Warlock: A Novel of Ancient Egypt

WARLOCK

Wilbur Smith

Like an uncoiling serpent, a line of fighting chariots wound swiftly down the gut of the valley. From where he clung to the dashboard of the leading chariot the boy looked up at the cliffs that hemmed them in. The sheer rock was pierced by the openings to the tombs of the old people that honeycombed the cliff. The dark pits stared down at him like the implacable eyes of a legion of djinn. Prince Nefer Memnon shuddered and looked away, furtively making the sign to avert evil with his left hand.

Over his shoulder he glanced back down the column and saw that from the following chariot Taita was watching him through the swirling clouds of dust. The dust had coated the old man and his vehicle with a pale film, and a single shaft of sunlight that penetrated to the depths of this deep valley glittered on the mica particles so that he seemed to glow like the incarnation of one of the gods. Nefer ducked his head guiltily, ashamed that the old man had witnessed his fleeting superstitious dread. No royal prince of the House of Tamose should show such weakness, not now when he stood at the gateway to manhood. But, then, Taita knew him as no other did, for he had been Nefer's tutor since infancy, closer to him than his own parents or siblings. Taita's expression never changed but even at that distance his ancient eyes seemed to bore into the core of Nefer's being. Seeing all, understanding all.

Nefer turned back and drew himself up to his full height beside his father, who flipped the reins and urged the horses on with a crack of the long whip. Ahead of them the valley opened abruptly into the great amphitheatre that contained the stark and tumbled ruins of the city of Gallala. Nefer thrilled to his first sight of this famous battlefield. As a young man Taita himself had fought on this site when the demigod Tanus, Lord Harrab, had destroyed the dark forces that were threatening this very Egypt. That had been over sixty years ago but Taita had related to him every detail of the fight, and so vivid was his storytelling that Nefer felt as if he had been there on that fateful day.

Nefer's father, the god and Pharaoh Tamose, wheeled the chariot up to the tumbled stones of the ruined gateway, and reined in the horses. Behind them a hundred chariots in succession neatly executed the same manoeuvre, and the charioteers swarmed down from the footplates to begin watering the horses. When Pharaoh opened his mouth to speak the coated dust crumbled from his cheeks and dribbled down his chest.

'My lord!' Pharaoh hailed the Great Lion of Egypt, Lord Naja, his army commander and beloved companion. 'We must be away again before the sun touches the hilltops. I wish to make a night run through the dunes to El Gabar.'

The blue war crown on Tamose's head gleamed with mica dust, and his eyes were bloodshot with tiny lumps of tear-wet mud in the corners as he glanced down at Nefer. This is where I will leave you to go on with Taita.'

Although he knew that it was futile to protest, Nefer opened his mouth to do so. The squadron was going in against the enemy. Pharaoh Tamose's battle plan was to circle south through the Great Dunes and weave a way between the bitter natron lakes to take the enemy in his rear and rip an opening in his centre through which the Egyptian legions, massed and waiting on the Nile bank before Abnub, could pour. Tamose would combine the two forces and before the enemy could rally, drive on past Tell el-Daba and seize the enemy citadel of Avaris.

It was a bold and brilliant plan which, if it succeeded, would bring to a close, at one stroke, the war with the Hyksos that had already raged through two lifetimes. Nefer had been taught that battle and glory were the reasons for his existence on this earth. But, even at the advanced age of fourteen years, they had so far eluded him. He longed with all his soul to ride to victory and immortality at his father's side.

Before his protest could pass his lips, Pharaoh forestalled him. 'What is the first duty of a warrior?' he demanded of the boy.

Nefer dropped his eyes. 'It is obedience, Majesty,' he replied softly, reluctantly.

'Never forget it.' Pharaoh nodded and turned away.

Nefer felt himself spurned and discarded. His eyes smarted and his upper lip quivered, but Taita's gaze stiffened him. He blinked to clear his vision of tears, and took a pull from the waterskin that hung on the side rail of the chariot before turning to the old Magus with a jaunty toss of his thick dust-caked curls. 'Show me the monument, Tata,' he commanded.

The ill-assorted pair made their way through the concourse of chariots, men and horses that choked the narrow street of the ruined city. Stripped naked in the heat, twenty troopers had climbed down the deep shafts to the ancient wells, and formed a bucket chain to bring the sparse, bitter water to the surface. Once those wells had been bountiful enough to support a rich and populous city that sat full upon the trade route between the Nile and the Red Sea. Then, centuries ago, an earthquake had shattered the water-bearing stratum and blocked the subterranean flow. The city of Gallala had died of thirst. Now there was scarcely sufficient water to slake the thirst of two hundred horses and top up the waterskins before the wells were dry.

Taita led Nefer through the narrow lanes, past temples and palaces now inhabited only by the lizard and the scorpion, until they reached the deserted central square. In its centre stood the monument to Lord Tanus and his triumph over the armies of bandits who had almost choked the life out of the richest and most powerful nation on earth. The monument was a bizarre pyramid of human skulls, cemented together and protected by a shrine made of red rock slabs. A thousand and more skulls grinned down upon the boy as he read aloud the inscription on the stone portico: 'Our severed heads bear witness to the battle at this place in which we died beneath the sword of Tanus Lord Harrab. May all the generations that follow learn from that mighty lord's deeds the glory of the gods and the power of righteous men. Thus decreed in the fourteenth year of the reign of the God Pharaoh Mamose.'

Squatting in the monument's shadow Taita watched the Prince as he walked around the monument, pausing every few paces with hands on hips to study it from every angle. Although Taita's expression was remote his eyes were fond. His love for the lad had its origins in two other lives. The first of these was Lostris, Queen of Egypt. Taita was a eunuch, but he had been gelded after puberty and had once loved a woman. Because of his physical mutilation Taita's love was pure, and he had lavished it all on Queen Lostris, Nefer's grandmother. It was a love so encompassing that even now, twenty years after her death, it stood at the centre of his existence.

The other person from whom his love for Nefer sprang was Tanus, Lord Harrab, to whom this monument had been erected. He had been dearer than a brother to Taita. They were both gone now, Lostris and Tanus, but their blood mingled strongly in this child's veins. From their illicit union so long ago had sprung the child who had grown up to become the Pharaoh Tamose, who now led the squadron of chariot that had brought them here; the father of Prince Nefer.

'Tata, show me where it was that you captured the leader of the robber barons.' Nefer's voice cracked with excitement and the onset of puberty. 'Was it here?' He ran to the broken-down wall at the south side of the square. 'Tell me the story again.'

'No, it was here. This side,' Taita told him, stood up and strode on those long, stork-thin legs to the eastern wall. He looked up to the crumbling summit. The ruffian's name was Shufti, and he was one-eyed and ugly as the god Seth. He was trying to escape from the battle by climbing over the wall up there.' Taita stooped and picked up half of a baked-mud brick from the rubble and suddenly hurled it upwards. It sailed over the top of the high wall. 'I cracked his skull and brought him down with a single throw.'

Even though Nefer knew, at first hand, the old man's strength, and that his powers of endurance were legend, he was astonished by that throw. He is old as the mountains, older than my grandmother, for he nursed her as he has done me, Nefer marvelled. Men say he has witnessed two hundred inundations of the Nile and that he built the pyramids with his own hands. Then aloud he asked, 'Did you hack off his head, Tata, and place it on that pile there?' He pointed at the grisly monument.

'You know the story well enough, for I have told it to you a hundred times.' Taita feigned modest reluctance to extol his own deeds.

'Tell me again!' Nefer ordered.

Taita sat down on a stone block while Nefer settled at his feet in happy anticipation and listened avidly, until the rams' horns of the squadron sounded the recall with a blast that shattered into diminishing echoes along the black cliffs. 'Pharaoh summons us,' Taita said, and stood up to lead the way back through the gate.

There was a great bustle and scurry outside the walls, as the squadron made ready to go on into the dune lands. The waterskins were bulging again and the troopers were checking and tightening the harness of their teams before mounting up.

Pharaoh Tamose looked over the heads of his staff as the pair came through the gateway, and summoned Taita to his side with an inclination of his head. Together they walked out of earshot of the squadron officers. Lord Naja made as if to join them. Taita whispered a word to Pharaoh, then Tamose turned and sent Naja back with a curt word. The injured lord, flushed with mortification, shot a look at Taita that was fierce and sharp as a war arrow.

'You have offended Naja. Some day I might not be at hand to protect you,' Pharaoh warned.

'We dare trust no man,' Taita demurred. 'Not until we crush the head of the serpent of treachery that tightens its coils around the pillars of your palace. Until you return from this campaign in the north only the two of us must know where I am taking the Prince.'

'But Naja!' Pharaoh laughed dismissively. Naja was like a brother. They had run the Red Road together.

'Even Naja.' Taita said no more. His suspicions were at last hardening into certainty, but he had not yet gathered all the evidence he would need to convince Pharaoh.

'Does the Prince know why you are going into the fastness of the desert?' Pharaoh asked.

'He knows only that we are going to further his instruction in the mysteries, and to capture his godbird.'

'Good, Taita.' Pharaoh nodded. 'You were ever secretive but true. There is nothing more to say, for we have said it all. Now go, and may Horus spread his wings over you and Nefer.'

'Look to your own back, Majesty, for in these days enemies are standing behind you as well as to your front.'

Pharaoh grasped the Magus' upper arm and squeezed hard. Under his fingers the arm was thin but hard as a dried acacia branch. Then he went back to where Nefer waited beside the wheel of the royal chariot, with the injured air of a puppy ordered back to its kennel.

'Divine Majesty, there are younger men than me in the squadron.' The Prince made one last despairing effort to persuade his father that he should ride with the chariots. Pharaoh knew that the boy was right, of course. Meren, the grandson of the illustrious General Kratas, was his junior by three days and today was riding with his father as lance-bearer in one of the rear chariots. 'When will you allow me to ride into battle with you, Father?'

'Perhaps when you have run the Red Road. Then not even I will gainsay you.'

It was a hollow promise, and they both knew it. Running the Red Road was the onerous test of horsemanship and weapons that few warriors attempted. It was an ordeal that drained, exhausted and often killed even a strong man in his prime and trained to near perfection. Nefer was a long way from that day.

Then Pharaoh's forbidding expression softened and he gripped his son's arm in the only show of affection he would allow himself before his troops. 'Now it is my command that you go with Taita into the desert to capture your godbird, and thus to prove your royal blood and your right one day to wear the double crown.'

--

Nefer and the old man stood together beside the shattered walls of Gallala and watched the column fly past. Pharaoh led it, the reins wrapped around his wrists, leaning back against the pull of the horses, his chest bare, linen skirts whipping around his muscular legs, the blue war crown on his head rendering him tall and godlike.

Next came Lord Naja, almost as tall, almost as handsome. His mien was haughty and proud, the great recurved bow slung over his shoulder. Naja was one of the mightiest warriors of this very Egypt and his name had been given to him as a title of honour: Naja was the sacred cobra in the royal uraeus crown. Pharaoh Tamose had bestowed it upon him on the day that, together, they had won through the ordeal of the Red Road.

Naja did not deign to glance in Nefer's direction. Pharaoh's chariot had plunged into the mouth of the dark gorge before the last vehicle in the column went racing past where Nefer stood. Meren, his friend and companion of many illicit boyhood adventures, laughed in his face and made an obscene gesture, then raised his voice mockingly above the whine and rattle of the wheels. 'I will bring you the head of Apepi as a toy,' he promised, and Nefer hated him as he sped away. Apepi was the King of the Hyksos, and Nefer needed no toys: he was a man now, even if his father refused to recognize it.

The two were silent for long after Meren's chariot had disappeared, and the dust had settled. Then Taita turned without a word and went to where their horses were tethered. He tightened the surcingle around his mount's chest, hiked up his kilts and swung up with the limber movement of a much younger man. Once astride the animal's bare back he seemed to become one with it. Nefer remembered that legend related he had been the very first Egyptian to master the equestrian arts. He still bore the title Master of Ten Thousand Chariots, bestowed upon him with the Gold of Praise by two pharaohs in their separate reigns.

Certain it was that he was one of the few men who dared to ride astride. Most Egyptians abhorred this practice, considering it somehow obscene and undignified, not to mention risky. Nefer had no such qualms and as he vaulted up on to the back of his favourite colt, Stargazer, his black mood started to evaporate. By the time they had reached the crest of the hills above the ruined city he was almost his usual ebullient self. He cast one last longing glance at the feather of distant dust left on the northern horizon by the squadron then firmly turned his back upon it. 'Where are we going, Tata?' he demanded. 'You promised to tell me once we were on the road.'

Taita was always reticent and secretive, but seldom to the degree that he had been over the matter of their ultimate destination on this journey. 'We are going to Gebel Nagara,' Taita told him.

Nefer had never heard the name before, but he repeated it softly. It had a romantic, evocative ring. Excitement and anticipation made the back of his neck prickle, and he looked ahead into the great desert. An infinity of jagged and bitter hills stretched away to a horizon blue with heat-haze and distance. The colours of the raw rocks astounded the eye: they were the sullen blue of stormclouds, yellow as a weaver bird's plumage, or red as wounded flesh, and bright as crystal. The heat made them dance and quiver.

Taita looked down on this terrible place with a sense of nostalgia and homecoming. It was into this wilderness that he had retired after the death of his beloved Queen Lostris, at first creeping away like a wounded animal. Then, as the years passed and some of the pain with them, he had found himself drawn once more to the mysteries and the way of the great god Horus. He had gone into the wilderness as a physician and a surgeon, as a master of the known sciences. Alone in the fastness of the desert he had discovered the key to gates and doorways of the mind and the spirit beyond which few men ever journey. He had gone in a man but had emerged as a familiar of the great god Horus and an adept of strange and arcane mysteries that few men even imagined.

Taita had only returned to the world of men when his Queen Lostris had visited him in a dream as he slept in his hermit's cave at Gebel Nagara. Once more she had been a fifteen-year-old maiden, fresh and nubile, a desert rose in its first bloom with the dew upon its petals. Even as he slept his heart had swollen with love and threatened to burst his chest asunder.

'Darling Taita,' Lostris had whispered, as she touched his cheek and stirred him awake, 'you were one of the only two men I have ever loved. Tanus is with me now, but before you can come to me also there is one more charge that I lay upon you. You never once failed me. I know that you will not fail me now, will you, Taita?'

'I am yours to command, mistress.' His voice echoed strangely in his ears.

'In Thebes, my city of a hundred gates, this night is born a child. He is the son of my own son. They will name this child Nefer, which means pure and perfect in body and spirit. My longing is that he carry my blood and the blood of Tanus to the throne of Upper Egypt. But great and diverse perils already gather around the babe. He cannot succeed without your help. Only you can protect and guide him. These years you have spent alone in the wilderness, the skills and knowledge you have acquired here were to that purpose alone. Go to Nefer. Go now swiftly and stay with him until your task is completed. Then come to me, darling Taita. I will be waiting for you and your poor mutilated manhood shall be restored to you. You will be whole and entire when next you stand by my side, your hand in my hand. Do not fail me, Taita.'

'Never!' Taita had cried in the dream. 'In your life I never failed you. I will not fail you now in death.'

'I know you will not.' Lostris smiled a sweet, haunting smile, and her image faded into the desert night. He woke, with his face wet with tears, and gathered up his few possessions. He paused at the cave entrance only to check his direction by the stars. Instinctively, he looked for the bright particular star of the goddess. On the seventieth day after the Queen's death, on the night that the long ritual of her embalmment had been completed, that star had appeared suddenly in the heavens, a great red star that glowed where none had been before. Taita picked it out and made obeisance to it. Then he strode away into the western desert, back towards the Nile and the city of Thebes, beautiful Thebes of a hundred gates.

That had been over fourteen years ago, and now he hungered for the silent places, for only here could his powers grow back to their full strength, so that he could carry through the charge that Lostris had laid upon him. Only here could he pass some of that strength on to the Prince. For he knew that the dark powers of which she had warned him were gathering around them.

'Come!' he said to the boy. 'Let us go down and take your godbird.'

--

On the third night after leaving Gallala, when the constellation of the Wild Asses made its zenith in the northern night sky, Pharaoh halted the squadron to water the horses and to eat a hasty meal of sun-dried meat, dates and cold dhurra millet cakes. Then he ordered the mount-up. There was no sounding of the ram's horn trumpet now for they were into the territory where often the patrolling Hyksosian chariots ranged.

The column started forward again at the trot. As they went on the landscape changed dramatically. They were out of the bad lands at last, back into the foothills above the river valley. Below them they could make out the strip of dense vegetation, distant and dark in the moonlight, that marked the course of great Mother Nile. They had completed the wide circuit around Abnub and were in the rear of the main Hyksosian army on the river. Although they were a tiny force to go in against such an enemy as Apepi, they were the best charioteers in the armies of Tamose, which made them the finest in the world. Moreover, they held the element of surprise.

When Pharaoh had first proposed this strategy and told them he would lead the expedition in person, his war council had opposed him with all the vehemence they could muster against the word of a god. Even old Kratas, once the most reckless and savage warrior in all the armies of Egypt, had torn at his thick white beard and bellowed, 'By Seth's ragged and festering foreskin, I did not change your shit-smeared swaddling sheet so that I could send you straight into the loving arms of Apepi.' He was perhaps the one man who might dare to speak to a god-king in this fashion. 'Send another to do such menial work. Lead the breakthrough column yourself if it amuses you, but do not disappear into the desert to be devoured by ghouls and djinn. You are Egypt. If Apepi takes you he takes us all.'

Of all the council only Naja had supported him, but Naja was always loyal and true. Now they had won through the desert, and were into the enemy rear. In tomorrow's dawn they would make the one desperate charge that would split Apepi's army, and allow five more of Pharaoh's squadrons, a thousand chariots, to come boiling through to join him. Already he had the melliferous taste of victory on his tongue. Before the next full moon he would dine in the halls of Apepi's palace in Avaris.

It was almost two centuries since the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Egypt had been split apart. Since then either an Egyptian usurper or a foreigner invader had ruled in the northern kingdom. It was Tamose's destiny to drive out the Hyksos and unite the two lands once more. Only then could he wear the double crown with justification and the approval of all the ancient gods.

The night air blew in his face, cool enough to numb his cheeks, and his lance-bearer crouched low behind the dashboard to shield himself. The only sound was the crunch of the chariot wheels over the coarse gravel, the lances rattling softly in their scabbards, and the occasional low warning cry of 'Beware! Hole!' passed on down the column.

Suddenly the wide wadi of Gebel Wadun opened ahead of him and Pharaoh Tamose reined down the team. The wadi was the smooth roadway that would lead them down on to the flat alluvial plain of the river. Pharaoh tossed the reins to his lance-bearer and vaulted down to earth. He stretched his stiff, aching limbs and, without turning, heard the sound of Naja's chariot come up behind him. A low command and the wheels crunched into silence, then Naja's light, firm footsteps came to his side. 'From here the danger of discovery will be stronger,' Naja said, 'Look down there.' He pointed with a long, muscular arm over Pharaoh's shoulder. Where the wadi debouched on to the plain below them a single light showed, the soft yellow glow of an oil lamp. That is the village of El Wadun. That is where our spies will be waiting to lead us through the Hyksosian pickets. I will go ahead to the rendezvous to make safe the way. Do you wait here, Majesty, and I will return directly.'

'I will go with you.'

'I beg you. There may be treachery, Mem.' He used the King's childhood name. 'You are Egypt. You are too precious to risk.'

Pharaoh turned to look into the beloved face, lean and handsome. Naja's teeth gleamed white in the starlight as he smiled, and Pharaoh touched his shoulder lightly but with trust and affection. 'Go swiftly, and return as swiftly,' he acceded.

Naja touched his own heart, and ran back to his chariot. He saluted again as he wheeled past where the King stood, and Tamose smiled as he returned the salute then watched him go down the side of the wadi. When he reached the flat hard sand of the dry riverbed, Naja whipped up the horses, and they sped down towards the village of El Wadun. The chariot left black-shaded wheel-tracks behind it on the silvery sands, before it disappeared beyond the first bend of the wadi. When it had gone Pharaoh walked back down the waiting column, speaking quietly to the troopers, calling many by name, laughing softly with them, encouraging and cheering them. Small wonder they loved him, and followed him so gladly wherever he led them.

