Khai of Khem

I At the Pool of Yith-Shesh

Ashtarta—dark-eyed, raven-haired Ashtarta, with skin of a pure, light-olive complexion—knelt by the Holy Pool of Yith-Shesh in a cave high in the foothills of the Gilf Kebir Plateau. The pool, which did not contain water but a thick liquid seeped at the dark of the moon from a crack in the floor of the cave, was black as Ashtarta’s huge, slanting eyes and still as her face. Its surface, like her outward appearance, was calm ... for the present.

But beneath that surface ...

Mirrored in the pool, the queen’s face stared back at her with eyes in which the shiny jet of the pupils was almost indistinguishable from the flawless ebony of the irises. Her eyelashes, painted blue, were long and curving; and above them her thin eyebrows, which like her hair were so black as to be near-blue, tapered to the point where they almost touched the square-cut fringe that decked her brow. At the back of her head and at its sides, falling so as to cover her small flat ears, her hair looked almost metallic in its lacquered sheen. Parted at the nape of her neck, it was drawn forward over her shoulders and caught together again with a clasp of crimson gems in the hollow of her long neck; from where it fell in a wide flat band to be cut square just above her navel. Her nose, small and straight, was perfect in its symmetry and given to a haughty lift; when tiny nostrils would show dark, tear-shaped and occasionally flaring. Her chin was small but square and firm, and it too could tilt warningly when Ashtarta was angry.

The facial features at which she gazed—her own—were utterly beautiful, classic as those of another woman whose face would grace the pages of textbooks thousands of years in the future; but Nefertiti would be a Queen of Khem (or Egypt, as Khem would become before Nefertiti’s time) while Ashtarta was a Candace of Kush. And Khem and Kush were enemies poles apart, had been so for hundreds of years and would continue to be until one was finally destroyed—or until both were swept away by time and the ravages of war.

It was because of the present war between Khem and Kush that Ashtarta was here in the cave, kneeling by the side of the black Pool of Yith-Shesh. Her army, under command of the generals Khai Ibizin and Manek Thotak, had gone down from the Gilf Kebir into Khem, to the waters of the Nile itself to strike at the very heart of the Pharaoh Khasathut’s kingdom. They had laid seige on the massively walled slave-city Asorbes—whose center was Khasathut’s future tomb, a great pyramid forty years in the building and almost ready now to receive his mummy when at last the tyrant died—and by now the Candace should have received news of their victory.

Could it be, she wondered, that the Pharaoh’s wizards and necromancers had turned her army back? Surely not. And yet she had seen enough in the five years of her reign to know better than to discount such an idea out of hand. That was why she was here now, waiting for Imthra, the mage who had promised her a vision. But Imthra was old now and could not climb the mountain of the pool as fast as he used to. It seemed to Ashtarta that she had been waiting for him for a long time. Now, as finally she heard the wheezing rattle of the old magician’s breath and the shuffle of his sandaled feet, she looked up.

The old man, whose flowing white hair and long white beard seemed to burn golden as they trapped the mid-afternoon sun before the shadow of the cave’s mouth fell over him, shuffled at last into his sovereign’s presence. The golden glyphs of his wide-sleeved, black mage’s robe continued to glow even in the gloom of the cool cave, while a redder light burned through the holes in a tiny firepot which hung from his wrist on a leather thong; and as his ancient eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, so they saw Ashtarta where she kneeled at the edge of the pool.

He saw her and held his breath. For frail with years as he was and most of the fire burned out of him—indeed, and the Candace the great granddaughter of his own long-dead brother—nevertheless her beauty was such as to lend even his old heart wings. It was a beauty, he thought, which might wake the very dead.

She wore a clinging scarlet sheath of a shift with one clasp at her left shoulder. Her arms, neck and right breast were bare. But however simply attired, her beauty seemed almost immortal to the old man; like a perfect pearl in the dark flesh of an oyster, so Ashtarta stood out in the gloom of the cave. She looked more a goddess than a mere queen, thought Imthra, except that he no longer believed in the old deities. No, for they were dead as the recently green Sahara, mocked at, spat upon and murdered by Khasathut’s black cruelties, destroyed by his necromancers and wizards.

Imthra prostrated himself, ancient joints creaking as he went down on one knee, then to all fours in the dust of the cave’s floor. Ashtarta made no attempt to stop him. It would be pointless. Too late now to protest a love, loyalty and devotion that spanned eighty years, which the old magician had given Ashtarta, her father and his father before him.

He touched his head to the floor and she put her hand on his white locks. “Up, father,” she said, “and let’s be at the seeing. It seems to me that if all were well we should surely have heard from Khai and Manek by now.”

