Khasathut hissed. “On your knees.”
Anulep approached, went down before the Pharaoh who placed his good hand upon his polished, shivering head. “Vizier,” said Pharaoh softly, “if I thought for one moment that you were in any way instrumental in the boy’s vanishment—that perhaps you feared for your own high station and thought to thwart my plans—then it would go very badly for you.” He stuck his nails slowly and deliberately into Anulep’s scalp.
“Master, I—”
“Very badly indeed.” And Pharaoh drew the tips of his nails rakingly forward over Anulep’s head, leaving four thin lines of blood to well slowly to the surface. Then he kicked his high priest away from him and shouted: “Now get out! Begone from me—and let my will be done!”
To go down into the chamber of the Dark Heptad of mages was to enter a pit of snakes, and for all that the Vizier had been there many times before, still he shuddered—even Anulep—and paused briefly before entering that room of bubbling vats, flickering shadows and mumbled incantations. The figures of the seven stirred as he entered and their mumblings ceased. One of them, in the voice of an asp, said:
“Are you come again to speak with us, Vizier? So soon?”
“I am come again, aye,” Anulep answered, dabbing at his head with a square of linen.
“We are not doctors, Anulep,” a second mage whispered. “We may not dress your wounds.”
“Look to your own health, wizard!” Anulep snapped.
“Oh? And is something amiss, Vizier?”
“I’ll not waste your time,” Anulep answered. “The Pharaoh suspects that I have deceived him, which you may be sure I have—with your help!”
Almost as a man, the seven figures began to chuckle and titter. Finally, one of them said: “We have not aided you in any deception, Anulep. That would be a hard thing to prove.”
“Oh? And what of the boy, Khai? You could have found him while he was still in Asorbes, if you had bothered to look for him!”
“We knew nothing of the boy!” a third mage whined. “Not until you told us. What interest have we in mere boys, we who serve the immemorial Gods!”
“But I would say that you knew of him,” Anulep smiled his hideous smile, “if ever I believed you worked against me.”
“You have threatened us before, Vizier,” hissed the mage with a snake’s voice, “we who have always served you well. We will not tell Pharaoh of your deceit.”
“No,” Anulep answered, “you will not, for I would be dead within the hour—and you would not last much longer! Even if Pharaoh let you live, still you would not be safe. It takes a powerful magic to sway a dart loosed in flight, or drain a draft of rare poison from an innocent cup of wine.”
“More threats, Anulep?”
“Listen,” the Vizier snarled. “Listen, all of you. I threaten because I am afraid. You see my head? Pharaoh himself did this! His anger is such that he might well be driven to kill. You know well enough the pleasure he takes in killing, but he rarely kills them that serve him. One word carelessly uttered however, and—” He drew a finger across his throat.
“We understand, Vizier,” said the one whose voice was a whisper, “and you have nothing to fear from us. We wish you a long life.”
“Yes, I’m sure you do,” Anulep sneered. He began to turn away, then paused.
“One other thing. I know you sometimes have the power to influence things to come. Well then, there is something you can do. Less than one hour ago, you told me that the boy Khai had fallen into the hands of the Kushites.”