Samlor walked slowly toward the children. He tried to grasp Pemu by the hair, but the boy's head had been shaved to mere fuzz in the fashion of the country. Instead, Samlor closed his hand across the skull with his fingertips on one temple and the pad of his thumb on the other. He turned the boy so that Pemu's tightly-clenched eyes were on him.
The eyelids flew open as Samlor cut the boy's throat from ear to ear. The blade severed all four branches of the carotid artery, bathing both victim and killer in hyphenated spurts of blood. It dripped onto the floor, cratering the lapis lazuli dust and turning it into purple gum.
Pemu's head flopped to the side when the muscles holding it erect were cut, but his eyes were still bright as the servant holding him turned and dropped the dying child out the window. The body splashed in the pool beneath. One, then the other crocodile slammed their jaws on it with a sound like vaults closing. In the room's dead stillness, Samlor could hear the boy's ribs cracking beneath the pressure of ragged yellow teeth.
He looked back at Khamwas. He could feel nothing except Pemu's blood, and that burned like boiling vitrol. "Go on," Khamwas croaked.
Tabubu's dress lay crumpled beside the couch. She wore nothing but the dangling crocodile pendant toward which she drew Khamwas' face.
Samlor turned. His bloody left hand was a claw poised to wrap itself in Serpot's hair and jerk the child's throat up for his blade.
Her face was already lifted to him. Her eyes were glistening with tears, but they were open and her slender throat bobbled as she swallowed a sob.
"Don't you want me?" Pre breathed in Samlor's ear. She was standing behind him, so close that when she lifted herself on her toes the pressure of her body slid Samlor's tunic up on his hips.
He swung the coffin-hilled knife in a short arc that grated on Serpot's neckbone as it tore through everything else, skin and flesh and the tough cartilage of her windpipe. Her tongue stuck out in final terror as the force of the blow flung her sideways, against the smiling servant holding her.
A voice in Samlor's mind screamed "Father!" and his eyes flickered with images of Star, not Serpot, being lifted and hurled through the window to the reptiles waiting below.
His dagger clanged to the floor. There was blood everywhere, ropy trails slung from the blade as it cut clear and great pools splashed on the sparkling dust by the child's jugular emptying her life.
Pre's arms were around Samlor. She kissed him, the touch of her lips beneath his ear drawing his face around to meet them.
"Now," she whispered as she drew Samlor down onto the blood and lapis of the floor with her, "take what you have earned, my hero."
He didn't realize he was tearing the strong linen of his tunic until the fabric ripped. He knelt between Pre's thighs and felt her heels encircle him.
As he thrust forward, her grinning mouth opened wider into bestial jaws… a tunnel of blue fire. . into a screaming void that filled the cosmos. .
Samlor was face down on the ground outside the arbor in Khamwas' garden. Khamwas was within, sprawled across
the curved wicker bench in a pose that must have been as painful as the way Samlor's knee pressed a knotted root in the turf.
Samlor had cut the neck off a gourd-two gourds, he saw, when Khamwas sat up. His cock was stuck through the hole, and that hurt also.
"What in the name of heaven are you doing?" demanded Osorkon in amazement. Behind stood the palace children, their game forgotten, and the equally frightened servants who had been watching them. "Are you drunk?"
CHAPTER 29
"COVER YOURSELF, FOR pity's sake," said Osorkon scornfully as he stepped past Samlor to the entrance of the arbor.
Samlor turned toward the wall and tried to blank out the memory of childish faces gaping in amazement at him. The rind was tough enough that the edges scraped as he pulled the gourd off him. That pain helped him-not forget, but at least put aside the shock and embarrassment that made his skin burn all over his body.
"Brother," Osorkon said in cold fury as Khamwas disengaged himself from a similar gourd. "If you've returned to degrade yourself and the kingdom, so be it- your family has no power to stop you, you've made that clear. But tell us now so that we can exile ourselves and avoid watching further disgusting exhibitions."
Samlor squeezed the front of his tunic together. He'd torn it all the way to the waist, despite the brocaded hem. It was an impressive feat of strength-for a singularly unworthy purpose.
"Where-"he said, more to get his voice working again than because he understood where the sentence would go next. "H-how long have we been here?"
Osorkon turned. In his face Samlor saw the concern which Osorkon's personality converted to anger before he could openly display it. "Well, some hours," he said. "You were watching the children play, and then you began to behave, well, oddly."
He blinked, trying to drive away the image of just how oddly his brother and Samlor had behaved. "They became concerned, and your major domo-" that plump servant, sweating with emotion and the sunlight into which only a crisis had drawn him, attempted a smile of acknowledgement " – thought I should be summoned rather than a doctor at first."
Osorkon looked from Samlor to Khamwas, doubtful but obviously hoping that medical attention would not be necessary.
Samlor's dagger lay in the grass. Its blade was stained with the juice and pulp of the gourd.
Khamwas stepped stiffly out of the arbor. He held the Book of Tatenen in his hand. Lights winked and changed in its crystalline interior, but sunshine on the open lawn did not affect the display.
Sarnlor said nothing, but his face grew very still. His eyes met Khamwas' when the book glinted between the men in its own rhythm.
"I think. .," said Khamwas. "What is that thing?" demanded Osorkon. "Is it a jewel?"
"Nanefer won't send us a dream next time. We'll really live it," said Samlor, ignoring Osorkon. "And there won't be a damned thing we can do, even knowing it." His groin ached with the abuse he had just given it.
". . that we'd best return this now," said Khamwas, completing the thought that he did not realize had been interrupted.
"What are you talking about?" Osorkon begged, suffused with the fear that his brother was going to break out into aberrant behavior again.
Samlor and Khamwas were walking toward the house, discussing preparations for their formal return to the Tomb of Nanefer.
As they passed the wide-eyed servants and children, they opened their arms. Khamwas strode on, holding his son by the hand, while Samlor carried the little girl who was not Star.
The manikin Tjainufi capered on Khamwas' shoulder, crying, "Happy is the heart of the man who has made a wise decision!"
The sparks in the crystal's heart had muted to warm pink and a yellow the hue of sunshine.
CHAPTER 30
"THE BOOK," TRILLED Ahwere's ghost. Her form shrank and expanded like a doll twisting on the end of a pendulum, now close to Samlor and now farther away. "They've come back with the book."
"Royal prince," intoned Khamwas, "royal princess, we return to you what is yours."
"Royal Prince Merib," Samlor echoed according to the directions his comrade had given him, "we beg forgiveness for having disturbed your rest."
Thirty musicians were playing on a barge on the river outside, and there was a chorus of over a hundred boys on the strand, chanting a hymn of praise to Tatenen. The music had been loud even while Samlor followed Khamwas up the tunnel; but in the tomb chamber, outside sounds vanished as utterly as if they took place in the crater of the worm.
The corpse of Nanefer laughed.
Samlor was sweating and his nostrils were full of the dry, thick odor of incense boiling from the braziers he and Khamwas bore on their heads. There was no real danger that a quick motion would unlatch the perforated lid and pour burning coals down on the wearer-but it was possible, and the crawl through the tunnel was as abject a means of abasement as any Samlor had undertaken.