“Aye, Candace, you could well be right,” he answered, kneeling beside her at the pool’s edge. “But I must warn you that the Pool of Yith-Shesh is no longer the bright crystal it once was. Its pictures may no longer wholly be trusted, and their meanings are often obscure.”

“Still,” she told him, “we shall see what we shall see.”

They turned to the shiny black surface of the pool and Imthra flicked upon it the contents of a small leather pouch. Then, beckoning the queen back a little from the pool, he commenced an invocation handed down immemorially from his magician ancestors. Strange and alien the cadence of his old voice, and weird the energies that soon began to fill the air of the cave.

Then, at the height of his chanting, he began to whirl the firepot by its thong about his head. Soon it issued a scented smoke, at sight of which Imthra caught the jar in his free hand and unstoppered its perforated top. Done with his invocation and as its echoes died away to be replaced by an eery wind that filled the cave, the old man stretched out a trembling hand and tipped the glowing contents of the small vessel onto the surface of the pool.

II The Dreams in the Pool

At once the pool caught fire, burning with a lambent blue light formed of a million tiny flickering flames that danced on the dark surface and turned it a luminous blue. The herbal substances that Imthra had scattered on the pool burned, issuing heady, scented fumes that immediately assailed Ashtarta’s and the mage’s own senses.

There where they kneeled amidst softly flickering shadows, the minds of the old man and the young queen suddenly reeled—whirling chaotically for the space of a half-dozen heartbeats—then steadying as the little flames began to die on the surface of Yith-Shesh’s pool. And as the flames flickered and died, so the play of blue fires upon the dark mirror surface seemed to form moving pictures.

The two sighed as one, leaning forward the better to read the message of the flames. They looked and … they saw. And as the rising fumes thickened in the cave, at last Imthra and Ashtarta succumbed— just as the old mage had known they would— falling into drugged dreams of ethereal figures and formless phantoms....

“Candace, majesty, please wake up! And you, magician—you, Imthra—rouse yourself!”

“What? Who is this?” mumbled the old man, shaken awake at last by none-too-gentle hands. He looked up from the cave’s floor and saw a young warrior kneeling beside him. The youth wore the insignia of a charioteer, but his left arm was in a sling. That was why he had not gone with the army three months ago, down from the mountains to do battle with Khasathut’s troops in the valley of the Nile.

“Wake up, Imthra. It is I, Harek Ihris. Up, old man, and bring the queen awake. A rider comes, two or three hours away. The mirrors signal his coming.”

“What? A rider? A messenger!” Assisted by Harek Ihris, the old man sat up. The queen, too, awakened by their excited voices, stirred herself.

“Candace,” Imthra wheezed, “a rider comes from Asorbes, from the battleground. Doubtless he brings news. The mirrors foretell his coming, which will be in a few hours’ time. At the onset of night, then he will be here.”

Ashtarta stood up and Harek Ihris assisted Imthra to his feet. They passed out of the cave into the cool air of early evening. Low in the western sky hung the ball of the sun, and away to the east something flashed briefly, brightly, reflecting the golden glow of the slowly sinking orb.

“See,” said Imthra, pointing a trembling finger. “The mirrors of our watchers speak to us with Re’s own voice.”

“Re is a god of Khem, old man,” the Candace sharply retorted, frowning. “And we are children of Kush. The sun is the sun, no more a god than the so-called ‘sacred’ crocodiles that the Pharaoh’s people also worship.”

“Just so, Queen,” the old magician mumbled his agreement, though deep inside he felt that there would always be a godliness about the blazing solar furnace. He turned to Harek Ihris. “You go on ahead, young man. We will follow in our time. We have things to talk about.”

As the young soldier started off quickly down the steep mountain path, Ashtarta called after him: “And when the rider comes, make sure he knows that he is to be brought straight to my tent. And let there be meat and wine ready....”

An hour later, as they neared the foot of the mountain—more a high, steep foothill than a mountain proper—finally Ashtarta and Imthra found time to talk. Until then they had saved their breath, assisting each other in those places where the path was at its steepest or its surface loose and treacherous. Now, as the slope gentled toward the tents of the encampment, which lay about a pool surrounded by trees, palms and green shrubs, Imthra asked: “Did you see anything, daughter, in the black crystal Pool of Yith-Shesh?”

She looked at him and frowned, then nodded. “Yes, I saw something— many things. But they were to me a nonsense. Come, Imthra, you are the magician. What did you see in the pool?”

“Candace, I—” He hesitated, then quickly went on: “But as I have explained, often the pool’s pictures lie, or at best they present an obscure or confused—”

“You saw evil, is that it?”

Imthra looked down at his sandaled feet and appeared to pick his way most carefully. “I saw … something. Its meaning may not be easy to explain. Therefore do not ask me, Ashtarta, for my vision would only disturb you— perhaps unnecessarily. Young eyes, however, often see far more clearly than old ones. What did your eyes see in the Pool of Yith-Shesh?”

