Khai of Khem

I Khai’s Progress

On those occasions in later life when Khai would be asked how he fared during his first years in Kush, his reactions would be varied. Despite the fact that he now held a definite position on Melembrin’s staff of officers, still he was only a youth; and when he was not teaching his considerable skills as an archer he was subject, as are all strangers in strange lands, to the gibes and taunts and occasional cruelties of his hosts. One man in particular—albeit a young one, that same Manek Thotak who would have whipped him—was openly hostile, for a time at any rate. And since Manek was now a Captain of Horse and holding the same rank as Khai, there was little that the adopted Khemite could say or do about it.

Despite all odds, however, he soon formed a circle of firm friends, not least among them being the Princess Ashtarta herself, but he often felt lonely for all of that. He blamed his loneliness for the dreams—those inexplicable visions which came in the night to taunt him with half-remembered scenes of times and lands all but forgotten, or as yet unconceived—and began to spend a deal of time on his own, away from the camps and villages out on the free wild face of the steppes.

For following the crushing of Pharaoh’s pursuit force at Hortaph, Melembrin had drawn back into the hinterland of Kush to convalesce. The sweet air and rolling green slopes to the east of the Gilf Kebir would be good for him, he had thought, and had retired to his birthplace in Nam-Khum. This was where he garrisoned his men, and from here they were allowed to filter back to their former homes and work, ready at a moment’s notice for recall whenever Khem should pose her next threat. Surprisingly, that threat did not materialize; the lull turned into a period of real peace; and gradually Melembrin’s guerrillas drifted back to their own tribes and became one with the fields, mountains and steppes which had spawned them.

Thus, as his duties declined, Khai found himself with much more time on his hands, which only sufficed to increase his loneliness and the incidence of peculiar dreams. The latter were no longer confined to the hours of darkness and of sleep but might come upon him as brief waking visions, and they were often so strange as to be frightening. He had always been prone to oddish nightmares even as a child, and some of his childhood dreams and fancies now repeated themselves: such as dreams of flying, or of riding at incredible speed in strange vehicles along black paths in an alien land. But if anything his newer nightmares were stranger by far than these earlier dreams. On awakening, he could never remember any real details of them, only the faintest shadows that remained to cloud his thoughts; but the waking visions—in the form of weird, intuitive flashes—were completely different and utterly bewildering.

It was at the half-yearly games at Nam-Khum that Khai first found some benefit from these peculiar visitations. He took part in the archery competition, of course, and easily won each of the four events. Manek Thotak equalled this achievement in the equestrian events, and he also took second place in whip-handling. Then came the wrestling.

This was more or less a free-for-all in which any young man who fancied his chances entered a great ring marked on the earth with pebbles. The idea was that the last man in the ring was the winner. The town’s children had been playing at the game all morning and Khai had watched them. As he did so, a recurrent picture kept flitting over the surface of his mind, of small yellow men who bowed to one another and grinned with big teeth—before hurling themselves into hand-to-hand combat that was fast, furious and utterly ruthless!

As quick as they came the visions were gone, only to repeat after a minute or so until Khai shook his head in an attempt to clear it of their influence. For it seemed to him that he had fought with these yellow men. They had instructed him, made him a master of their arts. He knew it. Somewhere, somehow, it was so. His arms had been stronger then and his body heavily muscled, and his speed had been that of a striking snake. He had been a man, then—but how could he have been? Looking down at himself, at his body, his hands, he felt suddenly a stranger in this youthful flesh. But that, too, was a vision and soon vanished with the rest of them. Nevertheless, as he had watched the village children tumble and squirm, he had vowed that he, too, would try the wrestling.

Of all the young men who entered the ring of pebbles that day, Khai was easily the youngest. Tall and rangy, he had none of the breadth or muscle of the other contenders, but he did have … something. And no sooner had the game been opened then Khai became the center of attraction. Melembrin, near-crippled now and pale in his pain, sat on the judges’ dais nearby and grunted his approval. Beside him, Ashtarta was astonished by a side of Khai she had never before seen, at which she could not possibly have guessed.

At first, the other contestants more or less ignored the fair-haired, blue-eyed youth out of Khem, but after he had very quickly thrown all of the lesser wrestlers out of the circle he was suddenly a very real threat. Three of the more experienced men, clad only in loincloths and gleaming with the sweat of their exertions, exchanged glances full of meaning. They turned on the Master of Archers in unison, and while one contrived to drive his elbow into Khai’s mouth—totally against all of the rules, which did not allow striking as such—another tripped him from behind. As Khai sprawled and dabbed in astonishment at his bleeding mouth, the third man made a play of falling over him, his knees coming down on Khai’s ribs. That was what should have happened….

Instead it was as if a key had turned in the lock of Khai’s mind. His reactions became those of someone else—he was someone else—and his speed and strength suddenly increased threefold. When those knees came down where his chest had been, Khai had already rolled aside, was springing to his feet, driving rigid knuckles in a stiff-armed jab that broke the nose of the largest of his attackers. At the same time, his head had turned, his eyes had seen the man who kneeled where he had lain, and his elbow had driven backward to strike him in the forehead with stunning force. The youth who had tripped him sprang at him from the rear, threw an arm around his neck and forced a knee into his back. His free hand he used to clout Khai on the side of the head.

A cry split the air then: of an enraged martial arts warrior under attack, turning his body to a fighting machine in a controlled frenzy of activity. Khai tore the man from his back and in a single motion hurled him headlong from the circle of pebbles. Then he was in among the remaining contestants, striking left and right, stretching them out almost as fast as the eye could follow his blows. By this time Melembrin was on his feet, shouting his encouragement, beside himself with savage pleasure.

“Sh’tarra, look at him! I was like that as a boy, daughter, since when I’ve never seen such fighting. The Khemite is a born killer!”

“But they’re not wrestling,” she answered. “They’re really fighting! There’s blood everywhere, and Khai’s to blame for most of it.”

“All of it—that I can see, girl. But they turned on him first. Hah! Like cubs snapping at a sleeping lion. Well, they’ve woken him up, and now they’re paying the price!”

Now, seeing their danger and concerned that Khai had already bested so many of their friends, the remaining half-dozen Kushites threw themselves upon him in a last desperate attempt to get him out of the circle. He was a whirlwind among the six, sending them flying left and right, until at last he stood face to face with Manek Thotak. They tottered, both of them near-exhausted, at the very edge of the circle, glowering at each other with red-rimmed eyes. By now, however, Khai was feeling just as bewildered as the spectators. The mood was off him and his skill and speed were gone. When Manek mustered his last ounce of strength and charged at him, it was as much as he could do to turn the charge so that they flew out of the circle together.

“A draw!” cried Melembrin, on his feet again. “What say you, Sh’tarra?”

“A draw, father, yes. And look—do you suppose that they’ll be friends now ?”

The king looked and saw Manek and Khai staggering from the field of combat. Each had an arm around the other’s neck, and their weary laughter came back to Melembrin where his eyes followed them. They limped, yes, but they also laughed.

