Dagger (мир воров)

by David Drake

  The Prefect was an obtuse man and much the happier for it. He brightened and came forward, saying, "I trust your highness has met at last with success?" though nothing in the tableau hinted at that possibility.

  "You've been directed to afford my master every facility, have you not?" said Samlor brusquely.

  The Prefect looked unwillingly from Khamwas to the underling-the foreigner who was addressing him. "Yes, yes, of course. Any help I can give." He paused, frowning as he looked at the old man in Samlor's grip. "But who is this?" he asked. "Was he with you? I don't-"

  "We want you to hold him, " Samlor ordered. "Someplace he can't get away."

  "At once," the Prefect agreed. He snapped his fingers. A pair of official servants stepped forward with the nervousness of men who had seen their fellow raining toads. "Take this fellow," continued the Prefect imperiously, "and lock him in my basement storeroom."

  "Someplace other 'n that," the caravan master said, grinning in spite of himself. "Also, we'll need a hundred men equipped for a digging job. Demolition job, in fact."

  "At once," the Prefect repeated. "Where do you want them to assemble, my good man?"

  Khamwas said, "At the south corner of your house, my good man." He gestured with his staff. "We're going to demolish it."

  For some long seconds, the Prefect blinked and waited to hear the rest of the joke. Only when his wife began to scream did the man realize his lord was quite serious.

  CHAPTER 33

  THE INNER WALL was too far back to be a threat to the diggers, but it blocked the route up which baskets of earth and rubble were handed to clear the excavation. The mud brick structure toppled backward with a crash and a cloud of white dust from the molded plaster covering.

  The team of workmen cheered as they coiled their ropes. The Prefect's wife broke into a renewed set of wails. She had refused to allow her bedroom at the south corner to be emptied in the few minute Samlor allowed for salvage. She might regret the decision later, but Samlor had to admit that when your home was being devastated, there'd be small comfort in preserving your wardrobe.

  "You've got that old man locked where he won't get loose?" Samlor asked the military officer standing beside him.

  "Yes, sir," the soldier agreed. His ostrich plume headdress trebled the height of his nod. "We put him in an empty cistern-" his short spear pointed toward a back corner of the garden " – and there's a guard at the mouth of it."

  "Stone!" called a man from the pit. "Smooth stone!"

  "Then bloody clear it!" Samlor bellowed. "That's what we're about, ain't it?"

  Khamwas stood silently with his hands clasped and the staff held upright between them. He was facing the excavation, but his eyes were closed. No one came near him. Raised voices dropped if the speaker chanced to glance across the scholar's forbidding figure.

  "My lord," the Prefect said to Samlor, wringing his hands. "You have to believe that I wouldn't have occupied a temple site. There must be some mistake."

  "That's between you and the Office of Religious Works," Samlor replied with a shrug. "Though. . if it turns out to be what we hope, I think you'll find the Prince-" he nodded toward Khamwas " – is real well disposed toward you."

  "We've found a sarcophagus!" called the foreman from the pit, his voice an octave higher than during the previous announcement.

  "Oh, I'm ruined!" moaned the Prefect, but Samlor was running toward Khamwas at the edge of the excavation.

  It had seemed quickest to collapse the house into its basement and then to cart away the rubble while digging further. As a result, there were plaster chips, fragments of storage jars and even a forlorn piece of statuary at the bottom of the pit.

  The house was built on a-brick foundation, but below the corner which had been ripped down was an angle of polished red sandstone, the remnant of previous construction. Samlor whispered a prayer, remembering the lamplit interior of the tomb which Tekhao had offered for the burial of his lord's child and wife. He could almost smell the incense again…

  Khamwas pointed his staff.

  The crew in the pit was six men whose shovels and mattocks filled baskets for a hundred other men and women. The earth was handed out in long, snaky lines until it could be safely dumped. The diggers scrambled up the sides of their excavation in near panic to avoid whatever the magician was going to do.

  Green light flared at the base of the pit.

  There were two stone slabs, though only a corner of the second had been uncovered as yet. They were of the same fine-grained sandstone as the blocks of the walls, a striking contrast to the yellow clay in which they were now imbedded.

  The cold light which followed the line of Khamwas' staff made the carvings on the stones stand out despite being worn shallow and covered with clay still baking dry in the sun.

