"A man!" the damsel nearest him chirped.
Mathayus clamped a hand over her pretty mouth. "Quiet, now."
Then he realized they seemed to be staring at him much as he had at them—in wonderment. He had not the slightest idea why, having no sense of what a magnificent male specimen he must have seemed to the fetching young women.
He took his hand off the girl's mouth, and she remained silent. Good. Rising, drawing his scimitar, he looked all about. "What is this place?"
Another of the girls whispered, "Lord Memnon's harem, of course."
They were all around him now, a beautiful swarm.
"But you'd never know it was," another said. "Our lord so seldom visits...."
Another exquisite creature said, "He has better things to do, it would seem."
And another stroked the assassin's bare arm, saying, "Always off on his campaigns of war. No time for us ... we get so lonely."
The girl who had first spoken now said, "We long for a man's touch," and she gently took his free hand—the other held the scimitar—and brought his palm up to rest on a firm, full breast. Reflexively, he cupped it, as she covered her hand with his and held it there.
She was squealing with girlish delight, just as he pulled his hand away, saying to her, "You're wonderful, but... This isn't a good time."
"What better time," one of the them said, eyes sparkling over her veil, "could you imagine?"
"It could be a very good time," another said, and they were surging forward, crowding him, crying out to him, Stay here! Stay with us! We will pleasure you! We know how to please a man!
As they fawned over him, disrobing him he thought, he was drunk with the sight of them, the scents, the exotic delights that seemed to hover like shimmering dreams; and—great warrior that he was, he was a man after all, only a man—he did not realize they were in reality disarming him, plucking his knives, his metal, from his belt. Nor did he sense the mighty bow and its quiver leave his shoulders, as another wench slipped them off, behind his back.
"Stay with us," a green-eyed one was cooing,
"and we will make your every fantasy come
true__ "
Then one of them, in a sudden, almost savage move, yanked the scimitar from his grasp, while a few steps away one of her sisters pulled a large tassel and rang the huge gong, sending waves of sound radiating across, seemingly, the entire world.
And now these sweet harem girls became vicious creatures, no less lovely, but clawing now, scratching and biting, a multitude of ferocious cats attacking.
In one swift movement, swinging both his arms, Mathayus disentangled himself, flinging them here and there like rag dolls, and they tumbled pretty end over pretty end, landing awkwardly on the scattered pillows.
He had regained his scimitar and several daggers, but not his mighty bow, when half a dozen archers burst into the harem den ... and in their lead was the brutal Thorak.
Thorak's scar turned white as surprise and rage seized him. "It's the Akkadian] ... He lives ... but not for long—kill him!"
As the archers let fly with their arrows, the assassin dove toward that huge gong, tumbling behind it; with a sweep of his scimitar, he cut the ropes binding the golden sphere to its pedestal, from which he snatched the huge shieldlike object. Rolling the gong swiftly along, hiding behind it as arrows pinged and danced off its outer surface, Mathayus made his way to the harem doors, through which he sent the gong crashing, making an ungodly music.
When the guards followed into the corridor, Mathayus was again spiraling his golden shield along, making their arrows ineffectual. At the end of the hall, the Akkadian dove from behind the revolving orb, allowing it to clatter to a resounding stop as he pitched through waiting doors.
Again he found himself within a strange room of the palace, and he slammed the doors shut and barricaded them with an ornate chest.
He turned to get his bearings.
This was no magician's lair... and yet it was. This was a golden-hued sandstone chamber whose hieroglyph decorations seemed feminine, a sensation enhanced by delightful scents of oil and flowers and incense. He knew at once he was in Cassandra's quarters; not in her bedroom, or living chamber, no—this was an indoor bathing pool.
And he knew it belonged to the sorceress, because Cassandra herself lay within the huge bath, her lovely head and a shoulder looming above a surface covered with rose petals.
Her almond eyes grew large—she may have been a prophet, but she had clearly not anticipated his entry into her quarters, and was dumbstruck.
But, then, so was he.
The sorceress's handmaidens, who'd been tending her alongside the pool, which took up most of the floor space in the modest-sized chamber, were not struck dumb: they screamed like frightened children, and ran into the adjacent rooms of their mistress's quarters.
Quickly the regal Cassandra regained her poise, and she rose from the rose-cloaked water, throwing back the damp mane of her long dark hair, displaying every inch of her golden, well-formed flesh, perfect breasts, narrow waist, the flare of hips, flawless skin pearled with moisture, every female secret shared.
She stood with her arms at her sides and her chin, and her breasts, held high. No woman had ever been more at ease with her beauty as she said, "Well, assassin? Are you going to kill me, or just stare?"
Mathayus sighed; first the harem girls . .. now this. "Decisions," he said, "decisions."
Then someone knocked at the door—rammed at it, actually; guards beyond were yelling as they did their best to batter their way inside.
And now her voice called to him, the defiance, the pride gone; something sweet, something mystical, like a gentle wind drifting across the landscape of his soul. "Akkadian ... Akkadian ..."
He frowned, and he quietly, all but drowned out by the battering-ram sounds, said, "Oh no, witch ... Not this time."
And he dove into the pool, pulling her down under, sweeping them both below the rose-petaled skin of the water. The woman cried in surprise, but her scream was cut off abruptly, before it was much of anything really, just a yelp before she disappeared under the petals and water.
It took a while for the guards to butt through that door, and by the time they had, that rosy surface had settled, and the bath appeared empty.
Thorak strode in, sword in hand, looking around the room, frowning in frustration. Lord Memnon had joined the search, personally, and entered the bath chamber on his trusted adviser's heels.
Under the water, Mathayus slipped the tip of the scimitar under an iron grating at the base of pool, prying it open. At once, the bathwater began to rush down the narrow spillway below.
As the pool drained, the shadowy forms under the water began to reveal themselves, and Memnon cried, "Kill him!"
That spillway was not so narrow, though, that the Akkadian and the sorceress couldn't slide down in, and he didn't even have to convince the woman, as they were both carried by its flow.
And when Memnon's red-turbaned guards slashed at the draining water with their swords, they were too late.
Mathayus and Cassandra were gone, sliding, careening down a twisting drain, swept along with the tide.
Valley of the Dead
F
rom his high window in the tower room where he kept his primitive but visionary laboratory, Philos—that self-proclaimed man of science— gazed down at the source of the noise that had attracted his attention.