“Friends?” he finally answered his daughter. “Yes, I should think so. I hope so, for they certainly can’t afford to be enemies. And Kush can’t afford to be divided.”

As Khai became a man and moved into his third year with the Kushites, news began to filter back from Khem to the tribes of the mountains. War had flared up along the Nubia-Khem border—a confrontation over Pharaoh’s continual and blatant slave-taking—and N’jakka had carried out punitive raids on Peh-il and Phemor. Pharaoh had begun to build forts all along the river between Peh-il and Subon; he had further cemented his friendship with the Arabbans beyond the NarrowSea; and he was demanding vast tribute from Siwad and Syra to pay for a planned mobilization. Trouble was in the air, big trouble, and Kush began to feel the first vibrations of its coming.

Meanwhile Khai and Manek, with certain reservations, had become firm friends. For one thing, Manek never failed to let it be known that he considered Khai of inferior stock, a good Khemite but a Khemite for all that. And Khemish blood, as everyone knew, was degenerate, inferior. Oh, there could be little question of Khai’s value to Kush, but he must really be looked upon as a mercenary rather than a true friend of the peoples of the Gilf Kebir and its hinterlands.

Both men were young colonels now and rising in stature with each passing day. Melembrin relied on their military judgement, took their advice and planned the rather sporadic training of his troops accordingly. The day was coming, he was certain, when Kush must once more protect herself against Pharaoh and his territorial avarice. The king was failing, however, and he knew it. The poison was spreading through his system at an ever-accelerating rate, and the end could not be too far away. As for Ashtarta: she was being groomed for her duties as the next Candace, and so had little time for anything else.

Khai’s dreams no longer bothered him quite so much, but certain aspects of them had become more specific, more detailed, so that he could remember something of them on awakening. Now he dreamed of saddles, of wheels, and of dark metals in the earth; and there were names in his dreams which seemed synonymous with these strange symbols of his subconscious.

Then, toward the end of the third year, Melembrin died and Ashtarta became Candace. She went into mourning for a month, and when finally she took her seat on the throne of Kush, it could be seen that the transformation was complete. There had been a metamorphosis, and the tomboy princess was now an imperially beautiful, fully-fledged Queen. Without exception, the chiefs of the tribes accepted her and her administration.

II The Coming of the Mages

It was at this time, too, that Khai first mentioned his dreams to the aged wizard, Imthra. Imthra had been Khai’s friend for two years now, and the more he learned of the Khemite, the more fascinating he found him. It was not only Khai’s blue eyes and fair hair—a combination of physical anomalies hitherto unknown to the peoples of the region—but also his ideas, his battle skills and now his dreams.

Khai had mentioned dreaming about a dark metal in the ground and had even given it a name: “iron.” He had connected the metal with a name: Mer-ow-eh, which Ithra knew to be a town in jun-gled Nubia south of the Nile. Similarly, Khai spoke of “wheels” and had drawn a picture of a “chariot” for Imthra; and again he had a name to supplement these weird ideas. This time it was “Hyrksos,” which Imthra knew to be the name of a people who lived some hundreds of miles to the west. And so it went.

Now Imthra, who was one of the wisest men in all Kush, soon came to realize that there was much more to his young friend than first met the eye. He spoke to others of his discovery, wise men from far and wide across the country, and gradually Khai’s fame as a mystic, his recognition as a seer with access to as yet untapped powers, spread afar. Certainly the soldiers in his command already considered him as something magical. When Khai shot an arrow it invariably found its target, and when he wrestled … who could stand against him? Moreover, in this last year he had shot up like a sapling, putting on meat and muscle until he truly looked the young general which Ashtarta would soon make him. In Kush’s army, the commanders were all young, for they must be where the fighting was thickest and their thinking must have the clarity, scope and vision of youth.

And this was the way things stood when, some months later, the seven mages came to Kush. They came from all the lands which enclosed Khem, some of them having traveled for thousands of miles to avoid that central country, and yet somehow all of them contrived to arrive on the same day, at the same hour, which was noon. Imthra had known that something of great importance was in the wind— he had seen seven shadows looming in his shewstone—but he had never dreamed that he would see this day, when the seven mages should all come together and visit him in his own humble dwelling in Nam-Khum on the steppes of Kush. Of the seven, he already knew Kush’s own hermit-mage and had met him many times; the others he knew only by repute.

When formal introductions were done with and while Imthra took refreshment with his visitors, he asked the seven why they honored him with this visit to his humble house, why they had left their homelands and traveled so far to see him. The seven told Imthra that they did not wish to offend him, but they had merely called on him because he was Ashtarta’s resident mage. In fact, they had come to Kush to offer their services to the Candace. Also, to give her their advice in a certain matter which would presently concern her people; and finally they had come to speak to the General Khai Ibizin, once of Khem.

“But Khai is not a general, not yet,” Imthra had protested, only to be told:

“No, but he will be—tomorrow, after we have seen the Candace… .”

In the afternoon of the next day, at Ashtarta’s palatial house, a meeting was held of all the chiefs or their representatives in Nam-Khum. This was the quarterly council meeting of the chiefs, presided over by Ashtarta; but on this occasion the agenda was to be other than the petty problems of tribes and far more important. All of Ashtarta’s advisers were there, tribal elders in the mam, and also fourteen chiefs or their representatives. In addition, there were six colonels—including Khai and Manek, the latter pair having returned that very morning from a hunting trip in the hills—and old Imthra, who was also Ashtarta’s chief adviser.

The seven mages had seen the Candace in private earlier and had spent several hours with her. They had also seen Khai and had questioned him about his strange dreams and visions, and about his vow to return to Asorbes one day and destroy Pharaoh. They had not tried to explain Khai’s dreams— indeed their entire audience with him had seemed designed purely to glean information from him—but upon leaving him they had all saluted him and called him General. Also, the Nubian mage had taken his hands, examining them minutely as if to satisfy himself of something. And upon Khai showing the black mage Adonda Gomba’s sign, which he still carried with him wherever he went, then the ancient Nubian had addressed him as Khai the Killer.

At the meeting in the great hall of Ashtarta’s house, the atmosphere was one of high tension. Obviously something massively important was happening, so that when Ashtarta finally stood and addressed the assembly her every word was eagerly seized upon.

“Chiefs, military men, councilors and friends,” she began, “this will not be our usual meeting of tribal heads, but as you have doubtless guessed a most unusual meeting. Information of great moment has been brought to me by the seven wise men from all the lands around, whose word, I am assured, may only be ignored at the peril of all Kush. And this is the word: that even now Pharaoh poises his army like a great spear for a mighty thrust at Kush—one which will pierce the land through and through!”

As an excited babble broke out among the chiefs, Ashtarta held out her arms and spoke over their voices. “Make no plans, you chiefs, nor speak of battle and the ways of war. For every man you can muster Pharaoh has ten, and this time they won’t fall into your traps so readily. No, and I am advised that… that Kush should not defend herself!”

“Not defend?” a gnarled old chief jumped to his feet. “Is this Melembrin’s daughter who speaks to us? What then shall we do, O Candace? Give ourselves over into Pharaoh’s tender care?”