For all that she was young, Ashtarta was wise. She did not press the magician for an answer but told him instead of her own visions. “I saw carts without oxen, without horses, moving fast as the stars that fall from the sky,” she began, her great slanted eyes filling with wonder. “The carts carried many people, all dressed in a strange and wondrous garb. I saw great birds that served these people, carrying them in their bellies without eating them; and ships that went without sails on the ocean, which were as long as the side of Khasathut’s pyramid! Aye, and I saw vast encampments greater by far than all of Kush and Khem camped together, with dwellings of stone taller than mountains and teeming with peoples of all kinds and colors in their millions. Then—”

She turned quickly, catching Imthra off guard, her troubled eyes searching his face. “Then I saw the general Khai, my future husband, who came to me as a boy out of Khem. Did you, too, see Khai, Imthra?”

“Khai? Khai the general? The Warlord?” He did his best to look surprised.

“Do you know of any other?” She peered at him suspiciously through silk-shuttered eyes, like a cat at the cautious pattering of a mouse.

“No, Candace, of course not,” Imthra mumbled. “And no,” he lied, “I did not see Khai in the Pool of Yith-Shesh. My visions were of no consequence compared with yours. Now please continue, daughter,” he urged. “Go on, tell me what else you saw. Tell me of Khai the general.”

For a moment longer, the Candace peered into Imthra’s lined old face. Then she relaxed and said: “There is little more to tell. He had wings; he stood on a green mountain in a wild, craggy and alien land; he flew. Then … something swooped on him out of the sky like a great hawk. He crashed to the ground. After that I saw no more.”

They were walking now through tufts of spiky, coarse grass between the tents. Directly in front of them, beside the springfed oasis pool, Ashtarta’s large, pavilion-like tent stood scarlet and gold in the last rays of the sun as it sank down between twin peaks. Silhouetted against the tent, whose color merged with that of her dress, Ashtarta’s flesh seemed almost green, exotically beautiful.

A handmaiden at the tent’s entrance bowed low and kissed the hand that the queen held out to her. Before entering, Ashtarta turned to where Imthra had paused. “When the messenger comes, you will bring him to me?”

“Of course, Candace.” Bowing, the old magician began to back away.

“And Imthra—”

“Majesty?”

“While we are waiting, perhaps you would give some thought to the meaning of my vision?”

“Majesty,” he bowed his obedience.

“And to the meaning of your own—” she continued, piercing him through with her gaze, “whatever it was....”

As the queen turned from him and entered into the scented luxury of her tent, Imthra bowed one last time, shivering as he felt the first chill of evening creeping into his old bones. He should consider the meaning of his vision, should he? Little need of that when the messenger, who would be here soon enough, would doubtless be able to explain it for him. And not, he was sure, to his liking.

So the old man turned away from Ashtarta’s tent and made for his own less sumptuous apartment, a low, black affair with four poles, numerous silver symbols sewn into the walls, and black tassels hanging from each corner. He supposed he might look into his shewstone; there might just be something to see in there, but he doubted it. His eyes were of little use now for the scrying of mysteries, and his mind not much better. As for the vision he had seen in the pool: what interpretation could he possibly place on it except the obvious one?

He had seen Khai, yes. He had seen him stretched flat on his back on a bed of funerary black, with baleful blue fumes rising from seven encircling censers while chanting wizards in strangely horned, pschent-like headdress performed an ancient rite. It was a ceremony old as time itself, come down from predawn days before Khem and Kush, Therae and Nubia, before ever the first tribes of the hills and valleys came from the East and the South to settle in and around the valley of the Nile. The time-lost ice-priests of primordial Khrissa had known it and the long-headed Lords of Lemuria—whose alien blood, it was rumored, ran even now in the veins of Khem’s pharaohs— and it had been practiced, too, in legended Ardlanthys.

And Imthra had known the ceremony immediately, even though it was not practiced by the people of Kush. He had recognized it despite certain basic anomalies, despite one highly peculiar circumstance. It was that rite with which the Khemites sent the ka of a dead person winging on its way into the next world—except that from the slow rise and fall of Khai’s chest, Imthra had known that the young general was not yet dead!

III Manek Thotak

Almost two hundred miles away and a few miles west of the Nile—beyond vast, blasted areas of savannah, marshland and forest, where all the trees were now flattened down or snapped off at their bases and the grass was blackened stubble—there the Pharaoh Khasathut had built Asorbes, his titan-walled city and stronghold.

