“That is so,” the shrill-voiced mage answered, his skeletal face half in flickering shadow. “I myself saw it, and no other sees so clearly or so far.”
“Good,” Anulep nodded. “Now listen: Khasathut’s soldiers may well take The Fox this time. If that happens, the boy must die. Do you understand me? Cast whatever spells are necessary—do what must be done—but ensure that Khai Ibizin is not brought back here to Asorbes.”
“And if the raiders are not caught?” one of the seven asked.
“Then I am not interested. Doubtless, the Kushites will kill the boy themselves. I don’t care, except that he shall not grow to manhood in Khem. I will not be replaced by the soft son of some soft architect.”
“We understand,” the Dark Heptad nodded as a man.
“Good, then understand this also: I plotted that Khai should escape. I told him this and showed him that which were designed to make him flee—and flee he did. Except… I had hoped he might die escaping. He did not die, and so I ordered officers of Pharaoh’s Corps of Intelligence into the city’s streets to find him. They were to return him to me and I would then have sought to kill him by another means. They did not find him....”
“We could have found him,” hissed the one with a snake’s voice.
“Aye,” Anulep answered, “and so discovered my plot. I did not want you to know of it. If you had been brought in, perhaps Pharaoh would have learned of my part in the matter. He might even have ordered you to protect the boy, which would be contrary to my plans. Now?” and he shrugged, “now it does not matter. Let me simply remind you that if my part in this thing is discovered, then that your own lives are forfeit. I have given orders to that effect.”
“We can only repeat, Vizier, that you have nothing to fear from us,” assured the whisperer.
Anulep slowly nodded. He dabbed again at his scarred head and peered at the mages one by one where their eyes regarded him strangely. Finally, apparently satisfied, he turned and left them.
Long moments after he had disappeared into gloom and his footsteps had faded into silence, the mage with a snake’s voice hissed: “The Fox will not be taken—neither The Fox nor the boy Khai.”
“True,” answered another, silent until this moment. “And the boy will live.”
“If we allow it,” said a third with a voice which bubbled like the many vats sunken into the floor of the place.
“I do not think we could prevent it,” added a fourth. “There is destiny in that boy. I feel it in my bones.”
“That may well be,” hissed the first, “but we had best be sure. I shall prepare a spell. Then, if the boy is taken back from the Kushites, he will not be taken alive.”
“And is this a measure of your fear of Anulep?” asked the whisperer.
“It is,” came a hiss in the darkness. “I fear him more than Pharaoh himself. Khasathut does the things he does because he is insane. Anulep is sane, wherefore he is far more dangerous....”
When Anulep got back to his own sparsely-furnished apartments, he went straight to a secret nook and took out a small wooden box. Removing its lid, he gazed upon a set of polished bronze teeth. They had been made by a master craftsman three years earlier, after Anulep had suffered a severe beating at the hands of Khasathut. The craftsman had died soon after—very suddenly and mysteriously—and now only Anulep knew about his teeth.
He smiled as he slipped them carefully into his mouth. They fitted him perfectly and it was good to feel their cold metal against his shriveled gums. He had to be careful not to trap his tongue, for these were not ordinary teeth. Their biting edges were honed to a razor’s edge!
For a moment or two, Anulep tenderly fingered his scarred head, then removed the teeth from his mouth and put them back in their box. They were for another day: that day when finally Pharaoh would decide to replace his Vizier with someone new. Anulep knew what such “replacement” meant. Ah, but Khasathut would have good reason to kill him. Indeed he would. Using his bronze teeth, Anulep himself would provide that reason.
He looked down at the awful teeth once again and smiled his monstrous smile, then carefully closed the box....
II
Khai…of Kush
Khai had not regained consciousness until the Kushite raiding party set up its camp again in shrub- and grassland twenty miles west of the Nile. He had been bundled onto a travois-like framework amidst assorted supplies, to be dragged along behind a sturdy hill-pony and its bareback rider, and the bruises he discovered when he awoke resulted from a bumpy ride over fairly rough terrain. All of The Fox’s supplies traveled the same way—his wounded, too, when he had any—for nothing so sophisticated as a wheel was yet known in the days when the Sahara was green.
When the new camp was operational, then Khai had sat himself up, rubbed the lump on his head and felt his aching bones; and the girl who called herself Ashtarta had been there to lead him staggering to the tent of the warrior king. Busy as they were with their work in and about the new camp, Melembrin’s guerrilla warriors had taken little note of the Khemite youth as he was guided through their hustle and bustle. They had heard something of his coming and would learn the full story in due course, but for now there was work to be done and a watch to be set. And Melembrin had already mentioned his desire to seek out and destroy at least one more of Pharaoh’s border patrols before making for the keep at Hortaph.
So Khai had followed Ashtarta into the presence of the mighty Melembrin, and from her obvious familiarity with the king he inferred that she was indeed his daughter. Remembering what had transpired on the riverbank and the way he had spoken to the girl, he was uncomfortably aware of her presence where she seated herself on a cushion to one side of the tent while her father questioned him. Now his story had been told in full and he stood as still as he could under The Fox’s bushy-browed gaze.
The youth didn’t look like much, Melembrin thought. A bit thin and pale for your average Kushite. In fact, he looked like nothing Melembrin had ever seen before; not with his blue eyes, fair skin and blond hair. He wasn’t an albino, for a certainty, and his wiriness in no way suggested fragility. At the moment, he was probably underfed, and the bags under his eyes had doubtless resulted through lack of sleep before and during his flight from Asorbes. Actually, he was quite a handsome lad and would soon make a handsome man. His shoulders would broaden out soon enough and his forearms already had a width to them that the Kushite king liked.
He was intelligent, too, and his blue eyes had been full of blood and high-mountain ice when he’d spoken of Pharaoh and the way his entire family had been butchered in the slave city. There had been no tears, only a grim resolve, and Melembrin had liked that, also. This was no milksop, for all his soft looks, and if proof were needed of that, it probably still lay rotting in a certain clump of reeds back at the river’s edge. In disposing of that pair of scummy runaway mercenary dogs, the boy had shown a natural killer instinct which completely belied the soft existence he must have known as the son of a great architect in Asorbes. More than that, without question he had saved the life of the next Candace of Kush!
Finally, Melembrin spoke: “These men you killed in the forest across the river. They weren’t Khemish?”
“They were Arabbans. Slavers working for Khem—and for themselves,” Khai answered.
“You must call my father ‘Lord,’” Ashtarta reminded him for the tenth time from her cushion.
“And the mercenaries on the riverbank,” Melembrin continued. “They were Theraens, right?”
“Yes,” Khai nodded, and winced at the throbbing in his temples which the movement of his head produced.