“Advice such as I have received comes hard,” Ashtarta answered him, “but its very source is such that I cannot refuse it. We will not make war with the Khemites nor even defend our lands against them—not yet. The world is far and wide, and our little land is but a small part. We shall go out into the world and leave Kush behind—for now.”

“Leave Kush?” the chiefs cried as one man, their voices shocked.

“That was my word,” Ashtarta answered sorrowfully. “Leave Kush— leave her ravished, burned, destroyed—so that the Khemites shall not benefit at all from holding her. Not a single animal, neither beast nor bird, nothing that lives shall they take. Burn the very ground, that is my word.”

“And where shall we go, Queen?”

“That is a question you must ask of Khai,” she answered them. “Of the General Khai, for thus I now appoint him. General Khai Ibizin, of Kush. And his brother general, Manek Thotak, also newly-promoted. Khai, what have you to say of the sundering of the tribes of Kush?”

Khai was astonished. He stood up, opened his mouth, said nothing.

“Huh!” snarled a belligerent chief. “See the Khemite, elevated to a general, little more than a youth and gasping like a fish out of water—or a man out of his depth!”

“Oh?” Khai found his tongue. “And would you put six of your best men in a ring of pebbles with this fish, Dori Antoshin? I think not. Only let me recover from the shock of this honor bestowed upon me, and I shall say where the sundered tribes must go.”

He leaned his knuckles on the great table and frowned, then cautiously began. “Myself, I shall take fifty thousand men into Nubia. I have friends there and we shall fight Pharaoh’s soldiers together, black and white side-by-side. Also, there is a metal in the ground, and I shall make weapons of it. The General Manek Thotak: he shall take a similar body of men into Siwad, and he too shall fight Pharaoh, for Kush and Nubia are not the only lands to suffer Khasathut’s oppression. And in Siwad Manek will learn the arts of swamp-fighting, which will be useful when we return to Kush and attack Pharaoh in his house across the swamps. Moreover, the Siwadis are experts with fine and supple leathers, and there are things I desire to be made which Manek will bring back with him when that time comes.” He paused for a moment and gazed at Ashtarta and Imthra at the head of the table.

“Our Queen and her mage, they shall go to the west, to the land of the Hyrksos peoples. The remainder of our warriors will go with her; the women and children, too. Pharaoh will not follow there, for that would be to advance his borders too far, and even he will not have the men for that—not with the Nubians and Siwadis worrying his flanks. The Hyrksos are a friendly people, for they have no enemies surrounding them and do not need to fight. But they are great craftsmen, and they have built travois which do not drag along the ground but ride over it by use of wheels. The Queen shall take many craftsmen and horse-soldiers out of Kush with her, and also designs which I shall give her; so that when she returns to Kush she may ride in a chariot of war!”

“Huh!” another chief, Genduhr Shebbithon, snorted his contempt. “The whole plan is a madness, based on the visions of wizards and the dreams of a foreigner come to power in Kush. ‘Go here,’ Khai says, and ‘go there.’ And ‘do this,’ or ‘do that.’ And are we supposed to obey? I challenge his authority, his right to command tribes, his very origins! Who is this Khai, blue-eyed and fair-haired, who holds such sway in Kush? And for that matter, who are these seven mages? Wizards, mummers and charlatans, say I. And if they are men of powers, what dark spells have they placed on Melembrin’s daughter that now she would flee the Khemites? Now look—there sits Manek Thotak, also a general. What does he think of all this, who like his father before him has proved himself since a boy and loves Kush as a Kushite should?”

Manek immediately stood up. “I think we should all be quiet,” be said. “You, too. Genduhr Shebbithon, until all is explained.”

“But who will explain?” questioned yet another chief. “It is the right of the Candace to choose her generals as and when she will, but since when does Kush employ doubtful wizards for her guidance?”

“Now hush!” commanded Ashtarta, her face dark and angry. “You are all too eager to snap and snarl. And I will not suffer insults to our guests. Do you think I have not shared your doubts? Of course I have, who love Kush better than any of you. If it comes hard for you to give up your territories, how then for me, who must forsake a throne? Now I will say it one more time: Kush must be either sundered or overwhelmed, one or the other. You, Genduhr Shebbithon—you went raiding with The Fox in Khem. And now you compare me to my father and say I am bewitched! Well, and did not Melembrin himself—even The Fox—run from the Khemites when it suited his purpose to do so?”

“But, Candace—” two or three of the chiefs groaned in unison, for they knew she was hurt and would not have had it this way.

“Hush!” she cut them short, then bade the spokesman for the seven mages to rise. “You have heard me,” she told her warrior chiefs, “and certainly I have heard enough of you. Very well, now listen to the words of men wiser by far than all of you gathered here. And having listened, then tell me I am wrong to accept their advice….”

III Message of the Mages

No man knew the true names of the seven mages, for to let them be known would be to lessen their powers considerably. A name is a target at which an enemy may direct harmful spells. Thus it was that the spokesman for the seven, the yellow mage, was known simply as the Mage of Mentalism, and thus he introduced himself before he commenced the following narrative:

“Many years ago,” he began, in a voice which, for all it was a whisper of dried leaves, still filled the hall, “Khasathut’s father, who was then Pharaoh, drew seven evil men into his house. They were necromancers, wizards, users of dire magics. We, too, are mages—wizards, if you so desire to call us—and indeed there is a necromancer among us. But our magics are white and those of the Pharaoh Thanop’et’s mages were black.

“He called them to him because he feared them, feared that they might work against him. Also, he was growing old and his son would need powerful allies when he claimed the throne. And Thanop’et set his Vizier over the Dark Heptad to keep them in their place, and they were put to work on mysteries for Pharaoh, who desired to be immortal. Thanop’et had acquired the skills of the Dark Heptad too late, however, and the task he had given them, to discover immortality for him, was too great. In time, he died and Khasathut came to the throne, last of his line, and later he appointed his own Vizier, Anulep, to council him and be his eyes and ears. And still the Dark Heptad worked their magics and saw to Pharaoh’s needs; and for him, as for his father, they continued to seek out the secrets of immortality.

“Now this was all well and good, for in keeping the Dark Heptad busy, Pharaoh prevented them from working their own abominations, which had been a scourge on Khem and all the lands around for years uncounted. My brothers and I—” he indicated the six seated mages, “had long known of them and had long abhorred their interference with the ordered laws of nature. Now, with the Dark Heptad all together under one roof, as it were, we were relieved of the watch we must keep over them and could relax our guard a little; for we had long kept a wary eye on these evil wizards to know how they fared in their infernal work and how, if ever they should come too close to the blackest mysteries of all, their vile industry might be checked.