The heart of the city was a golden pyramid, almost complete now, whose base covered twenty-three acres. Built of fifteen million tons of yellow stone, it towered to a height of almost six hundred feet. In a later age, its tumbled and scattered blocks of vastly-hewn limestone would be floated almost three hundred miles downriver and utilized in building the lesser monument which one day men would call the “great” pyramid, ranking it as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Khasathut’s pyramid itself would not survive the ages, no, but if it had then surely it must be the first of all such wonders.

Central in all the lands of the Pharaoh—which until recently had consisted of the entire Nile Delta and Valley from the Mediterranean to the fourth cataract, and from the Red Sea to the swamps, forests and savannahs of the west—Asorbes stood huge and until now impregnable. Khasathut had used the crocodile-infested swamps as a buffer against the resurgent mountain tribes of Kush, whose people in their thousands he had once enslaved for the building and maintenance of his fortress city and pyramid tomb, a task which had absorbed him and destroyed them for years untold. There were few Kushite slaves in Asorbes now, for they had refused to breed for the Pharaoh and their blood had finally run out; but it had been the blood of a proud and fierce race and the Kings and Candaces of Kush would never rest until the agonized ghosts of their people no longer cried out for red revenge.

Now the savannahs were razed to naked earth, the forests laid waste and the swamps magically dried up from the city’s west wall as far as the eye could see. Now, too, half of the army of Kush laid triumphant siege on the city and awaited orders from Ashtarta; and yet there was no rejoicing among the grim warriors without the walls. In the hour of his triumph the general Khai had been kidnapped, taken by the enemy and smuggled away into Asorbes by the black wizards of Khem. His fellow general, Manek Thotak, had bargained with Khasathut for Khai’s life, and the Pharaoh’s terms had been a truce in exchange for the young general’s freedom. A truce, and the withdrawal of Ashtarta’s army from Khem’s ravished territories.

Manek Thotak, acting on his own initiative, had accepted these terms; but when Khai was lowered from the walls of Asorbes into the hands of his men, then it was seen that he was stricken with a strange malady. He was not dead, but it was as if he were.

Nevertheless, the Pharaoh had honored his part of the agreement, however deviously, and so Manek Thotak immediately ordered the withdrawal of Kush’s army; and knowing of Ashtarta’s love for Khai, he made preparations for the stricken general’s immediate return to Kush. Manek had overestimated his authority, however, with those tribes previously under Khai’s control, especially his Nubians. The chiefs of his impis refused to lift the siege but determined instead to wait outside the city’s massive walls for Ashtarta’s decision.

Doubtless the Candace would feel obliged to accept the terms arranged by Manek Thotak, but if she did not... Khai Ibizin’s legions would wait here, beneath the walls of Asorbes, until word came back to them from the queen herself. If that word was peace—then, however, reluctantly, they would leave.

But if it was war …

Many miles beyond the dried-out swamps and shattered forests, hurrying westward, Manek Thotak led fifty men across a shriveled wasteland which recently was a sweeping savannah. He rode in a chariot alongside one of his lieutenants, while to the rear his men rode ponies and kept watch over a central cart in which, on a pile of soft furs and linens, the waxen form of Khai Ibizin bounced without injury as the cart sped over rough ground.

Manek had left his eighty thousand warriors in a temporary camp a mile or so inside the dead forest’s border, within a clearing of sundered, shattered trees. There he had led them—many of them crowded into horsedrawn carts, a few riding in two-man chariots, the rest on foot or seated two-astride the backs of sturdy hill ponies—and there he had bade them wait. Then, setting off with his fifty men and the cart containing Khai, Manek had sent a lone rider on ahead to warn of his coming and to prepare the Candace for a great shock. The war with Khem was all but won, but the general Khai was lost.

Manek had known well enough not to leave his regiments camped too close to the general Khai’s troops, for that would surely have caused unnecessary problems. The armies were, after all, gathered together from three separate nations comprised of many different tribes; and it was bad enough to have Khai’s men refuse his authority in the matter of the siege without further exacerbating matters. His own troops would not take kindly to the fact that Khai’s men had seen fit to ignore his orders. Since many of these little kings were recent rivals, they might well turn upon each other in his absence; and so he moved his regiments to their present location.

During that move, they had trampled a front two-and-a-half miles wide, with flanks half a mile deep. Now, by comparison, Manek felt almost naked. His fifty men seemed like a mere handful; this despite the fact that he knew there was nothing this side of the Nile which could possibly threaten him. All of these lands now belonged to the Candace, should she desire them. But Manek believed she would honor his arrangements with the Pharaoh. She was an honorable woman and must surely see that if he had not come to some agreement with Khasathut, then Khai Ibizin would now be dead.

As it was, the general Khai lived—if such a condition could properly be called life—but he could no more command Ashtarta’s armies than could a puling babe. More to the point, he was no longer a contender for the Queen’s hand, no longer a threat to Manek Thotak’s own ambitions.