--

Lord Naja drove warily, hugging the south bank of the dry riverbed. Every now and then he glanced upwards at the crest of the hills, until at last he recognized the tower of wind-blasted rock that leaned slightly askew against the skyline, and grunted with satisfaction. A little further on he reached the point where a faint footpath left the wadi bottom and wound up the steep slope to the foot of the ancient watchtower.

With a curt word to his lance-bearer he jumped down from the footplate, and adjusted the cavalry bow over his shoulder. Then he unslung the clay fire-pot from the rail of the chariot, and started up the pathway. It was so well disguised that if he had not memorized ever turn and twist he would have lost his way a dozen times before he reached the top.

At last he stepped out on to the upper rampart of the tower. It had been built many centuries ago and was in ruinous condition. He did not approach the edge for there was a precipitous drop into the valley below. Instead he found the bundle of dry faggots hidden in the niche of the wall where he had left it and dragged it into the open. Quickly he built up a tiny pyramid of the kindling, then blew on the charcoal nuggets in the fire-pot, and when they glowed he crumbled a handful of dried grass on to them. They burst into flame and he lit the small signal beacon. He made no attempt to hide himself but stood out where a watcher below would see him illuminated on the height of the tower. The flames died away as the kindling was consumed. Naja sat down to wait in the darkness.

A short while later he heard a pebble rattle on the stony path below the walls and he whistled sharply. His signal was returned, and he stood up. He loosened the bronze blade of his sickle sword in its scabbard and nocked an arrow in the bow, standing ready for an instant draw. Moments later a harsh voice called to him in the Hyksosian language. He replied fluently and naturally in the same tongue, and the footsteps of at least two men sounded on the stone ramp.

Not even Pharaoh knew that Naja's mother had been Hyksosian. In the decades of their occupation the invaders had adopted many of the Egyptian ways. With a dearth of their own women to choose from, many of the Hyksos had taken Egyptian wives, and over the generations the blood-lines had become blurred.

A tall man stepped out on to the rampart. He wore a skull-hugging basinet of bronze, and multicoloured ribbons were tied in his full beard. The Hyksos dearly loved bright colours.

He opened his arms. The blessing of Seueth on you, cousin,' he growled, as Naja stepped into his embrace.

'And may he smile on you also, Cousin Trok, but we have little time,' Naja warned him, and indicated the first light fingers of the dawn stroking the eastern heavens with a lover's touch.

'You are right, coz.' The Hyksosian general broke the embrace, and turned to take a linen-wrapped bundle from his lieutenant, who stood close behind him. He handed it to Naja, who unwrapped it as he kicked life back into the beacon fire. In the light of the flames he inspected the arrow quiver it contained. It was carved from a light tough wood and covered with finely tooled and stitched leather. The workmanship was superb. This was the accoutrement of a high-ranking officer. Naja twisted free the stopper and drew one of the arrows from the container. He examined it briefly, spinning the shaft between his fingers to check its balance and symmetry

The Hyksosian arrows were unmistakable. The fletching feathers were dyed with the bright colours of the archer's regiment and the shaft was branded with his personal signet. Even if the initial strike was not fatal, the flint arrowhead was barbed and bound to the shaft in such a way that if a surgeon attempted to draw the arrow from a victim's flesh, the head would detach from the shaft and remain deep in the wound channel, there to putrefy and cause a lingering, painful death. Flint was much harder than bronze, and would not bend nor flatten if it struck bone.

Naja slipped the arrow back into the quiver and replaced the stopper. He had not taken the chance of bringing such distinctive missiles with him in his chariot. If discovered in his kit by his groom or lance-bearer, its presence would be remembered, and difficult to explain away.

'There is much that we still should discuss.' Naja squatted down and gestured for Trok to do the same. They talked quietly until at last Naja rose. 'Enough! Now we both know what must be done. The time for action has at last arrived.'

'Let the gods smile upon our enterprise.' Trok and Naja embraced again, and then, without another word, Naja left him, ran lightly down the rampart of the tower and took the narrow path down the hill.

Before he reached the bottom he found a place to cache the quiver. It was a niche where the rock had been split open by the roots of a thorn tree. Over the quiver he placed a rock the size and roughly the shape of a horse's head. The twisted upper branches of the tree formed a distinctive cross against the night sky. He would recognize the place again without difficulty.

Then he went on down the path to where his chariot stood in the wadi bottom.

--

Pharaoh Tamose saw the chariot returning, and knew by the impetuous manner in which Naja drove that something untoward was afoot. Quietly he ordered the squadron to mount up and stand with drawn weapons, ready to meet any eventuality.

Naja's chariot rattled up the pathway from the wadi bottom. The moment it drew level with where Pharaoh waited he sprang down. 'What's amiss?' Tamose demanded. 'A blessing from the gods,' Naja told him, unable to stop his voice shaking with excitement. They have delivered Apepi defenceless into our power.'

'How is that possible?'

'My spies have led me to where the enemy king is encamped but a short distance from where we now stand. His tents are set up just beyond the first line of hills, yonder.' He pointed back with his drawn sword.

'Can you be certain it is Apepi?' Tamose could barely control his own excitement.

'I saw him clearly in the light of his campfire. Every detail of his features. His great beaked nose and beard shot with silver shining in the firelight. There is no mistaking such stature. He towers above all those around him, and wears the vulture crown on his head.'

'What is his strength?' Pharaoh demanded.

'With his usual arrogance he has a bodyguard of less than fifty. I have counted them, and half of them are asleep, their lances stacked. He suspects nothing and his watchfires burn bright. A swift charge out of the darkness and we will have him in our grasp.'

'Take me to where Apepi lies,' Pharaoh commanded, and leaped to the footplate.

Naja led them, and the soft silvery sands of the wadi muffled the sounds of the wheels, so that in a ghostly silence the squadron swept around the last bend and Naja raised his clenched fist high to order the halt. Pharaoh drew up alongside him and leaned across.

'Where lies Apepi's camp?'

'Beyond the ridge. I left my spies overlooking it.' Naja pointed up the pathway towards the watchtower on the crest. 'On the far side is a hidden oasis. A sweet-water well and date palms. His tents are set among the trees.'

'We will take a small patrol with us to scout the camp. Only then can we plan our attack.'

Naja had anticipated the order, and with a few terse orders selected a scouting party of five troopers. Each one was bound to him by blood oath. They were his men, hand and heart.

'Muffle your scabbards,' Naja ordered. 'Make not a sound.' Then, with his recurved bow in his left hand, he stepped on to the pathway. Pharaoh came close behind him. They went upwards swiftly, until Naja saw the crossed branches of the thorn tree silhouetted against the dawn sky. He stopped abruptly, and held up his right hand for silence. He listened.

'What is it?' Pharaoh whispered close behind him.

'I thought I heard voices on the crest,' Naja answered, 'speaking the Hyksosian tongue. Wait here, Majesty, while I clear the path ahead.' Pharaoh and the five troopers sank down and squatted beside the path, while Naja went on stealthily. He stepped around a large boulder and his dim figure disappeared from view. The minutes passed slowly and Pharaoh began to fret. The dawn was coming on swiftly. The Hyksosian king would soon be breaking his camp, and moving on, out of their grasp. As a soft whistle came down to him he sprang to his feet eagerly. It was a skilful imitation of a nightingale's dawn call.

Pharaoh hefted his fabled blue sword. 'The way is clear,' he murmured, 'Come, follow me.'

They went on upwards, and Pharaoh reached the tall rock that blocked the pathway. He stepped round it then stopped abruptly. Lord Naja faced him at a distance of twenty paces. They were alone, hidden by the rock from the men who followed. Naja's bow was at full draw and the arrow was aimed at Pharaoh's naked chest. Even before he could move, the full realization of what confronted him blazed in Pharaoh's mind. This was the foul and loathsome thing that Taita, with his clairvoyant powers, had smelt in the air.

The light was strong enough for him to make out every detail of the enemy he had loved as a friend. The bowstring was pulled hard against Naja's lips, twisting them into a dreadful smile, and his eyes were honey gold and fierce as those of the hunting leopard as he glared at Pharaoh. The fletching of the arrow was crimson and yellow and green, and in the Hyksosian fashion the arrowhead was made from razor-sharp flint, designed to tear through the bronze of an enemy's helmet and cuirass.

'May you live for ever!' Silently Naja mouthed the words as though they were a curse, and he loosed the arrow. It flew from the bowstring with a twang and a hum. It seemed to come quite slowly, like some poisonous flying insect. The feathers spun the shaft, and it made one full revolution as it covered the twenty paces. Though Pharaoh's eyesight was sharpened and his other senses were heightened by the mortal danger in which he found himself, he could move only with the slowness of nightmare, too slowly to avoid the missile. The arrow took him high in the centre of his chest, where his royal heart pounded in its cage of ribs. It struck with the sound of a boulder dropped from a height into a bed of thick Nile mud, and half the length of the shaft was driven through his chest. He was spun round by the force of the impact, and thrown against the red rock of the boulder. For a moment he clung to the rough surface with his hooked fingers. The flint arrowhead had pierced him through and through. The blood-clotted barb stood out of the knotted muscles that ran down the right side of his spine.

The blue sword dropped from his fist, and a low cry burst from his open mouth, the sound muffled by a gout of his own bright lung blood. He began to slide down to his knees, his legs buckling under him, his fingernails leaving shallow scratches on the red rock.

Naja sprang forward with a wild cry, 'Ambush! Beware!' and he slipped one arm around Pharaoh's chest below the protruding arrow.

Supporting the dying king he bellowed again, 'On me, the guards!' and two stout troopers appeared almost instantly from around the rock wall, responding to his rallying cry. They saw at a glance how Pharaoh was struck and the bright bunch of feathers on the base of the arrow.

'Hyksos!' one yelled, as they snatched Pharaoh from Naja's grasp and dragged him back behind the shelter of the rock.

'Carry Pharaoh back to his chariot while I hold off the enemy,' Naja ordered, and whirled around, pulling another arrow from his quiver and loosing it up the path towards the deserted summit, bellowing a challenge, then answering himself with a muffled counter-challenge in the Hyksosian language.

He snatched up the blue sword from where Tamose had dropped it, bounded back down the path and caught up with the small party of charioteers who were carrying the king away, down to where the chariots were waiting in the wadi.

'It was a trap,' Naja told them urgently. 'The hilltop is alive with the enemy. We must get Pharaoh away to safety.' But he could see by the way the king's head rolled weakly on his shoulders that he was past any help, and Naja's chest swelled with triumph. The blue war crown toppled from Pharaoh's brow and bumped down the path. Naja gathered it up as he ran past, fighting down the temptation to place it on his own head.

'Patience. The time is not yet ripe for that,' he chided himself silently, 'but already Egypt is mine, and all her crowns and pomp and power. I am become this very Egypt. I am become part of the godhead.'

He held the heavy crown protectively under his arm, and aloud he cried, 'Hurry, the enemy is on the path hard behind us. Hurry! The king must not fall into their hands.'

The troops below had heard the wild cries in the dawn, and the regimental surgeon was waiting for them beside the wheel of Pharaoh's chariot. He had been trained by Taita, and though lacking the old man's special magic he was a skilled doctor and might be capable of staunching even such a terrible wound as had pierced Pharaoh's chest. But Lord Naja would not risk having his victim returned to him from the underworld. He ordered the surgeon away brusquely. 'The enemy is hard upon us. There is no time for your quackery now. We must get him back to the safety of our own lines before we are overrun.'

Tenderly he lifted the king from the arms of the men who carried him and laid him on the footplate of his own chariot. He snapped off the shaft of the arrow that protruded from the king's chest and held it aloft so that all his men could see it clearly. This bloody instrument has struck down our Pharaoh. Our god and our king. May Seth damn the Hyksosian pig-swine who fired it, and may he burn in eternal flame for a thousand years.' His men growled in warlike agreement. Carefully Naja wrapped the arrow in a linen cloth, and placed it in the bin on the side wall of the chariot. He would deliver it to the council in Thebes to substantiate his report on Pharaoh's death.

'A good man here to hold Pharaoh,' Naja ordered, Treat him gently.'

While the king's own lance-bearer came forward, Naja unbuckled the sword-belt from around Pharaoh's waist, sheathed the blue sword and carefully stowed it in his own weapons bin.

The lance-bearer jumped on to the footplate and cradled Tamose's head. Fresh bright blood bubbled from the corners of his mouth as the chariot wheeled in a circle then sped back up the dry wadi with the rest of the squadron driving hard to keep up with it. Even though he was supported by the strong arms of his lance-bearer Pharaoh's limp body was jolted cruelly.

Facing forward so that none could see his expression, Naja laughed softly. The sound was covered by the grinding wheels and the crash of the chassis over the small boulders he made no attempt to avoid. They left the wadi and raced on towards the dunes and the natron lakes.

It was mid-morning and the blinding white sun was halfway up the sky before Naja allowed the column to halt and the surgeon to come forward again to examine the king. It did not need his special skills to tell that Pharaoh's spirit had long before left his body and started on its journey to the underworld.

'Pharaoh is dead,' the surgeon said quietly, as he stood up with the royal blood coating his hands to the wrists. A terrible cry of mourning started at the head of the column and ran down its entire length. Naja let them play out their grief then sent for his troop captains.

The state is without a head,' he told them. 'Egypt is in dire peril. Ten of the fastest chariots must take Pharaoh's body back to Thebes with all haste. I shall lead them for it may be that the council will wish me to take up the duties of regent to Prince Nefer.'

He had planted the first seeds and saw by their awed expressions that they had taken root almost immediately. He went on, with a grim, businesslike air that suited the tragic circumstances which had overtaken them, The surgeon must wrap the royal corpse before I take it home to the funeral temple. But in the meantime we must find Prince Nefer. He must be informed of his father's death and of his own succession. This is the single most urgent matter of state, and of my regency.' He had assumed that title smoothly, and no man questioned him or even looked askance. He unrolled a papyrus scroll, a map of the territory from Thebes down to Memphis, and spread it on the dashboard of his chariot. He pored over it. 'You must split up into your troops and scour the countryside for the prince. I believe that Pharaoh sent him into the desert with the eunuch to undertake the rituals of manhood, so we will concentrate our search here, from Gallala where we last saw him towards the south and east.' With the eye for ground of a commander of armies Naja picked out the search area, and ordered a net of chariots to be spread out across the land to bring in the prince.

--

The squadron returned to Gallala with Lord Naja in the van. Next in line came the vehicle carrying the partially embalmed body of Pharaoh. On the shore of the natron lake Waifra, the surgeon, had laid out the royal corpse and made the traditional incision in his left side. Through this he had removed the viscera and internal organs. The contents of the stomach and intestines had been washed in the viscous salt water of the lake. Then all the organs were packed with the white crystals of evaporated natron from the lake edge and stored in pottery wine jars. The king's body cavity was packed with natron salts, then wrapped in linen bindings soaked with the harsh salt. When they reached Thebes he would be taken to his own funerary temple and handed over to the priests and embalmers for the ritual seventy days of preparation for burial. Naja grudged every minute spent upon the road, for he was in desperate haste to return to Thebes before the news of the King's death preceded him. Yet at the gates of the ruined city he took more precious time to instruct the troop captains who were to undertake the search for the prince.

'Sweep all the roads to the east. The eunuch is a wily old bird and will have covered his tracks, but smell him out,' he ordered them. There are villages at the oases of Satam and Lakara. Question the people. You may use the whip and the hot iron to make certain they hide nothing. Search all the secret places of the wilderness. Find the prince and the eunuch. Fail me not, at your peril.'

When at last the captains had refilled their waterskins and were ready to take their divisions out into the desert, he held them with a final order, and they knew from his voice and his ferocious yellow eyes that this was the most fateful order of all, and that to disobey would mean death. 'When you find Prince Nefer, bring him to me. Give him into no other hand but mine.'

There were Nubian scouts with the divisions, black slaves from the wild southlands highly skilled in the art of tracking down men and beasts. They trotted ahead of the chariots as they fanned out into the wilderness, and Lord Naja spent another few precious minutes watching them go. His jubilation was tempered with unease. He knew that the ancient eunuch, Taita, was an adept; that he possessed strange and wonderful powers. If there is one single man who can stop me now, it is he. I wish that I could run them down myself, the eunuch and the brat, rather than send underlings to pit themselves against the Warlock's wiles. But my destiny calls to me from Thebes and I dare not linger.

He ran back to his chariot and seized the reins. 'Onwards!' He gave the command to advance with a clenched fist. 'Onwards to Thebes!'

They drove the horses hard, so that when they raced down the escarpment of the eastern hills on to the wide alluvial plain of the river, the lather had dried white on their heaving flanks and their eyes were red and wild.

Naja had withdrawn a full legion of the Phat Guards from the army encamped before Abnub. He had explained to Pharaoh that these were the strategic reserves to throw into the gap and prevent a Hyksosian break-out should the offensive fail. However, the Phat Guard was his own special regiment. The commanders were oath-bound to him. Following his secret orders they had pulled back from Abnub, and were waiting for him now at the oasis of Boss, only two leagues from Thebes.

The guards' pickets saw the dust of the approaching chariots and stood to arms. The colonel, Asmor, and his officers were turned out in full armour to meet Lord Naja. The legion, under arms, was drawn up behind them.

'Lord Asmor!' Naja hailed him from the chariot. 'I have dreadful news to take to the council at Thebes. Pharaoh is killed by a Hyksosian arrow.

'Lord Naja, I stand ready to carry out your orders.'

'Egypt is a child without a father.' Naja halted his chariot in front of the ranks of plumed and glittering warriors. Now he raised his voice so it carried clearly to the rear ranks. 'Prince Nefer is a child still, and not yet ready to rule. Egypt stands in desperate need of a regent to lead her, lest the Hyksos take advantage of our disarray.' He paused and stared significantly at Colonel Asmor. Asmor lifted his chin slightly in acknowledgement of the trust that Naja had placed in him. He had been promised rewards greater than any he had ever dreamed of.

Naja raised his voice to a bellow: 'If Pharaoh falls in battle, the army has the right by acclamation to appoint a regent in the field.' He fell silent and stood with one fist clenched on his breast and the lance in his other hand.

Asmor took a pace forward and turned to face the ranks of heavily armed guards. With a theatrical gesture he removed his helmet. His face was dark and hard. A pale scar from a sword slash twisted his nose to one side, and his shaven pate was covered by a plaited horsehair wig. He pointed his drawn sword to the sky, and he shouted, in a voice that had been trained to carry over the din of battle, 'Lord Naja! Hail to the Regent of Egypt! Hail to Lord Naja!'

There was a long moment of stunned silence before the legion erupted in a roar, like a pride of hunting lions, 'Hail to Lord Naja, Regent of Egypt.'

The cheering and the uproar lasted until Lord Naja raised his fist again, and in the silence that followed he spoke clearly: 'You do me great honour! I accept the charge you place upon me.'

'Bak-her!' they shouted, and beat upon their shields with sword and lance until the echoes broke like distant thunder on the hills of the escarpment.

In the uproar Naja summoned Asmor to him. 'Place pickets on all the roads. No man leaves this place until I do. No word of this must reach Thebes ahead of me.'

--

The journey from Gallala had taken three days of hard riding. The horses were worn out, and even Naja was exhausted. Yet he allowed himself only an hour to rest, bathe away the dust of the journey and change his apparel. Then, with his jaw shaven, his hair oiled and combed, he mounted the ceremonial chariot that Asmor had ready and waiting at the entrance to the tent. The gold leaf that decorated the dashboard shone in the sunlight.

Naja wore a white linen skirt, with a pectoral plate of gold and semiprecious stones covering his bare muscled chest. On his hip he carried the fabulous blue sword in its golden scabbard that he had taken from Pharaoh's dead body. The blade was beaten from some marvellous metal, heavier, harder and sharper than any bronze. There was none other like it in all Egypt. It had once belonged to Tanus, Lord Harrab, and had come to Pharaoh by his bequest.

The most significant of all his accoutrements, however, was the least eye-catching. On his right arm, held in place by a plain band of gold above the elbow, was the blue hawk seal. Like the sword Naja had taken it from Tamose's royal corpse. As Regent of Egypt, Naja was now entitled to wear this potent badge of imperial power.

