in between the notations again.
"All right. I'll read and you listen." She hunched over her notes. "The
trouble is that a subtle variation of the translation might change the
sense. Taita loved puns, and effect. One wrong twist a pun can rely on
a single word fo or slant to a word and we have lost it."
"Try anyway," Nicholas encouraged her. "Remember that even Taita had
never played bao in three dimensions be at the very before. if he left
a clue it would have le of beginning of the stele. Concentrate on the
first coup notations and the epigrams that separate them."
"We'll try it that way," Royan agreed. "The first notambers five and
seven and tion is the bee followed by the nu the sistrum."
I have heard that so often Nicholas grinned. "Okayt What follows?,
already that I will never forget it er over the ation." She ran her ring
"The first quot can be known hieroglyphics. "'What can be given a name
What is nanwiess can A be felt. i sail with the tide behind me and the
wind in my face. 0, my beloved, the taste of You is sweet uPon my UPs."'
"Is that all?" he asked.
"Yes, then the next notation. The scorpion and the number two and three
and the sistrum again." make Slowly! Slowly! First things first. What
can out of the 1sailing" and the "beloved'T
They riddled and wrestled with the text of the stele, So until their
eyes burned and they had lost track of day or night. They were
eventually recalled to reality by Sapperjs voice echoing up the
staircase. Nicholas stood up from the desk and stretched before he
looked at his watch.
"Eight. 'clock. But I' not sure if that is morning or evenin
Then he started as Sapper came up the staircase, and saw that his bald
head was shining with moisture and his shirt was soaked.
"What happened to you?" Nicholas demanded. "Did you fall into the
sinkholer Sapper wiped his face with the palm of his hand.
"Didn't anybody tell you? It's pissing with rain outside." They both
stared at him in horror.
"So soon?" Royan whispered. "It wasn't supposed to start for weeks yet."
Sapper shrugged. "Somebody forgot to tell the weatherman."
"Has it set in?" Nicholas asked. "What's the state of the river? Has the
level started to rise yet?"
"That's what I came to tell you. I am going up to the dam, taking the
Buffaloes with me. I want to keep an eye on it. As soon as it gets
unsafe I will send a runner down to you. When I do that, don't stop to
argue. Get out of here fast. It will mean that I expect the dam to burst
at any moment."
"Don't take Hansith with you," Nicholas ordered. "I need him here."
When Sapper had gone, taking most of the workers from the tunnel with
him, Royan and Nicholas looked at each other seriously.
"We are running out of time fast, and Taita still has us in a tangle,'
Nicholas said. "One thing I must warn you.
When the river starts to rise "
She did not let him finish. "The river!" she cried. "Not the sea! I was
mistaken in the translation. I read it as "tide".
the sea, but it should have I assumed Taita was referring to been
"curyene,.The Egyptians made no distinction between rds."
the two wo They both rushed back to the desk and her notebooks.
C4The current behind me and the wind in my face Nicholas changed the
quotation.
on the Nile," Royan exulted, "the prevailing wind is lways from the
always from the north, and the current a south. Taita was facing north.
The north castle."
"We assumed the symbol for the north was the baboon,'
he reminded her.
"No! I was wrong." Her face was alight with the fires of inspirations
"', my beloved, the taste of you is sweet upon my lips." Honey! The bee!
I had the symbols for the north and south inverted." we find there?"
"What about east and west? What can with fresh enthusiasm. "'MY
He turned back to the texts of bronze sins are red as carnelians. They
bind me like cUns the They prick my heart with fire, and I turn my eyes
towards evening star."'
"I don't see ation," he stuttered eagerly. -Prick" is the wrong transi
ing towards the qt should be "sting". The scorpion look the west. The
evening star. "Me evening star is always in rn castle, not the eastern
castle." scorpion is the wester
"We had the board inverted." She jumped up excitedly.
"Let's play it that way!'
"We still have not determined the levels," he objected.
"Is the sistrum the upper level, or is it the three swords?"
"Now that we have made this breakthrough, that is the only variable. We
are either right or Wrong. We will play work upper level, and if that
doesn' the sistrurn first as the lay it the other way round."
we can tricacies of the maze It was so much easier now. The in had
become less forbidding with familiarity. There were the large white
chalk signs in Nicholas's handwriting on each corner and at each fork
and T-junction of the tunnels.
They moved swiftly through the complex twists and turns, their
excitement rising sharply as they followed each notation and "i6und the
way still clear before them.
"The eighteenth move." Royan's voice trembled. "Hold both thumbs. If it
takes us into one of the open files that threaten the opponent's south
castle, then that will be the check coup." She drew a deep breath and
read it aloud to him. "The bird The numbers three and five. With the
lower level symbol of the three swords."
They paced it out and passed the five junctions into the lowest level of
the maze, reading their position from the chalk marks on the stone
blocks of the walls at each fork. "This is it!" Nicholas told her, and
they stood together and looked about them.
"There is nothing outstanding about this spot." Disappointment was
bitter in Royan's tone. "We have passed over it fifty times before. It
is just like any of the other turns."
"That is exactly what Taita would have wanted. Hell!
He wouldn't have put up a signpost saying " marks the spot", would he
now?"
"So what do we do?" She looked at him, for once at a loss.
"Read the last epigram from the stele."
S he had her notebook in her hand. "'From the black and holy earth of
dus very Egypt the harvest is abundant. I whip the flanks of my donkey,
and the wooden spike of the plough breaks new ground. I plant the seed,
and reap the grape and the ears of corn. In time I drink the wine and
eat the loaf. I follow the rhythm of the seasons, and tend the earth."'
She looked up at him. "The rhythm of the seasons? Is he referring us to
the four faces of the stele? The earth?"
she asked and looked down at the slabs beneath their feet, "The promise
of reward from the earth? Under our feet, perhaps?" she asked.
He stamped his foot on the slabs, but the sound was dull and solid.
"Only one way to find out." He raised his voice and it echoed weirdly
through the labyrinth. "Hansith! Come down here!'
apper sat on the high seat of his yellow frontend loader in the rain and
cheerfully cursed his gang of Buffaloes, secure in the knowledge that
they understood not a word of his insults. The rain swept over them in
intermittent gusts off the high mountains. It was not yet the solid,
drenching downpour of the true wet season. However, the river was rising
sullenly, turning dirty blue'grey with the mud and sediment that it was
bringing down.
He knew that the flood had not yet begun in earnest.
The thunder that growled ominously along the mountain peaks like a pride
of hunting lions was only the prelude to the vast celestial onslaught