Khai of Khem

I Khai’s World

The center of Khai’s world was Asorbes, the Pharaoh Khasathut’s fortress city. Asorbes stood a mile and a half square, built mainly of limestone, a little less than two miles from the west bank of the Nile. Indeed, the river was clearly visible from the top of the East Wall. Khai had been out of the city as a small child, down the river with his father almost as far as the GreatSea itself, but that journey was only a dim memory now. He did remember, however, that it had been a great adventure; how he had hunted imaginary beasts in the hills and quarries while his father prospected for the fine limestones of his craft.

Of Asorbes itself: Khai had long since explored most of the city at one time or another. He had been atop the massive walls, walking right round the city and back to his starting point all in a single morning. That, too, had been with his father, and Khai remembered how much it had tired the old man. And indeed, Harsin Ben Ibizin was old now. Khai was a child of his old age, conceived of an old man’s seed in the womb of a younger wife.

Harsin Ben, because of his age, was lucky that no younger man had taken his place. He had his rivals, true, but it was also true that no other man in Asorbes or all of Khem had his skills as an architect. His greatest achievement—which stood him high in the favor of the Pharaoh and his councilors and guaranteed his continued employment well into the foreseeable future—was the great pyramid itself, Khasathut’s massive monument, as yet unfinished but slowly nearing completion with each passing season.

Of necessity, Harsin Ben had to be at the pyramid’s site almost every day, but that was the one aspect of his work which displeased him: the sight of those polyglot slaves whose life’s blood stained (and not only figuratively) each single huge block of stone from which the pyramid was constructed. Khai, too, had found the sight of the myriad half-naked brown and verminous bodies that struggled, sweated, bled and died under the lash of Khasathut’s overseers painful and offensive. Often, during his lone wanderings about the city, whenever he found the vast pyramid looming before him, he had paused to wonder why these people were forced to remain here in Asorbes when their homelands lay beyond Khem’s farthest corners.

“Son,” his father had once explained, “the Pharaoh has decreed that his pyramid will be built in his lifetime. He will be buried within the completed structure to await the second coming of his own kind, Gods from the stars who brought Khasathut’s forebears here when the land was chaos. Because he knows that his time among mortal men is running out, he is in a hurry to see the work done. And so he takes slaves. Using Arabban slavers, he takes them from Therae, Nubia, Daraaf, Siwad and Syra—even from the hills of Kush, when he can get them. Aye, and the criminals of Khem, too—they also serve their sentences in the quarries and on the walls of the pyramid.” And Khai’s father had looked at him with wise eyes.

“I know what you are thinking, Khai, and even though your thoughts are deep and strange for a small boy, still I agree with them. You would not be my son if your thoughts were other than they are, for you are a kind boy, even as I am kind. But they are dangerous thoughts, my son, and must never be given voice, not in Khem. Console yourself as I do with this thought: your father only designs great monuments. He is not responsible for the way in which his masters choose to build them, or for the work-force they employ….”

So it was that in all Khai’s world, as in his father’s, the one black spot was the great pyramid. The pyramid … and perhaps the ghetto, that sprawling huddle of low, crumbling piles and crooked, smelly streets where the slaves were quartered, where they lived out their lives and reared the next generation which, upon reaching the age of eight or nine years, would commence working on the pyramid in its turn. As for the rest of Asorbes—indeed throughout the entire lands of Khem, from the Mediterranean to the Nubian border and from Kush and Daraaf to the Red Sea—Khai’s world was green and wonderful and teemed with life.

The river for most of its length harbored countless hippopotamuses and crocodiles, and in the forests the elephants and buffaloes were everywhere. Fishes proliferated in the Nile’s waters and mollusks grew large and fat in the warm mud of its banks and in the lakes and marshes. Cattle not too far removed from ancestral Bos primigenius were herded m their thousands along with sheep and goats, and the savannahs were alive with antelopes, gazelles and wild pigs.

It was a land of plenty, where a whole range of wild asses, ostriches, giraffes, aardvarks and lions wandered the forests and plains at will, and countless myriads of other animals sported around the water holes and in the long grasses of the savannahs. Though the horse was almost unknown in Khem, Khai had seen a small number of those graceful creatures imported from Arabba and lands east; and he knew that in the mountains of Kush, fierce tribesmen tamed wild ponies, riding upon their naked backs and using them for haulage and other domestic tasks. He had often wondered what it must be like to ride upon the back of a fleet-footed horse. Why, a simple horse would be able to run rings about one of Khasathut’s jewel-bedecked, lumbering ceremonial elephants!

Because of the number and variety of beasts and birds, Khem was a hunter’s paradise. Khai’s father had given him his first bow and quiver of arrows when he was not yet nine years old, and less than two years later, he had brought home a brace of fine geese shot in flight over the papyrus reeds on the banks of the Nile. On that occasion Khai had been in trouble, for he was only a small boy and he had returned home late, bedraggled and weary—and it was an exceptionally bad year for crocodiles. Several children and a number of adults too had been taken by the ugly reptiles, so that the city’s councilors had offered a goldpiece for every Nile crocodile killed.

It was curious to think that in at least one province downriver the crocodile was deified in certain seasons and its hunting utterly forbidden, when that same year in Asorbes the tanners had amassed such a heap of hides that there would be no shortage for several years and sandals, belts and other leather and hide goods were at their very cheapest.

“If it were not for the fact that your own hide is so soft and white,” Harsin Ben Ibizin had told his son, “and that you are the light of your mother’s life, then I would flay you alive for being so late home! Here I and your poor mother have sat and waited, not knowing if you lived or lay dead in the belly of some great croc, and you straggle home covered in Nile mud, and only a pair of scrawny geese with which to redeem yourself! Are these supposed to be worth a day’s waiting and worrying? You’ll not do it again, Khai Ibizin, d’you hear?”

And Khai had gone to bed without his supper; but later his mother, Merayet, had sneaked in to him with bread and meat and a cup of sweet wine. “My fine hunter,” she had called him, and had gone on to tell him that indeed his geese were excellent birds, glossy and fat. “We shall eat them tomorrow,” she said, “roasted on spits in the garden, when we all come home from the Pharaoh’s Procession.”

The Royal Procession, yes! And this would be the first time that Khai had ever seen it. The splendid pomp and ceremony of Khasathut’s quarterly parade, when the Pharaoh himself would appear to the people, to be praised and worshipped by them; when he would choose three more brides, as he did four times a year, to enter with him into the pyramid and the glory of matrimony with the great and omnipotent man-God. …

II The God-King’s Parade

With the first rays of the morning sun—whose golden disk had been a god long before Khasathut’s many-times great-grandfather had become the first Pharaoh—the peoples of Khem were out in all their finery, thronging through the streets, squares and thoroughfares of Asorbes to gather at the base of the pyramid.

Arriving mid-morning with his parents, his older brother Adhan and his sister Namisha, Khai was astonished at the masses of color, the fantastic arrangements of flowers which adorned the sides of the great ramp, the thousands of pennants emblazoned with Khasathut’s double-looped ankh, and the gold and ivory gleam of the Pharaoh’s Black Guard where they stood single-ranked along the three edges of the pyramid’s plateau-like eastern summit.

Wide ramps of packed earth had once wound in a rising square whorl about a towering central pillar which had formed the core of the pyramid. Pre-shaped blocks of stone had been pushed, dragged and hoisted up these ramps to be positioned on the inside, thus forming the inner mazes, chambers and outer walls of that mighty monument. The north, south and west faces were now almost complete; they lacked only their facing of fine white limestone and the layer of beaten gold with which Khasathut intended eventually to cover them.

The eastern face, however, with its great ramp that ran up to it for almost half a mile from the distantly looming East Wall, was still incomplete. At its top it formed a man-made plateau. There the ranks of the Black Guard stood at ease, as they had stood since early morning, their spears leaning outward over the city; behind them a great pinnacle of carved stone in the shape of a vast arrowhead towered almost half as high as the plateau again.

As noon approached and the sun drew near the zenith, the merchants collapsed their many stalls and bundled up their wares, the crowds drew back from the paved road that reached around the pyramid’s base and along both sides of the great ramp, and there was sudden movement atop the high plateau of the east face. There, where the ramp merged with the lip of the plateau, the Black Guard had drawn aside; and now, with a blare of brazen trumpets, the rest of the guardsmen snapped to attention and lifted their spears in the royal salute. This was the moment for which Khai had been waiting, when Pharaoh would show himself to his people.