  "May the god Tatenen be merciful to the spirit of Merib," Khamwas read, chanting the revealed glyphs as loudly as a priest before his god. "May his innocence find peace in the god."

  Samlor gripped his friend's shoulder in triumph, then strode back to the soldier to whom he'd spoken earlier. Behind him, Khamwas was reading out the inscription of the second sarcophagus while green symbols blazed through clay and uncleared rubble.

  "We're going to let the old bastard go," Samlor said, gesturing sharply enough to catch the soldier's attention and start him moving without hesitation. "I don't guess he's owed much of an apology, but he'll get one. . and he'll get whatever bloody else he wants, or 1 miss my bet."

  The guard stood in a nook shaded by Rose of Sharon. The insects buzzing in the rich purple flowers had lulled him into a doze, but he snapped to full alertness when Samlor and the plumed officer stepped into view. "Sir," he said crisply.

  "How's your prisoner?" Samlor asked. The cistern's pottery lid was ajar. He bent to remove it.

  "Just fine, sir," the guard said to Samlor's back. "Hasn't said a word since we put him down there, except to ask that I put the lid back partway so the sun didn't cook him."

  The cistern was a buried terra cotta jar, eight feet tall and five feet at its greatest diameter. Its interior was plastered to hold the water which could be fed in through pipes around the rim. Empty, it was the perfect prison for a frail old man who couldn't climb out unaided.

  But the cistern was completely empty now.

  Samlor backed away.

  The military officer glanced in and gasped. He began shouting threats at the guard who defended himself with blurted astonishment.

  But when Samlor thought about it, he realized that the proper place to search for the old man would be in a rock-cut tomb near the ancient capital of Napata.

  Which is where he and Khamwas were about to return, bearing the bones of Merib and Ahwere. .

  CHAPTER 34

  AHWERE'S REMAINS WEIGHED almost nothing after a thousand years in what had been a swamp till silt pushed the Delta further out into the Great Sea. The casket in which Khamwas placed them was very small, but it was made of thick gold and ivory. Supporting half its weight while holding a lamp in the other hand-and crawling up the passage to Nanefer's tomb-made a damned difficult job.

  But Pemu and Serpot were struggling along behind with Merib's similar casket. If they didn't complain, then Samlor surely had no right to.

  As before, the sound of music outside the tomb dimmed to silence when Samlor and Khamwas stood within the chamber. The lampflame waved languidly, the only light in the room.

  The children staggered out of the passage. They were sweating and the crawl had disarranged their garments of blue and gold, but they did their best to look royal and solemn as they caught their breath within the tomb.

  Samlor had worried that the chamber would glow in an unearthly fashion, frightening the children. . and reminding him of their terrified faces as he cut their throats from ear to ear in his dream, only a dream. Perhaps Prince Nanefer had shared the same concern, because the tomb was as cold and dark as a cavity in rock should be.

  Nanefer wouldn't have been a bad
guy to know.

  Nanefer hadn't been a bad guy to be, though he sure wasn't Samlor hil Samt. . and anyway, that had been a dream, too.

  "Prince Nanefer," Khamwas intoned, "my kinsman, we have come to reunite you with the Princess Ah were."

  There was no echo, none at all.

  Speaking together-Serpot starting a half syllable ahead of Pemu, but the two of them coming into synchrony almost at once-the children said, "Prince Nanefer, our kinsman, we have come to reunite you with the Prince Merib."

  "Your little boy," Serpot said in a piping solo.

  The children, sagging toward the heavy casket between them, looked at their father. Khamwas nodded, and the party advanced as evenly as possible.

  The adults set Ah were's coffin to the right of the throne and the seated mummy. Pemu and Serpot managed to put their burden down on the other side without dropping it, but the boy heaved a great sigh of relief and began kneading circulation back into his right palm.

  Nanefer's corpse was as still as carven wood. With luck, Pemu and Serpot thought the ill-lit form was indeed a statue.

  Khamwas bent over his children and hugged them. "You can go out now, darlings," he said. "Samlor and I will be with you very shortly."

  Serpot turned, but Pemu tugged her around again. They made deep bows toward-Nanefer? The caskets? Samlor couldn't be sure. Only then did they back to the passage and duck away.