“Also, we knew that they could never discover immortality for Khasathut, for there was only one way that this might be achieved—which would mean such a blasphemy as never before was seen. It would be the unleashing of forces which must eventually destroy Khem, all the lands around, the world, the sun and the moon, and all the stars in the sky. So that even if the Dark Heptad should discover this road, still they would never go that way, for that would mean universal insanity. Not even the Dark Heptad would dare that… or so we thought. …

“But now this Pharaoh Khasathut, he nears the end of his span of years and his frustrations are many. His pyramid tomb towers in Asorbes, where in five more years it will be finished, but still Pharaoh is impatient with the work. His Dark Heptad promises him immortality, and gives him nothing. His Vizier plots and schemes and seeks more power, who already carries Pharaoh’s might in his hands; and this also worries the God-king sorely. So sorely indeed that he has made plans for Anulep to go with him into his tomb when the last day is come, which is not at all to the high priest’s liking. Also, Siwad and Nubia have risen up against Pharaoh, so that he must protect his borders; and he has learned that in Kush a certain man is grown up who has earned the respect of the Candace, who vows one day to return to Asorbes and destroy him who once destroyed all he held dear.

“And so Khasathut has made his plan, which is this:

“He will hold his borders with Nubia and Siwad, which will prove expensive in manpower but cheaper than waging outright war with the peoples of those lands. Next he will take Kush, against which he has a great grudge. To do this, his armies will surround the Gilf Kebir and slowly throttle the heartland. His warriors will strike from the hinterland, where no frowning walls of rock rise up to defy them. Thus will he drive the Kushites off the very edge of the Gilf Kebir, and those who might escape through clefts in the rock will find his soldiers waiting patiently in siege beneath the looming walls.

“Then, when Kush is fallen and its tribes overwhelmed, Pharaoh plans to split his army in two parts; one to strike south through Daraaf which is unprotected, and thus come into Nubia from the flank; the other to strike north, getting behind Siwad and crushing her from the rear. At the same time, he will mobilize all of Khem and reinforce his troops with fierce warriors out of Therae and Arabba. And these are the forces he will hurl against Nubia across the river, and against Siwad in the north. Thus will all be overwhelmed, and when it is done, Pharaoh will then rape the conquered lands of all precious things….”

Here the yellow mage paused and the chief Dori Antoshin took the opportunity to ask: “And how do you mages know these things, who have been on your journeys for long and long?”

“How do you know when the sun shines?” the yellow mage countered.

Dori was taken aback. “Why!” he finally answered, “I see it with my eyes, feel it warm on my skin.”

“Just so,” nodded the yellow mage, “and we also have eyes that see and skin that feels, but you are just a man and we are the seven mages.” Again he paused, but this time there was no interruption.

“Now, if the tribes of Kush go their separate ways according to the directions of the General Khai Ibizin, then when the Khemites get here, they will waste much time in the taking of a land which is undefended, for they will ever be on the lookout for the fierce men who are known to dwell here. And when at last the land is taken, then they will discover that it cannot support them, where there is no meat and even the grass is burned to dust. Also, by the time half of the army gets here, Nubia and Siwad will be fighting back all along their borders, and so Pharaoh will send no more men into Kush. Short of supplies and needed elsewhere, the Khemish invaders of Kush will fall back into Khem to reinforce the forts and camps to north and south. Eventually, though seasons and years must pass before it comes to be, only small garrisons will be left in Kush, and the rest of Pharaoh’s armies will be fighting Nubia and Siwad across their borders.

“Ah! But the fighting will be bitter, with Siwad and Nubia bolstered up by men of Kush under the Generals Khai Ibizin and Manek Thotak. And soon Pharaoh will order all of his forces to those fronts to make an end of it. And now it will be the turn of Nubia and Siwad to hold the line. In Siwad, the Khemites will founder in mire; and to the south, where the Nile will be in flood, they will drown as they make the crossing into Nubia. Yes, and while this is happening the tribes of Kush will be reunited!

“Here in Kush, at this very spot, three-and-one-half years from today, the tribes shall come together, and now they will be armed with iron swords out of Nubia, leathers from Siwad, chariots from Hyrksos; and Khai shall bring an impi with him. Then shall Kush strike terror into the heart of Pharaoh, when the garrisons are overwhelmed and the war chariots thunder down out of Kush to strike the forts of the western marches and crush Khem even to the banks of the Nile and beyond… .

“Now this much we have seen, we who have access to dreams and visions and we who hear the words of spirits of times gone and times still to come. But beyond this we cannot see, except to say that win or lose, Pharaoh will at the last cause his Dark Heptad to do that which will overwhelm the world. For he is mad and his madness waxes in him like moss on a damp stone, until it obscures the stone. So his madness grows, until Pharaoh will be no more and only the madness will remain.

“This is our concern, that an end be put to Pharaoh before he dooms the world, and to ensure this we pledge our services to the Candace Ashtarta of Kush. When the tribes of Kush separate and go their ways into the world, we also shall go where we may not be found, and when the tribes come together once more, we shall be here to work with them against Khem....

“We have spoken.”

For a long moment, there was silence. Then the chief Genduhr Shebbithon said: “How may we know that any of this will come to pass? Give us a sign.”

“A sign?” the keen-eyed brown mage from Daraaf stood up. He was the Mage of Oneiromancy, an interpreter of dreams, and now his eyes were bright with sights unseen by the others. “Last night, I dreamed a rider would come from the Gilf Kebir,” he said. “And the rider would say that word was come out of Khem of the gathering of Pharaoh’s forces, that even now a great army marched on Kush.”

“Oh?” said Genduhr Shebbithon uncertainly, “and where is this messenger?”

The brown mage gazed at him and smiled until his keen eyes twinkled like stars. “That is your sign, chief,” he said, “for you spoke those very words in my dream last night. And I answered thus: ‘Let the messenger speak for himself!’”

“Majesty!” an usher burst in through the great doors. “A rider has come from the east with a message.”

Ashtarta smiled grimly at the suddenly wide eyes and stricken looks on the faces of her chiefs. “Send him in,” she commanded. “We know what his message will be—but I should like certain of my chiefs to hear it for themselves. …”

IV Pharaoh’s Frenzy

It took all of five days for Ashtarta’s message to get out to the tribes, but after that, her instructions were followed to the letter. All goods and chattels were bundled up for the journey or else hidden away in inaccessible places; beasts were either herded together ready for the drive out of Kush, or slaughtered where they stood; and as the first cohorts of Khem arrived at the foot of the Gilf Kebir, so the tribes of Kush departed, as it were, “by the back door.”

After twelve weeks, when Pharaoh’s forces encircled the Gilf’s plateau-lands and got behind those frowning cliffs of near-impregnable rock, then it was discovered how sorely the departed Kushites had dealt with the land; when all about was seen the scorched earth and blackened houses, the choked wells and dams broken down so that streams ran to waste, the ravaged fields and stripped orchards. And when finally it dawned on the commanders of that expeditionary force that indeed the Kushites were fled, then they set up their camps, took stock of their meager supplies and sent word back to halt the advance of an even greater army which was clearly unnecessary and unsup-portable.

At first Pharaoh greeted this news with a mad delight, for second only to a destroyed Kush was word of one in full flight or already utterly fled before his might; but as Nubia and Siwad began a new and savage offensive, his mood quickly turned to one of rage. And all came to pass as the seven mages had prophesied, with Pharaoh deploying the bulk of his men to north and south, intending to crush his resurgent neighbors in short order and so put an end to it. Here, however, he had reckoned without the advent of the Generals Khai Ibizin and Manek Thotak, without whose military skills and trained Kushite warriors it would have gone hard indeed for the Nubians and Siwadis. Also, the weather turned against Pharaoh and, in a deluge of completely unseasonable rain, the Nile became unnavigable, while the low-lying lands of Siwad turned into a vast and totally impassable morass.