His bodyguard formed up around him, and the full legion fell in behind him. With five thousand men at his back the new Regent of Egypt began his march on Thebes.

Asmor rode as his lance-bearer. He was young for the command of a full legion, but he had proved himself in battle against the Hyksos, and he was Naja's close companion. He, too, had Hyksosian blood in his veins. Once, Asmor had thought the command of a legion was the summit of his ambition, but now he had scaled the foothills and suddenly before him rose the glorious alps of exalted office, of power unfettered, and - dare he even think it? - elevation to the highest ranks of the nobility. There was nothing he would not do, no act so reckless or base that he would not undertake it willingly to hasten his patron Lord Naja's ascension to the throne of Egypt.

'What stands before us now, my old comrade?' It seemed that Naja had read his thought, for the question was so appropriate.

'The Yellow Flowers have cleared all but one of the princes of the House of Tamose from your path,' Asmor answered, and pointed with his lance across the grey silt-laden waters of the Nile to the far hills in the west. 'They lie there in their tombs in the Valley of the Nobles.'

Three years previously the plague of the Yellow Flowers had swept through the two kingdoms. The disease was named for the dreadful yellow lesions that covered the faces and bodies of the stricken before they succumbed to the pox's burning fevers. It was no respecter of persons, choosing its victims from every station and level of society, sparing neither Egyptian nor Hyksos, man nor woman nor child, neither peasant nor prince, it had mown them down like fields of dhurra millet before the sickle.

Eight princesses and six princes of the House of Tamose had died. Of all Pharaoh's children, only two girls and Prince Nefer Memnon had survived. It was as though the gods had set out deliberately to clear the path to the throne of Egypt for Lord Naja.

There were those who vowed that Nefer and his sisters would have died also, had not the ancient Magus Taita wrought his magic to save them. The three children still bore the tiny scars on their left upper arms where he had cut them and placed in their blood his magical charm against the Yellow Flowers.

Naja frowned. Even in this moment of his triumph he could still give thought to the strange powers possessed by the Magus. No man could deny that he had found the secret of life. He had already lived so long that no one knew his age; some said a hundred years and others two hundred. Yet he still walked and ran and drove a chariot like a man in his prime. No man could better him in debate, none could surpass him in learning. Surely the gods loved him, and had bestowed upon him the secret of life eternal.

Once he was Pharaoh, that would be the only thing that Naja lacked. Could he wring the secret out of Taita the Warlock? First, he must be captured and brought in along with Prince Nefer, but he must not be harmed. He was far too valuable. The chariots Naja had sent to scour the eastern deserts would bring him back a throne in the form of Prince Nefer, and life eternal in the human guise of the eunuch, Taita.

Asmor interrupted his thoughts: 'We of the loyal Phat Guard are the only troops south of Abnub. The rest of the army is deployed against the Hyksos in the north. Thebes is defended by a handful of boys, cripples and old men. Nothing stands in your way, Regent.'

Any fears that the legion under arms would be denied entrance to the city proved baseless. The main gates were thrown open as soon as the sentries recognized the blue standard, and the citizens ran out to meet them. They carried palm fronds and garlands of water-lilies, for a rumour had swept through the city that Lord Naja brought tidings of a mighty victory over Apepi of the Hyksos.

But the welcoming cries and laughter soon gave way to wild ululations of mourning when they saw the swaddled royal corpse on the floorboards of the second chariot and heard the cries of the leading charioteers: 'Pharaoh is dead! He has been slain by the Hyksos. May he live for ever.'

The wailing crowds followed the chariot that carried the royal corpse to the funerary temple, clogging the streets, and in the confusion no one seemed to notice that divisions of Asmor's men had taken over from the guards at the main gates, and had swiftly set up pickets at every corner and in every square.

The chariot bearing Tamose's corpse had drawn the crowds along with it. The rest of the usually swarming city was almost deserted, and Naja galloped his chariot team swiftly through the narrow crooked streets to the river palace. He knew that every member of the council would hurry to the assembly chamber as soon as they heard the dreadful news. They left the chariots at the entrance to the gardens, and Asmor and fifty men of the bodyguard formed up around Naja. They marched in close order through the inner courtyard, past the ponds of the water garden filled with hyacinth and fish from the river, which shone like jewels below the surface of the limpid pools.

The arrival of such a band of armed men took the council unawares. The doors to the chamber were unguarded, and only four members were already assembled. Naja paused in the doorway and looked them over swiftly. Menset and Talla were old and past their once formidable powers; Cinka had always been weak and vacillating. There was only one man of force in the chamber with whom he had to reckon.

Kratas was older than any of them, but in the way that a volcano is old. His robes were in disarray - clearly he had come directly from his pallet, but not from sleep. They said that he was still able to keep his two young wives and all of his five concubines in play, which Naja did not doubt, for the tales of his feats with arms and amours were legion. The fresh, damp stains on his white linen kilt and the sweet natural perfume of female concupiscence that enveloped him were apparent even from where Naja stood. The scars on his arms and bare chest were testimony to a hundred battles fought and won over the years. The old man no longer deigned to wear the numerous chains of the Gold of Valour and the Gold of Praise to which he was entitled - in any case, such a mass of the precious metal would have weighed down an ox.

'Noble lords!' Naja greeted the members of the council. 'I come to bring you dire tidings.' He strode down into the chamber and Menset and Talla shrank away, staring at him like two rabbits watching the sinuous approach of the cobra. 'Pharaoh is dead. He was cut down by a Hyksosian arrow while storming the enemy stronghold above El Wadun.'

The council members gawked at him in silence, all except Kratas. He was the first to recover from the shock of that news. His sorrow was matched only by his anger. He rose ponderously to his feet, and glowered at Naja and his bodyguard, like an old bull buffalo surprised in his wallow by a pride of half-grown lion cubs. 'By what excess of treasonable impudence do you wear the hawk seal upon your arm? Naja, son of Timlat out of the belly of a Hyksosian slut, you are not fit to grovel in the dirt under the feet of the man from whom you looted that talisman. That sword at your waist has been wielded by hands more noble by far than your soft paws.' The dome of Kratas' bald head turned purple and his craggy features quivered with outrage.

For a moment Naja was taken aback. How did the old monster know that his mother had been of Hyksosian blood? That was a close secret. He was forcefully reminded that this was the only man, besides Taita, who might have the strength and the power to wrest the double crown from his grasp.

Despite himself he took a step backwards. 'I am the Regent of the royal Prince Nefer. I wear the blue hawk seal by right," he answered.

'No!' Kratas thundered. 'You do not have the right. Only great and noble men have the right to wear the hawk seal. Pharaoh Tamose had the right, Tanus, Lord Harrab had the right, and a line of mighty kings before them. You, you slinking cur, have no such right.'

'I was acclaimed by my legions in the field. I am the Regent of Prince Nefer.'

Kratas strode towards him across the chamber floor, 'You are no soldier. You were thrashed at Lastra and Siva by your Hyksos jackal kin. You are no statesman, no philosopher. You have gained some small distinction only by Pharaoh's lapse in judgement. I warned him against you a hundred times.'

'Back, you old fool!' Naja warned him. 'I stand in the place of Pharaoh. If you handle me, you give offence to the crown and dignity of Egypt.'

'I am going to strip the seal and that sword off you.' Kratas did not check his step. 'And afterwards I might give myself the pleasure of whipping your buttocks.'

At Naja's right hand Asmor whispered, 'The penalty for lèse-majesté is death.'

Instantly Naja realized his opportunity. He lifted his chin and looked into the old man's still bright eyes. 'You are an ancient bag of wind and dung,' he challenged. 'Your day has passed, Kratas, you doddering old idiot. You dare not lay a finger on the Regent of Egypt.'

As he had intended, the insult was too great for Kratas to bear. He let out a bellow and rushed the last few paces. He was surprisingly quick for a man of his age and bulk, and he seized Naja, lifted him off his feet and tried to rip the hawk seal from his arm.

'You are not fit-'

Without looking round, Naja spoke to Asmor, who stood only a pace behind his shoulder with his drawn sickle sword in his right hand.

'Strike!' said Naja softly. 'And strike deep!'

Asmor stepped to the side, opening Kratas' flank above the waistband of the kilt for the thrust low in the back, into the kidneys. In his trained hand the blow was true and powerful. The bronze blade slipped in silently, easily as a needle into a sheet of silk, right in to the hilt, then Asmor twisted it in the flesh to enlarge the wound channel.

Kratas' whole body stiffened and his eyes opened wide. He loosed his grip and let Naja drop back to his feet. Asmor pulled out the blade. It came away reluctantly against the suck of clinging flesh. The bright bronze was smeared with dark blood, and a sluggish trickle ran down to soak into Kratas' white linen kilt. Asmor stabbed again, this time higher, angling the blade upwards under the lowest rib. Kratas frowned and shook his great leonine head, as though annoyed at some childish nonsense. He turned away and began to walk towards the door of the chamber. Asmor ran after him and stabbed him again in the back. Kratas kept walking.

'My lord, help me kill the dog,' Asmor panted, and Naja drew the blue sword and ran to join him. The blade bit deeper than any bronze as Naja hacked and stabbed. Kratas reeled out through the doors of the chamber into the courtyard, blood spurting and pulsing from a dozen wounds. Behind him the other members of the council shouted, 'Murder! Spare the noble Kratas.'

Asmor shouted just as loudly, 'Traitor! He has laid hands on the Regent of Egypt!' And he thrust again, aiming for the heart, but Kratas staggered against the surrounding wall of the fish pond, and tried to steady himself. However, his hands were red and slick with his own blood and found no grip on the polished marble. He collapsed over the low coping and, with a heavy splash, disappeared under the surface.

The two swordsmen paused, hanging over the wall to catch their breath as the waters were stained pink by the old man's blood. Suddenly his bald head thrust out of the pool and Kratas drew a noisy breath.

'In the name of all the gods, will not the old bastard die?' Asmor's voice was filled with astonishment and frustration.

Naja vaulted over the wall into the pond and stood waist-deep over the huge, floundering body. He placed one foot on Kratas' throat and forced his head beneath the surface. Kratas struggled and heaved beneath him, and the waters were stained with blood and churned river mud. Naja trod down with all his weight and kept him under. ''Tis like riding a hippopotamus.' He laughed breathlessly, and immediately Asmor and the soldiers joined in with him, crowding the edge of the pool. They roared with laughter and jeered, 'Have your last drink, Kratas, you old sot.'

'You will go to Seth bathed and sweet smelling as a babe. Even the god will not recognize you.'

The old man's struggles grew weaker, until a vast exhalation of breath bubbled to the surface and at last he was still. Naja waded to the side of the pool and stepped out. Kratas' body rose slowly to the surface and floated there face down.

'Fish him out!' Naja ordered. 'Do not have him embalmed, but hack him into pieces and bury him with the other bandits, rapists and traitors in the Valley of the Jackal. Do not mark his grave.' Kratas was thus denied the chance to reach Paradise. He would be doomed eternally to wander in darkness.

Dripping wet to the waist Naja strode back into the council chamber. By this time all the other members of the council had arrived. They had been witness to Kratas' fate and huddled, pale and shaken, on their benches. They stared at Naja aghast as he stood before them with the reeking blue blade in his hand. 'My noble lords, death has always been the penalty for treason. Is there any man among you who would question the justice of this execution?' He looked at each in turn and they dropped their eyes: the Phat Guards stood shoulder to shoulder around the wall of the chamber and, with Kratas gone, there was no man to give them direction.

'My lord Menset,' Naja singled out the president of the council, 'do you endorse my action in executing the traitor Kratas?'

For a long moment it seemed that Menset might defy him, but then he sighed and looked at his hands in his lap. 'The punishment was just,' he whispered. 'The council endorses the actions of the Lord Naja.'

'Does the council also ratify the appointment of Lord Naja as the Regent of Egypt?' Naja asked softly but his voice carried clearly in the fraught and silent chamber.

Menset raised his eyes and looked around at his fellow members, but not one would catch his eye. 'The President and all the councillors of this assembly acknowledge the new Regent of Egypt.' At last Menset looked directly at Naja, but such a dark, scornful expression blighted his usually jovial features that before the full of this moon he would be found dead in his bed. For the time being Naja merely nodded.

'I accept the duty and heavy responsibility you have placed upon me.' He sheathed his sword and mounted the dais to the throne. 'As my first official pronouncement in my capacity of Regent in Council I wish to describe to you the gallant death of the divine Pharaoh Tamose.' He paused significantly, then for the next hour he related in detail his version of the fatal campaign and the attack on the heights of El Wadun. Thus died one of Egypt's most gallant kings. His last words to me as I carried him down the hill were, "Care for my only remaining son. Guard my son Nefer until he is man enough to wear the double crown. Take my two small daughters under your wings, and see that no harm befalls them."'

Lord Naja made little attempt to hide his terrible grief and it took him some moments to bring his emotions under control. Then he went on firmly, 'I will not fail the god who was my friend and my pharaoh. Already I have sent my chariots into the wilderness to search for Prince Nefer and bring him back to Thebes. As soon as he arrives we will set him on the throne, and place the scourge and the sceptre in his hands.'

There was the first murmur of approval among the councillors, and Naja continued, 'Now send for the princesses. Have them brought to the chamber immediately.'

When they came hesitantly through the main doors, Heseret the elder was leading her little sister, Merykara, by the hand. Merykara had been playing pitch and toss with her friends. She was flushed from her exertions and her slim body was dewed with sweat. She was still several years from womanhood so her legs were long and coltish and her bare chest was as flat as a boy's. She wore her long black hair in a side-lock that hung over her left shoulder, and her linen breech clout was so diminutive that it left the lower half of her little round buttocks exposed. She smiled shyly around this formidable gathering of famous men, and clung harder to her elder sister's hand.

Heseret had seen her first red moon and was dressed in the linen skirts and wig of a marriageable woman. Even the old men looked at her avidly for she had inherited in full measure her grandmother Queen Lostris' celebrated beauty. Her skin was milky. Her limbs were smooth and shapely, and her naked breasts were like celestial moons. Her expression was serene but the corners of her mouth lifted in a secret, mischievous smile, and there were intriguing lights in her huge dark green eyes.

'Come forward, my pretty darlings,' Naja called to them, and only then they recognized the man who was the close and beloved friend of their father. They smiled and came towards him trustingly. He rose from the throne, went down to meet them and placed his hands on their shoulders. His voice and his expression were tragic. 'You must be brave now, and remember that you are princesses of the royal house, because I have bitter news for you. Pharaoh your father is dead." For a minute they did not seem to understand, then Heseret let out the high keening wail of mourning, followed immediately by Merykara.

Gently Naja put his arms around them, and led them to sit at the foot of the throne, where they sank to their knees and clung to each other, weeping inconsolably.

The distress of the royal princesses is plain for all the world to see,' Naja told the assembly. 'The trust and the duty that Pharaoh placed upon me is equally plain. As I have taken Prince Nefer Memnon into my care, so now I take the two princesses, Heseret and Merykara, under my protection.'

'Now he has all the royal brood in his hands. But no matter where he is in the wilderness, and how hale and strong the Prince Nefer may seem,' Talla whispered to his neighbour, 'methinks he is already sickening unto death. The new Regent of Egypt has made abundantly clear his style of government.'

--

Nefer sat in the shadow of the cliff that towered above Gebel Nagara. He had not moved since the sun had first shown its upper rim above the mountains across the valley. At first the effort of remaining still had burned along his nerve endings and made his skin itch as though poisonous insects were crawling upon it. But he knew that Taita was watching him so he had forced his wayward body slowly to his will and risen above its petty dictates. Now at last he sat in a state of exalted awareness, his every sense tuned to the wilderness about him.

He could smell the water that rose from its secret spring in the cleft in the cliff. It came up a slow drop at a time and dripped into the basin in the rock that was not much larger than the cup of his two hands, then overflowed and dribbled down into the next basin, green-lined with slippery algae. From there it ran down to disappear for ever into the ruddy sands of the valley bottom. Yet much life was supported by this trickle of water: butterfly and beetle, serpent and lizard, the graceful little gazelle that danced like whiffs of saffron dust on the heat-quivering plains, the speckled pigeons with their ruffs of wine-coloured feathers that nested on high ledges all drank here. It was because of these precious pools that Taita had brought him to this place to wait for his godbird.

They had begun to make the net on the day of their arrival at Gebel Nagara. Taita had bought the silk from a merchant in Thebes. The hank of thread had cost the price of a fine stallion, for it had been brought from a land far to the east of the Indus river on a journey that had taken years to complete. Taita had shown Nefer how to weave the net out of the fine threads. The mesh was stronger than thick strands of linen or thongs of leather but almost invisible to the eye.

When the net was ready Taita had insisted that the boy catch the decoys himself. 'It is your godbird. You must take it yourself,' he had explained. 'That way your claim will be more secure in the sight of the great god Horus.'

So, in the baking daylight out on the valley floor, Nefer and Taita had studied the route up the cliff. When darkness fell Taita had sat beside the small fire at the base of the cliff and softly chanted his incantations, at intervals throwing a handful of herbs on to the fire. When the crescent moon rose to illuminate the darkness of midnight Nefer had started the precarious climb to the ledge where the pigeons roosted. He had seized two of the big, fluttering birds while they were still disorientated and confused by the darkness and the spell that Taita had cast over them. He brought them down in the leather saddlebag slung on his back.

Under Taita's instruction Nefer had plucked the feathers from one wing of each bird, so that they were no longer able to fly. Then they had selected a spot close to the base of the cliff and the spring, but exposed enough to make the birds clearly visible from the sky above. They tethered the pigeons by the leg with a thread of horsetail hair and a wooden peg driven into the hard earth. Then they had spread the gossamer net above them, and supported it on stalks of dried elephant grass, which would snap and collapse under the stoop of the godbird.

'Stretch the net gently,' Taita had shown him, 'not too tight, nor again too slack. It must catch in the bird's beak and his talons and tangle him so that he cannot struggle and damage himself before we can free him.'

When all was set up to Taita's satisfaction, they began the long wait. Soon the pigeons had become accustomed to their captivity, and pecked greedily at the handfuls of dhurra millet that Nefer scattered for them. Then they sunned and dusted themselves contentedly under the silken net. One day succeeded the next hot, sun-riven day, and still they waited.

In the cool of the evening they brought in the pigeons, furled the net, and then they hunted for food. Taita climbed to the top of the cliff where he sat cross-legged on the edge, overlooking the long valley. Nefer waited in ambush below, never in the same place so that the game were always surprised when they came to drink at the spring. From his vantage-point Taita wove his spell of enticement, which seldom failed to seduce the dainty gazelle within fair shot of where Nefer lay with his arrow nocked and bow held at draw. Every evening they grilled gazelle steaks over the fire at the entrance to the cave.

The cave had been Taita's retreat during all the years after the death of Queen Lostris when he had lived here as a hermit. It was his place of power. Although Nefer was a novice, and had no deep understanding of the old man's mystical skills, he could not doubt them, for every day they were demonstrated to him.

They had been at Gebel Nagara for many days before Nefer began to understand that they had not come here to find the godbird alone: this interlude was an extension of the training and instruction Taita had lavished upon him from as far back as Nefer's young memory stretched. Even the long hours of waiting beside the decoys was a lesson in itself. Taita was teaching him control over his body and being, teaching him to open doors within his mind, teaching him to look inward, to listen to the silence and hear whispers to which others were deaf.

Once he had been conditioned to the silence, Nefer was more amenable to the deeper wisdom and learning that Taita had to impart. They sat together in the desert night, under the swirling patterns of the stars that were eternal but ephemeral as the winds and the currents of the oceans, and Taita described to him wonders that seemed to have no explanation but could only be perceived by an opening and extension of the mind. He sensed that he stood merely on the shadowy periphery of this mystical knowledge, but he felt growing inside him a great hunger for more.

One morning when Nefer left the cave in the grey light before dawn, he saw a huddle of dark, silent figures sitting out in the desert beyond the spring of Gebel Nagara. He went to tell Taita, and the old man nodded. 'They have been waiting all night.' He spread a woollen cloak over his shoulders and went out to them.

