by Gary Gygax
"No, not quite yet," Inhetep hissed in response. "Luck might truly be with us. Come on! Let's have a peek inside the bedroom and then see about his study." Together the two men stole on tiptoe to the inner opening and peeped into Chemres' bed chamber. It was similarly silent and deserted, so they moved the curtain and went in. "There!" the ur-kheri-heb mouthed silently, touching Tuhorus' arm and pointing. A thin line of golden light was visible at the bottom of the door which closed this room from the one next in sequence.
It could be that one of the police officers had simply left a lamp alight, but Tuhorus doubted that. With his weapon ready, he stood back so as to be able to rush into the study when the magister opened the door. Inhetep didn't yank it open immediately, however. With one hand on the latch, the tall wizard-priest paused and pressed his ear against the panel. Then he moved back, signaled to his companion, and pulled with all his might. The light which spilled suddenly into their room nearly blinded the policeman, but he blinked and darted into the adjoining chamber nonetheless, crouching low and looking right and left to avoid being ambushed.
Every book, manuscript, and scroll in the place was disturbed. These items were piled on the floor, atop the desk, and every other flat surface as well. Someone was hunched over what must have been a small stack, the last of the volumes from the last shelf, turning the pages of the topmost book as the chief inspector leaped into the study. "Don't make a move!" Tuhorus cried.
Inhetep suddenly sprang up behind the policeman. He had shut his eyes for a second before opening the door, hoping that they'd adjust quickly enough thereafter so that he could use the casting he had ready to use on the one lurking within, inflicting muscle rigidity. The mag-ick was of the sort quickly evoked, and though its effect lasted only a few seconds, the subject creature—human or otherwise—was held motionless during that time by nervous energy which locked muscles into knotted rigor. To activate the charm required but a little heka, but to lay it properly the priest-wizard had to himself freeze into immobility, consciously tense his whole body, and then transfer the magnified attitude to the other creature. Inhetep fixed his gaze on the figure by the flaring oil lamp.
Whomever was hunched there had so muffled itself in a cloak that no features were immediately distinguishable, save for dark, glaring eyes which met the ur-kheri-heb's own for a split second. Setae raised his arm and began uttering the few syllables which would transmit the store of magickal energy from his own body to that of the intruder. Yet before he could manage to get the last sound out of his mouth, the magister saw the cloaked figure move with lightning speed, a dark hand flashing toward the lamp as if to extinguish its flame. Inhetep bit off his dweomer and cried out instead, "Back, Tuhorus!"
The same sort of dweomer which had brought the fiery efreet and consumed the zombie Aufs-eru now caused the lamp to send forth its oily contents in a geyser. That jet of fuel was magnified in volume, somehow intermixed with air, and augmented at the same time with some other substance, so that as it shot up and outward it burned with a hellish brightness and blastfurnace heat. The policeman instinctively obeyed Inhetep's warning shout. The magister hurled himself backward even as he called out, and Tuhorus dived off to the side and rolled. There was a roar as the lamp's tripled volume of oil was consumed in an instant. The brass container itself was turned to a molten puddle, and then there was dead blackness, save for the red glow of the metal and the faint illumination from overhead.
"Are you all right, Tuhorus?"
The man grunted in pain but said, "Fine—a bruised knee from getting out of the way is all. I can stand on it. What happened to the intruder?"
"Gone. Fled, but I think we're now ready for the last act of this nasty drama, my friend. Shield your eyes; I'm going to cast a witchlight here so we can find anything our pyromaniacal quarry might have left behind in his hurry to escape. There," Inhetep said as the place was filled with brightness from the dweomer he had imbued into the ceiling. "Now we have proper illumination." Instead of barely twinkling "stars" above, there were beams as intense as sun rays streaming down out of midair. "Already receptive, you see," he remarked to the policeman. "Only a small matter to energize those places into suitable brightness."
"Who was that fiend who tried to blast us?" Tuhorus asked, rubbing his left knee. "He was faster than a cobra."