Khasathut—a man, and yet a god—descendant of those Great Gods from the sky who came in their golden pyramid when the tribes of Khem were mere savages and left their seed to take root in the fertile valley of the Nile. Legend had it that the first gods who grew from that seed were weak and died young, and that many generations passed before there grew to old age a Pharaoh of that alien stock. This was because the gods had mated with the daughters of mere men, which had severely weakened their blood. By the time the strain was strong again, most of the wisdom of the sky-gods had been lost forever, for none had lived long enough to learn it and pass it on. Thus, only the legends now remained. And now, with his own eyes, Khai was about to see one of those legends—or the sole surviving descendant of them—for himself.

The Ibizins had an excellent view of the entire affair. They were seated along with many other high-ranking personages and their families on cushioned chairs placed about marble tables on a dais high over the heads of Asorbes’ less prominent citizens. Even so, they had to crane their necks to look up at the plateau’s rim where the Pharaoh now appeared.

Khai, because he had been distracted by a distant trumpeting of elephants from somewhere to the rear of the pyramid, did not actually see the figure of the Pharaoh come into view—but he heard the sudden cessation of all mundane sounds, and then the concerted sigh that went up from many thousands of throats. Only then did Khai turn his widening eyes up to the incredible golden figure on the plateau high above.

Towering head and shoulders over the huge black guardsmen flanking him, Khasathut was massive! In a flowing robe of royal golden-yellow, the God-king stood at the head of the great ramp and looked out over Asorbes, over all Khem. He slowly turned his huge head to the south, as if looking far beyond the borders of Khem to the unseen sources of the Nile, then to the north, toward the GreatSea and beyond, and finally he faced east and inclined his head downward to gaze upon his people. So huge was Pharaoh that Khai fancied he could make out his features: radiant, benign and beautiful.

Then the awesome figure slowly held up its arms and its robe fell from incredibly broad shoulders; and again that mighty sigh, that gasp of wonder, went up from Khasathut’s subjects. The sun was reflected dazzlingly from golden armor that covered his body and limbs, from a golden crown that sat upon his head, and thousands of eyes watered as they stared at a skirt embroidered with hundreds of glittering jewels.

“Why!” Khai thought out loud, his voice the merest whisper, “his arms and his thighs, they must be like trees!” He had seen huge Nubian wrestlers fighting bouts for their Khemite masters in the market squares, but even they would be dwarfed by the massive figure atop the ramp who now drew the crowd’s amazed and adoring attention. And why shouldn’t they adore him? His prosperity was Khem’s prosperity, wasn’t it? And if ever a man looked like a king, surely the Pharaoh was that man. And if a king could be a god, then most certainly was Khasathut the God-king himself!

And now the members of the Black Guard were replaced on the high plateau by the royal trumpeters, whose molten instruments blared out in unison once more to herald the commencement of Pharaoh’s parade. As a bellowing of elephants answered the call of the trumpeters, so a huge throne was pushed forward from behind the great golden God-figure and Khasathut seated himself (rather stiffly, Khai thought). Then, with a vast swaying of trunks and a pounding of great gray limbs, the Pharaoh’s two hundred elephants appeared from behind the pyramid, maneuvering along the base of the north face and down the paved road toward the foot of the ramp. Wearing horned helmets of bronze and armored about their great knees—driven by tiny, big-bellied pigmy riders who sat the mighty beasts bareback—the huge pachyderms were the most fearsome creatures that Khai had ever seen.

No sooner had the elephants passed the dais of the dignitaries than Khasathut’s archers appeared, jogging in ranks of ten immediately in the wake of the beasts. Following the bowmen—who numbered no less than fifteen hundred—came the infantry, rank upon rank of them, all in tens. Sixty thousand men of Khem and thirty thousand from neighboring Syra, Arabba, Therae, Daraaf and Siwad trotted by in strict military precision; and indeed their numbers were such that they took almost an hour to pass. And each and every man of them carried a bronze sword and a shield of hide patterned with bronze studs.

Kush and Nubia were the only absentees; for while certainly there were Kushites among the Pharaoh’s slaves, no man of Kush would ever volunteer to become a mercenary in Khasathut’s army. No, rather death than that. The Kushites were wild and wilful, hill-dwellers in the main who preferred the freedom of the heights to the lowlands and the oppression of Khasathut’s border patrols and his Arabban slavers. The God-king had sworn that one day he would see Kush overrun and crushed, but until that day he would have to be satisfied with his few Kushite slaves. And even the children of such were unruly and unreliable, and certainly they could never be trained for military service—not in the Pharaoh’s army, at least.

As for Nubia: Pharaoh had his Black Guard, but none of them were of good birth. They were all the sons of slaves, chosen for their size and trained from birth to attend Pharaoh’s every whim. If he so much as snapped his fingers in command, each and every last one of them would fling himself from the plateau. He was also supposed to have five thousand trained warriors—an impi of terrific fighting prowess—but these had been withdrawn by their king in Nubia six months ago (ostensibly to be trained in the jungles of their homeland) and their return was already overdue.

So the parade passed. The infantry was followed by a thousand specialist spearsmen and seven hundred marksmen with their slings; and finally there came the generals five-square: twenty-five massive military commanders, all carrying their individual banners of nation and regiment, pausing en-masse where Khasathut could see them from on high. They dipped their colors low three times before him, and in return he held out his left arm over them, saluting them. Then they snapped to attention and turned to follow the army along the base of the great ramp.

All of these men—well over one hundred thousand of them—and the elephants, too, they had all been mustered unseen to the west of the great pyramid, in the hugely sprawling barracks that housed them when they were not maneuvering. But now the military side of the day was almost done. Now there only remained the Choosing of the Brides, and finally the presentation to the Pharaoh of all personages of note. Then all would be done except for the feasting and drinking, by which time Khasathut would have retreated back into the pyramid’s secret ways with his new wives.

By then, too, the Ibizins would have returned home, preferring to celebrate in the privacy of their own splendid house near the East Wall. Harsin Ben did not yet know it, but on this occasion he would have precious little to celebrate. …

III The God-King Commands

As soon as Pharaoh drew back from the lip of his aerie and passed out of view, then the common folk of Asorbes began to disperse and drift away from the vast central plaza of the great pyramid; for them the show was over. A few minutes passed while the crowd thinned, during which time a large number of hugely-muscled, freshly-scrubbed and cleanly-robed slaves assembled in pairs from the neighboring streets carrying litters of light, ornately woven reed. A third slave bearing a large fan made up each litter’s complement.

As the families of the city’s dignitaries stepped down from their dais, so they were taken up one by one into the litters and borne up a great flight of steps that climbed the side of the ramp from its base to the rim of the plateau. When each personage had been safely deposited atop that man-made mountain, then his bearers would take up their empty litter and trot with it down the long ramp, so that soon a line of them could be seen scurrying like so many ants down the length of the elevated roadway.

Simultaneous with this activity, a string of specially canopied litters was being borne by the broad steps, and within the silk walls of these carrying-chairs were those girls whose beauty had been noted by Pharaoh’s scouts during the preceding quarter. These were the twenty from which Khasathut would choose his three brides-to-be.

The Ibizins, too, stepped down from the dais and into their litters to be carried up the great stairway; and Khai, gazing out over the city as he was lifted ever higher, grew dizzy with the view and wondered how his mother fared, who shunned heights and dreaded what seemed to her an all-too-regular nightmare. At last, however, the entire family stood among dozens of friends on the plateau itself; and when the last of the lesser dignitaries—rich merchants, river-lords, foreign diplomats and governors of one sort or another—were safely brought up, then there came the ceremony of the Choosing of the Brides.

Seated upon his massive throne in the shadow of the towering wall behind him, Khasathut nodded as each of the twenty girls was paraded before him, and on three occasions he lifted up his right hand to signify that this particular girl pleased him greatly. Each of the three girls thus chosen went forward in turn, kneeled and kissed the jewel-encased feet of their husband to be, the God-king himself.

By now Khai had come to realize that Pharaoh was not necessarily the huge figure of a man he had thought him, for on closer inspection it could plainly be seen that his outward appearance was merely a facade, a manlike construction behind which the true Pharaoh discreetly avoided the doubtless corrupting gaze of merely mortal men. This was of course as it should be, for Pharaoh was no common man upon whom any other might look whenever he desired. Indeed, it was rumored among the more ignorant of his subjects that Khasathut’s beauty was such as to blind any commoner who might catch sight of him unawares.

Now, as his three newly-chosen brides were led away into the pyramid through a massive arched entrance that loomed behind him—from which they would nevermore step forth into the sight of common folk—Pharaoh called to his Vizier, Anulep the high-priest, and bade him draw closer. Anulep, who until now had stood to one side with his arms folded across his chest, answered Pharaoh’s call by falling to all fours, crawling to him and putting his head between his jeweled feet.