  Samlor wasn't surprised that his lamp snuffed itself as soon as the children disappeared, nor that the frescoed walls took on a pale, shadowless light.

  "Prince Nanefer," said Khamwas, bowing to the seated corpse. "We will leave you to your peace."

  "You have done well, my kinsman," the corpse rasped softly.

  A point of white light sparkled on the surface of either casket, then expanded solidly into the living form from which the bones within had come. Ahwere stepped, in front of her husband, lifted Merib onto her hip, and placed her free hand on the mummy's shoulder.

  "Go in peace, kinsman," Nanefer said.

  "Go in peace," echoed Ahwere, smiling warmly. She and the infant faded away, but for a moment the translucent memory of her lips hung in the air.

  Samlor turned to follow his companion out of the tomb chamber. He had expected his tension to release when the corpse had accepted their offering, but his gut was no less tense than it had been when he steeled himself to enter the tomb for the third time.

  "Wait with me, Samlor hil Samt," said the leathery voice.

  Great. He could trust his gut. As if that was news.

  "Prince Nanefer-" said Khamwas as he whirled.

  "You told your kids you'd come out quick," said Samlor; fear made his voice snarl. "Get out with 'em, then!" His big hand closed on his companion's shoulder, forcing Khamwas to meet his eyes.

  "But-" Khamwas said, begging his friend to be allowed to plead with the corpse at whom neither of them dared look for the moment.

  "Don't speak when it's not the time for speaking," said Tjainufi sharply from the opposite shoulder.

  "Your kids need you," Samlor said harshly. "I don't need nobody t' take my heat."

  Khamwas clasped Samlor's hand, then bowed with cold formality toward the seated corpse. He ducked down the passageway, leaving Samlor in a chamber which contained no other living thing.

  "How can I serve you, your highness?" Samlor asked. His voice sounded reedy in his own ears, but at least it didn't break.

  "You have served me, Samlor hil Samt," Nanefer whispered. "Do you recognize me?"

  "I know who you are," Samlor replied as coldly as if he were disposing a caravan against foes sure to overwhelm it.

  The horny flesh of the corpse began to soften and swell like a raisin dropped in water. The skin lost its wooden swarthiness and paled to a warm, coppery tone much like that of Khamwas and his brothers.

  There could be no doubt that this was the man Samlor had met in the Vulgar Unicorn; but there had been no doubt of that anyway.

  Samlor drew the coffin-hilled dagger. "Look," he said, beyond fear and beyond even resignation. "The night I took this, I did what seemed like a good idea to do at the time. I don't expect you to like it-but I'd do the same thing again if I thought it'd do a damn bit a good."

  Nanefer gave the laugh of a happy, healthy man. "You did what I wanted you to do," he said easily. "What I chose you to do."

  Samlor said nothing, because his lips clamped shut on, "I don't understand-" which was too evident to need stating.

  "My kinsman is a good man," said the figure which had been a corpse, "and a great scholar. But without a friend like you, Samlor, he would have left his bones to be gnawed by the rats of Sanctuary. He couldn't have taken the Book of Tatenen from me."

  The crystal in his lap blazed, visible through the silk and the hands grasping it, though the sunwhite radiance didn't change the illumination of the rock chamber.

  "But you fought him?" said Samlor, uncertain in his own mind as to whether he was really asking a question.

  "With all my strength," Nanefer agreed. "No one else could have defeated me-nor Khamwas had he been alone.

  "And until I was truly overborne, neither I nor my wife and son could ever find peace."

  "I… see," said Samlor when he was sure that he did.

  "A thousand years isn't a very long time," Nanefer murmured. His well-shaped hands caressed the crystal whose effulgence glowed through him. "When it's over."

  "Then I'll give you back your knife," Samlor said, "and leave you to your rest. You-"

  He paused, then blurted out the observation he knew he had no right to make: "You're a pretty good man, your highness. I'm glad to have known you."

  "Keep the knife, Samlor," said the seated form. "May it serve you as well as you served my kinsman."

  The light began to fade from the walls. Nanefer's features shrivelled and darkened away from the semblance of life. The entrance to the passage was a square of light trickling from the rockface beyond.

  When Samlor bent to crawl out of the tomb chamber for the last time, his eyes fell on the blade of the dagger bare in his right hand.

  Letters wavering in the steel read, Go, blessed of the Gods.

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