"Indeed he was. Did you see his feet?"
"No. What about them?"
"Bare and black, my friend. The fellow was none other than Yakeem, the Dahlikil assassin— perhaps the most able killer ever known," the ur-kheri-heb told his associate. "Now I think I have it complete. What do you make of his being here, Tuhorus?"
"He was searching for something. Every scrap of writing in this room had been gone through— except for the bit he was working on when we surprised him, that is."
"Yes. Let's take a look to see if there's anything in that last pile, and then we can move on."
"But what about the assassin—Yakeem? You can't let him escape!"
"Can't? He's already gone, Tuhorus. Nothing we can do in the next few minutes will change that. Don't worry, Chief Inspector. He didn't vanish. We can track him down well enough a bit later—at our leisure," the wizard-priest explained as he began paging through the material that the Dahlikil had been going through. "Here, take this volume and see if it has anything other than the contents it's supposed to—any scraps of paper, notes in the margins, anything, and don't neglect to check the spine and binding."
After some time, they completed the search.
'Nothing at all," the police official said with consternation. "What next?"
"That we found nothing means that Yakeem is unsure of the location of whatever it was he sought, but we know very well where it is."
"What are you talking about, Inhetep?!"
"Absobek-khaibet, of course. He had secreted something to ensure his safety—-at least, he thinks he has. Now all we need to do is locate the means of entrance to the passageways we know lie beneath here, and we'll be ready for the conclusion of the case."
__ 14 —
A SECRET SHRINE OF DEATH
The escape route was concealed behind a panel in a little alcove just a few feet from where the cloaked assassin had been. Neither detective had noted the Dahlikil exit there because of the sudden flare of incandescent light and its roaring. The magister had no trouble discovering that the lamp had been magickally primed for such an effect beforehand. All the killer needed to do was add a chemical compound to the flame, and that seemingly normal tongue of fire changed instantly to a volcano-like display which might destroy any too near it, and worse, provide cover for Yakeem's flight as needed.
"He is a mage as well as a hired slayer, then?" queried Tuhorus.
"I have no doubt he has a considerable amount of skill when it comes to lethal dweomers, Inspector, but I doubt he's truly so able a spell-worker, a full practitioner of the arts. What he did here was carefully prepared, and my guess is that Jobo Lasuti's hand assisted him, directly or indirectly."
"And the uab? For a time I suspected that your assassin and Absobek-khaibet were one and the same man."
"The thought crossed my mind, Tuhorus, but I discarded it. Yakeem isn't accomplished enough at priestcraeft to pass himself off as one of the Pure of Set. No, we'll have to look elsewhere to discover the cleric's identity."
"We already know that."
"Not likely. Somewhere there's undoubtedly a long-dead corpse of the real Absobek. My guess is that his identity was assumed by another when it was time for him to come north."
"What makes you say that?"
Inhetep shrugged. "Mere speculation, perhaps, but the followers of Set aren't generally involved in this sort of thing—not in so blatantly open a manner, anyway. Not one of the priests here in the temple is a party to Chemres' involvement, are they?"
"No," the policeman admitted after a moment of reflection. "Yet I cannot make a connection between that fact and the murder of the actual uab and assumption of his ide
ntity you allege."
"Of the Seven Evils, Inspector, which looms larger than Set?"
"The red-one is the greatest save for ... Aapep!"
With an almost unconscious protective sign to ward off the attention of that dread serpent, Setne agreed. "Right. The Lord of Serpents is greatest of all in sheer power. The only ones able to give us any description of the uab say he was dusky, but we know he isn't the Dahlikil. We also must infer that he used some relatively potent heka to make those around him unable to recall his true appearance. Therefore Absobek-khaibet, the imposter posing as him, rather, is as follows:
"Dark of skin and tallish, knowledgeable enough in ecclesiastical matters pertaining to Set to perform ceremonies and rituals properly, able to employ magick outside the sphere usual for priests, and, lastly, wholly devoted to Evil."