“Up, Anulep,” Khasathut commanded. “Bring to me the first of my Lords that I may know them again. And bring them before me for my blessing, each in his turn with his family, that they may share equally in that glory which is mine alone to bestow.”

As Anulep rose and approached the assembled dignitaries and their families, Khai stared at him in awe and amazement—and with something very much akin to fear or at least apprehension. The man was spectrally pale, tall and gaunt, with a long scrawny neck and a face and head utterly naked of hair. He looked like nothing so much as a vulture in human form, or at best a gray and ghastly Theraen embalmer; and Khai found himself wondering if the Vizier ever had grown eyebrows or eyelashes at all, or if he simply shaved them off each morning. From the look of the polished dome of his head, hair certainly had not grown there for many years.

Moreover, when Anulep smiled at the nobles and officials as he invited them to step forward, it could plainly be seen that he was toothless. These peculiarities or anomalies in the Vizier’s physical appearance were only accentuated by his dress: a tubelike, almost funereal sleeve of black cloth which covered him from shoulders to feet, leaving his spindly arms bare except for wide golden bands clasped above his elbows. All taken into account, Khai believed that he never before had seen anyone looking so completely repulsive.

The first dignitary to be called forward was a Nubian diplomat who was due shortly to return to his homeland in the south. Relations with Nubia were cool at best, but diplomatic channels still functioned. Almost as tall as Anulep, the black official was well proportioned and endowed with a crest of frizzy hair which he wore like a crown. His bearing was proud, his robe a brilliant crimson, and in his nose he wore a huge diamond. He approached Pharaoh and stood before him at a discreet distance, then went gracefully to his knees and bowed his head.

“Up, black Lord,” commanded Pharaoh in a voice which Khai found at once awesome and inhuman. It was an almost mechanical voice, loud as an echo in a vault, each word uttered with a whoosh reminiscent of the smelter’s bellows, so that Khai thought that Khasathut’s lungs must be made of leather and his throat of copper. Perhaps he really did fill his vast outer case after all!

As the Nubian rose effortlessly to his feet, so Pharaoh spoke to him again. “I see you are alone. Did your wife fear to cross Nubia’s borders? Does she not know that Pharaoh protects his guests?”

“Most high Son of Re, of Heaven itself,” the black ambassador answered, calm and completely unruffled. “Such are my duties that I deemed it unwise to take a wife. A traveler in distant lands and places cannot be a father to his children, and as a representative of king and country I am—”

“A dutiful man,” Khasathut cut him short, “—if a trifle long-winded. Yes, I can see that. Very well, you may go. Convey my compliments to the young king. Perhaps N’jakka would deign to visit me in person one day? Perhaps, too, he will bring me back my impi?”

“The affairs of a king, Omnipotent One, are—”

“I know, I know!” Pharaoh testily boomed. “And what of the affairs of a God-king? Do you think they are any less? No matter. Perhaps one day I might order N’jakka to attend me....” He let the threat hang in the air for a moment, then dismissed the ambassador with the merest twitch of his hand. “Go now—go!” he said, and turned his great face slowly away from him.

This was a bad start and the forty or so remaining dignitaries were immediately apprehensive; but as the audiences continued and Pharaoh appeared to regain his humor, so they began to relax. Khasathut next spoke to a hooded Theraen priest of Anubis, called to Asorbes to attend to the ritual interment of a deceased official; then to an aging governor of Peh-il, a southern river town; until at last Harsin Ben Ibizin and his family were called forward. All five took up positions at a respectful distance and the children dutifully waited until their parents kneeled and bowed their heads before they also prostrated themselves before the God-king.

“Up, all,” commanded the Pharaoh in that awe-inspiring voice, and the younger Ibizins were quick to be on their feet and offering assistance to their elders.

“Harsin Ben,” the Pharaoh continued after a long moment of silence, during which his great carved head ponderously scanned the five, “Re has blessed me with an architect of matchless skill, and he has blessed you with a family of rare and radiant beauty. You have one son who is fine, strong and clever— who studies, I believe, the science of numbers and assists you in your structural calculations?—and another whose appearance I find strangely becoming. The boy is not an albino?”

“No, Descended from the Sky, his coloring is natural,” Harsin Ben answered.

“And yet unnatural to the point of beautiful,” Khasathut commented; and his great head angled toward Khai. “Come forward, boy.”

“Go to him,” Harsin Ben hoarsely whispered. “Go now—hurry!”

Trembling, Khai stepped quickly forward, prostrated himself and placed his forehead between Pharaoh’s feet.

“Up,” Pharaoh commanded, and Khai obeyed. He stood up and gazed wide-eyed at the great carven face before and above him. Shaded as he and the figure of the Pharaoh were by the as yet incomplete crest of the pyramid, the boy was able to look upon Pharaoh without being dazzled by the glittering face-mask and jewel-crusted body-structure. Behind the eyeholes cut in the facemask, he could now make out the moist glint of real eyes, wide and staring, which seemed to regard him with a hideous intentness.

“What do you do, boy?” asked the Pharaoh, and the boom and whoosh of his voice made Khai jump.

“I… I go to school, Omnipotent One.”

The great head nodded. “Of course you do. And what would you like to do?”

“I would be an archer in your army, Descended from the Sky,” Khai answered without hesitation, regaining something of his composure.

“Ah? Good! Then you shall practice at least one day in five. That will be arranged.” The great head lifted and looked beyond Khai. “Harsin Ben, come forward and bring your daughter.”

The old man and his daughter obeyed, began to prostrate themselves alongside Khai until Pharaoh stopped them. “No, do not get down,” he said. And now his huge head moved to gaze at Namisha.

Khai’s sister was dressed in a long, pure white chemise cut away to reveal her small, pert left breast; but with her hair in ropes, for all that she felt like a woman of the world, still she looked more like a girl of fourteen than a young woman of seventeen years.

“Harsin Ben,” came Pharaoh’s voice again, but lower this time and thoughtful. “This daughter of yours is lovely. In four more years, she should be given the chance to become a royal bride!”

Namisha gasped and staggered a little as if she were suddenly giddy, and her father could not stop his hand from flying to his mouth.

“Pharaoh—” he stumbled over his words, “Re on Earth—I don’t—I can’t—”

“Do not thank me,” Khasathut checked him. “Merely ensure that she comes to me unsullied. As for the boy: let him practice his archery and we will see. But in four years, then both of them come to me.”

“Namisha ... and the boy, Omnipotent One? But—”

“Yes, yes,” Pharaoh nodded, “the boy, too. There are duties for just such a boy in the pyramid. You have built my house and tomb, Harsin Ben, and is it not fitting that your son shall dwell therein with me? My Vizier, Anulep, has served me well for many years. Perhaps the time draws near when he should groom another for his work. …”

“Descended from the Sky,” Harsin Ben started again with a groan he could hardly suppress, “I—”

“You are overwhelmed, I know,” the great head nodded. “But I will hear no more of it. It is decided. You may go.”

IV The Architect’s Apprentice

The pall of gloom which fell over the Ibizin household from that time onward was almost tangible in its intensity. While Khai could not quite understand it, he could nevertheless trace its source back directly to the day of the Pharaoh’s parade; and on several occasions when he came across his mother and father in the rooms of their house or in its grounds talking worriedly and in low tones, he would hear Khasathut’s name mentioned and know that indeed Pharaoh was the root cause of the mysterious misery.

Namisha, withdrawing into herself completely, became almost a ghost in a matter of months. This was partly of her own volition, her reaction to Khasathut’s awful interest in her, but in the main it was her poor father’s doing; for he dared not disobey Pharaoh’s commands, whose spies were everywhere and would certainly report any divergence from his instructions. That was why Harsin Ben had assigned one of his slaves to accompany Namisha wherever she went, and why she was no longer able to attend those parties she had so used to love. Now, with the fall of night, she must be safely home and under her father’s roof.

On those one or two occasions when Khai had asked what was amiss, he had been immediately and unjustly rebuked and sent away, and even Adhan would not explain to him what was wrong. When finally it got through to him that his own and his sister’s futures were the source of the distress, then he was even more confused. Surely his parents did not take seriously Pharaoh’s joke that he might one day make Khai his Vizier, his right-hand man? And was it not the greatest of all compliments for a girl to be chosen as a prospective bride for the God-king? In any case, four years seemed like such a long time to Khai and he couldn’t really see what all the fuss was about. Why, in four more years he would be nearly fifteen and almost a man! And surely he would then be able to choose for himself whether or not he should go to live in the pyramid.