When they recognized Taita's gaunt figure in the half-light they burst into wails of supplication. They were people of the desert tribes and they had brought children to him, children stricken by the Yellow Flowers, hot with fever and covered with the terrible sores of the disease.

Taita ministered to them, while they remained camped beyond the spring. None of the children died, and after ten days the tribe brought gifts of millet, salt and tanned hides, which they left at the entrance to the cave. Then they were gone into the wilderness. After that there came others, suffering from disease and wounds inflicted by men and beasts. Taita went out to all of them, and turned none away. Nefer worked beside him and learned much from what he saw and heard.

No matter if there were the sick and ailing Bedouin to care for, or food to be gathered, or instruction or learning to be imparted, each morning they set out the decoys under the silken net and waited beside them.

Perhaps they had fallen under the calming influence of Taita, for the once-wild pigeons became docile and quiescent as chickens. They allowed themselves to be handled without any sign of fear, and uttered soft throaty coos as their legs were secured to the pegs. Then they settled and fluffed up their feathers.

On the twentieth morning of their stay, Nefer took up his position over the decoys. As always, even without looking directly at Taita, Nefer was deeply aware of his presence. The old man's eyes were closed and he, like the pigeons, seemed to be dozing in the sunlight. His skin was criss-crossed with innumerable fine wrinkles and dappled with age spots. It seemed so delicate that it might tear as easily as the finest papyrus parchment. His face was hairless, no trace of beard or eyebrows; only fine lashes, colourless as glass, surrounded his eyes. Nefer had heard his father say that neutering had left Taita's face beardless and little marked by the passage of time, but he was certain that there were more esoteric reasons for his longevity and the persistence of his strength and life-force. In vivid contrast to his other features, Taita's hair was dense and strong as that of a healthy young woman, but bright burnished silver in colour. Taita was proud of it and kept it washed and groomed in a thick plait down his back. Despite his learning and age, the old Magus was not inured to vanity.

This little touch of humanity heightened Nefer's love for him to the point where it stabbed his chest with a strength that was almost painful. He wished that there was some way in which he could express it, but he knew that Taita already understood, for Taita knew everything.

He reached out surreptitiously to touch the old man's arm as he slept, but suddenly Taita's eyes opened, focused and aware. Nefer knew that he had not been asleep at all, but that all his powers had been concentrated on bringing in the godbird to the decoys. He knew that, in some way, his wandering thoughts and his movement had affected the outcome of the old man's efforts, for he sensed Taita's disapproval as clearly as if it had been spoken.

Chastened, he composed himself, and brought his mind and body under control again in the manner that Taita had taught him. It was like passing through a secret doorway into the place of power. The time passed swiftly, without being counted or grudged. The sun climbed to its zenith and seemed to hang there for a long while. Suddenly Nefer was blessed with a marvellous sense of prescience. It was almost as if he, too, hung above the world and saw everything happening below him. He saw Taita and himself sitting beside the well of Gebel Nagara, and the desert stretching away around them. He saw the river that contained the desert like a mighty barrier and marked out the boundaries of this very Egypt. He saw the cities and the kingdoms, the lands divided under the double crown, great armies in array, the machinations of evil men, and the striving and sacrifice of the just and good. In that moment he was aware of his destiny with an intensity that almost overwhelmed and crushed his courage.

In that same moment he knew that his godbird would come on this day, for he was ready to receive it at last. 'The bird is here!'

The words were so clear that, for an instant, Nefer thought Taita had spoken, but then he realized his lips had not moved. Taita had placed the thought in Nefer's mind in the mysterious manner that Nefer could neither fathom nor explain. He did not doubt that it was so, but in the next instant it was confirmed by the wild fluttering of the decoy pigeons who had sensed the menace in the air above them.

Nefer made no move to show that he had heard and understood. He did not turn his head or lift his eyes to the sky. He dared not look upwards lest he alarm the bird, or incur the wrath of Taita. But he was aware with every fibre of his being.

The royal falcon was such a rare creature that few men had ever seen it in the wild. For the previous thousand years the huntsmen of every pharaoh had sought out the birds, had trapped and netted them, and to fill the royal mews had even lifted their young from the nest before they were fledged. Possession of the birds was proof that Pharaoh had the divine approval of the god Horus to reign in this very Egypt.

The falcon was the alter ego of the god: statues and depictions of him showed him with the falcon head. Pharaoh was a god himself so might capture, own and hunt the bird, but any other man did so on pain of death.

Now the bird was here. His very own bird. Taita seemed to have conjured it out of heaven itself. Nefer felt his heart held in a suffocating grip of excitement and the breath in his lungs seized up so that he thought his chest might burst. But still he dared not turn his head to the sky.

Then he heard the falcon. Its cry was a faint lament, almost lost in the immensity of sky and desert, but it thrilled Nefer to the core, as though the god had spoken directly to him. Seconds later the falcon called again, directly overhead, its voice shriller and more savage.

Now the pigeons were wild with terror, leaping against the thongs that secured them to the pegs, beating their wings with such violence that they shed feathers, and the downdraught of air raised a pale cloud of dust around them.

High overhead Nefer heard the falcon begin its stoop on the decoys, with the wind singing over its wings in a rising note. He knew that at last it was safe to raise his head, for all the falcon's attention would be focused on its prey.

He looked up and saw the bird drop against the aching blue of the desert sky. It was a thing of divine beauty. Its wings were folded back, like half-sheathed blades, and its head was thrust forward. The strength and power of the creature made Nefer gasp aloud. He had seen other falcons of this breed in his father's mews, but never before like this in all- its wild grace and majesty. Miraculously the falcon seemed to swell in size, and its colours grew more intense as it fell towards where he sat. The curved beak was a lovely deep yellow with a tip sharp and black as obsidian. The eyes were fiercest gold with tear-like markings in the inner corners, the throat was creamy and dappled like ermine, the wings were russet and black, and the whole creature was so exquisite in every detail that he never doubted it was an incarnation of the god. He wanted to possess it with a longing he had never imagined possible.

He braced himself for the moment of impact when the falcon would strike the silken net and ensnare itself in the voluminous folds. Beside him he felt Taita do the same. They would rush forward together.

Then something happened that he could not believe was possible. The falcon was fully committed to its stoop, the velocity of its dive was such that nothing could have stopped it but the impact of the strike into the pigeons' soft-feathered bodies. But, against all probability, the falcon flared out. Its wings changed their profile and for an instant the wind-force threatened to rip away the pinions at their juncture with its body. The air shrieked over the spread feathers and the falcon had changed direction, was hurtling aloft once more, using its own momentum to arc up into the sky until in seconds it was only a black speck against the blue. Its cry sounded once more in the air, plaintive and remote, and then it was gone.

'He refused!' Nefer whispered. 'Why, Taita, why?'

'The ways of the gods are not for us to fathom.' Although he had been still for all those hours, Taita stood up with the lithe movement of a trained athlete.

'Will he not return?' Nefer asked. 'He was my bird. I felt it in my heart. He was my bird. He must return.'

'He is part of the godhead,' Taita said softly. 'He is not part of the natural order of things.'

'But why did he refuse? There must be some reason,' Nefer insisted. Taita did not reply immediately, but went to release the pigeons. After all this time their wing feathers had grown again, but as he freed their legs from the horsehair fetters they made no attempt to escape. One fluttered up and perched on his shoulder. Gently Taita took it in both hands and threw it aloft. Only then did it fly up the cliff face to its roost on the high ledge.

He watched it go then turned and walked back to the entrance of the cave. Nefer followed him slowly, his heart and legs leaden with disappointment. In the gloom of the cave Taita seated himself on the stone ledge below the back wall, and leaned forward to build up the smoky fire of thorn branches and horse dung until it burst into flames. Heavily, filled with foreboding, Nefer took up his accustomed place opposite him.

They were both silent for a long while, Nefer containing himself, although his disappointment at the loss of the falcon was a torment as intense as if he had thrust his hand into flames. He knew that Taita would only speak again when he was ready. At last Taita sighed, and said softly, almost sadly, 'I must work the Mazes of Ammon Ra.'

Nefer was startled. He had not expected that. In all their time together Nefer had only seen him work the Mazes twice before. He knew that the self-induced trance of divination was a little death that drained and exhausted the old man. He would only undertake the dreaded journey into the supernatural when no other course was open to him.

Nefer kept silent, and watched in awe as Taita went through the ritual of preparing the Mazes. First he crushed the herbs with a pestle in a mortar of carved alabaster, and measured them into a clay pot. Then he poured boiling water from the copper kettle over them. The steam that rose in a cloud was so pungent it made Nefer's eyes water.

While the mixture cooled, Taita brought the tanned leather bag that contained the Mazes from its hiding-place at the back of the cave. Sitting over the fire, he poured the ivory discs into one hand and rubbed them gently between his fingers as he began to chant the incantation to Ammon Ra.

The Mazes comprised ten ivory discs, which Taita had carved. Ten was the mystical number of the greatest potency. Each carving depicted one of the ten symbols of power, and was a miniature work of art. As he sang he fondled the discs so that they clicked between his fingers. Between each verse of the invocation, he blew on the discs to endow them with his life force. When they had taken on the warmth of his own body he passed them to Nefer.

'Hold them and breathe upon them,' he urged, and while Nefer obeyed these instructions, Taita began to sway in rhythm to the magical verses he was reciting. Slowly his eyes seemed to glaze over as he retreated into the secret places in his mind. He was already in the trance when Nefer stacked the Mazes in two piles in front of him.

Then with one finger Nefer tested the temperature of the infusion in the clay pot as Taita had taught him. When it was cool enough not to scald the mouth, he knelt before the old man and with both hands offered it to him.

Taita drank it to the last drop, and in the firelight his face turned white as building chalk from the quarry at Aswan. For a while longer he kept up the chant, but slowly his voiice dropped to a whisper, the descended into silence. The only sound was his hoarse breathing as he succumbed to the drug and the trance. He subsided on to the floor of the cave, and lay curled like a sleeping cat beside the fire.

Nefer covered him with his woollen shawl, and stayed beside him until he started to twitch and groan, and the sweat streamed down his face. His eyes opened and rolled back in their sockets until only the whites glared blindly into the dark shadows of the cave.

Nefer knew there was nothing he could do for the old man now. He had journeyed far into the shadowy places where Nefer could not reach him, and he could no longer bear the terrible distress and suffering that the Mazes inflicted upon the Magus. Quietly he stood up, fetched his bow and quiver from the back of the cave and stooped to see out through the entrance. Across the hills the sun was low and yellow in the dust haze. He climbed the western dunes, and when he reached the top and looked out across the valleys he felt so strongly his disappointment at the lost bird, his concern for Taita in his agony of divination, and his sense of foreboding at what Taita would discover in his trance, that he was seized by the urge to run, to escape as though from some dreadful predator. He bounded away down the face of the dune, the sand cascading and hissing beneath his feet. He felt tears of terror brim in his eyes and stream down his cheeks in the wind, and he ran until the sweat poured down his flanks, his chest heaved and the sun was on the horizon. Then at last he turned back towards Gebel Nagara and covered the last mile in darkness.

Taita was still curled under the shawl beside the fire, but he was sleeping more easily now. Nefer lay down beside him, and after a while he, too, fell into a sleep that was restless with dreams and haunted by nightmares.

When he awoke dawn was glimmering at the entrance to the cave. Taita was sitting at the fire, grilling gazelle cutlets on the coals. He still looked pale and sick, but he skewered one on the point of his bronze dagger and offered it to Nefer. The boy was suddenly ravenous, and he sat up and gnawed on the bone. When he had devoured the third portion of sweet tender meat he spoke for the first time. 'What did you see, Tata?' he asked. 'Why did the godbird refuse?'

'It was obscured,' Taita told him, and Nefer knew that the omen had been unpropitious, that Taita was protecting him from it.

They ate in silence for a while, but now Nefer hardly tasted the food and at last he said softly, 'You have freed the decoys. How can we set the net tomorrow?'

'The godbird will not come to Gebel Nagara again,' said Taita simply. 'Then am I never to be Pharaoh in my father's place?' Nefer asked.

There was deep anguish in his voice, so Taita softened his answer. 'We will have to take your bird from the nest.'

'We do not know where to find the godbird.' Nefer had stopped eating. He stared at Taita with pitiful appeal.

The old man inclined his head in affirmation. 'I know where the nest is. It was revealed in the Mazes. But you must eat to keep up your strength. We will leave before first light tomorrow. It is a long journey to the site.'

'Will there be fledglings in the nest?'

'Yes,' said Taita. 'The falcons have bred. The young are almost ready for flight. We will find your bird there.' Silently he told himself, Or the god will reveal other mysteries to us.

--

In the darkness before dawn they loaded the waterskins and the saddlebags on to the horses then swung up bareback behind them. Taita led the way, skirting the cliff face and taking the easy route up the hills. By the time the sun was above the horizon they had left Gebel Nagara far below them. When Nefer looked ahead he started with surprise: there ahead of them was the faint outline of the mountain, blue against the blue of the horizon, still so far off that it seemed insubstantial and ethereal, a thing of mist and air rather than of earth and rock. The sensation that he had seen it before overcame Nefer, and for a while he was at a loss to explain it to himself. Then it came rushing back and he said, 'That mountain.' He pointed it out. 'That is where we are going, is it not, Tata?' He spoke with such assurance that Taita looked back at him.

'How do you know?'

'I dreamed it last night,' Nefer replied.

Taita turned away so that the boy would not see his expression. At last the eyes of his mind are opening like a desert bloom in the dawn. He is learning to peer through the dark curtain that hides the future from us. He felt a deep sense of achievement. Praise the hundred names of Horus, it has not been in vain.

'That is where we are going, I know it is,' Nefer repeated, with utmost certainty.

'Yes,' Taita agreed at last. 'We are going to Bir Umm Masara.'

Before the hottest part of the day, Taita led them to where a clump of ragged acacia thorn trees grew in a deep ravine, their roots drawing up water from some deep source far below the surface. When they had unloaded the horses and watered them, Nefer cast around the grove and within minutes had discovered sign of others who had passed this way. Excitedly, he called Taita over and showed him the wheel-marks left by a small division of chariots, ten vehicles by his reckoning, the ashes of the cooking fire, and the flattened earth where men had lain down to sleep with the horses tethered to the acacia trunks nearby.

'Hyksos?' he hazarded anxiously, for the dung of the horses in their lines was very fresh, not more than a few days old - it was dry on the outside, but still damp when he broke open a lump.

'Ours.' Taita had recognized the tracks of the chariots. After all, he had made the first designs of these spoked wheels many decades before. He stooped suddenly and picked up a tiny bronze rosette ornament that had fallen from a dashboard and was half buried in the loose earth. 'One of our light cavalry divisions, probably from the Phat regiment. Part of Lord Naja's command.'

'What are they doing out here, so far from the lines?' Nefer asked, puzzled, but Taita shrugged and turned away to cover his unease.

The old man cut short their period of rest and they went on while the sun was still high. Slowly the outline of Bir Umm Masara hardened and seemed to fill half of the sky ahead of them. Gradually they could make out the etching and scarification of gorge, bluff and cliff. As they reached the crest of the first line of foothills, Taita checked his horse and looked back. Distant movement caught his attention, and he held up his hand to shade his eyes. He could see a tiny feather of pale dust many leagues out in the desert below. He watched it for a while and saw that it was moving eastwards, towards the Red Sea. It might have been thrown up by a herd of moving oryx, or by a column of fighting chariots. He did not remark on it to Nefer, who was so intent on the hunt for the royal falcon that he could not tear his eyes from the silhouette of the mountain ahead. Taita thumped his heels into the flanks of his horse and moved up beside the boy.

That night, when they camped halfway up the slope of Bir Umm Masara, Taita said quietly, 'We will make no fire this night.'

'But it's so cold,' Nefer protested. 'And we are so exposed here that a fire could be seen for ten leagues across the desert.'

'Are there enemies out there?' Nefer's expression changed, and he gazed down over the darkening landscape with trepidation. 'Bandits? Raiding Bedouin?'

'There are always enemies,' Taita told him. 'Better cold than dead.' After midnight when the icy wind woke Nefer, and his colt, Stargazer, stamped and whinnied, he rolled out of his sheepskin blanket and went to calm him. He found Taita already awake, sitting a little apart.

'Look!' he ordered, and pointed down on to the lowland. There was a distant glimmer and flicker of light. 'A campfire,' Taita said.

'They might be one of our own divisions. Those who made the tracks we saw yesterday.'

They might indeed,' agreed Taita, 'But then again, they might be somebody else.'

After a long, thoughtful pause Nefer said, 'I have slept enough. It's too cold, anyway. We should mount again and move on. We don't want the dawn to catch us here on the bare shoulder of the mountain.'

They loaded the horses and in the moonlight found a rough path made by wild goats that led them round the eastern shoulder of Bir Umm Masara, so that when the light began to strengthen they were already out of sight of any watchers in the distant encampment.

The chariot of Ammon Ra, the sun god, burst furiously out of the east, and the mountain was suffused with golden light. The gorges were dark with shadow, made more sombre by the contrast, and far below the wilderness was vast and grand.

Nefer threw back his head, shouted with joy, 'Look! Oh, look!' and pointed up past the rock peak. Taita followed his gaze and saw the two dark specks, turning in a wide circle against the heavens. The sunlight caught one, so that it glowed for a second like a shooting star.

'Royal falcons.' Taita smiled. 'A mating pair.'

They unloaded the horses and found a vantage-point from which they were able to watch the circling birds. Even at this distance they were regal and beautiful beyond Nefer's ability to express it. Then suddenly one of the birds, the smaller male, the tiercel, broke the pattern of flight, and angled up against the wind, his leisurely wingbeats taking on a sudden ferocity.

'He has discovered,' Nefer shouted, with the excitement and joy of the true falconer. 'Watch him now.'

When it began the stoop was so swift that to have taken the eye off it for even a moment would have meant missing the kill. The tiercel dropped down the sky like a thrown javelin. A single pigeon was coasting unsuspectingly near the base of the cliff. Nefer recognized the moment when the plump bird became suddenly aware of the danger, and tried to avoid the falcon. It turned so violently towards the safety of the rock face that it rolled over on to its back in full and frantic flight. For an instant its belly was exposed. The tiercel tore into it with both sets of talons, and the big bird seemed to dissolve in a burst of puce and blue smoke. The feathers drifted away in a long cloud on the morning wind and the falcon bound on, locking its talons deep into its prey's belly, and plunged with it into the gorge. The killer and its victim hit the rocky scree slope only a short distance from where Nefer stood. The heavy thud of their fall echoed off the cliff and resounded down the gorge.

By this time Nefer was dancing with excitement, and even Taita, who had always been a lover of the hunting hawks, gave voice to his pleasure.

'Bak-her!' he cried, as the falcon completed the ritual of the kill with the mantling: it spread its magnificently patterned wings over the dead pigeon, covering it and proclaiming the kill as its own.

The female falcon came down to join him in a series of graceful spirals and landed on the rock beside her mate. He folded away his wings to let her share the kill, and between them they dismembered and devoured the carcass of the pigeon, ripping into it with their razor-sharp beaks, and pausing between each stroke to lift their heads and glare at Nefer, with those ferocious yellow eyes, while they gulped down the bloody fragments of flesh and bone and feathers. They were fully aware of the presence of the men and horses, but tolerated them as long as they kept their distance.

Then, when all that was left of the pigeon were a blood spot on the rock and a few drifting feathers, and the usually sleek bellies of the falcons were crammed with food, the pair launched into flight again. Wings flogging now to carry them, they rose up the sheer cliff face.

'Follow them!' Taita hitched up his kilt and scampered over the treacherous footing of the scree slope. 'Don't lose them.'

Nefer was faster and more agile, and he kept the rising birds in sight as he raced along the shoulder of the mountain beneath them. Below the peak the mountain was split into twin needles, mighty pinnacles of dark stone, terrifying even from below. They watched the falcons rise up this mighty natural monument, until Nefer realized where they were headed. Where the rock overhung, halfway up the eastern tower, there was a V-shaped cleft in the stone face. Stuffed into it was a platform of dried branches and twigs.