Tuhorus understood. "Even Set himself would hesitate to object to a servant of Aapep donning the mantle of one of his own uab priests."
"Just so. And where is the serpent most venerated? The only place?"
"Darfur!"
"Your knowledge is excellent. This is correct, and therefore, Chief Inspector Tuhorus, we are seeking a skilled kheri-heb of Aapep—a malign counterpart of myself, as nearly as you like— who is a native of Darfur and is somewhere nearby as well."
"Down there someplace?"
"Not likely at all! No, I think we'll find him elsewhere, although we must venture down to have a look around."
The detective was still trying to fit the whole together. "So there is a plot fostered by Darfur, dissident Nubians, and a few renegades hereabouts? A racial war pitting black against red?"
"That would be damned awful, Tuhorus, but it's worse. This whole dirty business stems from an ^Egyptian, I fear. One who is quite willing to use any means—racism, greed, even murder. In that one's mind, Set, even Aapep, are tools to use in gaining the end he desires. Have you ever run across the Accursed?"
The policeman thought a moment, then shook his head. "What are they?"
"A loosely organized network of the most wicked sorts imaginable. This affair is just their sort of thing, but their usual stamp is not on it. No matter. We'll know for sure when we get our man."
"Who is this arch-fiend, then?" Tuhorus demanded.
"One whose guilt cannot be proved easily, but yet might be caught unaware—if we are careful and quick enough." Setne went to the secret egress from Chemres' private sanctum and summoned Chief Inspector Tuhorus to follow. "Once again, we must do a little underground exploring, my friend. Then we'll move on to the most dangerous bit."
As the two descended the hidden way, they examined the steps. Splayed bare feet had been here, the prints identical to those on the staircase in the burned wing of the governor's residence. "You knew about this all along."
"Suspected," Inhetep corrected.
"That's how you could state that you knew where Chemres' missing three volumes of notes were," the policeman said.
"Where else but hidden—or carried off by a secret way? The priests here saw no one with them and no magickal means were used to spirit them hence—that would have sounded alarms. The books had to have been physically removed, and this is the way it was accomplished."
Inhetep's sweeping gesture included the concealed entrance they had just passed through, the steps they were on, and the tunnels which lay below. "Either the uab-pretender, or Ya-keem, or both operating in tandem, came here and removed the evidence. There was no other way."
"And so too the murder of Prince-Governor Ram-f-amsu?"
"Ahemm .. . Well, I do believe that this secret way plays a part, but as yet, there's nothing conclusive. Shall we proceed with our investigation below? Perhaps there's something down there which will help us undo yet another knot holding fast this conundrum."
They went on down the staircase, a seemingly endless flight of steep and uneven steps hewn from the sandstone bedrock of the place. "The sandstone is soft, Magister, but these risers aren't particularly worn. What do you think?"
"A very private way, Tuhorus. I'd say that only the hem-neter-tepi of the temple used this stair."
"There has been usage, so what might be awaiting below?"
"There's the landing for the temple cellars,"
Inhetep noted. "Let's have a look at the steps further down." Both of them stopped after a few stairs and examined the wear to the stone there. "Far less here, but still ..."
The policeman concurred. "There has been something which brought many of the high priests of Set down here, Magister. I mislike this!"
Finally, they came to the end of their descent, at least a hundred feet underground. The little room at the bottom was also carved from living rock, and in its center there was a shaft which went down still further. "Smell that? This is a well, Tuhorus."
"That can't be the principal reason for so much secrecy, can it?"
"No, I think not." Inhetep gazed around the oval chamber, which was decorated with idols, each statue standing in a niche around the curve of the wall. "Six figures, Inspector, and not one of Set or his associates. And here! Take a look at this," the priest-wizard urged his comrade. "The stone of Hapy's head is worn," he said pointing to the figure of the Nylle god in a nearby recess. "Let's have a look at the rest."