Once, coming across his parents in the garden where they sat alone in muted conversation, he overheard what amounted to treason when his mother said that perhaps Pharaoh would not last four more years. Harsin Ben had compounded the crime by answering:

“Bah! Sick he may well be, wife, but his sickness is not of the body. Even if he were physically unwell, his physicians would keep him alive until I finish his pyramid, of that you can be certain. And if by some miracle he were to die—and how I have prayed for that—do you think they would let him stay dead? No, they would not! There are seven black and seven white mages in Khem and the lands around, and Pharaoh has called all of them that are black to him. He provides for them, and they for him. Even life, of a sort, they would provide if he were to die.”

“Husband,” she had answered in a frightened, gasping voice, “surely these stories we hear are only old wives’ tales? Lies that Khasathut’s enemies—”

“Do not deceive yourself, Merayet!” Harsin Ben had cut her short, his tone unaccustomedly sharp. “I know of a man who has seen men and women dancing in the pyramid’s lower chambers. And their faces were black with death and their bodies full of worms, for they had been dead for months! The Pharaoh keeps Theraens in his house who mix black magic and the embalmer’s art in proportions which produce total abomination. And that is not to mention his Dark Heptad of necromancers. … There is a room,” he lowered his voice to a shaky whisper, “where the viscera of mummies still live and move in tubs of fluids, as if they were never removed from their dead owners’ bodies!”

“Harsin Ben, how can you say these things to me?” Merayet had cried out. “How can you when you know that Namisha and Khai—”

“Hush!” her husband had quietened her, detecting an agitated rustling of leaves. “Khai?—is that you, boy? Come out of there!” And Khai had emerged from the shrubbery to be given a thorough telling off—which did nothing at all to quell his curiosity.

So it was that desiring to know more about these things he had heard whispered but fearing to approach the other members of his family, Khai finally turned to an outsider. Imthod Haphenid was Harsin Ben Ibizin’s apprentice, a young man five or six years older then Khai whose father had been Harsin Ben’s good friend for many years. On his deathbed three years earlier, old Thutmes Haphenid had asked the architect to take Imthod into his tutelage.

The youth would be heir to Thutmes’s house and his wealth—enough to maintain a modest standard of living—and if in addition he took a trade, then perhaps he could make something of himself. Too weak for soldiering and having little aptitude for business, the youth seemed of little use for much else. But that was not to belittle Harsin Ben’s field, on the contrary, for Imthod did have a good head for numbers, measurements and sketches; and so maybe Harsin Ben could teach him his arts and in so doing prepare him for a useful and constructive life.

Imthod was duly indentured and five days out of seven came to study under his new master. A sickly, unhandsome young man, he could usually be found in the old architect’s workshop studying his sketches and plans, or examining his models of pyramids, temples and other great houses. That was where Khai, who had always found Imthod friendly enough in the past, eventually approached him with his problems and questions.

On the subject of the Pharaoh, however, Imthod was worse than useless; he knew only that Khasathut was the God-king and the most powerful man in the world. As for strange goings-on in the pyramid: the ways of kings were known to be strange, Imthod said, and those of gods even stranger. How then for a God-king whose forebears came down from the stars? And anyway, what was Khai’s interest in the first place?

And so, instead of learning anything from his father’s apprentice, Khai ended up telling him all that had transpired after the Royal Procession, even mentioning his parents’ fears for himself and his sister and their doubts with regard to Pharaoh’s beneficence and the well-being of those he took into the pyramid as his own. And here Imthod was most attentive, prompting Khai until he had picked every minor detail and morsel of information from the boy’s memory. Finally, having learned all, he cautioned Khai against ever repeating his story, then made as if to return to his studies.

After Khai had left him, however, Imthod sat at his bench for a long time doing nothing, with his eyes narrowed and a frown etched deep into his forehead. Four years, the boy had said. Four years until Pharaoh claimed Namisha for a bride and took Khai off to be trained for duties in the pyramid. And Harsin Ben was opposed to Khasathut’s plans, was he?

Imthod began to wonder how much he could learn from the old man in four years. A great deal, he suspected, if he really put his mind to it. But would it be sufficient to earn him the Pharaoh’s royal seal of approval, to make him the next Grand Architect of the Pyramid in his master’s place? For if Harsin Ben were found guilty of treason, why!—then there would be need for a new man to finish his great work.

Oh, there were other architects in Asorbes, to be sure—but none of them had served under Harsin Ben Ibizin, and none of them could possibly know his work as well as his own eager apprentice. The more Imthod thought about it, the more he could see the possibilities. In four more years, he would be a mature man, and if he handled the affair cleverly, he might possibly become the youngest of all Pharaoh’s favored ones.

After all, what did Imthod care for the Ibizins? Nothing! That snotty Namisha with her nose always in the air; and the boy, Khai, so naive and stupid; and Harsin Ben himself, who was blind to genius when it stared him in the face! What was he anyway but an old man, an insufferable old man who was forever complaining about something or other—always going on about how a man might get away with building a faulty house or even an ugly temple, but never an imperfect pyramid—always grumbling about how tasteless and slipshod Imthod’s work was.

Ah, but just suppose that the old fool really was building an imperfect pyramid? What if it could be shown that Harsin Ben deliberately schemed to sabotage Pharaoh’s great tomb? With this last thought Imthod nodded and smiled a sick smile. Yes, he would show the old dodderer, and in the process elevate himself to a position of great power.

But not yet, not just yet. Four years would be time enough… .

From that time on—as the weeks turned into months and life in the Ibizin household, while retaining little of its former harmony, nevertheless began to balance out—Harsin Ben found at least one change for the better. This was in Imthod Haphenid’s progress in the field his father had chosen for him. It was as if the apprentice had turned over a new leaf and could no longer get enough of his master’s teaching, which was a transition at once welcome and unexpected.

Perhaps it was because the old architect was so unhappy—with his daughter’s gradual decline, with Khai’s neglect of his schooling in favor of archery practice at the massive barracks behind the pyramid, unhappy with the whole generally bleak-looking future of his beloved family—that he took so much pleasure from the way his pupil now responded to his teaching. One of the old man’s qualities which helped greatly in making him a good teacher lay in his never failing to give credit where it was due, and he often remarked that Imthod’s emerging dedication must surely pay the young architect great dividends in the years to come.

Old Thutmes Haphenid had been right after all, it appeared, and Harsin Ben took additional pleasure in the fact that his friend’s faith in his sickly son seemed at last to be bearing fruit....

V The Time Draws Nigh

Contrary to Khai’s boyish beliefs and his mother’s prayers, and despite his father’s sleepless nights and his sister’s almost total withdrawal into herself—which of late had seemed to manifest itself in secretiveness, furtive nocturnal absences from home and bouts of tearful self-pity—the four years passed all too quickly and the day of reckoning rapidly drew closer. During that time, several changes had taken place in the Ibizin household, each of them as a direct result of the Pharaoh’s decree.

Khai’s father no longer protested his son’s desertion of more mundane lessons in order to attend the ranges of the barracks; indeed Harsin Ben now openly encouraged Khai’s participation in target practice, for he secretly hoped that in the end the Pharaoh might be swayed toward letting Khai follow a military career as opposed to inducting him into the affairs of the pyramid. The lad’s prowess as an archer had won him countless awards in competitions with other young aspirants to the Corps of Archers, carrying him to a peak of marksmanship which even his instructors found difficult to match.

As for Adhan: he had become an especially brilliant mathematician—exponent of a comparatively new science which went hand-in-hand with measurement and the arts of pyramid-building—and was now his father’s chief adviser in the design and construction of Pharaoh’s tomb, which rapidly neared completion. Two or three more years at the outside, and it would only remain to fill the pyramid’s topmost cavities with thousands of tons of fine sand and to coat its vast exterior with a shining skin of gold. To these ends, the finest sands had already been brought from the shores of the Great Sea, transported and sifted, and as for the gold: Pharaoh had now commenced the stripping of all known goldmines in the Eastern Desert and the forests north of Nubia, and despite N’jakka’s coolness, he had put out feelers into the heart of the Black Kingdom itself, demanding an annual tribute in large measures of raw gold.

But the four years had taken a terrible toll of Harsin Ben Ibizin. He had aged far more rapidly than advancing years might readily account for, and his hair and eyebrows were now white as fine bleached linens. More and more he had come to lean on his apprentice, Imthod Haphenid, depending upon him for the handling of all architectural tasks with the sole exception of the great pyramid itself, and not once had Imthod let him down. No, for the apprentice had become a master in his own right, and of all other architects in Asorbes, only Harsin Ben could now deem himself Imthod’s peer.