'The nest!' Nefer shrieked. 'There is the nest!'

They stood together, heads thrown back, watching the falcons alight, one after the other, on the edge of the nest, and begin to heave and strain to regurgitate the pigeon flesh from their crops. Another faint sound came to Nefer on the wind that soughed along the cliff-face: a chorus of importunate cries from the young birds demanding to be fed. From this angle he and Taita could not glimpse the falcon chicks, and Nefer was hopping with frustration. 'If we climb the western peak, there,' he pointed, 'we should be able to look down into the nest.'

'Help me with the horses first,' Taita ordered, and they hobbled them, and left them to graze on sparse clumps of mountain grass nurtured by the dews carried by the breeze from the distant Red Sea.

The climb up the western peak took the rest of the morning, but even though Taita had unerringly picked out the easiest route around the far side of the peak, in places the drop beneath them made Nefer draw in his breath sharply, and look away. They came out at last on to a narrow ledge just below the summit. They crouched there for a while to compose themselves, and to stare out at the grandeur of land and distant sea. It seemed that the whole of creation was spread beneath them, and the wind moaned around them, tugging at the folds of Nefer's kilt and ruffling his curls.

'Where is the nest?' he asked. Even in this lofty and precarious place, high above the world, his mind was fixed on one thing only.

'Come!' Taita rose and shuffled sideways along the ledge with the toes of his sandals overhanging the drop. They made their way round the angle and slowly the eastern peak came into view. They looked across to the vertical rock face only a hundred cubits away, but separated from them by such an abyss that Nefer swayed with vertigo.

On this side of the gulf they were slightly higher than the nest, and could look down upon it. The female falcon was perched on the edge, obscuring its contents. She turned her head and stared implacably at them as they rounded the shoulder of the peak. She raised the feathers along her back, as an angry lion lifts its mane in threat. Then she let out a wild cry and launched herself out over the drop, to hang almost motionless on the wind, watching them intently. She was so close that every feather in her wings was clearly revealed.

Her movement had exposed the interior of the cleft that contained the nest. A pair of young birds was crouched in the cup of twigs and branches lined with feathers and the wool of wild goats. They were fully fledged already, and almost as large as their mother. As Nefer stared across at them in awe, one raised itself and spread its wings wide, then beat them fiercely.

'He is beautiful.' Nefer groaned with longing. 'The most beautiful thing I have ever seen.'

'He practises for the moment of flight,' Taita warned him softly. 'See how strong he has grown. Within days he will be gone.'

'I will climb for them this very day,' Nefer vowed, and made as if to go back along the ledge, but Taita stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

'It is not something to enter into lightly. We must spend a little precious time in planning it carefully. Come, sit beside me.'

As Nefer leaned against his shoulder Taita pointed out the features of the rock opposite them. 'Below the nest the rock is smooth as glass. For fifty cubits sheer there is no handhold, no ledge on which to place a foot.'

Nefer tore his eyes from the young bird and peered down. His stomach churned, but he forced himself to ignore it. It was as Taita had said: not even one of the rock hyrax, those furry, sure-footed rabbit-like creatures that made these lofty places their home, could have found a footing on that pitch of vertical rock. 'How can I get to the nest, Tata? I want those chicks - I want them so.'

'Look above the nest.' Taita pointed across. 'See how the cleft continues upwards, to the very top of the cliff.'

Nefer nodded - he could not speak as he stared at the perilous road Taita was showing him.

'We will find a way to reach the summit above the nest. We will take up the harness ropes with us. From the top I will lower you down the crack. If you wedge your bare feet and bunched fists sideways into the opening they will hold you, and I will steady you with the rope.'

Still Nefer could not speak. He felt nauseated by what Taita had suggested. Surely no living person could make that climb and survive. Taita understood what he was feeling and did not insist on a reply.

'I think ...' Hesitantly Nefer started to refuse, then fell silent and stared at the pair of young birds in the nest. He knew that this was his destiny. One of them was his godbird, and this was the only way to achieve the crown of his fathers. To turn away now was to deny everything for which the gods had chosen him. He must go.

Taita sensed the moment when the boy beside him accepted the task and thus became a man. He rejoiced deep in his heart, for this also was his destiny.

'I will make the attempt,' Nefer said simply, and rose to his feet. 'Let us go down and prepare ourselves.'

--

The next morning they left their rudimentary camp and started upwards while it was still dark. Somehow Taita was able to place his feet on a path that even Nefer's young eyes could not discern. Each of them carried a heavy coil of rope, plaited from linen and horsehair and used to tether the horses. They had also brought one of the small waterskins: Taita had warned that it would be hot on the pinnacle once the sun reached its height.

By the time they had worked their way round to the far side of the eastern pinnacle the light had strengthened and they could see the face above them. Taita spent an hour surveying the route up it. At last he was satisfied. 'In the name of great Horus, the all-powerful, let us begin,' he said, and made the sign of the god's wounded eye. Then he led Nefer back to the point he had chosen from which to begin the ascent.

'I will lead the way,' he told the boy, as he knotted one end of the rope around his waist. 'Pay out the rope as I go. Watch what I do, and when I call you, tie it to yourself and follow me. If you slip I will hold you.'

At first Nefer climbed cautiously, following the route that Taita had taken, his expression set and his knuckles white with tension as he fastened on each hold. Taita murmured encouragement from above, and the boy's confidence grew with each move upwards. He reached Taita's side and grinned at him. 'That was easy.'

'It will grow harder,' Taita assured him drily, and led up the next pitch of rock. This time Nefer was scampering behind him like a monkey, chattering with excitement and enjoyment. They stood below a chimney in the rock face that tapered near the top into a narrow crack.

'This is like the climb you will have to make down to the nest when we reach the top. Watch how I wedge my hands and feet into the crack.' Taita stepped up into the chimney and went up slowly but without pause. When the chimney narrowed he kept on steadily, like a man climbing a ladder. His kilts flapped about his skinny old legs, and Nefer could see up under the linen to the grotesque scar where his manhood had been cut away. Nefer had seen it before, and grown so accustomed to it that the terrible mutilation no longer appalled him.

Taita called to him from above, and this time Nefer danced up the rock, falling naturally into the rhythm of the ascent.

Why should it not be so? Taita tried to keep his pride within reasonable bounds. In his veins runs the blood of warriors and great athletes. Then he smiled and his eyes sparkled as though he were young again. And he has had me to teach him - of course he excels.

The sun was only halfway up the sky when at last they stood together on the summit of the eastern peak. 'We will rest awhile here.' Taita took the waterskin from his shoulder and sank down.

'I am not tired, Tata.'

'Nevertheless, we will rest.' Taita passed him the skin and watched as he gulped down a dozen mouthfuls. 'The descent to the nest will be more difficult,' he said, when Nefer stopped for breath. 'There will be nobody to show you the way, and there is one place where you cannot see your feet when the rock leans away from you.'

'I will be all right, Tata.'

'If the gods allow,' Taita agreed, and turned away his head as if to admire the glory of mountain, sea and desert spread below them but in fact so that the boy would not see his lips move as he prayed. 'Spread your wings over him, mighty Horus, for this is the one you have chosen. Cherish him, my mistress Lostris, who has become a goddess, for this is the fruit of your womb and the blood of your blood. Turn your hand from him, foul Seth, and touch him not, for you cannot prevail against those who protect this child.' He sighed as he reconsidered the wisdom of challenging the god of darkness and chaos, then softened his admonition with a small bribe: 'Pass him by, good Seth, and I will sacrifice an ox to you in your temple at Abydos when next I pass that way.'

He stood up. 'It is time to make the attempt.'

He led the way across the summit and stood on the far lip, looking down at the campsite and the grazing horses, which were rendered tiny as new-born mice by the drop. The female falcon was in flight, circling out over the gorge. He thought there was something unusual in her behaviour, particularly when she uttered a strange, forlorn cry, such as he had never before heard from a royal falcon. There was no sign of her mate, though he searched the heavens for him.

Then he lowered his eyes and looked across the abyss at the main peak of the mountain and the ledge on which they had stood the previous day. This enabled him to orientate himself, for the bulge of the rock face under him hid the nest from sight. He moved slowly along the lip until he found the beginning of the crack, which he recognized as the one that ran down and opened into the cleft in which the falcons had built their nest.

He picked up a loose pebble and dropped it over the edge. It clattered as it dropped down the wall and out of sight. He hoped that it might alarm the tiercel off the nest and so confirm its exact position, but there was still no sign of it. Only the female bird continued her aimless circles and uttered her strange, lonely cries.

Taita called Nefer to him and tied the end of the rope around his waist. He checked the knot carefully and then, an inch at a time, drew the full length of the rope through his fingers, checking for any frayed or weakened spot. 'You have the saddlebag to carry the fledgling.' He checked the knot with which Nefer had secured it over his shoulder so that it would not hamper his movements on the climb.

'Stop fussing so, Tata. My father says that sometimes you are like an old woman.'

'Your father should show more respect. I wiped his arse when he was a mewling infant, just as I wiped yours.' Taita sniffed, and again checked the knot at the boy's waist, delaying the fateful moment. But Nefer walked to the edge and stood straight-backed above the drop without any sign of hesitation.

'Are you ready?' He looked over his shoulder, and smiled with a flash of white teeth and a sparkle of his dark green eyes. Those eyes reminded Taita so vividly of Queen Lostris. With a pang he thought Nefer even more comely than his father had been at the same age.

'We cannot dally here all day.' Nefer uttered one of his father's favourite expressions in lordly tones, aping the royal manner faithfully.

Taita sat down and wriggled into a position in which he could anchor his heels in the crack and lean back to brace himself against the rope over his shoulder. He nodded at Nefer, and saw the cocky grin leave the boy's face as he edged down over the drop. He paid out the rope as Nefer worked his way down.

Nefer reached the bulge in the wall and, hanging on grimly with both hands, let his legs down to grope for a foothold beneath the overhang. He found the crack with his toes and thrust his bare foot into it, twisting his ankle to lock the hold, then slithered down. He glanced up one last time at Taita, tried to smile, but made a sickly grimace, then swung round the overhang. Before he could find another hold he felt his foot slip in the crack and he started to swivel on the rope. If he lost his footing he would pivot and swing out helplessly over the drop. He doubted that the old man above would have the strength to haul him back.

He snatched desperately at the crack, and his fingers hooked on, steadying him. He lunged with his other hand and grabbed the next hold. He was round the bulge, but his heart was hammering and his breath hissed in his throat.

'Are you all right?' Taita's voice came down to him.

'All right!' he gasped. He looked down between his knees and saw the crack in the rock widen into the top of the cleft above the nest. His arms were tiring and beginning to shake. He stretched his right leg down, and found another foothold.

Taita was right: it was more difficult to descend than to climb upwards. When he moved his right hand down he saw that already his knuckle was raw and he left a small bloody smear on the rock. Inching down, he reached the point where the crack opened into the main cleft. Again he was forced to reach round the lip and find a hidden hold.

Yesterday, when he and Taita had discussed it, sitting together on the other side of the gulf, this transition point had looked so easy, but now both his feet were swinging out freely over the lip of the cleft, and the abyss seemed to suck at him like some monstrous mouth. He moaned and hung on with both hands, freezing to the rock face. He was afraid now, the last vestige of courage blown away on the gusts of hot wind that tugged at him, threatening to tear him from the cliff. He looked down and tears mingled with the sweat on his cheeks. The drop beckoned, pulled at him with claws of terror, sickening him to the guts.

'Move!' Taita's voice drifted down to him, faint but filled with urgency. 'You must keep moving.'

With a huge effort Nefer rallied himself for another effort. His bare toes groped under him and he found a ledge that seemed wide enough to give him purchase. He lowered himself on aching, juddering arms. Abruptly his foot slipped from the ledge, and his arms were too tired to support his weight any longer. He fell and screamed as he went.

He dropped only the span of his two arms, and then the rope bit cruelly into his flesh, binding up under his ribs and choking the breath out of him. He came up short and dangled out into space, held only by the rope and the old man above him.

'Nefer, can you hear me?' Taita's voice was rough with the strain of holding him. The boy whimpered like a puppy. 'You must catch a hold. You cannot hang there.' Taita's voice calmed him. He blinked the tears out of his eyes, and saw the rock only an arm's length from his face.

'Latch on!' Taita goaded him, and Nefer saw that he was hanging opposite the cleft. The opening was deep enough to accommodate him, the sloping ledge wide enough for him to stand on, if only he could reach it. He stretched out a shaking hand and touched the wall with his fingertips. He started to swing himself back towards it.

It seemed an eternity of struggle and heartbreaking effort, but at last he swung into the opening and managed to place both bare feet on the ledge, and to crouch doubled over in the opening. He wedged himself there, panting and gasping for air.

Above him Taita felt his weight go off the rope, and called down encouragement. 'Bak-her, Nefer, Bak-her! Where are you?'

'I am in the cleft, above the nest.'

'What can you see?' Taita wanted to keep the boy's mind fixed on other things, so that he would not dwell on the void beneath his feet.

Nefer wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand and peered down. 'I can see the edge of the nest.'

'How far?'

'Close.'

'Can you reach it?'

'I will try.' Nefer braced his bowed back against the roof of the narrow cleft, and shuffled slowly down the sloping floor. Below him he could just make out the dried twigs that protruded from the nest site. As he went down further, his view into the nest opened slowly an inch at a time.

The next time he called out his voice was stronger and excited. 'I can see the tiercel. He is still on the nest.'

'What is he doing?' Taita shouted back.

'He is crouched down. It seems as though he is sleeping.' Nefer's voice was puzzled. 'I can only see his back.'

The male bird was motionless, lying on the high side of the untidy nest. But how could he be sleeping and unaware during the commotion above him, Nefer wondered. His own fear was forgotten now in the excitement of having the falcon so close and the nest almost within touching distance.

He moved faster, more confidently, as the floor of the cleft levelled out under his feet, and there was more headroom for him to stand erect.

'I can see his head.' The tiercel was stretched out with his wings spread as though he was mantling a kill. He is beautiful, Nefer thought, and I am almost close enough to touch him, yet he still shows no fear.

Suddenly he realized he could seize the sleeping bird. He braced himself for the effort, wedging his shoulder into the cleft, his bare feet in a secure stance under him. Slowly he leaned out towards the tiercel, then stopped with his hand poised above it.

There were tiny droplets of blood on the russet back feathers. Bright as polished rubies, they twinkled in the sunlight, and with a sudden, swooping sensation in the pit of his stomach, Nefer realized that the tiercel was dead. He was overcome with a dreadful sense of loss, as though something of great value to him had been taken away for ever. It seemed more than just the death of the falcon. The royal bird represented something more: it was the symbol of a god and a king. As he stared at it, the carcass of the tiercel seemed to be transformed into the dead body of Pharaoh himself. A sob choked Nefer and he jerked away his hand.

He had moved only just in time, for then he heard a dry, rasping sound and an explosive hiss of air. Something huge and glittering black whipped out at where his hand had been the moment before, and slammed into the mattress of dried twigs with such force that the whole nest shook.

Nefer recoiled as far as the cramped space in the cleft would allow, and stared at the grotesque creature that now swayed and wove before his face. His vision seemed sharpened and magnified, time moved with the slow horror of nightmare. He saw the dead fledglings huddled in the cup of the nest beyond the carcass of the tiercel, the thick, glittering coils of a gigantic black cobra twisted around them. The snake's head was raised, its hood, marked with a bold pattern of black and white, was spread.

The slippery black tongue flickered out between the thin, grinning lips. Its eyes were fathomless black, each with a star of reflected light in the centre as they held Nefer in a mesmeric stare.

Nefer tried to scream a warning to Taita, but no sound came from his throat. He could not tear away his gaze from the cobra's dreadful stare. It's head swayed gently, but the massive coils that filled the falcon's nest to overflowing pulsed and clenched. Every polished scale was burnished like a jewel as they rasped against the twigs of the nest. Each coil was as thick as Nefer's arm, and slowly they revolved upon themselves.

The head swayed back, the mouth gaped, and Nefer could see the pale lining of the throat. The almost transparent fangs came erect in the folds of soft membrane: there was a tiny bead of colourless venom on the tip of each bony needle.

Then the wicked head flashed forward, as the cobra struck at Nefer's face.

Nefer screamed and hurled himself sideways, lost his balance and tumbled backwards from the cleft.

Even though Taita was braced to take any sudden weight on the rope, he was almost jerked from his stance on top of the cliff as Nefer's weight hit the line. A coil of the horsehair rope slid through his fingers, scorching the flesh, but he held hard. He could hear the boy screaming incoherently below him, and feel him swinging at the end of the rope.

Nefer pendulumed out from the cleft then swung straight back towards the falcon's nest. The cobra had recovered swiftly from its abortive strike, and was once more poised and erect. It fixed its gaze on the boy and swivelled its head to face him. At the same time a harsh hiss erupted from its throat.

Nefer screamed again and kicked out wildly at the snake as he flew straight towards it. Taita heard the terror in that scream and lay back on the rope, hauling until he felt his old muscles crack under the strain.

The cobra struck instinctively at Nefer's eyes as he came within range, but at that instant Taita's heave on the rope end jerked Nefer off-line. The snake's gaping jaws passed a finger's width from his ear and then, like the lash of a chariot whip, the heavy body flogged across his shoulder. Nefer screamed again, knowing he was fatally bitten.

As he swung out once more over the open drop he glanced down at the spot on his shoulder into which the serpent had sunk its fangs, and saw the pale yellow venom splashed across the thick leather fold of the saddlebag. With a wild lift of relief he tore the bag free and as he started to swing back towards where the cobra still stood menacingly, he held the bag like a shield in front of him.

The instant he was within range the cobra struck again, but Nefer caught the blow on the thick leather folds of the bag. The beast's fangs snagged in the leather and held fast. As Nefer swung back the snake was dragged with him. It was hauled cleanly out of the nest, a writhing, seething ball of coils and polished scales. It thrashed against Nefer's legs, the heavy tail lashing him, hissing fearsomely, clouds of venom spraying from its gaping jaws and dribbling down the leather bag. So great was its weight that Nefer's whole body was shaken violently.

Almost without thought, Nefer hurled the leather bag away from him, the cobra's fangs still hooked into the leather. The bag and the snake dropped away together, the sinuous body still curling, coiling and whipping furiously. The penetrating hisses grew fainter as it plunged away down the cliff. It seemed to fall for ever until at last it struck the rocks far below. The impact did not kill or stun it, and it whipped about as it rolled down the scree slope, bouncing over the rocks like a huge black ball until Nefer lost sight of it among the grey boulders.

Through the mists of terror that clouded his mind, Taita's voice reached him. It was hoarse with effort and concern. 'Speak to me. Can you hear me?'

'I am here, Tata.' Nefer's voice was weak and shaky.

'I will pull you up.'

Slowly, one heave at a time, Nefer was drawn upwards. Even in his distress Nefer marvelled at the old man's strength. When the rock came within reach, he was able to take some of his weight off the rope and it went quicker. At last he clawed his way round the overhang, and saw, with vast relief, Taita looking down at him from the summit, the ancient features, like those of a sphinx, riven into deep lines by his exertions on the rope.

With one last heave Nefer tumbled over the top and fell into the old man's arms. He lay there gasping and sobbing, unable to speak coherently. Taita hugged him. He too was shaking with emotion and exhaustion. Slowly they calmed and regained their breath. Taita held the waterskin to Nefer's lips and he gulped, choked and gulped again. Then he looked into Taita's face so abjectly that the old man hugged him closer.

'It was horrible.' Nefer's words were barely intelligible. 'It was in the nest. It had killed the falcons, all of them. Oh, Tata, it was terrible.'

'What was it, Nefer?' Taita asked gently.

'It killed my godbird, and the tiercel.'

'Gently, lad. Drink some more.' He offered the waterskin.

Nefer choked again and was seized with a paroxysm of coughing. The moment he could speak again he wheezed, 'It tried to kill me also. It was huge, and so black.'

'What was it, boy? Tell me clearly.'

'A cobra, a huge black cobra. In the nest, waiting for me. It had bitten the chicks and the falcon to death, and it went for me as soon as it saw me. I never imagined a cobra could grow so large.'