Each of the stone figures showed the same sort of wear. Tuhorus was about to do the obvious thing and test one to see what it operated, for the idols were obviously the means to get beyond the room. The magister stopped him. "Hold on there, Chief Inspector. Have a care! Something is odd. all of this is too obvious, and the number is wrong, too. There should be seven here for the Seven Evils, and none of these deities are correct at all. Do you have the capacity of reading auras and heka?"
"To a limited extend, Inhetep. I've already noted a strong preternatural radiance pervading this whole chamber."
"Yes, and it's particularly strong around the figures, but I see it as a screen. Nothing comes from the leftmost curve there—the place unadorned by any statued niche."
"I can sense no magick there at all, Inhetep. Do you mean ... ?"
"That's where we seek egress, Tuhorus. Help me examine the wall there." Minute stains on the floor indicated others had passed there. Tactile impressions finally revealed that the seemingly smooth wall actually had etched into it shallow glyphs, the Seven Evils surmounted by three of the aspects of Set—okapi-, ass-, and warthog-headed. "I think we have three exits," the ur-kheri-heb said. "Let's open them and see."
"How is it that we could feel nothing while watching our hands at work, Magister, but with an averted gaze we could feel the markings?"
"The effect of the casting laid here. The heka makes eyes blind and sovereign over the other senses."
"But there's no aura!"
"None we can read, Inspector, but there's power here. This should come as no surprise after all that's occurred to date." Inhetep was pressing the glyphs with his fingers as he spoke, and pressure activated first the right and then the left of the slabs which hid exits from the chamber. Finally, the middle one opened, drawing back and removing the glyphs from the wizard-priest's touch. "There are the proper means of leaving, Tuhorus, but which of the three is the one for us?"
"Yakeem went along one of these ways?"
"I'm certain of it. Is there any trace of his passage?"
"No, but the central corridor has been most frequently used. That to the right is almost abandoned, while the other is nearly as neglected— note the floor and the cobwebs."
Inhetep paused and considered. One of the passageways must lead to the general complex of subterranean tunnels honeycombing the rock beneath On. That would lead them to the riverside exit he was sure existed. What of the other two? Somewhere in the stygian depths there was probably a forbidden altar, one dedicated to human sacrifice and rites too horrible to contemplate. Set's high priest must attend such services, but for what congregation? Even he had to shudder at the thought, especially when the officiating entity was considered. Such a place had
to be at the leftmost. That was fitting. The center of the three ways seemed used, but no place such as this would be unguarded. The six obvious portals were the first line of defense.
Certainly they led to dead ends or worse. Even trying to activate some of them might prove fatal. Despite the careful concealment of the actual route, its malign architects wouldn't be satisfied. Left would lead to danger and death from the denizens which dwelled there. The magister snapped his fingers as a means of determination came to him. "Watch, Tuhorus, as I go into the rightmost of the ways." Thrusting aside the drooping cobwebs, the magister entered.
The policeman shouted after him, "The passage looks as if you've never been there, Inhetep! Dust has reappeared, and the veil of webs has returned as drooping and unbroken as ever."
"This is the one then, Chief Inspector. Leave them all as they are, and follow me." In the space of a few heartbeats, the policeman caught up to Setne, and the pair advanced into the unknown. It didn't take long for the nature of the way to change; the priest-wizard quickly determined that they now had come to the main artery of the maze. "The cross passage is familiar, isn't it? The same workmanship as we saw under the governor's place. It begins to ascend in that direction—must be the Nylle dock area exit I anticipated. With Yakeem having almost an hour's lead on us, there's no point in chasing that way now. Let's go and see if we can't unearth Absobek-khaibet."
"But that will allow the assassin to completely cover his trail and evade capture entirely!"
"I know where he is going, and he'll be there when we want him," the ur-kheri-heb assured Tuhorus. "Since the supposed uab has evidently fallen out with his masters, I believe he's the one to get to now."