And it was just as well that Imthod had been available to handle his master’s lesser affairs (which after all provided the Ibizin family’s daily bread), for in the last twelvemonth Harsin Ben had grown more and more vague and abstracted as the terror which hovered over his household threatened to descend and stifle all. Now, as the days narrowed down, the old architect was more distraught and concerned than ever. His concern had to do with a summons, the Royal Command, which Khasathut invariably issued to the families of his future brides advising them that their daughters were to take part in his parade of prospective chosen ones. That command had not yet arrived, nor yet any word of Khai’s future as foretold four years earlier, so that Harsin Ben was at a loss to know which way to turn.

It was as if the Pharaoh had altogether forgotten those words he had spoken on that fateful day of the Royal Procession four years ago, or as if they had been merely a whim to be uttered and then put aside; but Harsin Ben could put little trust in that. And yet… perhaps there was hope after all. There had been fifteen Royal Processions since that time, and Pharaoh’s Grand Architect had been present at every one of them. On several occasions, Khai or Namisha had been absent—ostensibly as a result of “illnesses,” or of holidays taken out of the city at the homes of friends in Béna or Ohath; but in fact as a rather unsubtle subterfuge to keep them out of sight and hopefully out of mind—and while on these occasions Harsin Ben had been apprehensive, not once had Pharaoh or his aides commented upon the absence of the young Ibizins.

On the tenth day before this sixteenth Royal Procession was to take place, Harsin Ben had asked his eldest son Adhan for his opinion. Adhan had grown into a fine man now and had a wise head on his shoulders. Perhaps he might have something constructive to say on the matters currently worrying his father. On this occasion, however, Harsin Ben found his son reticent and evasive. When he asked what was wrong, Adhan had advised that he should speak to Imthod Haphenid. Perhaps he could learn something from his apprentice, Adhan said, for he had heard it rumored that Imthod was spending a lot of his spare time in the city’s taverns with several of Pharaoh’s spies. One of the latter was well known as a scout for the Pharaoh, seeking out especially lovely girls for the quarterly ceremony of bride-choosing. Perhaps Imthod would know for certain whether or not Namisha was to be one of the twenty prospective brides….

Two days later, when Harsin Ben was unable to bear the suspense a moment longer, he called Imthod Haphenid into his study and broached the subject in as direct a fashion as he could find, speaking first of the apprentice’s friendship with certain employees and confidants of the Pharaoh.

“It’s true enough, master, that I’ve formed friendships within a certain group of men whose duties are deemed rather odd,” Imthod told him, grown suddenly a little more pallid than usual. “But since they carry out those duties on the orders and on behalf of Pharaoh himself, and since—”

“Hold, Imthod,” his master cautioned him, holding up a hand. “I don’t mean to cross-examine you. You must surely know that? No, it’s just that I’m worried about the Royal Procession. There’s only a week left. You know of course that four years ago Namisha was chosen by Pharaoh for a place in his bridal parade—the next Parade, in just a week’s time? Well, since you have friends among Khasathut’s spies—I mean, among those men he employs to … to—”

“I know your meaning, master,” Imthod answered, saving Harsin Ben from further embarrassment. “The only thing that puzzles me is how you came to discover that I was working for you in this way.”

“Working for me?” the old architect frowned. “I don’t—”

“You see,” Imthod quickly continued, “I had hoped that perhaps my friendship with these men might go unobserved, for my plan was a shaky one at best. Obviously, I’ve not been as subtle as I tried to be, for if you have suspected me, then what of them whose innermost secrets I’ve sought to discover?”

“What?” Harsin Ben gasped, failing to grasp the other’s meaning. “Can’t you be more plain, Imthod?”

“Master, do you think I’ve not known your dismay that your family must be taken from you? Khai and Namisha taken into the pyramid, never to return to you? I’ve suspected it must be so for a long time, which was why I cultivated such strange friendships with men whose natures are so far from my own. And master—” he lowered his voice, became confidential, “I believe that at long last I have news for you—good news!”

“News? Speak up, man!” the old man hoarsely commanded. “What have you learned?”

“Ah, be patient, Harsin Ben,” Imthod answered, calling his master by name for the first time. “First I had to mingle with these men and gain their confidence, and when finally I learned that Namisha was most certainly to be one of the twenty—that indeed she might well be chosen as one of Pharaoh’s three new brides—then I took my very life in my hands and laughed at my informants!”

“You did what?” Harsin Ben was amazed. “Why would you do such a thing?”

“I laughed that Khasathut’s advisers could be so reckless of their own positions as to allow Pharaoh to take so dull and dowdy a bride!”

“You did wh—” the old man could not believe his ears. “How dare—” “Harsin Ben—master!—pray, hear me out. Do you not see my plan? For I had sown seeds of doubt in their minds, and now at last it appears that those seeds have taken root!”

“How do you mean? In what way?”

“Why, don’t you see? Namisha is no longer a candidate for Pharaoh’s bed. She has been struck from the list of twenty names. She will not be called upon to parade for Khasathut’s choosing!”

“You have done this thing, Imthod?” Harsin Ben’s astonishment was gradually giving way to joy. “But why did you not—”

“You have not heard all, Harsin Ben,” his apprentice quickly cut him off. “About Khai—”

“Khai?” the old man was immediately apprehensive. “What of him?” “He is not to go to the pyramid after all,” Imthod smiled. “No, for he is to be an archer in Pharaoh’s army.”

Harsin Ben slowly shook his head in astonishment, in disbelief. “And is this, too, your doing, Imthod? It… it’s like a dream! How could you possibly have worked this wonder?”

“I am only partly responsible,” the apprentice replied. “Khai’s amazing skill with bow and arrows has been his true salvation. I had only to speak my opinion in the right ear: that a lad with Khai’s talent would be wasted as a lap dog in the pyramid. The rest seemed to come almost naturally.”

“And yet you’ve made no mention of these things before,” the old man frowned. “Why is that, Imthod Haphenid? Have I been such a tyrant that you could not confide in me?”

For a moment the apprentice seemed lost for words, but then he found his tongue. “No, no, Harsin Ben, not at all—but what if all my work had come to nothing in the end? What then? Should I raise up your hopes simply to dash them down again?”

“But when did you discover that all was well? How long have you known?”

Again Imthod seemed at a loss for an answer, but eventually he spluttered: “As recently as … as last night—but even so I would have said nothing had you not asked me. I did not wish it known that I … that—”

“That you have saved me and mine, Imthod Haphenid! And to think that your father had to beg me to take you as my apprentice. Man, I owe you everything!” And he took the other by the shoulders.

Immediately the apprentice shuddered and broke free. “You owe me nothing, Harsin Ben.” He stood up. “You have been my master and you taught me all you knew. Now there is no better architect in all Asorbes—save you yourself. For this I thank you. Why, my prowess is not unknown ... even in the pyramid!”

“In the pyramid?” Harsin Ben raised his white eyebrows.

“Aye, for last night I, too, was invited to appear before the Pharaoh when next his great procession takes place.”

“Huh!” the old man grunted. “But that is a mixed blessing, Imthod. A very mixed blessing indeed….”

When the apprentice had left him alone, Harsin Ben called Adrian out of a small adjacent room where he had been listening to all that was said. Taking hold of his forearm, his father frowned at his expression and asked: “Well, did you hear? Now what have you to say? Don’t you understand, Adhan, it’s all over! We’re to stay just as we are: a whole family. And all thanks to Imthod. Who would have believed it?”

“Who indeed ?” Adhan answered under his breath.

But his father heard him. “What do you mean?” Harsin Ben questioned, his voice trembling. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing at all,” Adhan was quick to answer. “It’s all so sudden, that’s all.”

But as he, too, left Harsin Ben’s study, he was glad that he had not told the old man the whole truth. For in fact there might very well be something wrong, something very wrong….

Adhan had been busy checking on Imthod and had heard certain whispers of a very odd, indeed sinister nature. Nothing factual or proven for certain, not yet—rumors mainly—but strong rumors. And horrible ones. For it had been put about that when Imthod was not studying under Harsin Ben, then that he not only mingled with Pharaoh’s spies but had himself become one of them. He spent his nights in company with the most dubious of characters, and what Adhan had discovered of them did not bear repeating.

For it was said that if a pretty girl’s family desired to keep her off Pharaoh’s list, this might well be arranged through Pharaoh’s own agents— though not without payment. Large amounts of gold had been known to change hands, but on occasion the price was something entirely different.

Adhan had heard that if a girl was desperate enough, she might retain her freedom by giving herself for a night or two to one or another—and sometimes more than one—of Khasathut’s spies.

And it was further rumored that Imthod had sometimes shared in this unholy bargaining of flesh … but that in itself was not what worried Adhan.

He was more worried about his sister—about where she was recently accustomed to going, secretly in the dead of night, through the streets of Asorbes. About her destination, yes, and about what she was doing when she got there.

And with whom?

