“We were camped outside the walls of Asorbes,” he began after a moment’s pause. “Having defeated the Khemites wherever we met them, our armies were tired and needed their rest. Our tents were some four or five miles from the city. We had some meat, for Pharaoh’s herdsmen had not been able to gather in all of the cattle before we surrounded the city. Indeed, we took a pair of young boys as they were herding, but they were mere children and so we let them go.
“So we ate and rested, and Pharaoh’s necromancers sent their blight against us, which I have already described. On the following night, when we went to parley with the Khemish commanders, then Khai was taken. As to how it came about—” he shook his head. “It seems impossible now that we could be such fools. We suspected nothing. The wonder is that I, too, was not taken; and—”
“Aye, tell me about that,” she broke in on him. “Tell me how Khai was taken, kidnapped, while you yourself—”
“Majesty! Majesty!” A handmaiden entered the tent unbidden, plainly confused and flustered. She approached nervously, bowing low. “Majesty, the wise men are here. They have come, as bidden—but the horsemen are not yet returned. The wise men say that… that they knew you desired their presence—and so they have come!”
V
Khai’s Sickness
Evening was creeping in when Manek Thotak was awakened by one of his men. Ashtarta had sent him out of her tent upon the arrival of the seven mages so that she could be alone with them. Imthra had been allowed to stay, even though his own talents were as nothing compared with those of the seven. Manek, too, would have preferred to stay, but he was a warrior and had nothing to offer where the occult arts were concerned. The Candace had told him that she would call for him when she was ready, or when she had news. Now, having come to some decision or other based on whatever the seven had told her, she wanted to see him.
It was not without some trepidation that Manek prepared himself, splashing his face with water from a jar, combing his beard and making of his appearance what he could before leaving his little makeshift tent and heading for Ashtarta’s marquee. He was chiefly worried about the mages and their conclusions. Not so long ago, he might scornfully have dismissed the feasibility of magic in any shape or form; and certainly he would rather place his trust in a strong arm and a keen blade than rub shoulders with wizards, conjurers and old mummers like Imthra. Lately, however, he had seen more than enough of injurious magic to make him change his mind, and he now knew that without the seven mages the war with Khem could never have been won.
Their powers were so completely … inexplicable—so much more than human. Why, rumor had it that like Khasathut and the five Pharaohs before him, these seven mages were descended from the Ancient Ones themselves! That was why (or so the fable went) they were so different from ordinary men. Nor were their differences confined to fantastic powers alone… .
Manek had seen the seven arrive as he left Ashtarta’s tent, and they struck him now as forcefully as the first time he had seen them. A stranger crowd he could never wish to meet. They were gathered from the seven lands on Khem’s borders: from Siwad, Kush, Daraaf, Nubia, Therae, Arabba and Syra, and yet in many ways they were as like as locust beans in a pod. Alike in that they were all very old, and yet sprightly and keen-minded in their old age. Alike in their bearing, which was proud and upright; alike, too, in the hugeness of their heads. All of which set them aside almost as a different species. But then, if they were indeed descended from the Ancient Ones, surely that was only to be expected.
Entering the marquee of the Candace, Manek bowed before her and turned to the seven mages. Though he had not seen them since the commencement of the latest hostilities, he knew well enough the part they had played in the destruction of the Pharaoh’s armies. He saluted each one in turn, acknowledging his own and Kush’s debt, and those of the lands of Siwad and Nubia. He kept his eyes averted from theirs as best he could, however, while yet scrutinizing them and attempting to gauge their mood and degree of penetration of Khai’s condition.
But no, they were utterly inscrutable, particularly the yellow man. Had they arrived at any decision at all, Manek wondered? Certainly they had taken enough time over their deliberations. Again he let his eyes flicker quickly over the faces of the seven where they stood in their long white robes, arms folded on their chests, along one side of the tent.
Manek knew none of their names but easily recognized their origins. From left to right they were the yellow mage, from a land far to the east but recently an oracle in Arabba; the pale, long-bearded Theraean mage; the black, frizzy-haired Nubian from his country’s southern forests; a leathery, spindly mage from the swampy borderlands of Siwad; a sure-footed, keen-eyed brown mage from the mountain regions of Daraaf; a wind-carved, sun-scorched Syran from the hot eastern shores of the Great Sea; and finally Kush’s own hermit-mage, a wanderer of the hills, valleys and plains to the west. And here they were all gathered to council Ashtarta, come to her in her hour of need. Looking again at those seven huge heads, Manek Thotak felt a shudder run up his spine as he wondered at the workings of such great brains.
“General Manek,” came the Queen’s voice, drawing his attention, “you appear quite pale. Is something amiss?”
“Nothing, Majesty, except—I worry for the general Khai.”
She nodded. “We all do, and with good cause.”
Looking at her where she stood beside the stricken man, Manek saw the strain in her face, the great depth of the shadows under her young eyes. He crossed to Khai’s couch and looked down at him, then again faced the Candace. For a moment they stared into each other’s eyes.
“General,” quavered old Imthra, breaking the spell. He shuffled forward out of a shadowed area of the tent. “General, Khai Ibizin is not sick—not as we understand sickness. Indeed, the physicians could never help him, for his malady is quite outside their realm. However, I was shown a vision at the Pool of Yith-Shesh, and my reading of this vision has now been confirmed by the seven mages. There is a chance, of course, that we are all wrong, in which case there is no helping the general Khai. If we are right, however—”
“Then?” Manek prompted the old man, his mouth suddenly dry and tasteless as he waited for Imthra to continue.
“Then we will need a volunteer for a perilous mission.”
“A mission?”
“Aye, Manek,” the sweet voice of the Candace, husky with emotion, rejoined the conversation. “You have known Khai since he came to us out of Khem. You have been rivals at the games, warriors fighting side by side, friends and generals together. You know him as well as any man knows him. Would you offer yourself now for this special task?”
“I … I would do anything you wish of me, Majesty, you know that. But what is this mission you speak of?”
“May we explain, Majesty?” The new voice, which belonged to the yellow mage, was a rustle of leaves, a mere wisp of sound. And now, as one man, the seven stepped forward, moving to form a circle around the still figure on the couch, enclosing Imthra, Manek and the Candace also.
The yellow mage positioned himself directly opposite Manek Thotak. Then, turning his great head to look at the Candace, his slanted eyes bright in the lamplight, he said: “With your permission, Majesty?”
“Please go on,” she said at once. “Time is wasting.”
Now the nodding heads of the seven all seemed to lean inwards, closing on Manek Thotak like the petals of some carnivorous bloom about an insect. The yellow mage said to him, “The Pharaoh’s wizards have taken Khai Ibizin’s soul. They have performed the death rite of the nobility over him— while yet he lived! They have sent his fa down the centuries, to inhabit the body of another yet unborn.”