Manek ordered his driver to rein back until the cart carrying Khai drew up alongside. He looked down at the stricken general and a frown creased his high brow beneath the rim of his bronze war helmet. “Aye, old rival,” he said under his breath, “and now see what you have come to…. You were always her favorite and knew it, though I never guessed it and you never hinted. She loved both of us—but me as a brother. You—” he grated his teeth and ordered his driver to speed on ahead once more, “—you she loved as a man, for your pale skin, your fair hair. And how well will she love you now, I wonder, with your slack mouth and vacant, staring eyes?”

“I see from the set of your jaw, Lord,” said Manek’s driver, “your pain at seeing the general Khai lying so still. What ails him, I wonder? Is it some disease contracted in the Pharaoh’s cells within Asorbes’ walls—or is it some device of Khasathut’s black magicians?”

“Why do you ask me?” Manek rounded on him. “Are there not enough problems without your search for more? Leave the general Khai be. What can be done for him will be done. Concern yourself with your driving. I’m sore from the night’s ride. Never have I suffered such a bruising!”

“My Lord, I only—”

“Be quiet!” ordered Manek. “And look,” he changed the subject, “did I not see the flash of a mirror from the hills just then?”

“Aye, Lord. The mirrors have been talking for an hour or more. Since the rising of the sun. In a little while, within the hour, we will reach the camp of the Candace. Even now she awaits your coming with the general Khai, for our horseman carried your word to her last night, since when she has not slept but waited for you. The mirrors have told all of this, but you have not been watching. Your mind has been busy with more important things and so you have not seen the mirrors talking or read their messages.”

“Aye, you are right.” Manek saw little point in denying it. “My mind has been with the general Khai. He was a warrior among warriors.”

“He surely was, Lord, even if he was a Khemite! Will there be a cure for him, do you think?”

“I think not!” Manek harshly answered. Then, seeing the surprised look on his driver’s face, he added: “What use to bolster false hopes? You can see him there and know he lies as one dead. Indeed, he is dying. But if the doctors of Kush can save him, then he will be saved. Now let it be, my friend, and concentrate on your driving. Take me home to the hills of Kush. To Kush … and to the Queen who waits there.”

IV In the Queen’s Tent

It was early afternoon. All through the morning Manek Thotak had been questioned by the Candace—almost to the point of interrogation—and to little or no avail. The three royal physicians had attended Khai on his couch in Ashtarta’s tent, and as a man had proclaimed him poisoned and on the brink of death. One of them, Hathon-al, had said he thought it just possible that the general was possessed of demons, and that perhaps they could be let out by boring a small hole in his head.

Trepanning was an operation with which Hathon-al was acquainted; his father had performed a similar exorcism on a young woman some thirty years ago. Because of the intervening years, however, he was not completely sure of the postures and incantations; but still he was perfectly willing to try. He would use only the most beneficent postures, and his brother physicians might care to join him in the utterance of their favorite and most curative incantations.

Ashtarta, who like her father before her had little faith in the healing magic of the physicians, had ordered them out of her tent. Theirs was a mixture of magic and science not at all to the Queen’s liking. She could accept magic for its own sake—indeed, she had ample proof of the efficacy of many forms of the mystic arts—but she suspected that the doctors were mere amateurs in occult matters. All well and good that they should mend broken bones and sew up gashes, but when the soul itself was injured … ? The true mages, on the other hand, had earned Ashtarta’s respect in more ways than one; and now, acting on Imthra’s advice, she called them to her tent.

There were seven of them in all, their number signifying the Seven Mystic Arts of the Ancient Ones—those mighty God-magicians who came from the stars with all knowledge at a time lost in the world’s dim and terrible infancy—and it was as a direct result of the incredible efforts of the seven that the balance of the war with Khem had swung in Ashtarta’s favor, when their magic had stemmed dark forces which had changed the face of Africa for thousands of years to come and which, but for them, had perhaps blasted the whole world forever!

At the onset of Kush’s latest offensive the seven had gone into the most inaccessible regions of the Gilf Kebir, and there they had remained in a secret place, using their long-range magic whenever the armies of Kush most needed their aid. Now a dozen riders were out looking for them, with orders to bring them to the Candace at once; and while she waited for their arrival, which might not be for several days, Ashtarta questioned Imthra about their powers.

These were Alchemy (the old man explained), which did not originate in Khem at all but had been old when the Nile was a mere streamlet; Fascination, or hypnotism; Necromancy, or communication with the dead; Pyromancy and the control of elemental fires; Oneiromancy, or the interpretation of dreams; Elementalism, the control of the elementals of air, earth and water; and finally Mentalism, the use of the mind as a physical power. All of these arts were embodied in the seven mages to one degree or another; and Imthra himself, having been a student of the Ancient Wisdom all of his long life, understood something of them all.