On the evening before the Royal Procession, a messenger came with word from the pyramid, from the Pharaoh himself. Harsin Ben Ibizin was to ensure that his entire family without exception accompanied him to the Royal Procession, and thereafter that they appeared before Khasathut atop the now greatly reduced summit of the east face. The Pharaoh greatly desired to see— indeed he especially looked forward to seeing—the Ibizin family in its entirety….

VI The Pharaoh’s Wrath

The day seemed little different from that of any other Royal Procession, and up to a point it proceeded in a like fashion. There were differences, however, one of which lay in the ever-increasing height of the east-facing plateau, which was now such that the litter-bearing slaves were obliged to elevate their human charges in relays. Three months previously, after the last Royal Procession, a Nubian slave had actually collapsed while carrying a litter. Only the quick reactions of his co-bearer had avoided certain disaster, when the litter and its occupant—an important Arabban ambassador—might well have gone plunging down the great flight of steps, taking other nobles, litters and bearers with it.

The offending slave, already dying of a burst heart, had been put to the sword there and then on the steps and his carcass tossed over the side. The broken, sandpapered thing which eventually thumped to a halt at the foot of the great ramp had been unrecognizable as a human being, and the city’s stray dogs had made very short work of it indeed. The unfortunate black’s quick-thinking colleague, a Khemish thief half-way through a three-year sentence, was then congratulated, set free and sent home, rejoicing, to Peh-il.

With the memory of so recent a tragedy still fresh in her mind, Merayet’s apprehension—as she was borne up in her litter to the now reduced but still vast area of the lofty plateau—was considerable; but it could not compare to the fear she had lived with for the last four years, which only recently had been relieved by Imthod Haphenid’s revelations as retold to her by her husband, Harsin Ben. As for last night’s peculiar summons: doubtless, this was to enable Khasathut himself to outline his altered plans, which in their original form would certainly have affected the whole family. And so as the hour of the audience approached, Harsin Ben and his family took their places among the other dignitaries on the plateau high over Asorbes and awaited the Pharaoh’s pleasure.

Khai’s father had already noted the presence of an extraordinary number of governors and high officials from the many towns and villages up and down the river, and he had not failed to take note of the rather perplexed and occasionally apprehensive glances which passed amongst them. On chatting with several acquaintances of old, he discovered that they had all been called to attend the procession and its subsequent ceremonies at extremely short notice, almost as if on an afterthought, and that they believed Pharaoh must have something of great importance to say to them.

The general consensus of opinion was that he wished them to give their active support to his military recruiting—greatly stepped-up in recent months on account of recurrent Kushite raids across the western border, which Khasathut had sworn to put down—by forming still more regiments from their own towns and provinces. While Harsin Ben had accepted this explanation readily enough, still he was uneasy. Certainly the number of troops taking part in the procession had been greatly reduced, as a result of Khasathut sending thousands of his warriors west of the river and to north and south, but since when did Pharaoh require the compliance of his governors before issuing his commands? Waiting with the rest of them for Khasathut to appear, the old architect found his mind darting in all sorts of gloomy and doom-fraught directions; but he was not to be kept in suspense for very much longer....

As the last of the dignitaries were brought up to the plateau’s summit, so eight huge black guardsmen appeared from the hollow, half-completed peak of the pyramid bearing a litter containing a throne with the massive, ornately-garbed figure of Pharaoh himself seated upon it. They lowered the litter to the stone surface of the plateau and prostrated themselves, then retired on all fours, crawling backward away from the spot where Pharaoh sat. When complete silence had settled over the high place, then the figure on the throne signaled that the ceremony of the bride-choosing should commence.

Khai was aware of his sister’s trembling where she stood close to him as the twenty girls were paraded one at a time before the Pharaoh, and as he chose his three new brides she shuddered anew and tried to make herself just a fraction smaller. But when the choosing was over and the brides-to-be had been led away into the pyramid, then events began to take a much less orthodox turn.

First of all, the Black Guard turned out in its entirety to line the three precipitous rims of the plateau, all of them facing inward and forming a black wall to enclose the drama about to be enacted high over Asorbes. When they were in position, then Khasathut called for his Vizier, Anulep, to go to him. And here once again the assembled nobles were witnesses to an occurrence of extraordinary rarity, when Pharaoh impatiently cut short Anulep’s usual obsequious approach and drew him close to whisper in his ear. Such a thing was hitherto unknown and could only be portent of even stranger things to come.

Now, as a ripple of speculation passed through the assembled personages, Anulep approached them and passed among them, seeking someone out. Straight to Harsin Ben Ibizin he came, and ignoring all others—governors, high officials and ambassadors alike—he ordered the aged architect to bring his family before the Pharaoh. Harsin Ben heard Anulep’s command as in an echoing tunnel, a dream, a nightmare. Some dreadful premonition told him that all was not well, far from it. In some sort of dreadful slow-motion he led out his family before Pharaoh and prostrated himself with them, then stood up to hear the God-king’s word; which came with its customary whoosh and roar:

“Harsin Ben Ibizin—Grand Architect of the Pyramid—have you any idea why you before all others assembled here have been called before me?”

Harsin Ben tried to speak but could not find his voice. In the end, he merely shook his head.

“Ah! Perhaps you do know after all,” Pharaoh continued, “and the knowledge has dried up your throat. Very well, let me tell you. I am going to make an example of you.”

“An … an example, Omnipotent One? I—”

“An example, yes. To all others who might foolishly think to use their positions of trust and power against me. You are a traitor, Harsin Ben Ibizin. I, Pharaoh, accuse you!”

Following immediately on his words, the Black Guard uttered a single concerted “Waugh!” and as one man took a pace forward.

“You ... you accuse, Lord?” Harsin Ben staggered as his family clung to him in terror. “But—”

“Not only you, architect,” came the whoosh of Khasathut’s voice, “but also them that stand with you. Traitors all—with the sole exception of the boy, Khai. Only he has kept my ordinances faithfully.” The great jewelled head turned slowly to gaze upon the Vizier. “Anulep, bring out the architect’s drawings.”

Harsin Ben gasped as he recognized his plans and saw them laid out on a table set before the Pharaoh. He took a pace forward, reaching out his now-palsied hands.

“Stay, Harsin Ben, and listen,” Khasathut commanded. “For these plans of yours are at fault, and as such they clearly show your treachery!”

“At fault?” Harsin Ben gasped. “Omnipotent—”

“If my tomb was finished according to these drawings,” Pharaoh whooshed and roared, “then it would not be capable of performing its final function: to channel sand down into the lower regions and bury that nethermost chamber where my immortal remains will lie until the return of my fathers from the sky. And if that entombment were not utterly complete, how then might I expect to survive the centuries which may yet elapse before the second coming?”

“Most High Lord, I—” the old man started to say, only to be cut short once again.

“And if this mortal form which houses my immortal ka were not preserved, why, then the gods themselves might not have the power to bring about my resurrection! You know these things well enough, Harsin Ben, and yet you deliberately planned to sabotage my plans for immortality!”

“Waugh!” came that awful cry from the throats of the Black Guard as they took a second pace forward.

“No, Descended from the Sky, it’s a lie!” the old architect cried, breaking free of his fearful family and staggering forward. Anulep quickly placed himself between the Pharaoh and the old man, and the latter went down on his knees before him and clutched at his feet. “Vizier,” he cried, “tell the Pharaoh he is mistaken! Why, my plans were checked by my own son, Adhan, and he is a master of measurements and numbers!”

“Silence!” roared Pharaoh. “You merely condemn yourself with your stuttered denials. Mistaken, am I? And your son Adhan the mathematician checked your plans, did he? Well then, come forward, Adhan, and gaze upon your father’s plans. Come, I command you.”

Visibly trembling in every limb and white as chalk, Adhan went forward as ordered and stared at the plans on the small table. His eyes, at first puzzled and frightened, gradually grew disbelieving, then angry. Color came back to his cheeks as he gazed up into Khasathut’s mask-hidden eyes. “Pharaoh, I see the error—but it is not of my father’s doing—nor yet mine. These plans have been tampered with, and by an expert!”

“Tampered with? And your father did not notice this ... this forgery? And you, the great mathematician, you did not see it? Where have you both been, if not at work on my pyramid ?”

“The work was well known to us, Omnipotent One,” cried Adhan, “and we rarely needed to consult the plans. Be certain we would soon have discovered—”

“Be silent!” Pharaoh whooshed. “You both lie ... you and your father both. The plans were tampered with, indeed! Well, they are not alone in that, it appears. Can you deny that your sister, too, has been ‘tampered’ with?” His great jeweled arm rose up slowly until his hand pointed at Namisha where she hugged her mother and sobbed. “You girl, come forward.”

