Dahak made a sharp motion, no more than the effort of a man brushing aside a fly and the dozen or more corpses feeding in the chamber stiffened-motive force denied-and then crumbled to dust. The skull-suddenly released-clattered across the floor and came to rest at the prince's feet.
The Lord of the Ten Serpents bent down, face twisted in a grimace-half amused, half irritated. Black fingernails bit into bone and he lifted the skull. Once, a man with a neatly trimmed beard and a powerful nose had worn this ragged, bloody scrap of flesh and glistening white. There was a gelatinous sloshing sound as the head rolled between Dahak's fingers.
"Where is the Sarcophagus?" A snap of command, echoing with a trembling hum, filled the prince's voice. His high brow creased in mild concentration.
The skull stiffened in his hands, a leprous white glow sparking in empty eye sockets-no more than red-rimmed holes, where dusty fingers had lately gouged-and the jaw twitched and spasmed. The tongue, at least, remained whole and a gargling sound issued from the broken head. Dahak grunted, finding the words unintelligible.
"Speak clearly!" the prince commanded, and sinews crawled like worms under torn flesh, muscle knitting to bone, arteries swelling with a thick, dark gray humor-not blood, no, but close enough to serve. Watery charcoal-colored fluid spilled from the mouth and Dahak held the thing at arm's reach, so as to keep his long pantaloons free of such offal. "Where is the body?"
"Not…" croaked the priest's dead tongue. "…here… taken."
"What?" A hiss of rage followed and black talons squeaked through fibrous bone. "Who has taken the Pretender's body? When?"
"Persia…" The head sighed, more fluid spilling from the mouth and staining the prince's hands. "Shapur the Young took him… away."
"Shapur?" Dahak stared at the leaking head in dismay. "Shapur the Manichean?"
The head tried to nod, but could not. The leprous radiance dimmed in the eye sockets and Dahak's face contorted into unbridled rage. His fist closed with a convulsive jerk and the skull shattered into fragments. Spitting furiously, the prince cast the bits and pieces away. As they flew, black flame enveloped them and only dust sifted to the ground.
"Curse him, curse the child and all his debased house!" Dahak turned slowly, blazing eyes sweeping across the dumb stone faces of ancient kings and gods. They did not amuse him, these stiff Ptolemies and weak-faced animals grafted to human bodies. The prince stalked among the rumpled shapes of the dead priests, searching for another whose cranium was intact enough to question.
After a moment, he sighed in despair. The gaatasuun had been swift to satisfy their hunger.
"All this effort, for nothing…" Dahak leaned against a wall, suddenly weary. The vast effort of revivifying the tomb-lost dead and drawing them forth from the ground, sending them in crashing, endless waves against the Roman walls, imbuing each dead husk with enough of a spark to motivate hands and legs, began to tell. The prince stared around, feeling defeat leech the strength from his body. "We have taken an empty coffin-only dust and worms and vermin hiding in the walls."
He pressed a hand across his eyes. They burned with fatigue and even the thin, greenish sunlight slanting down from high, close-set windows hurt. So much time wasted. The Sema empty and my agents will have to search the length and breadth of Persia for the Pretender… An old, half-heard voice emerged from black, turgid memory. Shapur raised a great edifice at Taq-I-Bustam-perhaps he hid the body there-I will send the Shanzdah to shatter mountains and cast down cliffs to find out!
Dahak rose, face set, the moment of weariness past. His will asserted itself, banishing weariness and despair alike. Eyes narrowing to burning slits, he turned his attention outward, sending his thoughts winging across the leagues to the west.
Where are my faithful ones, he asked the void. Have they found our other prize?
Faintly, the Shanzdah replied, feeling his will searching for them. We are here, they called.
Dahak frowned again. He caught a sense of limitless emptiness, of heat, of fist-sized black stones lining a narrow track winding between desolate hills. The first of the Shanzdah was walking, leather boots sliding in fine sand. Where are you? Where is the duradarshan? Where is Lord Shahin?
We failed, came the cold reply. Dahak snarled silently, feeling nothing but truth reaching across the leagues to him. The Romans were here-and the witches helped them-they stole the device. This shape… A sensation of chill humor echoed… was almost destroyed.
"Enough!" Dahak released the connection violently, mocking laughter ringing in his thoughts. The prince stared around the old temple with a sick, conflicted expression. "Lost in the desert… witches interfering again! Why didn't I crush them all long ago…" He realized he was muttering and closed his mouth with a snap. Fixing his attention on the nearest wall, Dahak breathed slowly until his racing heart slowed to a walk. The wall was painted with scenes of men giving sacrifice to the sun, whose golden disc encompassed them in beneficent rays, carrying Amon's blessing. All the races of the earth were represented, from the pale hair of the northmen to the shining blue-black of the southern tribes.
His reptilian face twisting in despair, Dahak pressed his fingers against the fresco, slowly tracing yellow-painted lines, a round solar disk flanked by spreading hawk wings, rich fields of corn and wheat. A strange sound echoed in the chamber, throbbing among the roof arches. Dahak started, staring around, one hand raised in the beginnings of a pattern sign.
There was no one in the funerary temple. He was alone.
What was that? The prince's eyes slid closed, one transparent lid sliding over another. Even in the hidden world, there was nothing around him, no invisible adversary, no spy, no secret watcher. Was that someone crying?
The prince looked back to the painting and his jaw tightened. The sun in the middle of the composition mocked him, so perfectly round, fulfilling and sustaining the world of men. Dahak turned his face toward the ceiling, letting his sight peel away the stone arches, the tiled roof, then a sea of air, the thin white clouds so far above the curve of the earth, then an abyss of distant fire and the cold, dead moon.
I do not need to see this, Dahak thought, wrenching his attention away from the void. The Hyades have not risen and Al-Debaran still hides behind the world. There is still time. His hand, still resting upon the wall, convulsed, iron-hard nails digging through plaster into the stone below. But not much, no… not much. Not even as men measure the hours.
"Row!" A Praetorian, long blond hair wild around his head, screamed at a dozen soldiers. The men shied away from the barbarian, but their hands already wrapped around the long, polished pine handle of a huge oar. Sextus caught a glimpse of the men straining, faces red with effort, as he staggered up the gangway. Frontius flopped on his back like a marlin, drooling vomit on his shoulder. The wounded engineer was not doing well.