'Are you stricken?' Taita demanded, with dread, and hauled Nefer to his feet to examine him.

'No, Tata. I used the bag as a shield. It never touched me,' Nefer protested, but Taita stripped off his kilt and made him stand naked while he went over his body looking for puncture wounds. One of his knuckles and both his knees were grazed but otherwise the strong young body was marked only by the pharaonic cartouche on the smooth skin of his inner thigh. Taita had tattooed the design himself, and it was a miniature masterpiece that would for ever endorse Nefer's claim to the double crown.

'Thanks be to the great god who protected you,' Taita murmured. 'With this cobra apparition, Horus has sent you a portent of terrible events and dangers.' His face was grave, and touched with the marks of grief and mourning. 'That was no natural serpent.'

'Yes, Tata. I saw it close. It was enormous, but it was a real snake.'

'Then how did it reach the nest site? Cobras cannot fly, and there is no other way to scale the cliff.'

Nefer stared at him aghast, 'It killed my godbird,' he whispered aloud. 'And it killed the royal tiercel, Pharaoh's other self.' Taita agreed grimly, sorrow still in his eyes. 'There are mysteries here revealed. I saw their shadows in my vision, but they are confirmed by what has happened to you this day. This is a thing beyond the natural order.'

'Explain it to me, Tata,' Nefer insisted.

Taita handed him his kilt. 'First we must get down off this mountain, and fly from the great dangers that beset us before I can consider the omens.'

He paused and looked to the sky, as if in deep thought. Then he lowered his eyes and looked into Nefer's face. Put on your clothes,' was all he said.

As soon as Nefer was ready, Taita led him back to the far side of the summit and they began the descent. It went swiftly, for they had opened the route, and the urgency in every move Taita made was infectious. The horses were where they had left them, but before they mounted Nefer said, The place where the cobra struck the rocks is but a short way from here.' He pointed to the head of the scree slope below the cliff on which the falcons' nest was still visible. 'Let us search for the carcass. Perhaps if we find its remains you could work some charm to destroy its powers.'

'It would be precious time wasted. There will be no carcass.' Taita swung up on to the mare's back. 'Mount, Nefer. The cobra has returned to the shadow places from which it sprang.'

Nefer shivered with superstitious awe, then scrambled up on to the back of his colt.

Neither of them spoke again until they were off the upper slopes and into the broken eastern foothills. Nefer knew well that when Taita was in this mood it was wasted effort to speak to him, but he urged his horse alongside and pointed out respectfully, 'Tata, this is not the way to Gebel Nagara.'

'We are not going back there.'

'Why not?'

'The Bedouin know that we were at the spring. They will tell those who search for us,' Taita explained.

Nefer was puzzled. 'Who searches for us?'

Taita turned his head and looked at the boy with such pity that he was silenced. 'I will explain when we are off this cursed mountain and in a safe place.'

Taita avoided the crests of the hills, where they might be silhouetted on the skyline, and wove a path through the gorges and valleys. Always he headed east, away from Egypt and the Nile, towards the sea.

The sun was setting before he reined in his mare again, and spoke: 'The main caravan road lies just beyond the next line of hills. We must cross it, but enemies may be watching for us there.'

They left the horses tethered in a hidden wadi, with a few handfuls of crushed dhurra millet in their leather nosebags to keep them contented, then climbed cautiously to the crest of the hills and found a vantage-point behind a bank of purple shale from which they could look down on to the caravan road below.

'We will lie here until dark,' Taita explained. 'Then we will cross.'

'I don't understand what you are doing, Tata. Why are we travelling east? Why don't we return to Thebes, and the protection of Pharaoh, my father?'

Taita sighed softly and closed his eyes. How do I tell him? I cannot hide it much longer. Yet he is a child still, and I should shield him.

It was almost as if Nefer had read his thoughts, for he laid his hand on Taita's arm and said quietly, 'Today, on the mountain, I proved that I am a man. Treat me as one.'

Taita nodded. 'Indeed, you proved it.' Before he went on he swept another look along the well-beaten road below them, and immediately ducked his head, 'Someone coming!' he warned.

Nefer flattened himself behind the shale bank and they watched the column of dust coming swiftly down the caravan road from the west. By this time the valley was in deep shadow and the sky was filled with all the glorious shades of the sunset.

'They are moving fast. Those are not merchants, they are fighting chariots,' Nefer said. 'Yes, I can see them now.' His bright young eyes had picked out the shape of the leading chariot, with the teamed horses trotting ahead of the charioteer on his high carriage. 'They are not Hyksos,' he went on, as the shapes hardened and drew closer, 'they are ours. A troop of ten chariots. Yes! See the pennant on the leading vehicle.' The fluttering pennant on the long, limber bamboo rod rode high above the rolling dustcloud. 'A cohort of the Phat Guards! We are safe, Tata!'

Nefer sprang to his feet and waved both hands over his head, 'Here!' he yelled. 'Here, the Blues. Here I am. I am Prince Nefer!'

Taita reached up a bony hand and hauled him down violently. 'Get down, you little fool. Those are the minions of the cobra.'

He shot another quick glance over the bank, and saw that the leading charioteer must have spotted Nefer on the skyline, for he had whipped his team into a canter and was tearing up the road towards them.

'Come!' he told Nefer. 'Hurry! They must not catch us.'

He dragged the boy off the ridge and started down the slope. After his initial reluctance, Nefer was spurred on by Taita's haste. He began to run in earnest, jumping from rock to rock, but he could not catch the old man. Taita's long skinny legs flew and the silver mane of his hair streamed out behind him. He reached the horses first, and was on the mare's bare back in a single leap.

'I don't understand why we are running from our own people,' Nefer panted. 'What is happening, Tata?'

'Mount! No time now to talk. We must get clear.'

As they galloped out of the mouth of the wadi and into the open, Nefer shot a longing look back over his shoulder. The leading chariot came soaring over the top of the ridge, and the driver let out a shout, but the distance and the rumble of the wheels muffled his voice.

Earlier, Taita had led them through an area of broken volcanic rock through which no chariot would find a way. Now they rode for it, the horses running shoulder to shoulder, and stride for stride.

'If we can get among the rocks, we can lose them during the night. There is only a whisper of daylight left.' Taita looked up at the last glow of the sun that had already sunk behind the western hills.

'A single horseman can always hold off a chariot,' Nefer declared, with a confidence he did not truly feel. But when he looked back over his shoulder he saw it was true. They were pulling away from the troop of bouncing, jolting vehicles.

Before Nefer and Taita reached the broken ground the chariots had dropped so far behind that they were almost obscured by their own dustcloud and by the gathering blue dusk. As soon as they reached the fringe of rocks they were forced to bring the horses down to a cautious trot, but the footing was so dangerous and the light so bad that they were quickly reduced to a walk. In the last glimmer of the light Taita looked back and saw the dark shape of the leading chariot of the squadron halt at the edge of the bad ground. He recognized the voice of the driver who shouted after them, even though his words were faint.

'Prince Nefer, why do you flee? You need not fear us. We are the Phat Guards, come to escort you home to Thebes.'

Nefer made as if to turn his horse's head. 'That is Hilto. I know his voice so well. He is a good man. He is calling my name.'

Hilto was a famous warrior, who wore the Gold of Valour, but Taita ordered Nefer onwards sternly.

'Don't be deceived. Trust nobody.'

Obediently Nefer rode on into the wilderness of broken rock. The faint shouts behind them dwindled and were snuffed out by the eternal silence of the desert. Before they had gone much further the darkness forced them to dismount and walk through the difficult places where the twisting path narrowed, and sharp pillars of black stone might maim a careless horse or shatter the wheels of any vehicle that tried to follow them through. At last they had to stop to water and rest the horses. They sat close together and, with his dagger, Taita sliced a loaf of dhurra bread, and they munched it as they talked softly.

Tell me of your vision, Tata. What did you truly see when you worked the Mazes of Ammon Ra?'

'I told you. They were obscured.'

'I know that is not true.' Nefer shook his head. 'You said that to protect me.' He shivered from the chill of the night, and from the sense of dread that had been his constant companion ever since that visitation of evil at the falcons' nest. 'You saw something of terrible portent, I know you did. That is why we are fleeing now. You must tell me all your vision. I must understand what is happening to us.'

'Yes, you are right.' Taita agreed at last. 'It is time for you to know.' He put out one thin arm and drew Nefer close under his shawl - the boy was surprised by the warmth of the old man's skinny frame. Taita seemed to be collecting his thoughts, and then at last he spoke.

'In my vision I saw a great tree growing on the banks of Mother Nile. It was a mighty tree and its blooms were blue as hyacinth and over it hung the double crown of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms. In its shade were all the multitudes of this very Egypt, men and women, children and greybeards, merchants and farmers and scribes, priests and warriors. The tree gave them all protection, and they prospered mightily and were content.'

'That was a good vision.' Eagerly Nefer translated it, the way Taita had taught him: 'The tree must have been Pharaoh, my father. The colour of the House of Tamose is blue, and my father wears the double crown.'

That is the meaning as I read it.'

'Then what did you see, Tata?'

'I saw a serpent in the muddy waters of the river, swimming towards where the tree stood. It was a mighty serpent.'

'A cobra?' Nefer guessed, and his voice was small and fearful.

'Yes,' Taita affirmed, 'it was a great cobra. And it crawled from the waters of the Nile and climbed into the tree, twisting itself around the trunk and the branches until it seemed part of the tree, supporting it and giving it strength.'

'That I do not understand,' Nefer whispered.

Then the cobra reared up above the uppermost branches of the tree, struck down and buried its fangs in the trunk.'

'Sweet Horus.' Nefer shuddered. 'Was it the same snake that tried to bite me, do you think?' He did not wait for an answer, but went on quickly, 'What did you see then, Tata?'

'I saw the tree wither, fall and shatter. I saw the cobra still reared triumphantly on high, but now it wore on its evil brow the double crown. The dead tree began to throw out green shoots but as they appeared the serpent struck at them, and they, too, were poisoned and died.'

Nefer was silent. Although the meaning seemed evident, he was unable to voice his interpretation of the vision.

'Were all the green shoots of the tree destroyed?' he asked eventually.

There was one that grew in secret, beneath the surface of the earth, until it was strong. Then it burst out like a mighty vine and locked itself in conflict with the cobra. Although the cobra attacked it with all its strength and venom, still it survived and had a life of its own.'

'What was the end of the conflict, Tata? Which of them triumphed? Which one wore the double crown at the end?'

'I did not see the. end of the conflict, because it was obscured in the smoke and dust of war."

Nefer was silent for so long that Taita thought he had fallen asleep, but then the boy began to shake and he realized he was weeping. At last Nefer spoke, with a dreadful finality and certainty. 'Pharaoh is dead. My father is dead. That was the message of your vision. The poisoned tree was Pharaoh. That was the same message at the falcons' nest. The dead tiercel was Pharaoh. My father is dead, killed by the cobra.'

Taita could not answer him. All he could do was tighten his grip around Nefer's shoulders, and try to impart strength and comfort to him.

'And I am the green shoot of the tree,' Nefer went on. 'You saw this. You know that the cobra is waiting to destroy me as he did my father. That is why you would not let the soldiers take me back to Thebes. You know that the cobra waits for me there.'

'You are right, Nefer. We cannot return to Thebes until you are strong enough to defend yourself. We must fly from this very Egypt. There are lands and mighty kings to the east. It is my purpose to go to them and seek an ally to help us destroy the cobra.'

'But who is the cobra? Did you not see his face in the vision?'

'We know that he stands close to your father's throne. For in the vision he was entwined with the tree and gave it support.' He paused, and then, as if making a decision, went on, 'Naja is the name of the cobra.'

Nefer stared at him. 'Naja!' he whispered. 'Naja! Now I understand why we cannot return to Thebes.' He paused for a while, then said, 'Wandering in the eastern lands we will become two outcasts, beggars.'

'The vision showed that you will grow strong. We must put our trust in the Mazes of Ammon Ra.'

Despite his grief for his father, Nefer slept at last, but Taita roused him in the darkness before dawn. They mounted again and rode eastwards until the bad ground fell away behind them and Nefer thought he smelt the salt of the sea on the dawn wind.

'At the port of Seged we will find a ship to take us across to the land of the Hurrians.' Taita seemed to read what was in his mind. 'King Sargon of Babylon and Assyria, those mighty kingdoms between the Tigris and the Euphrates, is your father's satrap. He is bound in treaty to your father against the Hyksos, and all our mutual enemies. I think that Sargon will hold to that treaty, for he is an honourable man. We must trust that he will take us in and foster your claim to the throne of united Egypt.'

Ahead of them the sun came up in a furnace glow, and when they topped the next rise they saw the sea below them blazing like a freshly forged bronze war shield. Taita judged the distance. 'We will reach the coast before the sun sets this evening.' Then, with narrowed eyes, he turned to look back over his mount's rump. He stiffened as he made out not one but four separate plumes of yellow dust rising on the plain behind them. 'Hilto, again,' he exclaimed. 'I should have known better than to think that old rogue had given up the chase so readily.' He jumped up and stood erect on his horse's back for a better field of view, an old cavalryman's trick. 'He must have detoured around the rocky ground in the night. Now he has thrown out a ring of chariots in an extended line to sweep for our tracks. He did not need a necromancer to tell him we must be heading east for the coast.'

Swiftly he looked in every direction for cover. Although the open stony plain over which they were travelling seemed devoid of any feature, he picked out an insignificant fold of ground that might offer concealment if they could reach it in time.

'Dismount!' he ordered Nefer. 'We must keep as low as possible and raise no dust for them to spot us.' Silently he rebuked himself for not having taken more care to cover their tracks during the night. Now as they turned aside and led the horses towards the concealing fold of ground, he took care to avoid the patches of soft earth and keep to a natural rock pavement, which would leave no tracks. When they reached the hidden ground they found it was too shallow to cover a standing horse.

Nefer looked back anxiously. The nearest column of moving dust was less than half a league behind them, and coming on fast. The others were spread out in a wide semicircle.

'There is no place to hide here, and it's too late to run now. Already they have us surrounded.' Taita slipped down from the back of his mare, spoke to her softly and stooped to caress her front legs. The mare stamped and snorted, but when he insisted, she lowered herself reluctantly and lay flat on her side still snorting in mild protest. Taita took off his kilt and used it to blindfold her, so that she would not attempt to stand up again.

Then he came quickly to Nefer's colt and performed the same trick. When both horses were down he told Nefer sharply, 'Lie at Stargazer's head and hold him down if he tries to stand.'

Nefer laughed for the first time since he had learned of his father's death. Taita's way with animals never failed to enchant him. 'How did you make them do that, Tata?'

'If you speak to them so that they understand, they will do whatever you tell them. Now, lie beside him and keep him quiet.'

They lay behind the horses and watched the encircling columns of dust sweep across the plain around them. 'They won't be able to pick out our tracks on the stony ground, will they, Tata?' Nefer asked hopefully.

Taita grunted. He was watching the approach of the nearest chariot. In the dancing mirage it seemed insubstantial, wavering and distorted as an image seen through water. It was moving quite slowly, weaving from side to side as it cast for spoor. Suddenly it moved forward with more determination and purpose, and Taita could see that the charioteer had picked up their tracks and was following them.

The chariot came on until they could make out the men on the footplate more clearly. They were leaning out over the dashboard, examining the earth as they passed over it. Suddenly Taita muttered unhappily, 'By Seth's stinking breath, they have a Nubian scout with them.'

The tall black man was made even taller by the headdress of heron's feathers he wore. Five hundred cubits from where they lay concealed, the Nubian jumped down from the moving vehicle and ran ahead of the horses.

They are at the spot where we turned aside,' Taita whispered. 'Horus conceal our spoor from that black savage.' It was said that Nubian scouts could follow the track left by a swallow flying through the air.

The Nubian brought the chariot to a halt with a peremptory hand signal. He had lost the tracks where they turned on to the stony ground. Bent almost double, he circled out over the bare earth. At that distance he looked like a secretary bird hunting for serpents and rodents.

'Can you not weave a spell of concealment for us, Tata?' Nefer whispered uneasily. Taita had worked the spell for them often when they were hunting gazelle out on the open plains, and most times had enticed the dainty little animals within easy bow-shot without them becoming aware of the hunters. Taita did not reply, but when Nefer glanced across to where he lay he saw that the old man already had his most potent charm in his hand, a golden five-pointed star of exquisite workmanship, the Periapt of Lostris. Nefer knew that sealed within it was a lock of hair Taita had snipped from the head of Queen Lostris as she lay on the embalmer's table before her deification. Taita touched it to his lips as he silently recited the canticle for Concealment from the Eyes of an Enemy.

Out on the plain the Nubian straightened with a fresh air of purpose, and gazed straight in their direction.

'He has found the twist in our tracks,' Nefer said, and they watched the chariot pull in behind him as the Nubian started towards them over the rocky ground.

Taita said softly, 'I know that devil well. His name is Bay and he is a shaman of the Usbak tribe.'

Nefer watched in trepidation as the chariot and its outrider came on steadily. The charioteer was standing high on the footplate. Surely he could look down on them from there. But he made no sign of having spotted them.

Closer still they came and Nefer recognized Hilto as the charioteer, even down to the white battle scar on his right cheek. For a moment it seemed he stared straight at Nefer with those hawk-sharp eyes, then his gaze slid away.

'Do not move.' Taita's voice was soft as the light breeze over the bright plain.

Now Bay, the Nubian, was so close that Nefer could see every charm in the necklace that dangled on his broad bare chest. Bay stopped abruptly and his scarified features creased into a frown, as he turned his head, slowly questing all around, like a hunting dog with the scent of game in his nostrils.

'Still!' Taita whispered. 'He senses us.'

Bay came on a few slow paces then stopped again and held up his hand. The chariot pulled up behind him. The horses were restless and fidgeting. Hilto touched the dashboard with the shaft of the lance in his hand. The small rasping sound was magnified in the silence.

Now Bay was staring directly into Nefer's face. Nefer tried to hold that dark implacable stare without blinking, but his eyes watered with the strain. Bay reached up and clasped one of the charms on his necklace. Nefer realized it was the floating bone from the chest of a man-eating lion. Taita had one in his armoury of talismans and magical charms.

Bay began to chant softly in his deep melodious African bass. Then he stamped one bare foot on the hard earth, and spat in Nefer's direction.

'He is piercing my curtain,' Taita said flatly. Suddenly Bay grinned and pointed directly at them with the lion charm in his fist. Behind him Hilto shouted with astonishment, and gaped at where Taita and Nefer were suddenly revealed, lying on the open ground only a hundred cubits away.

'Prince Nefer! We have searched for you these thirty days past. Thank great Horus and Osiris, we have found you at last.'

Nefer sighed and scrambled to his feet, and Hilto drove up, leaped out of the chariot and went down on one knee before him. He lifted the bronze skull helmet from his head, and cried, in a voice pitched to giving commands on the battlefield, 'Pharaoh Tamose is dead! Hail, Pharaoh Nefer Seti. May you live for ever.'

Seti was the Prince's divine name, one of the five names of power that had been given him at birth, long before his accession to the throne was assured. No one had been allowed to use the divine name until this moment when he was first hailed as Pharaoh.

'Pharaoh! Mighty bull! We have come to bear you to the Holy City that you may be risen in Thebes in your own divine image as Horus of Gold.'

'What if I should choose not to go with you, Colonel Hilto?' Nefer asked.

Hilto looked distressed. 'With all love and loyalty, Pharaoh, it is the strictest order of the Regent of Egypt that you be brought to Thebes. I must obey that order, even at the risk of your displeasure.'

Nefer glanced sideways at Taita, and spoke from the side of his mouth: 'What must I do?'

'We must go with them.'

--

They began the return to Thebes with an escort of fifty fighting chariots led by Hilto. Under strict orders the column rode first to the oasis of Boss. Fast horsemen had been sent ahead to Thebes and Lord Naja, the Regent of Egypt, had come out from the city to the oasis to meet the young Pharaoh Nefer Seti.

On the fifth day the squadron of chariots, dusty and battered from months in the wilderness, trotted into the oasis. As they entered the shade of the canopy of the palm groves a full regiment of the Phat Guards formed up in parade order to welcome them. The troopers had sheathed their weapons and instead carried palm fronds, which they waved as they chanted the anthem to their monarch.