Namisha took two paces forward, then crumpled in a faint.

“See!” Pharaoh roared. “Her guilt is plain to see. Because of it, she cannot face me. She is defiled, Harsin Ben Ibizin, and I know the name of her defiler. It is Adhan!”

Adhan’s mouth fell open where he stood at the table. He staggered and almost overturned the table at Khasathut’s feet. His mouth opened and closed like that of a landed fish. “Pharaoh,” he finally croaked, “these are lies—filthy lies!”

“Is Pharaoh then a liar?” the great voice blared out.

“Waugh!” roared the Black Guard, closing their ranks as they took a third step forward.

“Not you, Pharaoh, no!” cried Harsin Ben, his voice stronger now and thick with fury. “Your informants are the liars. All of these accusations—they are all cruel and false. Who is it?” he cried, wheeling about to stare at the crowded dignitaries, at their death-white faces, the caverns of their gaping mouths. “Who is it that falsely discredits and destroys me?” He turned back to Pharaoh, struggled past Anulep and stood beside Adhan at the table. “Can you really believe, Pharaoh, that my son would seduce his own sister?”

“I can believe—I do believe!” Pharaoh roared. “Yes, he has had incestuous relations with her, I have proof. There was a witness. I can produce him. The gods may mate with their own flesh, Harsin Ben, to keep the blood pure—but it is not for ordinary men to defile flesh which Pharaoh has named his own. I would have considered her for my bride, but now… ? You may be sure I would not accept any but the most damning evidence. Aye, and I have that evidence! I know the names of others who have had her, men I occasionally employ to test the eligibility of the women I chose for my brides. When these men approached your daughter, do you know what she did? She gave herself to them!”

“Waugh!” came another roar from the Black Guard, and yet again the shuffle and stamp of their sandaled feet.

Merayet, throwing herself down on the ground and slapping at her unconscious daughter’s face, cried, “Namisha, daughter, tell the Pharaoh he wrongs you. Tell him you are a good girl and pure. Say it is so!”

“Corrupt!” Pharaoh cried, his voice a throbbing whistle of rage. “The whole family—all in this together.” He lifted his hands up high. “You have been tried, Harsin Ben, and you are found wanting. Let your punishment stand as an example to others who would practice treachery and deceit upon the Pharaoh!”

“Waugh!” howled the Black Guard, and they swept across the plateau to engulf the Ibizins in a merciless crush of ebony bodies.

VII Horror on High

As eight of the huge blacks moved directly to Pharaoh’s litter-throne and lifted it shoulder high, four more drew curving swords and took up positions about the elevated throne, facing outward and watching the remainder of their colleagues as they commenced to mete out preordained “punishments” to the Ibizin family.

While Harsin Ben, Adhan and Khai were grabbed and held immobile—forced to look on in helpless horror as they squirmed in the grip of members of the Black Guard—so the rest of the huge Nubians pounced upon Merayet where she sprawled beside Namisha. They dragged her away from the girl and stripped both of them, tossing torn fragments of fine linens all about.

When the women were completely naked, four of the blacks lifted Khai’s mother up horizontally and held her with her arms and legs outstretched, forming a human cross. Namisha was lifted into the same position; and without more ado, coldly and apparently without lust, the Black Guard commenced to rape both mother and daughter—one awake and screaming, the other oblivious of her body’s torment—relieving themselves into their spreadeagled bodies one after the other and from the standing position.

The whole hideous process was remarkably quick and efficient, with each man working for mere seconds before withdrawing to be replaced by the next in line. Semen quickly formed small pools where it dripped from the suspended bodies of the brutalized women; and as the fifteenth or sixteenth massive black took his turn with Merayet, so she gave one final shriek and lost consciousness. At that, the four who held her sat her up in mid-air, their hands supporting her beneath knees and armpits, until her naked body formed the shape of a chair.

They ran with her in that position to the east-facing rim of the plateau. There, at intervals along the rim, bronze measuring rods stuck up vertically from locating holes in the outer blocks of stone. Two of these had been filed needle sharp; and upon one of them, without pause, the blacks placed Merayet’s body, ramming her down onto the rod until she sat on the very lip of the plateau with her legs dangling over the side. The rod came out, red and glistening, from a position near the top of her spine.

Namisha, too, was hurried over to the rim beside her mother, but as she was being lifted up above the second of the two sharpened rods, so she regained consciousness. One scream only she uttered, high and bubbling, as she was driven down onto that long, slender bronze fang. Her limbs flailed spastically for a split second as the rod’s point slid out above her left breast, and then she was still.

Through all of this, the three male Ibizins had howled, wept and struggled like madmen in the grip of the huge Nubians. But now, summoning a crazed strength from some hitherto unsuspected well, Adhan threw off the men who held him and turning, drove a sandaled foot into the groin of one of them that held his father. As the guardsman doubled up in agonized amazement, Harsin Ben somehow struggled free of the other man and hurled himself toward Pharaoh.

Adhan, snatching a spear from an astonished guardsman, went in the opposite direction. He rushed at the crowd of terrified dignitaries, their wives and families, howling: “Where are you, traitor, fiend? Oh, I know you now. You, Imthod Haphenid, you and no other—you have done this thing! In order to advance your own lofty ambitions, you have destroyed us! Where are you, sickly slug of a man? For as heavenly Re is my witness—I’ll yet eat your rotten brain!”

The officials, to this moment horrified spectators only and in no way personally involved, now found themselves trapped between a frothing maniac and the northern rim of the plateau. They scattered to left and right as Adhan drove through them, until Imthod was revealed where he had hidden behind them. Drained white and trembling, the former apprentice cringed on the very rim of eternity as Adhan aimed his spear.

“Seduced my own sister, did I?” Adhan screamed. ” ‘Defiled’ her, did I? I did not. But I now know who did!” He drew back his spear arm to make his throw, but then—

The spear was wrenched out of his hand from behind and a great black arm locked about his throat. He was dragged backward and hurled down onto the plateau’s roof. A crowd of furious Nubians poised their spears and swords over him.

“No!” came the whoosh and roar of Pharaoh’s voice. “Spare him—but see that he never fathers children. The Ibizin line is forever cursed and must not be perpetuated!”

Pinned down, Adhan could only shriek and froth at the mouth as his clothes were torn from him and one of the blacks took out a sharp, curved dagger. In another moment, his screams soared up the scale … then fragmented into sobbing and insane babbling as his captors, done with their grisly work, released him. On all fours, leaving a trail of blood, he crawled for the plateau’s rim.

“No!” Pharaoh whooshed again. “He may not kill himself. Take him to the foot of the ramp and release him. Let him live … as a reminder.”

As Adhan’s mutilated body was dragged away toward the ramp, Pharaoh turned his attention to Harsin Ben. The old architect had actually managed to fight his way to the cordon of Nubian guardsmen around Khasathut’s throne. There they had stopped him, gutting him as he vainly tried to overbalance the royal litter. Holding his entrails where they threatened to spill through his fingers, he now lay where he had fallen; and knowing that he was already a dead man, Harsin Ben gave vent to all his rage, agony and horror as he cursed Pharaoh with an unending stream of fevered maledictions.

For a few moments more Khasathut listened to the dying man, before lifting his arm to point toward the plateau’s rim. Two members of the Black Guard lifted Harsin Ben up and ran to throw him, guts fluttering like rags behind him as he flew, over the plateau’s rim into empty space....

To fill the utter silence which followed, a chill wind blew up that keened across the plateau and made a twisting sand devil in front of Pharaoh’s throne. Then Khai’s sobbing sounded on the quivering air and the spell was broken.

Slowly Khasathut’s masked head turned in Khai’s direction. The boy was slumped between a pair of blacks, exhausted by his terrific struggling. His blond hair was plastered to his forehead and dripped perspiration; his white shirt and kilt were drenched and adhered to his body like wet rags.

“Anulep,” said Pharaoh, his voice completely void of emotion. “Take the boy into the pyramid. Do whatever is necessary to prepare him for training, which is to commence as soon as practicable. You will be personally responsible for his training, and eventually he will relieve you of certain of your duties—which I have long considered to be excessive. You have three months....”

For answer, the Vizier bowed his head. He beckoned to the guardsmen holding Khai and they followed him as he entered the loftier chambers of the pyramid through an arched entrance of carved stone to disappear into stark black shadow. Stumbling dazedly between the blacks, Khai turned his head once as he was half-carried under the archway. Staring back through eyes which were glazed dull with shock, he looked one last time upon a scene which burned his mind like drops of acid:

The naked, butchered carcasses of his mother and sister where they sat like gargoyles—no longer human beings but slaughtered animals—overlooking Asorbes through sightless eyes, transfixed and supported by crimson-tipped spines of bronze....

