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.