'Seti, mighty bull.

Beloved of truth.

He of the two ladies, Nekhbet and Wadjet.

Fiery serpent, great of strength.

Horus of Gold, who makes hearts live.

He of the sedge and the bee.

Seti, son of Ra, god of the sun, living for ever and eternity.'

Nefer stood between Hilto and Taita on the footplate of the leading chariot. His clothing was ragged and dusty, and his thick locks were matted with dust. The sun had burnt his face and arms to the colour of ripe almonds. Hilto drove the chariot down the long alley formed by the soldiers, and Nefer smiled shyly at those men in the ranks whom he recognized and they cheered him spontaneously. They had loved his father, and now they loved him.

In the centre of the oasis an assembly of multicoloured tents had been set up beside the well. In front of the royal tent Lord Naja, surrounded by a concourse of courtiers, nobles and priests, waited to receive the king. He was mighty in the power and grace of regency, glistening and beautiful in gold and precious stones, redolent of sweet unguents and fragrant lotions.

On his either hand stood Heseret and Merykara, the princesses of the royal House of Tamose. Their faces were pearly white with makeup, eyes huge and dark with kohl. Even the nipples of their bare breasts had been rouged red as ripe cherries. The horsehair wigs were too large for their pretty heads, and their skirts were so heavy with pearls and gold thread that they stood as stiffly as carved dolls.

As Hilto brought the chariot to a halt in front of him, Lord Naja stepped forward and lifted down the dirty boy. Nefer had not had an opportunity to bathe since leaving Gebel Nagara, and he smelt like a billy-goat.

'As your regent I salute you, Pharaoh. I am your foot servant and your loyal companion. May you live a thousand years,' he intoned, so that all those in the closest ranks could hear every word. Lord Naja led Nefer by the hand to the dais of council, carved from precious black woods from the interior of the African continent and inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. He placed him upon it, then went down on his knees and kissed Nefer's grazed and grubby feet without any sign of repugnance. The toenails were torn and caked with black dirt.

He stood up and lifted Nefer to his feet, stripped away the torn kilt so the pharaonic tattoo on his thigh was revealed. He turned the boy slowly so that everyone in the audience could see it clearly.

'Hail, Pharaoh Seti, god and son of the gods. Behold thy sign. Look upon this mark, all the nations of the earth, and tremble at the power of the king. Bow down before the might of Pharaoh.'

A great shout went up from the soldiers and the courtiers packed around the dais. 'Hail, Pharaoh! In his might and majesty may he live for ever.'

Naja led the princesses forward, and they knelt before their brother to take their oaths of allegiance. Their voices were inaudible until Merykara, the younger, could contain herself no longer and sprang up on to the dais in a flurry of jewelled skirts. She rushed to her brother. 'Nefer,' she squealed, 'I have missed you so very much. I thought you were dead.' Nefer returned her embrace awkwardly, until she pulled away and whispered, 'You smell terribly,' and giggled.

Lord Naja signalled for one of the royal nursemaids to take the child away, and then, one by one, the mighty lords of Egypt, headed by the members of the council, came forward to take the loyal oath. There was one uncomfortable moment when Pharaoh surveyed the gathering and asked, in a clear, penetrating voice, 'Where is my good uncle Kratas? He of all my people should have been here to greet me.'

Talla mumbled a placatory explanation. 'Lord Kratas is unable to attend. It shall be explained later to Your Majesty.' Talla, old and feeble, was now president of the council of state. He had become Naja's creature.

The ceremony ended when Lord Naja clapped his hands. 'Pharaoh has come on a long journey. He must rest before leading the procession into the city.'

He took Nefer's hand in a proprietary manner and led him into the royal tent whose spacious galleries and saloons could have accommodated a full regiment of the guards. There the master of the wardrobe, the perfumers and hairdressers, the keeper of the royal jewels, the valets, manicurists, masseurs and the maids of the bath were waiting to receive him.

Taita had determined to stay at the boy's side where he could protect him. He tried unobtrusively to include himself among this entourage, but his lanky frame and head of silver hair marked him out, while his fame and reputation were such that he could never have passed inconspicuously anywhere in the land. Almost immediately a serjeant-at-arms confronted him. 'Greetings, Lord Taita. May the gods always smile upon you.' Although Pharaoh Tamose had elevated him to the nobility on the day that he had sealed the deed of his manumission, Taita still felt awkward at being addressed by his title.

'The Regent of Egypt has sent for you.' He looked down at the Magus' filthy clothing and dusty old sandals. 'It would be as well not to attend him in your present state of dress. Lord Naja detests uncouth odours and unwashed apparel.'

--

Lord Naja's tent was larger and more luxuriously appointed than Pharaoh's. He sat on a throne of carved ebony and ivory decorated in gold and the even rarer and more precious silver with representations of all the principal gods of Egypt. The sandy floor was covered with woollen rugs from Hurria, woven in wonderful colours, including the bright green that signified the verdant fields that covered both banks of the Nile. Since his elevation to the stature of regent, Naja had adopted that green as the colour of his house.

He believed that pleasing aromas encouraged the gods to draw nigh, and incense burned in the silver pots suspended on chains from the ridge-pole of the tent. There were open glass vases filled with perfume on the low table in front of the throne. The Regent had discarded his wig, and a slave held a cone of perfumed beeswax on his shaven pate. As the wax melted it ran down his cheeks and neck, cooling and soothing him.

The interior of the tent smelt like a garden. Even the ranks of courtiers, ambassadors and supplicants who sat facing the throne had been induced to bathe and perfume their bodies before entering the presence of the Regent. Likewise, Taita had followed the advice of the serjeant-at-arms. His hair was washed and combed into a silver cascade over his shoulders, and his linen was freshly laundered and bleached to purest white. At the entrance to the tent, he knelt to make obeisance to the throne. There was a hum of comment and speculation as he rose to his feet. The foreign ambassadors stared at him curiously, and he heard his name whispered. Even the warriors and priests nodded and leaned close together as they told each other, 'It is the Magus.', 'The holy Taita, adept of the Mazes.', 'Taita, the Wounded Eye of Horus.'

Lord Naja looked up from the papyrus he was scanning and smiled down the length of the tent. He was truly a handsome man, with sculpted features and sensitive lips. His nose was straight and narrow, and his eyes were the colour of golden agate, lively and intelligent. His naked chest was devoid of fat, and his arms were lean and covered with hard muscle.

Swiftly Taita surveyed the ranks of men who now sat closest to the throne. In the short time since the death of Pharaoh Tamose there had been a redistribution of power and favour among the courtiers and nobles. Many familiar faces were missing, and many others had emerged from obscurity into the sunshine of the Regent's goodwill. Not least of these was Asmor of the Phat Guards.

'Come forward, Lord Taita.' Naja's voice was pleasant and low. Taita moved towards the throne, and the ranks of courtiers opened to let him pass. The Regent smiled down at him. 'Know you that you stand high in our favour. You have discharged the duty that Pharaoh Tamose placed upon you with distinction. You have given the Prince Nefer Memnon invaluable instruction and training.' Taita was astonished by the warmth of this greeting, but he did not let it show. 'Now that the prince has become Pharaoh Seti, he will stand in even greater need of your guiding hand.'

'May he live for ever.' Taita responded, and the gathering echoed his words.

'May he live for ever.'

Lord Naja gestured. 'Take your seat here, in the shadow of my throne. Even I will have much need of your experience and wisdom when it comes to ordering the affairs of Pharaoh.'

'The royal Regent does me more honour than I deserve.' Taita turned a gentle face to Lord Naja. It was prudent never to let your hidden enemy recognize your animosity. He took the seat that was offered him, but declined the silken cushion, and sat on the woollen rug. His back was straight, and his shoulders square.

The business of the Regency proceeded. They were dividing up the estate of General Kratas: as a declared traitor everything Kratas owned was forfeited to the Crown. 'From the traitor Kratas, unto the temple of Hapi and the priests of the mysteries,' Naja read from the papyrus, 'all his lands and the buildings on the east bank of the river between Dendera and Abnub.'

As Taita listened he mourned his oldest friend, but he let no shadow of grief show on his face. During the long journey back from the desert, Hilto had related the manner of Kratas' death, then gone on to tell him, 'All men, even the noble and the good, walk softly in the presence of the new Regent of Egypt. Menset is dead, he who was president of the council of state. He died in his sleep, but there are those who say he had a little help to start him on the journey. Cinka is dead, executed for treason, though he had no longer the wits to cheat on his ancient wife. His estates are confiscated by the Regency. Fifty more have gone in company with the good Kratas to the underworld. And the council members are all Naja's dogs.'

Kratas had been Taita's last link with the golden days when Tanus, Lostris and he had been young. Taita had loved him well.

'From the traitor Kratas, unto the Regent of Egypt, all the store of millet held in his name in the granaries of Athribis,' Lord Naja read from the papyrus.

That was fifty bargeloads, Taita calculated, for Kratas had been a shrewd investor in the millet exchanges. Lord Naja had paid himself generously for the onerous work of assassination.

'These stores to be used for the common good.' The expropriation was qualified, and Taita wondered expressionlessly who would determine the public good.

The priests and the scribes were busily recording the division on their clay tablets. These would be stored in the archives of the temple. While Taita watched and listened, he kept his anger and his sorrow locked away in his heart.

'We will move on now to another important royal matter,' Lord Naja said, when Kratas' heirs had been deprived of all their inheritance, and he was richer by three lakhs of gold. 'I come to the consideration of the well-being and status of the princesses royal, Heseret and Merykara. I have consulted earnestly with the members of the council of state. All are agreed that, for their own good, I should take both the Princess Heseret and the Princess Merykara in marriage. As my wives, they will come under my full protection. The goddess Isis is the patron of both the royal maidens. I have ordered the priestesses of the goddess to consult the auguries, and they have determined that these marriages are pleasing to the goddess. Therefore, the ceremony will take place in the temple of Isis at Luxor on the day of the next full moon after the burial of Pharaoh Tamose, and the coronation of his heir, Prince Nefer Seti.'

Taita remained unmoving, his face blank, but all around him there was a rustle and murmur at this pronouncement. The political considerations of such a double marriage were monumental. All of those present knew that Lord Naja was intent on making himself a member through marriage of the royal House of Tamose, and thus the next in line of succession.

Taita felt chilled to his bones, as though he had just heard the death sentence of Pharaoh Nefer Seti cried aloud from the White Tower in the centre of Thebes. There remained only twelve more days of the required seventy for the Royal embalming of the dead pharaoh. Immediately after the interment of Tamose in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile, the coronation of his successor and the weddings of his surviving daughters would take place.

Then the cobra will strike again. Taita felt the certainty of it. He was roused from his preoccupation with the dangers that surrounded the prince by a general stir in the gathering around him, and he realized that, without him hearing it, the Regent had just declared the levee closed, and was rising and retiring through the tent flap behind the throne. He rose with the others to leave the tent.

Colonel Asmor stepped forward to stop him, with a smile and a courteous bow. 'Lord Naja, the Regent of Egypt, asks you not to leave. He invites you to a private audience.'

Asmor was now colonel of the Regent's bodyguard, with the rank of Best of Ten Thousand. In a short time he had become a man of power and influence. There was no point in or possibility of refusing the summons, and Taita nodded. 'I am the servant of Pharaoh and of his regent. May they both live a thousand years.'

Asmor led him to the back of the tent, and held open the curtaining for him to pass through. Taita found himself out in the open palm groves, and Asmor led him through the trees to where a smaller, single-roomed tent was pitched on its own. A dozen guards were posted in a ring around this pavilion, for this was a place of secret council which no person was permitted to approach without the Regent's summons. At a command from Asmor, the guards stood aside and the colonel ushered Taita into the shaded interior.

Naja looked up from the bronze bowl in which he was washing his hands. 'You are welcome, Magus.' He smiled warmly, and waved to the pile of cushions in the centre of the rug-covered floor. While Taita seated himself, Naja nodded to Asmor, who went to take up a guard position at the tent opening, his sickle sword drawn. There were only the three of them in the tent, and their conversation would not be overheard.

Naja had discarded his jewellery, and insignia of office. He was affable and friendly as he came to take a seat on one of the cushions facing Taita. He indicated the tray of sweetmeats and sherbet in golden bowls that stood between them. 'Please refresh yourself.'

Taita's instinct was to decline, but he knew that to refuse the Regent's hospitality would advertise his own hostility, and alert Naja to his deadly opposition.

As yet, Lord Naja had no reason to know that Taita was aware of his intentions towards the new Pharaoh, or of Naja's crimes and his further ambitions. He inclined his head in thanks and selected the golden bowl furthest from his hand. He waited for Naja to pick up the other bowl of sherbet. The Regent took it, raised it, drank and swallowed without hesitation.

Taita lifted the bowl to his lips, and sipped the cordial. He held it on his tongue. There were those who boasted of possessing poisons that were tasteless and undetectable, but Taita had studied all the corrosive elements, and even the tart fruit could not mask their flavours from him. The drink was uncontaminated, and he swallowed it with pleasure.

'Thank you for your trust,' said Naja gravely, and Taita knew that he referred to more than his acceptance of the refreshment.

'I am the servant of the King, and therefore of his regent.'

'You are a person of inestimable value to the Crown,' Naja countered, 'You have faithfully served three pharaohs and all of them have relied on your advice without question.'

'You overestimate my worth, my lord Regent. I am an old man and feeble.'

Naja smiled. 'Old? Yes, you are old. I have heard it said that you are more than two hundred years old.' Taita inclined his head, neither confirming nor denying it. 'But feeble, no! You are old and as monumental as a mountain. All men know that your wisdom is boundless. Even the secrets of eternal life are yours.'

The flattery was blatant and unashamed, and Taita searched behind it for the hidden reason and meaning. Naja was silent, watching him expectantly. What was he waiting to hear? Taita looked into his eyes, and tuned his mind to catch the other man's thoughts. They were as fleeting and evanescent as the darting shapes of cave bats against the darkling sky at sunset.

He captured one thought entire, and suddenly understood what Naja wanted from him. The knowledge gave him power, and the way ahead opened before him like the gates of a captured city.

'For a thousand years, every king and every learned man has searched for the secret of eternal life,' he said softly.

'Perhaps one man alone has found it.' Naja leaned forward eagerly, with his elbows on his knees.

'My lord, your questions are too profound for an old man like me. Two hundred years is not life eternal.' Taita spread his hands deprecatingly, but dropped his eyes, allowing Naja to read what he wanted to hear in the half-hearted denial. The double crown of Egypt, and eternal life, he thought, and smiled inwardly, keeping his expression solemn. This regent's wants are few and simple.

Naja straightened. 'We will speak of these deep matters another time.' There was a triumphant light in his yellow eyes. 'But now there is something else I would ask of you. It would be a way for you to prove that my good opinion of you is fully justified. You would find my gratitude without bounds.'

He twists and turns like an eel, Taita thought, and I once believed him to be a dull clod of a soldier. He has been able to hide the light of his lantern from all of us. Aloud he said simply, 'If it is within my power, I would deny Pharaoh's regent nothing.'

'You are an adept of the Mazes of Ammon Ra.' Naja said, with a finality that brooked no denial.

Once more Taita glimpsed the shadowy depths of this man's ambition. Not only the crown and eternal life! He wishes also to have the future revealed to him, Taita marvelled, but nodded humbly and replied, 'My lord Naja, all my life I have studied the mysteries, and perhaps I have learned a little.'

'All your very long life.' Naja placed his own emphasis on the phrase. 'And you have learned a very great deal.'

Taita bowed his head and remained silent. Why did I ever dream that he would have me killed? he asked himself. He will protect me with his own life, for that is what he believes I hold in my hands - the key to his immortality.

'Taita, beloved of kings and gods, I wish you to work the Mazes of Ammon Ra for me.'

'My lord, I have never worked the Mazes for anyone who was not a queen or a pharaoh, or one who was not destined to sit upon the throne of this very Egypt.'

'It may well be that one such person asks you now,' said Lord Naja, with deep significance in his tone.

Great Horus has delivered him to me. I have him in my hands, Taita thought, and said, 'I bow to the wishes of Pharaoh's regent.'

'Will you work the Mazes for me this very day? I am most anxious to know the wishes of the gods.' Naja's handsome features were alive with excitement and avarice.

'No man should enter the Mazes lightly,' Taita demurred. 'There are great dangers, not only for me but also for the patron who requests the divination. It will take time to prepare for the journey into the future.'

'How long?' Naja's disappointment was evident.

Taita clasped his forehead in a pantomime of deep thought. Let him sniff the bait for a while, he thought. It will make him more eager to swallow the hook. At last he looked up. 'On the first day of the festival of the Bull of Apis.'

--

The next morning, when he emerged from the great tent, Pharaoh Seti was transformed from the dusty and odorous little rapscallion who had entered the oasis of Boss the previous day. ' With a regal fury and fire that had dismayed his entourage, he had resisted the attempts of the barbers to shave his head. Instead, his dark curls had been shampooed and combed until they shone in the early sunlight with russet lights. On top of them he wore the uraeus, the circlet of gold depicting Nekhbet, the vulture goddess, and Naja, the cobra. Their images were entwined on his forehead, with eyes of red-and blue-coloured glass. On his chin was the false beard of kingship. His makeup was skilfully created so that his beauty was enhanced, and the packed crowds who waited before the tent sighed with admiration and awe as they sank to the ground in adoration. His false fingernails were of beaten gold, and there were gold sandals on his feet. On his chest was one of the most precious of the Crown Jewels of Egypt: the pectoral medallion of Tamose, a jewelled portrait of the god Horus the Falcon. He walked with a stately tread for one so young, carrying the flail and the sceptre crossed over his heart. He stared solemnly ahead until, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Taita in the front rank of the crowd: he rolled his eyes at the old man then made an impish moue of resignation.

In a cloud of perfume, Lord Naja walked a pace behind him, splendid with jewels and awesome with authority. On his hip hung the blue sword, and on his right arm he wore the hawk seal.

Next came the princesses, with the golden feathers of the goddess Isis on their heads, and golden rings on their fingers and toes. They were no longer in the stiff, encrusted robes of yesterday: from throat to ankles they were encased in long dresses, but the linen was so fine and transparent that the sunlight struck through it, as though through the river mist at dawn. Merykara's limbs were slim, and her chest boyish. The outline of Heseret's body was moulded into voluptuous curves, her breasts were rosy-tipped through the diaphanous folds, and at the base of her belly, in the fork of her thighs, nestled the shadowy triangle of womanhood.

Pharaoh mounted the processional carriage and took his seat on the elevated throne. Lord Naja stood at his right hand, and the princesses sat at his feet.

The companies of priests from every one of the fifty temples of Thebes fell in ahead, strumming the lyre, beating drum and shaking sistrum, sounding the horns, chanting and wailing praises and supplications to the gods.

Then Asmor's bodyguard took up their positions in the procession, and after them came Hilto's squadron of chariots, all freshly burnished and decked with pennants and flowers. The horses were curried until their hides glowed like precious metal, and ribbons were plaited into their manes. The bullocks in the traces of the royal carriage were all of unblemished white, their massive humps decorated with bouquets of lilies and water-hyacinth. Their widespread horns and even their hoofs were covered with gold leaf.

The drivers were stark naked Nubian slaves. Every hair had been plucked from their heads and bodies which greatly emphasized the size of their genitals. They had been anointed from head to foot with rich oils so that they glistened in the sunlight, black as the eye of Seth, in magnificent contrast to the snowy hides of their bullocks. They goaded the team forward, and the bullocks plodded through the dust. A thousand warriors of the Phat Guards fell in behind them and burst with one voice into the anthem of praise. The populace of Thebes had opened the main gates of the city in welcome and were lining the tops of the walls. From a mile outside it they had covered the dusty surface of the road with palm fronds, straw and flowers.

The walls, towers and buildings of Thebes were all built of sun-baked mud bricks - stone blocks were reserved for the construction of tombs and temples. It hardly rained in the Nile valley so these constructions never deteriorated; they had all been freshly whitewashed and hung with banners in the sky blue of the House of Tamose. The procession passed through the gates, with the crowds dancing, singing and weeping with joy, filling the narrow streets so that the pace of the royal carriage was that of a giant tortoise. At every temple along the way the royal carriage came to a ponderous halt, and Pharaoh dismounted in solemn dignity to sacrifice to the god who dwelt within.