VIII Inside the Pyramid

Unlike the tombs and monuments of a later age, Khasathut’s pyramid was not an almost solid mountain of stone, but a multi-storied maze of shafts, corridors and chambers whose total internal capacity was perhaps as great as two percent of the whole. That is to say that for every fifty cubic feet of solid stone, there was perhaps one of air or living-space. There were also sophisticated air-conditioning systems, with inlets and outlets through panels of perforated stone in the pyramid’s outer skin, and a catchment system which provided the massive monument with its water.

Moreover, incorporated into the structure was a series of smooth-lined, near-vertical shafts which were designed to channel sand from the topmost quarter of the pyramid to its basement temples and living areas, including Pharaoh’s subterranean tomb and the quarters of his entire Black Guard. When Khasathut was ready for his interment, his guardsmen would accompany him into darkness— entombed alive behind thousands of tons of sand.

Khai knew the layout of many of these rooms, passages, slipways and watercourses well; indeed, he had always been interested in his father’s work and during the last seven or eight years had often clambered with him in and about the pyramid’s levels as each was completed in its turn. His interest had extended to Harsin Ben’s drawings and plans, so that he understood a great deal of the principles underlying the pyramid’s construction; and as his stumbling feet moved him forward between the huge blacks—and despite the fact that he was close to exhaustion and closer to madness—still he recognized the ways he walked and knew that he was quickly descending into bowels of rock. The way was lighted by steadily burning flambeaux, causing shadows to leap on walls of stone, and as the party approached these blazing sources of light, Anulep’s shadow crept along the walls until it fell upon Khai. Each time this happened, it caused a chill inside the boy which was at once dreadful and preternatural.

As they went, so the Vizier began to talk to Khai, his voice sepulchral as it echoed back from where he strode on ahead. “One learns fast in the pyramid, boy, or else one is lost. Your father built the pyramid, and so I expect you will learn all the faster. You will learn the pyramid’s ways; its known, well-trodden ways, yes, and its secret ways, too … and its laws. Above all else, you will learn obedience to me, and through me obedience to Pharaoh.

“Pharaoh’s life draws quickly to an end, moves ever closer to that final day when he will draw his last breath—at least until the return of his ancestors from the stars. Age will not have brought him down, even though he is older than most men. No, for while his body ages, his lusts and passions seem to grow greater. Ah!—and did you think that Pharaoh was beyond passion and lust? As he is greater than men, so his needs are more … demanding. Certain of your future duties will be concerned with Pharaoh’s needs—closely concerned.”

So Anulep’s voice went on and on, echoing through the bowels of the pyramid and becoming almost hypnotic in its monotony. Against all natural laws, Khai was drawn back from the abyss by that voice, saved from what might otherwise have become a permanent withdrawal from a world grown far too monstrous for him. Much of what he was told escaped his understanding, but at least the Vizier’s voice was a focal point, something to hang onto as his mind clawed its way back from the chasm of horror which threatened to engulf it.

In what seemed to Khai a very short time, they had descended to the more frequently used and inhabited levels of the pyramid—those which were closer to ground level, where cavernous temples and great halls loomed on every side and slaves, strangely-crowned priests and acolytes came and went in eerie silence by the light of oil- and resin-burning flambeaux—but Anulep and his party barely paused before plunging deeper still. Khai had time enough to glimpse huge golden idols and figures carved from white limestone, massive statues of gods with the bodies of men and the heads of birds and animals, huge basins of burning oil which illuminated grottoes of untold mystery, and the blackened mouths of vast flues where they opened high in darkly domed ceilings, before he was carried down into the nethermost vaults beneath.

Here in the very bowels of the earth, the air-conditioning was less effective—either that or the odors of the place were more difficult to dispel—and Khai’s nose involuntarily wrinkled as certain particularly offensive smells were wafted to him. The light was much more subdued here and the shadows so much darker; and now there were strange sounds and furtive-seeming movements suggestive of esoteric industry. Approaching the entrance to a huge room where the light was somewhat brighter, Anulep bade the Nubian guardsmen wait outside and took Khai from them to lead him into the chamber. They paused just within the threshold where the high priest cautioned: “Wait! We can see all we need to see from here.”

There, engaged in various alchemical activities about sunken stone vats whose contents bubbled and seethed with unpleasant sucking sounds, seven darkly-robed figures worked to the slow pace of their own low chanting, only pausing when they sensed the presence of Anulep and the boy. Seven pairs of eyes turned to stare luminously in the flickering gloom, until Anulep pulled on Khai’s arm and drew him out of the chamber.

“We must not disturb them, boy,” the high priest said, “for they are about Pharaoh’s work, as they have been about it for more than twenty years. They are the Dark Heptad—the seven most powerful necromancers and wizards in all Khem and the lands around, and they seek that earthly immortality in which Pharaoh would clothe his eternal ka. If they fail him ... then he must wait on the return of his ancestors from the stars. But if they succeed—ah!— then Pharaoh will live forever!

“I repeat: it is not age that ails him, boy, though indeed he waxes very old. No, it is the poisons within him. The poisons of his own blood, and of the Nile’s blood, which is in him as it was in his earthly forebears. The great gods that came when the tribes were ignorant hoped to strengthen their blood by mixing it with the raw blood of men, but they were not successful. Khasathut is the last of his line. His seed is plentiful, indeed copious, but it does not take root. There will be no more Pharaohs with the blood of gods in them. Not until the second coming.

“That is another reason why Khasathut seeks immortality; so that ordinary men shall never occupy the great throne of Khem. And so the Dark Seven work for him as he desires, and as you shall see, they have had their successes … of a sort. Come—”

Now they passed along a rock-cut corridor to a room guarded by a gate of massive bronze bars. Anulep produced a key and turned it in the lock, then threw the gate open. While the two guards waited outside, showing an agitation and a fear which Khai noted even through his aching numbness of mind, Anulep led his charge into the dark chamber beyond the gate. As if their movements had stirred up something rotten, gusts of an evil fetor seemed to rise up stiflingly from the floor, so that Khai pinched his nostrils.

The place was lighted by a handful of tiny lamps placed at intervals along its length, and as Khai moved slowly over crumbling debris, his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom. And suddenly he understood the stench of the place as he recognized it for what it was: a mortuary! The feet of corpses by the dozen stuck out from niches in the walls, and cadavers in various stages of disintegration lay in piles everywhere. Now Anulep took up one of the tiny lamps and held it close to a mound of bodies.

“Dead, eh, boy? Dead and falling into decay, returning to dust. Ah, but they have known the touch of the Dark Seven! They are not incorruptible, no—but neither are they wholly dead—not yet. Look!” And from a pocket he took a tiny golden whistle which he put to his lips. He blew a single note, an eerie, undulating note … and at once the air was full of a leathery creaking, the suffocating stink of death—and motion!

“Come!” the Vizier’s voice fell to a whispering quaver as he hurried Khai back along the way they had come. “We cannot stay here now. These are the slaves of Nyarlathotep—whose very essence the Dark Seven invoked to perform their black magic, defying even Anubis himself—and as such, they are dangerous. See how they awaken?”

Outside in the corridor the high priest quickly locked the gate, and beyond its heavy bars gaunt and leathery figures began to stumble and flail about in the darkness while their stench welled out in ever-thickening clouds. Half-rotten fingers tore at the bars and fleshless skulls grinned and bobbed.

“I could make them dance for you if I so desired,” the Vizier said, once more in control of himself, “but theirs is not dancing for eyes such as yours. It amuses the Pharaoh, of course, but he is not as other men. No, and this is not the kind of immortality he sought.”

Even as he spoke, from somewhere up above there came the boom of a great gong. Looking up, Anulep remarked: “The afternoon is already one-third fled. Well, I have my duties, Khai Ibizin, and so we must hurry.” He blew one more warbling note on his whistle and the stumbling things behind the bars instantly crumpled into their previous immobility.

Again Anulep took Khai’s shrinking hand. “I have one more thing to show you,” he continued. “A hiding place, a peephole, from which you shall soon gaze out upon rare and wonderful things—marvelous things, your very future—and then I will take you to your room.” He held the boy’s hand in his own bony claw and lowered his face to smile a ghastly, toothless smile; and Khai could not help but notice again the small, circular gape of his mouth.

“Ah?” the Vizier opened his eyes wide. “Don’t you like my little empty mouth, then? A pity, for you yourself must visit the dentist in just a day or two.” He nodded his skull of a head. “You will see why ... tomorrow night. But now, can you walk? Or must the guardsmen drag you? Ah, the resilience of the young! I see you can walk. Come then, and hurry, hurry....”