As Imthra’s interpretation of the arts of the seven grew more complicated and detailed, the general Manek Thotak sat on his chair and listened intently. Though sunken-eyed, the young general seemed very alert for a man who must by now be greatly in need of sleep, and plainly he was absorbing all that was being said. This almost anxious interest of his did not go unnoticed by Ashtarta, who put it down to the fact that Manek shared her own great concern for Khai Ibizin’s well-being. And yet... she had been far from satisfied with Manek’s version of Khai’s misadventures, and even less satisfied with the truce he had arranged with the Pharaoh.

Now, as Imthra began to define the powers of mentalism—which in a later age would be known variously as telepathy, telekinesis, levitation and so on, and grouped under ESP in general—she put up a hand to stop him. She, too, was very tired, and Imthra’s droning voice was making her even more so.

“Later, later,” she told the old man. “For the moment I would speak again with the general.”

“Ashtarta,” Manek immediately responded, straightening up in his chair and granting himself the familiarity of first-name terms, “I feel I must offend you by my presence. The dust and grime of travel are still on me. I am unwashed and uncouth. Perhaps if I were to—”

“You do not offend,” she cut him off, “nor have you ever. But indeed I am sure that your weariness has dulled your mind and tongue, for still I find the things you have told me unsatisfactory. Explain to me once more, if you will, how the general Khai comes to be in his present condition. Leave nothing out, for the future of all Khem—if indeed the Land of the Pharaoh has a future—surely lies in the balance.”

The three of them were seated about the body of Khai where he lay as one dead upon his couch, and now Imthra sighed and leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers on his chest and relaxing for the moment. In her present mood, the Candace was most demanding. He had suffered her angry ranting, her furious, frustrated sobbing and impatient questioning, for some hours. Now it was Manek Thotak’s turn once more and Imthra was glad to be off the hook.

As of yet, the Candace seemed to have forgotten that she had ordered him to provide interpretations of their dreams at the Pool of Yith-Shesh, for which he was grateful. While her dream had been very difficult to understand and probably full of symbolism, his own had been fairly easy; but he knew that if he told it to Ashtarta, and if he so much as hinted at its meaning as he suspected it, then that she would be heartbroken. Better first to let the seven mages see Khai, and then to tell them of that ominous vision glimpsed in the flames of the cavern pool.

So, while Imthra sat and wrapped himself tiredly in his own thoughts, Ashtarta prompted her general again, saying: “Well, Manek? I am waiting.”

“Majesty,” he answered, “I’ve already told you everything there is to—”

“Tell me again, and do not sigh at me. How was Khai taken?” She reached down and laid her hand on the stricken man’s cheek.

For a moment Manek looked as if he might rebel, but then he shrugged and turned his eyes down. Rather than let the Candace see the anger in his eyes, he stared at the precious furs where they lay on the white sand floor. Plainly Ashtarta found fault with his handling of the affair; perhaps she even blamed him for Khai’s condition. Nor was he blameless.

“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.”

Manek stared into the eyes of the yellow mage and said, “And how may I help?”

“We are not completely familiar with this rite,” the whispering voice continued, “for it is an evil thing that the Pharaoh’s wizards have done, in keeping with their evil natures. Still, we believe we may be able to duplicate their dark handiwork.” Now the great heads leaned closer still.

“We wish to send your ka on Khai’s trail, also to be reborn in some far future, and we wish you to find him and bring him back. That is your mission, Manek Thotak, and if it is not done soon then surely will this mortal body of Khai’s turn into a shriveled husk. Without his soul, the general will soon die. You are the ideal choice, for you have known him well and will surely recognize him when you find him.”

Manek’s throat was now completely dry, his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth. His eyes went from those of the yellow man to his six strange colleagues, and from them to Ashtarta.

“Do this for me, Manek,” she said, “and you may name your own reward.”

Now he found his voice. “Candace, you must know that I would claim the richest prize of all?”

For a moment her eyes widened, but in a little while she answered: “If you so desire, Manek, aye. I have thought for some time that you were an ambitious man. Is it love for me which prompts you, I wonder, or do you simply desire the throne of Kush?” She held up a hand to quiet him before he could answer. “No matter. As you must know by now, my heart was ever Khai’s. And … if he were to die I should not want to live. To know he is alive, here, in this world, even though he can never be mine—there is no price I would not pay. Would you still want me for your queen on terms such as these?”

“On any terms, Ashtarta.”

“Then you accept?” Hope lifted her voice.

“I will undertake this mission, aye. And when I return—with or without Khai’s soul—then you promise to make me your king?”

She cast her eyes down, nodding in agreement, then looked him straight in the eye. “I do, Manek. And if knowing it pleases you, I think there are few men in Kush would make better kings.”