Moreover, to the west of the Nile, the enemy’s forces commenced a series of sly guerrilla raids on Khem’s camps and forts, with parties of Nubians striking north through Daraaf and the Siwadis cutting south across Khem’s own savannahs. And though month piled upon month, still the weather did not break, so that soon Khasathut became convinced that it would rain forever. Only then, after almost a year of battle, did the Dark Heptad approach Pharaoh through Anulep the high priest, with their interpretation of events; and only then did he begin to understand something of the truth of things: that much of the blame for what was amiss could be laid at the feet of seven mages who were the equal in powers, if not the peers, of his own seven wizards.

Now Khasathut had known of the seven mages for as long as he could remember, and he had often sought to find them and bring them together to work for him as his father had done with the Dark Heptad. Soldiers had been sent out more than once into the lands surrounding Khem (with the exception of Kush and Nubia) to bring back the seven dead or alive, but the mysterious mages had seemed like smoke to the grasp of his troops. Here today and gone tomorrow, they were as shadows that everyone saw but none could trace, whose owners were more wraithlike than the shadows themselves. Moreover, the peoples of their home- or host-countries could not be made to assist Pharaoh in their discovery; for the seven were as holy men and protected, so that Khasathut had never been able to take them.

Which was why, on learning that the seven had a hand in the business of the war—particularly in respect of the foul weather—Pharaoh flew into an evil temper and sent out chosen men yet again into Daraaf, Syra, Arabba and Therae to seek them out. Time passed and with the second summer the weather seemed to relent a little, and the seekers after the mages, some of them at least, began to return. Of the party sent into Daraaf, however, Pharaoh heard never a word and suspected that it had met with fatal troubles. The Theraen and Arabban parties did return, shamefacedly and empty-handed, but at least they carried home confirmation that the seven mages were indeed all gathered on the side of Kush and working against Pharaoh, which was to strengthen the warning of the God-king’s Dark Heptad. As for that party sent into Syra: they had not stopped there, but carried on eastward and were never seen or heard of again. For them the unknown east had more to offer than a return to their increasingly war-torn homeland.

Now, too, as if Khasathut’s temper and nerves were not ground fine enough already, the Siwadis destroyed the fort at Tanos and slaughtered Khem’s troops in their thousands to the west of the Nile; and the far-flung tribes of Daraaf also rose up to send guerrilla parties to the southwestern marches. It was not that Pharaoh was losing the battle—with his almost inexhaustible supply of manpower that would be unthinkable—but rather that he could not be seen to be winning it, and already the war was moving into its third year. Khem seemed hemmed in by mists, rains and swamps and surrounded by wraiths of warriors. And who may beat off the rain or smite a wraith ?

And so now Pharaoh thought to change his tactics. For if the seven so-called “wise” and “good” mages had gone to bolster the Kushites where they fought like mercenary dogs for Siwad and Nubia, and if they were conjuring magic to control the very elements and thus contain Pharaoh’s dreams of empire, why should he not answer in a like tongue? Thus he bade Anulep parade the Dark Heptad before him, along with his generals, administrators and all ambassadors and mercenary overlords in Khem, so that he could outline his new plans and issue his orders.

These were designed firstly to bring about a reversal of the weather which bogged down and foundered his troops; which task he placed squarely upon his Dark Heptad, with dire threats in the event of their failure. Secondly: he ordered that mobilization be effected on an unprecedented scale, and that any excess of troops be drawn down out of empty Kush to reinforce the forts and camps all along the western front. Thirdly: he offered fabulous enticements to Therae, Syra and Arabba for mercenary assistance in one vast and final push which he planned against Siwad, Nubia and now Daraaf. Kush he forgot entirely, for what was there now in Kush worth remembering?

He could not know of the strange red fires that burned in Nubia, or the metal that flowed into swords there. And he was equally ignorant that in far Hyrksos the wheels of war were even now turning against him, where Ashtarta built her chariots according to Khai’s designs; where she tested them and built anew, and trained her warriors in their handling. And even if he could have known of the reins, leathers and saddles which the Siwadi craftsmen were producing in their thousands, still he would not have understood. For in Khem the horse was as yet a doubtful beast, fit only for the use of savages such as the Kushites, whose land was now empty except for a handful of Khemish cohorts—

—But for how long?

Almost three-and-a-half years had gone by since Pharaoh sent his occupying force into Kush. Things had gone badly for him since then, but now at last he was ready to deliver those hammer blows from which, if he were successful, the civilized world might never recover. Now, too, after almost three years of near-continuous rain, his Dark Heptad seemed to have turned the trick and the sun shone over Khem, drying out the mire and turning it to firm earth once more. It seemed to Pharaoh that there never would be a more opportune time—when the Nile’s flooding was at an end and Nubia stood green and inviting across the river; when the swamps of Siwad steamed off their excess vapor and the mists lifted to reveal lands just waiting to be taken.

Moreover, Khem was full of soldiers—the entire Nile valley at arms—and thousands of fierce mercenaries choked the towns and villages and grew bored from lack of work. Even the border skirmishes seemed to have petered out, so that Pharaoh suspected his enemies of having lost their appetite for a war which ultimately they must lose. He waited no longer but hurled one hundred thousand mercenaries across the river into Nubia, and in the south ninety thousand more stormed the swamps to take the island villages of the pallid, morass-dwelling Siwadis. And in a little while, the first reports of these simultaneous assaults were carried home to Khasathut in Asorbes …

... Reports that drove him to the very rim of outright insanity, when his rage was such that Anulep himself fled from him and hid in the pyramid’s most secret chambers, where he shook and trembled until at last Pharaoh’s frenzy had burned itself out. Then, before seeking out his God-king where he lay exhausted and trembling upon the royal bed, the Vizier learned for himself the reasons for Pharaoh’s fit. Not fifty of his Arabban mercenaries had come back across the river from Nubia, and those that did return told tales of formidable impis, trained to a razor’s edge of fighting efficiency and armed with black swords which carved Khemish bronze as if it were green papyrus.

To further exacerbate matters, those mercenaries sent to invade Siwad had found nothing to invade; where for all their wading through crocodile- and leech-infested swamp, they had discovered Siwad empty of life, with the islands scorched and deserted. The Siwadis had forsaken their homeland in a pattern which Khasathut recognized all too well, and even now they were marauding along the border between Siwad and the rebuilt Tanos fort. Even so, the mercenaries had not returned empty-handed, no, for nine out of ten of them brought back the swamp’s fevers which made them useless; and of the rest: they had lost all interest in Pharaoh’s cause and dreamed now only of returning to their homelands. …

And Khasathut’s troubles were only just beginning.

V Kush Resurgent!