It was late afternoon before they reached the docks at the riverside where the royal barge waited to ferry Pharaoh's party across to the palace of Memnon on the west bank. Once they had gone on board, two hundred rowers in massed banks plied their paddles. To the beat of the drum they rose and fell in unison, wet and shining like the wings of a gigantic egret.

Surrounded by a fleet of galleys, feluccas and other small craft they made the crossing in the late sunlight. Even when they reached the west bank the King's duties for his first day were not completed. Another royal carriage bore him through the crowds to the funerary temple of his father, Pharaoh Tamose.

It was dark before they rode up the causeway, lit on both sides by bonfires, and the populace had indulged themselves all that day on beer and wine provided by the royal treasury. The uproar was deafening as Pharaoh dismounted at Tamose's temple, and climbed the stairway between ranks of granite statues of his father and of his patron god Horus in all his hundred divine guises - Horus as the child Harpocrates, with side-lock and a finger in his mouth, suckling at the breast of Isis, or squatting on a lotus blossom, or falcon-headed, or as the winged sun disc. It seemed that king and god had become one.

Lord Naja and the priests led the boy Pharaoh through the tall wooden gates into the Hall of Sorrow, that holy place where Tamose's mummy lay on its embalming slab of black diorite. In a separate shrine in the side wall, guarded by a black statue of Anubis, the god of cemeteries, stood the pearly alabaster canopic jars that held the king's heart, lungs and viscera.

In a second shrine against the opposite wall the gold-covered sarcophagus stood ready to receive the royal corpse. The lid of the coffin bore a portrait of Pharaoh in gold so lifelike that Nefer's heart twisted, impaled with grief, and tears started in his eyes. He blinked them away, and followed the priests to where his father's body lay in the centre of the hall.

Lord Naja took up his position opposite him on the far side of the diorite slab, facing Nefer, and the high priest stood at the head of the dead king. When all was in readiness for the ceremony of Opening the Mouth of the dead king, two priests drew aside the linen sheet that covered the corpse, and Nefer recoiled involuntarily as he looked down on his father.

For all the weeks after his death, while Nefer and Taita had been in the desert, the embalmers had been at work on the King's body. First they had probed a long-handled silver spoon up his nostril and, without marking his head, scooped out the soft custard of the brains. They removed the eyeballs, which would putrefy swiftly, and filled the eye sockets and the cavity of the skull with natron salts and aromatic herbs. Then they had lowered the corpse into a bath of highly concentrated salts, with the head exposed, and let it soak for thirty days, daily changing the harsh alkali fluids. The fats were leached out of the corpse and the skin peeled away. Only the hair and skin of the head were unaffected.

When at last the corpse was removed from the natron bath it was laid on the diorite slab and wiped down with oils and herbal tinctures. The empty stomach cavity was stuffed with linen pads soaked in resins and waxes. The arrow wound in the chest was sewn closed, and amulets of gold and precious stones placed over it. The barbed and broken shaft that had killed the king had been removed from Pharaoh's body by the embalmers. After it had been examined by the council of state, the missile had been sealed in a golden casket and would go into his tomb with him, a powerful charm against any further evil that might befall him on his journey through the netherworld.

Then, during the remaining forty days of the embalming, the corpse was allowed to dry thoroughly with the hot desert wind through the open doorways streaming over it.

Once it was as desiccated as firewood, it could be bound up. The linen bandages were laid on it in an intricate design, as incantations to the gods were chanted by choirs of priests. Under them were placed more precious talismans and amulets, and each layer was painted with resins that dried to a metallic hardness and sheen. Only the head was left uncovered, and then for the week before Opening the Mouth, four of the most skilful makeup artists of the guild of embalmers, using wax and cosmetics, had restored the King's features to lifelike beauty.

They replaced the missing eyes with perfect replicas of rock-crystal and obsidian. The whites were translucent, the iris and pupils an exact match of the king's natural colour. The glass orbs seemed endowed with life and intelligence, so that now Nefer gazed into them with awe, expecting to see the lids blink and his father's pupils widen in recognition. The lips were shaped and rouged so that at any moment they might smile, and his painted skin looked silken and warm, as though bright blood still ran beneath it. His hair had been washed and set in the familiar dark ringlets that Nefer remembered so well.

Lord Naja, the high priest and the choir began to chant the incantation against dying for the second time, but Nefer could not tear his gaze away from his father's face.

'He is the reflection and not the mirror,

He is the music and not the lyre,

He is the stone and not the chisel,

He will live for ever.'

The high priest came to Nefer's side and placed the golden spoon in his hand. Nefer had been coached in the ritual, but his hand trembled as he placed the spoon on his father's lips and recited, 'I open thy lips that thou might have the power of speech once more.' He touched his father's nose with the spoon. 'I open thy nostrils that thou might breathe once more.' He touched each of the magnificent eyes. 'I open thine eyes that thou might behold the glory of this world once more, and the glory of the world to come.'

When at last it was done, the royal party waited as the embalmers wrapped the head and painted it with aromatic resins. Then they laid the golden mask over the blind face, and once more it glowed with splendid life. Contrary to custom and usage, there was only one death mask and one golden sarcophagus for Pharaoh Tamose. His father had gone before him to his tomb covered by seven masks and seven sarcophagi, one within the other, each larger and more ornate than the next.

For the rest of that night Nefer stayed beside the golden sarcophagus, praying and burning incense, entreating the gods to take his father among them and seat him in the midst of the pantheon. In the dawn he went out with the priests on to the terrace of the temple where his father's head falconer waited. He carried a royal falcon on his gloved fist.

'Nefertem!' Nefer whispered the bird's name. 'Lotus Flower.' He took the magnificent bird from the falconer and held it high upon his own fist, so that the populace gathered below the terrace might see it clearly. Around its right leg the falcon wore a tiny goldtag on a golden chain. On it was engraved his father's royal cartouche. 'This is the godbird of Pharaoh Tamose Mamose. It is the spirit of my father.' He paused to regain his composure, for he was near to tears. Then he went on, 'I set my father's godbird free.' He slipped the leather rufterhood from the falcon's head. Fierce eyes blinked at the light of the dawn and the bird ruffled its feathers. Nefer unknotted the jesses from its leg, and the bird spread its wings. 'Fly, divine spirit!' Nefer cried. 'Fly high for me and my father!'

He threw the bird up, it caught the dawn wind and soared on high. Twice it circled overhead, and then, with a wild and haunting cry, it sped away across the Nile.

'The godbird flies to the west!' the high priest called out. Every member of the congregation upon the steps of the temple knew that that was a most unpropitious omen.

Nefer was so physically and emotionally exhausted that as he watched the bird fly away he swayed on his feet. Taita steadied him before he fell and led him away.

Back in Nefer's bedchamber in the palace of Memnon, Taita mixed a draught at his bedside and knelt beside him to offer it. Nefer took one long swallow then lowered the cup and asked, 'Why does my father have only one small coffin when you tell me my grandfather was entombed in seven heavy golden sarcophagi and that it took twenty strong oxen to draw his funeral wagon?'

'Your grandfather was given the richest funeral in all the history of our land, and he took a great store of grave goods to the underworld with him, Nefer,' Taita agreed. 'But those seven coffins consumed thirty lakhs of pure gold, and almost beggared the nation.'

Nefer looked thoughtfully into the cup, then drained the last few drops of the draught. 'My father deserved such a rich funeral, for he was a mighty man.'

'Your grandfather thought much of his afterlife.' Taita explained patiently. 'Your father thought much of his people and the welfare of this very Egypt.'

Nefer thought about this for a while, then sighed, settled down on the sheepskin mattress and closed his eyes. He opened them again. 'I am proud of my father,' he said simply.

Taita laid his hand upon his forehead in blessing and whispered, 'And I know that one day your father will have reason to be proud of you.'

--

It did not need the ill omen of the flight of the falcon Nefertem to warn Taita that they had reached the most dire and fateful period in all the long history of this very Egypt. When he left Nefer's bedchamber and started out into the desert, it was as though the stars stood frozen in their courses and all the ancient gods had drawn back and deserted them, abandoning them in this their most dangerous hour. 'Great Horus, we need your guidance now. You hold this Ta-meri, this precious land, in the cup of your hands. Do not let it slip through your fingers and shatter like crystal. Do not turn your back upon us now that we are in our agony. Help me, mighty falcon. Instruct me. Make your wishes clear to me, so that I may follow your will.'

Praying as he went, he climbed the hills at the periphery of the great desert. The clicking of his long staff against the rocks alarmed a yellow jackal and sent it scampering away up the moonlit slope. When he was certain that he was not observed he turned parallel to the river, and quickened his stride. 'Horus, well you know that we are balanced on the sword edge of war and defeat. Pharaoh Tamose has been struck down and there is no warrior to lead us. Apepi and his Hyksos in the north are grown so mighty as to have become almost invincible. They gather against us, and we cannot stand against them. The double crown of the two kingdoms is rotten with the worm of treachery, and cannot survive against the new tyranny. Open my eyes, mighty god, and show me the way, that we might triumph against the invading Hyksosian hordes from the north and against the destroying poison in our blood.'

For the rest of that day Taita journeyed through the stony hills and the silent places, praying and searching to discover the way forward. In the late evening he turned back towards the river, and came at last to his ultimate destination. He could have chosen to come here by the direct means of a felucca, but too many eyes would have remarked his passing, and he had needed that time alone in the desert.

In the deep darkness when most men slept he approached the temple of Bes on the riverbank. A guttering torch burned in its niche above the gate. It lit the carved figure of the god Bes, which guarded the entrance. Bes was the deformed dwarf god of drunkenness and joviality. His tongue lolled out between his leering lips. In the wavering light of the torch he gave Taita an inebriated grin as he passed.

One of the temple acolytes was waiting to receive the Magus. He led him to a stone cell in the depths of the temple where a jug of goat's milk stood on the table beside a platter of dhurra bread and honey in the comb. They knew that one of the Magus' weaknesses was honey from the pollen of the mimosa blossom.

There are three men already waiting your arrival, my lord,' the young priest told him.

'Bring Bastet to me first," Taita instructed.

Bastet was the chief scribe of the Nomarch of Memphis. He was one of Taita's most valued sources of information. Not a rich man, he was burdened with two pretty but expensive wives and a brood of brats. Taita had saved his children when the Yellow Flowers devastated the land. Although of little consequence in the scheme of things, he sat close to the seat of power, using his ears and phenomenal memory to good effect. He had much to tell Taita of what had transpired in the nome since the accession of the new Regent, and received his payment with genuine gratitude. 'Your blessing would have been sufficient payment, mighty Magus.'

'Babes don't grow fat on blessings.' Taita dismissed him.

Next came Obos, the high priest of the great Horus temple at Thebes. He owed his appointment to Taita, who had interceded for him with Pharaoh Tamose. Most of the nobles came to the temple of Horus to worship and make sacrifice, and they all confided in the high priest. The third man to report to Taita was Nolro, the secretary of the army of the north. He also was a eunuch, and there was a bond between those who had suffered such mutilation.

From the days of his youth, when Taita had first found himself directing affairs of state from the shadows behind the throne, he had been aware of the absolute necessity of having impeccable intelligence on which to base decisions. All the rest of that night and most of the following day he listened to these men and questioned them narrowly, so that when he was ready to return to the palace of Memnon he was informed of all the important events that had transpired, and the significant undercurrents and political whirlpools that had developed while he had been away in the wilderness of Gebel Nagara.

In the evening he started back towards the palace, taking the direct route along the bank of the river. The peasants returning from their labours in the fields recognized him, made the sign for good luck and long life, and called to him, Tray to Horus for us, Magus,' for they all knew he was a Horus man. Many pressed small gifts upon him, and a ploughman called to him to share his dinner of millet cakes and crisply roasted locusts and goat's milk warm from the udder.

--

As night fell Taita thanked the friendly ploughman, bade him farewell, and left him sitting beside his fire. He hurried on through the night, anxious not to miss the ceremony of the royal rising. It was dawn before he reached the palace, and he had barely time to bathe and change his raiment before he hurried to the royal bedchamber. At the door his way was barred by the two guards, who crossed their spears across the entrance.

Taita was astonished. This had never happened before. He was the royal tutor, appointed thirteen years ago by Pharaoh Tamose. He glared at the sergeant of the guard. The man dropped his eyes but remained steadfast in his denial of entry. 'I mean no offence, mighty Magus. It is on the specific orders of the commander of the bodyguard, Colonel Asmor, and the palace chamberlain. No person not approved by the Regent is allowed in the royal presence.'

The sergeant was adamant, so Taita left him and strode down the terrace to where Naja was at breakfast with a small circle of his particular favourites and toadies. 'My lord Naja, you are fully aware that I was appointed by Pharaoh's own father as his tutor and mentor. I was given the right of access at any time of day and night.'

'That was many years ago, good Magus.' Naja replied smoothly, as he accepted a peeled grape from the slave who stood behind his stool and popped it into his mouth. 'It was right for that time, but Pharaoh Seti is a child no more. He no longer needs a nursemaid.' The insult was casual, but that did not make it less cutting. 'I am his regent. In future he looks to me for advice and guidance.'

'I acknowledge your right and duty to the King, but to keep me from Nefer's side is unnecessary and cruel,' Taita protested, but Naja waved a lordly hand to silence him.

'The safety of the King is paramount," he said, and stood up from the breakfast board, to indicate that the meal and the interview were over. His bodyguard closed in around him so that Taita was forced to fall

back.

He watched Naja's entourage set off down the cloister towards the council chamber. He did not follow immediately but turned aside and sat down on the coping of one of the fish pools to ponder this development.

Naja had isolated Nefer. He was a prisoner in his own palace. When the time came he would be alone, surrounded by his enemies. Taita searched for some means to protect him. Once again he considered the idea of flight from Egypt, to spirit Nefer away across the desert to the protection of a foreign power until he had grown old and strong enough to return to claim his birthright. However, he could be certain that Naja had not only barred the door to the royal quarters but that every escape route from Thebes and Egypt would have already been closed.

There seemed no easy solution, and after an hour of deep thought, Taita rose to his feet. The guards at the door to the council chamber stood aside for him, and Taita went down the aisle and took his accustomed seat on the front bench.

Nefer was seated on the dais beside his regent. He wore the lighter hedjet crown of Upper Egypt, and he looked pale and peaky. Taita felt a flare of concern that he might already be the victim of slow poison, but he could detect no deadly aura surrounding the boy. He concentrated on sending a current of strength and courage to him, but Nefer gave him a cold, accusing stare to punish him for missing the royal rising ceremony.

Taita turned his attention to the council business. They were considering the latest reports from the northern front, where King Apepi had recaptured Abnub after a siege that had lasted the previous three years. That unfortunate city had changed hands eight times since the first Hyksosian invasion in the reign of Pharaoh Mamose, Tamose's father.

If Pharaoh Tamose had not been struck down by the Hyksosian arrow, his bold strategy might have averted this tragic reversal of arms. Instead of now being forced to prepare for the next Hyksosian strike towards Thebes, the armies of Egypt might have been surging towards the enemy capital of Avaris.

Taita found that the council was bitterly divided in every consideration of the crisis. They were seeking to place the blame for this most recent defeat, when it was plain for any fool to see that Pharaoh's untimely death had been the main cause. He had left his army without a head and a heart. Apepi had taken immediate advantage of his death.

Listening to them argue Taita felt more strongly than ever that this war was a running abscess in the body of this very Egypt. Exasperated, he rose quietly and left the council chamber. There was nothing further he could accomplish here, for they were still wrangling over who should be given command of the northern armies to replace the dead Pharaoh Tamose. 'Now that he has gone, there is not one of our commanders who can match Apepi, not Asmor or Teron or Naja himself,' Taita muttered, as he stalked away. 'The land and our armies are bled white by sixty years of warfare. We must have time to build up our strength again, and for a great military leader to emerge from our ranks.' He thought of Nefer, but it would be years before the lad could take over the role that Taita knew, from his study of the Mazes of Ammon Ra, destiny had devised for him.

I have to win him that time and keep him safe until he is ready.

Next he went to the women's quarters of the palace. Because he was a eunuch he could pass through the gates, which were barred to other men. It was three days since the princesses had learned that they were soon to become brides, and Taita knew he should have visited them before. They would be confused and distressed, and sorely in need of his comfort and advice.

Merykara was the first to see him when he entered the courtyard. She sprang up from where a priestess of Isis had been instructing her with writing tablet and brush, and flew to him on those long legs, her side-lock bouncing on her shoulder. She flung her arms around his waist and hugged him with all her strength. 'Oh, Taita, where have you been? I have searched for you these last days.'

When she looked up at him, Taita saw that she had been weeping for her eyes were red-rimmed and heavily underscored with dark bruises. Now she started again, her shoulders shaking with her sobs. Taita picked her up and held her in his arms until she had quieted a little. 'What is it, my little monkey? What has made you so unhappy?'

'Lord Naja is going to take me to a secret place and do terrible things to me. He is going to put something huge and sharp inside me that will hurt me and make me bleed.'

'Who told you that?" Taita controlled his anger with difficulty.

'Magara and Saak.' Merykara sobbed. 'Oh, Taita, can't you stop him doing these things to me? Please, oh, please.'

Taita should have known that the two Nubian slave girls had been responsible for her terror. Usually their tales were of African hobgoblins and ghouls, but now they had something else with which to torment their charge. Grimly Taita swore retribution on both little hussies, and set about calming the princess's fears. It needed all his tact and gentleness, for Merykara was terrified.

He led her to an arbour in a quiet corner of the garden, sat down and she scrambled up on to his lap and pressed her cheek to his chest.

Of course, her fears were unfounded. Even after marriage, it was beyond nature, law and custom that Naja would take her to the marriage bed before Merykara had seen her first red moon, and that event was still years away. He succeeded at last in calming her then took her down to the royal stables to admire and fondle the colt that had been born that morning.

When she was smiling and chattering again, Taita led her back to the zenana, and performed a few minor miracles for her amusement. He transformed a jug of Nile water into delicious sherbet by dipping his finger into it, and they drank this together. Then he threw a pebble into the air, which turned into a live canary and flew to the top branches of a fig tree. There it hopped and trilled while the child danced and squealed with glee beneath it.

He left her, went to find the two slave girls, Magara and Saak, and gave them such a verbal lambasting that soon they were clinging together and wailing dolefully. He knew that Magara was always the ringleader in any such unpleasantness, so he produced a live scorpion from her ear and held it inches in front of her face, which reduced her to such paroxysms of terror that she urinated in little squirts down her legs.

Satisfied, he went to look for Heseret. As he had anticipated, she was down on the bank of the river with her lyre. She looked up at him with a sad little smile but went on strumming. He sat down beside her, on the grassy verge under the trailing branches of the willow. The tune she was playing had been her grandmother's favourite. Taita had taught it to her, and now she began to sing the words.

'My heart flutters up like a wounded quail

when I see my beloved's face.

and my cheeks bloom like the dawn sky

to the sunshine of his smile.'

Her voice was sweet and true, and Taita felt his own tears brimming. It was as though he were listening to Lostris once again. He joined in with the chorus. His voice still clear and steady, without the quavering of age. Out on the river the rowers on a passing galley rested on their oars while they listened with rapt expressions as the current carried the vessel past where the pair sat together.

When the song ended Heseret laid aside the lyre, and turned to him. 'Darling Taita, I am so glad you have come.'

'I am sorry to have kept you waiting, moon of all my nights.' She smiled faintly at the pet name, for she had always had a romantic side to her nature. 'What service do you wish of me?'

'You must go to Lord Naja, and present him with my sincere apologies, but I cannot marry him.'

She was so much like her grandmother had been at the same age. Lostris, too, had saddled him with an impossible task, with the same assurance and confidence in his ability to accomplish it. Heseret now turned those enormous green eyes on him. 'You see, I have already promised Meren that I will be his wife.' Meren was the grandson of Kratas, and the boon companion of Prince Nefer.