“Manek,” said Imthra, shuffling closer, his voice sharper than ever the general remembered it. “Not when you return but if! You understand, of course, there is no guarantee that you will return? No man can say what awaits you in your next life. The perils may well be extreme….”

VI Time Capsule

“How will it be done, and when?” Manek asked. “I have an army camped where the forests of Khem once stood, and Khai’s thousands wait outside the walls of Asorbes. Though they have their own chiefs with them, still they cannot be expected to wait forever. Who will carry your word to them, Ashtarta, and what will that word be? Without their generals the armies are a rabble, and—”

“If all goes well,” Imthra broke in, “then the armies will not wait long for their generals. So long as Khai’s army surrounds the walls of Asorbes, the Pharaoh stays within. Let him wait! Only the seven mages may answer the rest of your questions.”

The Nubian mage came forward, his voice a deep rumble as he said, “You must put your faith in us, Manek Thotak. We shall perform the rite at dawn, with the rising of the sun—or, if things should go amiss, it may be repeated with the sun’s setting. All should be well, however.” His great brown eyes stared into Manek’s. “I am the Mage of Fascination. I shall come to you with the dawn and bring you here, to Ashtarta’s marquee. I will put you to sleep and impress upon your mind the importance of your quest, that in your new life you shall remember and go about the task set you.” And the Nubian stepped back into line with his brother mages.

To Imthra, the yellow mage said, “There is the matter of a reminder.”

“Ah, yes!” Imthra replied, and he turned to Ashtarta. “Candace, when Manek finds Khai in his future incarnation, he will need something to quicken in him the true essence of Khai. The ka will of course belong to Khai, but our Khai will be asleep. There will have to be something to shock him awake!”

Ashtarta tried to understand him, frowned, shook her head. “What is required ?”

Imthra looked at the seven mages. The yellow mage had picked up a face-mask of beaten gold from where it lay on a soft cushion. It was in the image of Ashtarta, a funerary device prepared on her orders against the possibility of her armies being defeated by those of the Pharaoh. She had vowed that in such an event and rather than being hunted down and taken alive, she would kill herself in a secret cavern tomb in the mountains. Dying, she would place the mask over her face. As her body decayed still she would wear the golden mask, going into the next world as beautiful as she had been in this one.

“Your mask, Queen!” Imthra exclaimed. “It would seem the ideal instrument.”

“My mask? But how may we send a solid thing such as my mask to follow Khai’s ka down the years? I do not understand.”

Imthra smiled, his old face wrinkling like ancient leather. “We will not send the mask anywhere, Candace, but merely enclose it in a box of hard wood and bury it. Only I shall know of its hiding place, myself and one other. The other will be Manek Thotak. When his ka alights in the future world he will remember the mask—the Mage of Fascination will see to that—and recover it. When he finds Khai, and when Khai sees the mask—”

“—It will trigger his awakening!” Ashtarta finished. “Good! But—”

“Majesty?”

“Let there be more than merely the mask. See—” she pointed at the stricken general’s recumbent form, at his right hand. “He wears a ring. He wore it as a boy and it has never left his finger. See how deeply it indents the flesh? His father gave it to him. Remove it now.”

A physician was sent for. He arrived, applied oils to the middle digit of Khai’s right hand and slid the heavy gold band loose from flesh which was permanently grooved. The Ankh relief on the ring’s face gleamed dully in the light of the lamps.

“It is fitting,” said Imthra. “As a boy he was a Khemite. The people of Khem believe that the looped cross protects. Since the ring has failed Khai in this life, let us pray it serves him better in the next.”

“Manek,” Ashtarta turned to the silent general and held out her hand. “Let me have your ring.”

Without a word, Manek removed his silver ring and gave it to her. She gave both rings to Imthra, saying: “Let these things be buried under cover of darkness, tonight. Go now, Imthra, Manek, and mark well the place. Then return by a winding route. Tomorrow as the sun rises, there will be the ceremony. And then—”

Her gaze seemed to burn as she turned it upon the yellow mage. “How long?”

The mage steepled his long fingers and stared at them for a moment. “If all goes well, Candace,” he whispered, “the transition will be immediate. However far Khai Ibizin’s spirit has journeyed, and however far Manek Thotak must follow—even in the matter of Manek’s recovering these buried things and his searching out of Khai—time is of no importance. For when the kas of the twain return they will be drawn back to this place, this time. The ceremony will take place and Manek will be seen to wax as one dead, even as the general Khai. Then, if all goes well, both shall awaken, renewed, restored!”

“If all goes well,” she repeated him, her voice trembling, her painted eyes close to tears. “So many uncertainties. But what can go wrong? Tell me.”