Manek Thotak and his army arrived on the steppes to the west of the Gilf Kebir some hours in advance of Ashtarta and Khai. His warriors, coming from Siwad, had split into two separate bodies to the north of the Gilf. One of these had curved round to the west, climbing onto the plateau-lands from the rear; the other had passed along the front of the Gilf below the looming cliffs. In the night, they had found two small Khemite garrisons, each of about one thousand strong, one on the heights and the other in a keep.

The high garrison had been taken at once, its sentries silenced by a small advance group before three thousand men of the main body rushed the Khemites, woke them, and drove them over the edge of the night-dark plateau. The taking of the garrison in the keep had been a little more difficult, had taken a little longer and had not been accomplished without cost—but only a very small cost. By contrast, not a man of the Khemites had been spared.

Then had the Kushite force down on the plain, all twenty-five thousand men of them, climbed up to the roof of the plateau along paths known of old; and before dawn, Manek Thotak’s army had been on its way westward, completing the final stage of its journey home. On their way, Manek’s men had been rounding up wild horses, offspring of many of their own animals set free three-and-a-half years ago. These would supplement that great herd of animals taken into Hyrksos by Ashtarta’s horsemen, which now they would be herding back again.

It was noon when Manek arrived on the rolling plain overlooking Nam-Khum, and there he camped his army with the sun standing overhead and a warm wind rising from the west. He sniffed that wind suspiciously and smiled grimly. The Khamsin, that hell-wind which would scorch these green slopes brown before it flew down into the valley of the Nile, was on its way. It would be the first time for four years. …

Green fields. Manek smiled again. The last time he had seen these steppes, they had been black, crisped by his own people before they went into their self-imposed exile of war. Well, the fields were green enough now. These last few years, there had been enough rain to grow grass on solid rock!

These last few years…. How had Naomi fared, he wondered. Naomi Tyrass had been his girl when he was a boy, and he had loved her. Oh, he’d had his rivals—particularly Thon Emahl, the son of the chief of Naomi’s village—but he had known that Naomi would one day be his. When he became a captain, however, and when Melembrin began grooming him as a commander, a general, then Manek had let Naomi go.

She had flown to Thon, who by then was a village chief in his own right, and on impulse she had married him. Now Thon was a chief under Manek, a colonel commanding his own regiment, which in effect was his own tribe. Today they were all home from the wars, for a little while, and Thon and Naomi would soon be reunited. Well, good luck to them. Life in a village with a pretty little wife was not for Manek. No, for he knew that the Candaces of Kush were obliged to seek husbands from their generals, and that narrowed down the field considerably.

Oh, there were other generals among the tribes of Kush, to be sure, but these were old men who no longer went to war but sat at home by the fire and told tales of the old days, when they were young. But Manek was young, and a general to boot, and who else could Ashtarta take for a husband? Khai Ibizin? Impossible, for he was of Khemish blood and it would be unheard of for any foreigner to sit upon the throne of Kush. No, Manek would be king one day, which was why he had let Naomi go. It was not that he loved Ashtarta, though certainly she was a beautiful woman, but rather that he did love Kush; so that his one ambition was to be ruler in the land, and his sons and daughters after him….

Musing on thoughts such as these and chewing on dried meat where he sat in the shade of a sapling shrub bearing its first flowers, Manek heard the shouts of his lookout and rose to his feet. He ran up the hillside a little way to where the lookout stood. Beneath him, his men had been taking their rest or eating, but now he was aware that every eye was turned to the west. “There, Lord Manek,” said the lookout, a youth four years Manek’s junior. He stabbed a finger westward. “That will be the Candace. See how she raises the dust!”

“Aye,” Manek agreed, “dust from the hooves of horses. That will be Ashtarta, all right—but your eyes aren’t as keen as they might be.” He chuckled at the youth’s expression. “See there, to the south, climbing the steppes in a long line like a thin, unending snake. Do you see? That’ll be Khai Ibizin. Khai of Khem.”

“I’m told he doesn’t like that name, Lord.”

Manek frowned. “A dog’s a dog no matter his shape, color or size,” he answered.

“It’s just that I thought the General Khai was your friend, Lord,” the younger man shrugged.

“So he is,” the general grinned. “Damn me, I don’t hold it against him that he’s born of the Nile—just that he thinks himself equal to a Kushite, that’s all! But enough—now I must go to meet them…. A pony,” he shouted as he ran back down the hillside. “Get me a horse. The rest of you, stay here. Those of you with wives and sweethearts, don’t worry. You’ll be seeing them soon enough. But if I were you, I’d save my strength. It won’t be long before you’ll be needing it. Five or six days at most….”

Manek and Ashtarta, both of them riding alone, came together on the rolling plain that leaned westward from Nam-Khum. They jumped from their mounts and clasped each other, their eyes full of questions, unwilling to speak or break the magic. For there was a magic in this, the reuniting of the tribes of Kush. Finally, the Candace stood back from Manek and fed her eyes on him. He was bearded, burly, a hawk. Every inch a general. Clad in leather trousers and jacket, whip at his side as usual, sword in his belt—he had gone away into Siwad a young man, and he had returned a giant.

“I’ve heard news of you,” she said. “How you drowned the Khemites in Siwad and burned them at Tanos. My father was right when he said you’d make a mighty general. It’s been hard to keep my own warriors back from joining you. They would have come to you in Siwad if I’d let them. To you, and to the General Khai.”

Manek said nothing, but stood and grinned his pleasure through his beard.

“And did you bring back leathers as Khai bade you?” she asked more seriously. “The Hyrksos leather is not good stuff.”

Now he frowned a little. “Leather? Oh, yes, piles of it, Candace. Saddles and reins and all, though I thought it was a great waste of time. Still, I could be wrong. Those of my lads who’ve tried these horse-seats say they’re very impressed with them.”

“I suspect that you are wrong, Manek,” she told him, and her eyes were bright and twinkling like diamonds. “My own experience is that Khai knows what he’s doing, and indeed I have marvelous things to show you.” Forgetting herself for a moment, she clapped her hands in glee.… Then she calmed herself, tucked her shirt into her breeches and tossed her hair back out of her eyes.

“And where is the General Khai?” she asked. “A Nubian runner came to me last night where I was camped and said Khai would be here.”

“He’s coming,” Manek answered. “I saw him from the hill. But he’s coming more slowly. No horseman, the Khemite, Majesty.”

“Yes, I remember,” she answered. “Well, if he still can’t ride bareback, we’ll have to see how he sits a saddle, eh?” And again she laughed.

Now, while she scanned the low ridges to the south, shading her eyes from the sun’s glare, Manek looked at this Queen of a Nation. He admired her legs clad in short, soft rabbit-skin breeches; her narrow waist; her firm body and pure, unblemished skin. She looked much more a woman than ever he remembered her, more a true queen than the tomboy princess he had known among Melembrin’s guerrillas.

“There,” she suddenly cried. “Look!”

