Mek's armed men still kept a twenty-four-hour guard on the causeway over
the sink-hole.
While Nicholas completed his photographic record of the walls of the
long gallery and the empty burial chamber, Royan sat at her table and
pored over her papers for hours at a time, scribbling notes and
calculations from them into her notebooks. Now and then she would jump
up from her desk and dart through the hatch in the white plaster doorway
into the long gallery to study a detail on the decorated walls.
Whenever this happened, Nicholas straightened up from his camera tripod
and watched her with a fond and indulgent expression. So intent was she
that she seemed completely oblivious of him and everybody else about
her.
Nicholas had never seen her in this mood, and the depth of her powers of
concentration impressed him.
When she had worked for fifteen hours without a break he went out on to
the landing to rescue her and to lead her, protesting, back down the
tunnel to the pool where there was a hot meal waiting for them. After
she had eaten he led her to her hut and insisted that she lie down on
her inflatable mattress.
"You are going to sleep now, Royan," he ordered.
He woke to hear her creeping stealthily out of the hut next door to his,
back along the ledge to the entrance to the tomb. He checked his watch
and grunted with disbelief when he realized that they had slept for only
three and a half hours. He shaved quickly and bolted back a slab of
toasted injera bread and a cup of tea before following her into the
tomb.
He found her standing in the long gallery before the empty niche in the
shrine where the statuette of Osiris had stood. She was so preoccupied
that she did not hear him come up behind her, and she started violently
when he touched her arm.
"You startled me," she scolded him.
"What are you staring at?" he asked. "What have you discovered?"
"Nothing," she denied swiftly, and then after a moment, "I don't know.
It's just an idea."
"Come on! What are you up to?"
"It's easier for me to show you." She led him back to her table on the
stone landing, and rearranged her notebooks carefully before she spoke
again.
"What I have been doing these last few days is going through the
material on the stele of Tanus's tomb, picking out all the quotations
that I recognize from the classical books of mystery, the Book of
Breathings, the Book of the Pylons and -the Book of Thoth, and setting
those on one side." She showed him fifteen pages in her neat small
script.
"All this is ancient material, none of it original compositions by
Taita. I have discarded it for the time being."
She set the first notebook aside and picked up the next. "All this is
from the fourth face of the stele. It's nothing that I recognize, but
seems to be only long lists of numbers and figures. Some sort of code,
perhaps? I am not sure, but I do have some ideas on it that I will come
to later.
Now this here," she showed him the next book, "this is all fresh
material that I don't remember reading in any of the ancient classics.
Much of it, if not all of it, must be original Taita writings. If he has
left any more clues for us, I believe they will be here, in these
sections."
He grinned, "Like that marvelous quotation describing the pink and
private parts of the goddess. Is that what you are referring to?"
"Trust you not to forget that." She flushed lightly and refused to look
up from her notebook. "Look at this quotation from the head of the third
face of the stele, the side Taita has headed "autumn". It's the very
first one that caught my attention."
Nicholas leaned forward and read the hieroglyphics aloud: "'The great
god Osiris makes the opening coup with deference to the protocol of the
four bulls. At the first pylon he bears full testimony to the immutable
law of the board."' He looked up at her. "Yes, I remember that
quotation. Taita is referring to bao, the game that the old devil loved
so passionately."
"That's right." Royan looked slightly embarrassed. "But do you also
remember that I told you about a dream that I had in which I saw Du raid
again in one of the chambers of the tomb?"
"I remember." He chuckled at her discomfort. "He said I of the four
bulls. Now
4 something to you about the protoco we are going in to the, realm of
divination by dreams, are we?"
She looked annoyed by his levity. "All I am suggesting is that my
subconscious had been -digesting the quotation and come up with an
answer, which it put into the mouth of Duraid in the dream. Can't you be
serious just for one moment?
"Sorry." He was contrite. "Remind me what you heard Duraid say."
"In the dream he told me, "Remember the protocol of the four bulls -
Start at the beginning."'
"I am no expert on the game of bao. What did he mean?"
"The rules and subtleties of the game have been lost in the mists of
antiquity. But as you know, we have found examples of the bao board
amongst the grave goods in the tombs of the eleventh to the seventeenth
dynasties, and we can only guess that it was an early form of chess."
She began to sketch for him on one of the blank pages at the back of her
notebook.
"The wooden board was laid out like a chessboard, eight rows of cups
wide and eight rows deep. Like this." She drew it in with quick, deft
strokes of her ballpoint pen.
"The pieces were coloured stones that moved in a prescribed fashion. I
won't go into all the details, but the protocol of the four bulls was an
opening gambit in the game favoured by grand masters of Taita's calibre.
It consisted of making sacrifices to mass the highest-ranking stones in
the first cup from where they could dominate the important centraffiles
of the board."
"I am not sure where we are going, but lead on. I am listening."Nicholas
tried not to look too mystified.
"The first cup of the board." She indicated it on her sketch, as though
instructing a backward child. "The beginning, Duraid said, "Start at the
beginning" Taita said, "The great god Osiris makes the opening coup."'
"I still don't follow you. "Nicholas shook his head.
"Come with me." Carrying the notebooks, she led him through the hatch in
the white plaster doorway and stood beside him at the shrine of Osiris.
"The opening coup. The beginning."
She turned and faced down the gallery. "This is the first shrine. How
many shrines are there altogetherr
"Three for the trinity, then Seth, Thoth, Anubis, Hathor and Ra," he
listed. "Eight altogether."
"Glory be!" She laughed. "The lad can count! How many cups in the files
of the bao board?"
"Eight across, and eight down-' he broke off and stated at her, "You
think-?"
She did not answer, but opened the notebook. "All of these numbers and
extraneous symbols - they spell no coherent words. They do not relate to
each other in any way, except that no number in the list is greater than
eight., "I thought I had caught up with you, but I just lost you again."
"If somebody were to read the notations of a game of T, chess four
thousand years from now, what would he make of it?" she asked. "Wouldn't