He shook his great head. “We have not done this before, my child, and—”

“And ignorance is dangerous—is that it?”

“Candace, we have this one chance to make Khai Ibizin well, to give him back his ka and make him a whole man. If we fail—” Sadly he shook his head.

Ashtarta turned to Imthra. “Wise one, go now. Do what must be done.”

The old magician faced Manek Thotak and it seemed to the latter that the ancient’s eyes were suddenly veiled. “Come, Lord Manek,” Imthra said, leading him from the tent and out into the evening’s dusk. “We go to find a place. And then you must get your sleep.”

“Sleep, old man? I think not,” Manek replied. “After we have buried the mask and rings, I must be riding. The village of Thon Emahl lies not far to the west, above the heights of Dah-bhas.”

“That is so,” Imthra agreed, “but what do you want there?”

“Thon was killed when we clashed with Pharaoh’s army in the grasslands, and him without a son to carry on his name. His widow does not know—not yet.”

“And you yourself ride to tell her?”

Manek nodded. “I do … and to spend the night! She is a beautiful woman, Imthra, with neither family nor children. And I have been too long away from the women of Kush. Before she knew Thon, she knew me; aye, and I would have wed her if I did not desire the throne.”

The old man started, but before he could speak Manek caught his arm. “Listen, old one. If I do not survive this wizard’s quest, will you see to it that the widow of Thon Emahl has my things, all I possess? If there is issue—” he shrugged. “Thon Emahl will have been the father. He saw his wife recently.”

“We all hope and pray that you do return, Manek,” said Imthra.

“Do you?” Manek turned on him with a snarl. “Do you, Imthra? I was of the opinion that Khai was your favorite! Or perhaps that is why you pray for my return—so that Khai will also be returned? Well, no matter. If I do return, I myself shall see to the woman’s needs. I can find a husband for her from among my men….”

“Why do you do this thing, Manek?” Imthra asked. “And why tonight, of all nights, when the Candace has promised herself to you?”

“What?” Manek returned. “Do you believe that? No, old man, she has promised me the throne of Kush, nothing more. She would be my Queen, yes, but never my woman. Why do I ride to Thon Emahl’s widow? Look up there, at the bright and starry skies of Kush. Tomorrow I go to seek my destiny in a new world, Imthra, and I may never see these skies again. That is all well and good. But tonight... tonight I intend to leave something of myself in this world. Now do you understand?”

For answer, Imthra tugged his arm free of the other’s grasp. “Come,” he said. “We must be about our work. And you had better ensure that you are here when the Nubian mage comes looking for you before the dawn....”

When the first pale flush of morning showed as a haze of gray mist on the eastern horizon, then the Mage of Fascination found Manek Thotak, haggard and chilled, where he crouched by the embers of an open fire. Together they went to Ashtarta’s tent, where certain preparations had already been made. All was still except for the phantom drift of dark figures on the camp’s perimeter, the night watch about their duties. Although the war was almost at an end, its lessons would not die an easy death.

In Ashtarta’s tent, the Nubian lay Manek down on a second couch set apart from the general Khai’s. He propped Manek’s head on a cushion and then, by the light of a hanging brazier, began to make intricate passes before his face. As he did so, he uttered a long list of sonorous, languorous words. Manek did not recognize the meaning of these words—if indeed they had a meaning— but nevertheless, he found them very lulling. In any event he was tired, and it was not unpleasant to simply lie here and listen to the black wizard’s low incantations.

The Nubian’s hands seemed full of rings, golden bands that caught the glow of the brazier and threw it into Manek’s eyes. Without realizing it, the general found himself closing his eyes against this glittering coruscation, and as he did so the mage’s low-spoken gibberish took on a more readily recognizable form. Now he was telling Manek what he must do in his next incarnation, repeating over and over a list of careful instructions, demanding utmost obediance, indelibly imprinting his subject’s mind. …

Somewhere, as the glow in the east increased and the brazier’s fire dulled to a sullen glow, a cock crowed.

The Nubian straightened up, went to one of the partitioned areas of the marquee and drew the curtains back. There his six colleagues waited, all seated cross-legged in a circle. Their instruments of magic lay close at hand: bronze censers, golden wands, high-domed wizard’s caps and capes embroidered with golden glyphs. Imthra was with them, but sat apart from them in a chair.

As the seven mages silently took their paraphernalia to set it up about the silent form of Manek Thotak, so Imthra left the marquee and went to the tent of Ashtarta’s handmaidens which stood nearby. Moments later, he led the Candace, her eyes still full of sleep, back to her marquee.

Now the eastern horizon was aglow with subdued light and soon the sun’s disk would show its golden rim above the edge of the world.

Ashtarta’s heart quickened and the roots of her raven hair prickled as she followed Imthra into the incense-scented cavern of her royal tent. …