Manek looked and saw something which caused him first to gape in astonishment, then to grin. Coming up over a low crest less than a mile away, eight massive Nubians bore an open litter. They chanted as they trotted, their limbs moving in perfect unison and providing a smooth ride for the man who sat the chair. It was Khai; and in four or five minutes the blacks reached the place where Ashtarta and Manek waited, put down the litter and fell on their faces. As Khai stepped out of his chair, Ashtarta embraced him as she had done with Manek, and once again there was a silence as they looked at each other. Khai had grown massive of chest and broad of shoulder, and his eyes seemed bluer and his blond hair blonder than ever the Candace remembered them. Feeling a flush rising to her cheeks, she breathlessly asked:

“But who are these? And why do they not stand up?” She looked doubtfully at the prostrated Nubians.

“They are yours, Candace,” he laughed, “and if they must stay there all day, they will not rise till you order it!” “Then tell them to get up,” she said.

“You must tell them,” he answered, “for I no longer command them and they won’t obey me. These eight are yours, Queen—but they know the rudiments of our tongue.”

Uncertain, she turned to the eight. “Get up,” she said, “at once.” And as a single man, they sprang to their feet.

Ashtarta stepped back a pace from these giants who towered over her, all bright with dyes and fierce as lions, their bushy heads sprouting feathers. “Look, Manek,” she turned to him. “See what Khai has brought home for me!”

“Aye,” Manek admired the blacks and stepped forward to take Khai’s hand, “a fine bodyguard indeed—but an inefficient way of getting about. I fancy you’d prefer your horse, Majesty.” The two men laughed and hugged each other, then Manek added:

“And Khai isn’t alone in his gift-bringing. Look—” From a pocket, he took out a fistful of massive gems. Of flashing colors, they were like fires in the general’s fist. “The Siwadis have sent you a chestful!” he told the Candace. “These are but a few.”

“Also,” Manek continued after a moment, “I’ve brought your warriors home again—though four thousand of them shall never return.” He nodded toward the great encampment higher on the slope.

“We’ve had our losses, too,” Khai nodded, “but it hasn’t all been a loss. Majesty, if you’d care to tell your guard to bring up their colleagues—”

“My guard?” She stared about with a puzzled look. “Their colleagues?”

With a nod of his head, Khai indicated the blacks.

“Oh!” she said, then did as he suggested.

The massive Nubians immediately put fingers to mouths and set up a shrill, beating whistling that echoed up and down the slopes and startled birds and deer to flight. As the echoes of that dinning note died away, there came other sounds: the pounding of feet, the rattle of assagais on shields of woven leather.

Rapidly the sounds grew to a roar that was deafening, and over the rise there suddenly poured such an impi that Ashtarta and Manek could only stand and stare. In two huge black squares of fifty men to a side, that regiment of Nubians came, halting less than a hundred yards away in a stamping of feet that shook the earth. Behind the squares, in military precision, twenty deep and stretching all along the fold of the hill, the warriors of Kush appeared, the whole forming a spectacle never before seen on the steppes of Kush.

When she could find her breath, finally Ashtarta turned to the west and waved a yellow handkerchief high over her head. In the distance, the tiny figure of a lookout raised an arm in answer. Then the Candace turned to her generals and said, “Oh? And did you think to shame your Queen, who alone seems to have come home empty-handed? Well, you are mistaken!”

For now there came the cry of horsemen and the sharp crack of whips; and Khai, at first dumbfounded but in another moment beside himself with savage joy, roared and laughed and shook his fists in the air as a thousand, two thousand chariots came speeding up out of the west, their spoked wheels a blur in the sunlight as they thundered in a tight, trained formation across the steppes. But it was enough, too much for one day. Khai would not upstage Ashtarta but would wait until later before showing her his ten thousand swords of iron. Yes, later.... First, he would show them to the Candace, and then—then by all the devils of hell—then he would show them to Khasathut!

VI Khai and the Candace

Long into that night Ashtarta, her generals and chiefs, talked and planned around the old table in the great hall of her house. The seven mages were there too, having come out of the southwest together a little after the reuniting of the tribes. Shortly after midnight, when all plans were laid— at least in broad outline—when the meats were eaten and the wine jars half-emptied, then there came a wind from outside that found its way into and whined through the great hall. It set all the lamps sputtering, that wind, as well it might; for its breath was nearly as warm as that of the man-made fires. This was the Khamsin, the scorpion wind from the western deserts legended to lie beyond Hyrksos, which stirred the blood of men as other great winds stir oceans to their bidding.

At its coming, the seven mages nodded and smiled their knowing smiles, then muttered together where they sat apart, and Ashtarta saw them. Since all business was done and the chiefs were now content to growl, thump tables and mull over old times together, she made to leave the hall. On her way out and escorted at a discreet distance by her straight-faced, near awesome Nubians, whose weapons were long-handled hard-wood clubs of great weight and thickness, she paused by the seven mages and asked:

“And is the Khamsin your doing also? I think not, for this is its season—or have you merely hastened it by a day or two? And if so, for what reason?”

“We have not hastened it, Ashtarta, O Candace,” the whispering yellow mage answered. “Though certainly it was a good idea and fits well with your proposals for war. Six days from now, when your warriors ride on Khem, the Khamsin will have left firm footing for them, where only the deepest and most persistent marshes shall bog them down. No, we have not done it—other hands have stirred the pot this time….”

By now the sounds of boasting and tales of skill and battles bold were tumultuous in the hall as the chiefs and their aides set about to finish off the last of the wine. The hot wind no longer howled outside, had dropped its heat like a fiery blanket over Nam-Khum and seemed to be saving its breath for the bigger blow to come, when it would move east into the valley of the Nile. Ashtarta looked about her at the great hall, stripped bare of its furnishings three-and-a-half years gone and not yet put to rights, then returned her attention to the mages.

Unheard by the others in the room, she asked: “If not your hands, then whose ?”

“Pharaoh’s Dark Heptad, Majesty. Khasathut needs the Khamsin more than we do, who in the space of only fourteen days plans to hurl three hundred thousand of his finest soldiers into Siwad and Nubia!”

“But then he’ll surely win!” she gasped. “For without the Generals Khai and Manek, how can—”

“No, O Candace,” the yellow mage shook his head and smiled. “It will not come to that. Pharaoh merely poises his spear; he has not yet thrown it. Nor shall he, for before then the armies of Kush shall strike across the swamps and savannahs, and the forces of Khem will turn to face them, trapped between them and the nations they sought to destroy.”

“You did not say this before,” Ashtarta accused, “and it is not quite in accordance with the plans we made tonight.”

“We did not know before, Majesty. It was the Khamsin’s coming which told us, who have learned to commune with the elements. As for the plans: they were good and need not be altered.”

“But three hundred thousand Khemish soldiers,” she whispered, almost to herself.

“More than that, O Candace, for even now mercenaries pour into Khem in droves fresh from Therae and Arabba.”

For a moment she was silent, then asked: “Can we win this war?”

“Yes, Majesty, we can,” the yellow mage told her. “It is not the winning, however, but the time taken in the winning. We will use what powers we may in your aid, of course—but Pharaoh’s Dark Heptad also have powers, and they work for him. If Kush is victorious, and when Pharaoh sees that he is beaten—he might yet call up forces which no man, not even a God-king, can control.”

She looked at the seven and said, “You have not eased my mind.” “That would be easy, Ashtarta—but the truth is always harder.” As she turned to go, the yellow mage added: “It would be unwise to worry greatly, O Candace, for tomorrow and the next day and the days to follow, they shall come, no matter how you or I say or do.”

She nodded and left, and her Nubians also nodded gravely as they followed her from the hall.

That night Ashtarta dreamed of Khai, as she had dreamed of him often enough, but this time the heat of the Khamsin was in her dream. When she awoke with a cry, a handmaiden was by her side, but when the Candace saw who it was—only a girl and not the figure of her dream—she sent her away with words which were unjustly harsh. She knew now, however, that it was time she paid her debt to the Khemite. With him so near, it was hard to concentrate on … on anything! Better to act shamelessly and put the matter behind her one way or the other, than to let it drag on.

If he would not come to her, then she must go to him, but it must be done carefully. She did not want the General Manek to know of her feelings for Khai, not before the fight with Khem. Something told her it could only cause bad blood between them. And so, though she hated it, she knew she must be secretive. She tossed in her bed a long time before returning to sleep, and though she could not know it, she was not alone in her restlessness. Khai, too, lay in a sweat and wide awake. But as for Manek Thotak: his was the sleep of a baby.

In the morning the Khamsin blew again, not furiously but with such heat that the very air burned the throats of them that breathed it, so that Ashtarta was glad to stay in the cool shade of her house. As for Khai and Manek: they were out on the steppes where, for all the Khamsin’?, furnace breath, they practiced the arts of the charioteer. In the afternoon, the wind died away and the heat seemed to lift a little, and Ashtarta went to find the General Manek, ostensibly to talk of the plans they had made the previous night and tell him of the words of the seven mages. In fact, she went to see him so that later she might see Khai.

She found Manek in his army’s camp—half-deserted now that the married men had gone off with their wives to establish themselves once more in their villages and settlements, from which they must soon return to ready themselves for war—and spent an hour with him deep in conversation. It was a valiant effort on Ashtarta’s part, but her heart was not in it. She could only think of Khai.

Finally, unable to keep up the pretext a moment longer and knowing that she must soon give herself away, she told Manek that she would now find Khai and tell him also of the words of the mages. Her Nubians sat her in her litter and took her straight to Khai’s encampment, where she learned that he had gone off to bathe in a mountain pool. Now she knew where Khai was, for there was a favorite place where he had used to swim, where the water lay cool and deep over a bed of rounded pebbles.

She took the senior man of her eight with her and drove her chariot in a southwesterly direction for a distance of some four miles, until she came to the spot beneath a rocky outcrop where a spring filled the pool and fed a tinkling stream. Sure enough, there in the shade of the rocks, she found a chariot and pair, tethered where the ponies could crop lush grass. Dismounting, she told her man to go and tell Khai that she had come to speak with him, and that he should now robe himself to receive her. After a few minutes, the black returned and reported that the General Khai awaited her.

She found him seated on a flat boulder by the side of the pool. Trees grew over him and the sun, striking through their branches, dappled his face with its light. He rose as she approached, but she indicated that he should sit. She stepped up onto the rock beside him and threw down a square of linen, seating herself not too close and facing slightly away from him. After a little while, she said:

“Khai, I—”

“Yes, Majesty?”

“I—I want to tell you what the seven mages told me, about the Khamsin.”

“It will dry out the land,” Khai answered, almost unconsciously. “That’s what Khasathut wants for his soldiers—but it’s also what we want for our chariots. With the chariots and our iron swords, we’ll cut them to pieces.”

“That is what they say, yes,” she breathlessly answered. “Also that we should first strike in the Siwadi- and Nubia-Khem borderlands. This will mean that—”

“That Pharaoh’s troops, where they gather to hurl themselves against Nubia and Siwad, will turn to face us, trapping themselves between the—”

“Have the mages already spoken to you?” she suddenly snapped.

“No, Candace,” he turned surprised eyes on her. “But it seems obvious to me that—”

“Oh, Khai,” she cut him off again, the words sighing from her, almost pleading. “If you are so wise and if so many things are obvious to you, why is it you have not seen the most obvious thing of all?”

“Queen, I—” he looked puzzled, uncomprehending, and his slowness angered her.

She jumped to her feet and he rose with her. “I remember a time when there was fire in you,” she snapped, stinging him with her words. “You were a man even as a boy, even as … as a Khemite!”

She made to step down from the rock, but her foot slipped and she would have fallen if he had not caught and steadied her. His hands were by no means as gentle as they might have been and she saw anger stamped on his face. His skin was tight with it and his eyes glittered like hard mountain ice.

“You forget yourself, Queen,” he said, his voice harsh. “You can remember when there was fire in me, can you?” He nodded. “Well, and I remember when you were a spoiled brat, but now you are Candace of all Kush! How have I offended you?”

“Spoiled brat?” she raged. “Offended me? Let me go—let me go at once!”

“Damn it—” he said, astonished by her rapid mood changes, “I’m not holding you!” It was true, for he had released her as soon as she was steady. But now it was like one of his dreams of old. It had all happened before—or was yet to happen, he knew not which—but suddenly he knew what he must do, what he must say.

“I should strip you naked as the day I first saw you,” he snarled, catching her hands so that she could not strike him. “I should throw you down on this rock and have you right here, now!”

“What?” she whispered, her eyes wide and amazed. “How dare—”

“What will you give me,” he pressed on, half-afraid that his dream might betray him, “if I free you?”

But now she, too, was caught up in the dream. He knew what her next words would be, but even so breathed a sigh of relief when she voiced them:

“I’ll give you … anything.”

“Then give me that,” he said, “which they would have stolen from you!”

In a voice which she no longer recognized as her own, she answered: “One day, you strange, blue-eyed boy, I might just keep that promise of mine—” And he let go of her hands as she threw them round his neck and sought his mouth with hers.

She could feel him against her, feel the core of him straining for her, and she gasped as their mouths filled with blood from the sheer ferocity of their kiss. His hands had slid down her back, were drawing her irresistibly to him. Her long nails went through the damp linen of his shirt and into his back. She tore his flesh and squirmed against him, unable to get close enough. Then—

“No!” she fought free of him. “No, Khai. Not here, not now.”

“Last night,” he gasped, holding out his arms to her, “I didn’t sleep. Tonight I won’t even try! When, Ashtarta? When?”

“When?” she stepped down, almost fell from the rock. She was flushed, lost for words, and her limbs trembled like the wings of a trapped bird. She turned and ran back the way she had come.

“Sh’tarra!” he called after her, his voice a groan of desperation. “When?”

She looked back. “When we camp beneath the Gilf Kebir,” she panted, “the night before you strike at Khem. Then and not before. You must not even see me. Will you come to me then, Khai, to my room of purple walls? Will you come, unseen in the night, like a thief, to the one who loves you?”

“Whenever,” he moaned, his voice a rattle in his dust-dry throat. “Wherever. To the very gates of hell, if you call me—

“Sh’tarra?” But she was gone.