When we leaped aboard the Hathor and awoke Horos and Zazamanx, the boatmen screamed with terror.
"You dead!" cried Horos. "Ghosts! All blood, blood, blood!"
"You'll be a ghost if you don't get this boat under way," I said. "Push off, quickly! Manethôs, I fear you must sacrifice your spare tunic for bandages."
"Take it," said the priest. "Berosos, I think, is the worst hurt."
The Babylonian, presenting the broadest target, had been stabbed in three places: arm, buttock, and a grazing cut along the ribs. In the flickering light of our link he looked greenish under his swarthiness. He groaned and cursed in guttural Syrian as Amenardis washed and bound his wounds.
Every one of us who had been in the light had at least one cut or prick of some sort. Mine was a small stab through the skin over the shoulder blade.
"Tychê favored us tonight," said Dikaiarchos. "A digit this way or that, and some of these wounds had been mortal.
Manethôs , what Thessalian wizardry did you work to make those flashing lights?"
The priest gave a quiet chuckle. "O Hellene, not meet is it that laymen should penetrate these arcane secrets. But since we are comrades in arms, I will tell you.
"Know that betimes we priests need a miracle to strengthen the faith of the unthinking masses. If the gods provide one not, we must do our poor best in their stead. Now, there grows a swamp moss which, gathered in due season, sheds seeds like fine impalpable powder, and this .powder burns with the levinlike light you saw. Only, in my haste, I blistered my own hand somewhat with the flame, Seth take it!"
Although the etesian wind now blew against us, we moved more swiftly than on our way up the Nile. We left the mast down, as the sail would be usable only on a few sharp bends. Instead, we manned all four oars. The boatmen and the two servants, being unwounded, did most of the rowing, but we relieved them all from time to time. We kept to the middle of the stream to take advantage of the swifter current, to avoid shoals, and to keep out of range of bowshots from the bank.
Sleeping cities drifted darkly past: Troia, Babylon, Kerkesoura, and the village of Delta, where the Nile casts off its first fork, the small Pelusiac branch. The glittering stars wheeled closely overhead, brilliantly white with glints of red and green and blue. They paled as a horned moon came up from the east.
We all knew, I think, that our problems were far from over. But, what with wounds and weariness and fear of arousing attention, we held our peace and caught what sleep we could through the dark hours. Despite all, I was as happy as I have seldom been. I was in love; I had my loved one; and we had escaped, at least for now, from our common foe.
As the eastern sky turned to green and gold, Manethôs said: "O Chares, were it not well to look at the robe, to see what is left of it?"
"I've been afraid to look," I said, unfolding the garment. "Oimoi! What sort of ragged relic is this to give a king?"
The robe was in much worse case than I had thought. It was slashed in every direction, and about a third of it was missing altogether, where the thief had torn off a piece. Onas whistled and said:
"It is too bad, Chares, that you used the garment for a shield."
"Listen to him who speaks!" I cried. "If you'd snatched it up and ran when I told you to, instead of mooning over your silly old book, we should have gotten through the door before the thieves could close in upon us. As things fell out, it was use the robe as I did or perish and lose it anyway."
"The book was just as important," said Onas. "With the Book of Thôth in our hands, it recks but little what our enemies do. We can amend any plight and retrieve any loss."
"Well, let's see you cast a spell to put the robe back into its pristine condition! Go on, what are you waiting for?"
Onas gave me a look wherein defiance struggled with apprehension. He got out the scroll, unrolled a cubit of it, and scanned its opening lines in the ruddy light of the rising sun. His lips moved. He frowned. His face fell, running down into despondent lines like a casting pattern of beeswax left too near the furnace.
After an instant more he silently handed the scroll to Manethôs and buried his head in his hands. As Manethôs scanned the book, his solemn, shaven face broke into a smile. He even gave a low laugh.
"Poor Onas!" he said. "This concerns the fabled Book of Thôth, forsooth, but it is not quite what he thought."
"What in the name of Herakles is it, man?" I asked.
Said Manethôs : "We have here a version of an old tale, long current in the land of Chem: the story of Sethenes Chamois. I will give you an abridged translation.
"There was a prince named Sethenes, surnamed Chamois, a son of the mighty King Rhameses Osymandyas. This Sethenes had made his life's work the study of the magical books in the Double House of Life, at the then capital of Neth-Ammon, which you Hellenes, for reasons I cannot fathom, call 'Thebes.'
"One day, fell Sethenes into talk with one of the king's sages. Now, Sethenes was a skeptic, like our friend Dikairachos here. 'AH this talk of the vasty powers of magic,' quoth he, 'is nought but mummery wherewith to cozen the simple. Never have I seen a wizard whose thaumaturgies were aught but sleights and tricks prestigious.'
" 'Be not so hasty, my son,' said the sage. 'Deeply into the arts theurgic have I delved; long have I pondered; far have I fared. I have read awful spells writ in blood on crumbling scrolls of human skin; I have talked with gibbering ghosts in ruined fanes by the light of the gibbous moon; I have communed with demons dire in secret ways beneath the pyramids. And I know better than to sneer at magic'
" 'Faugh, sirrah!' said Sethenes. 'An thou wouldst convince me, thou must needs monstrate to me.'
" 'That I will,' said the wise one. 'I will tell thee of a place where lieth concealed a book of portentous power, writ by the great god Thôth himself: Thôth, scribe of the gods, orderer of the universe, record keeper of the dead, viceroy of the supreme Ammon-Ra, and god of wisdom and learning.
" 'This book comprehended! two fell spells. The first of these enchanteth heaven and earth, sea and sky, mountain and river. Whoso readeth it shall understand the birds as they fly and the serpents as they crawl, and shall call fishes to the surface of the sea. The second enableth one stark dead in his tomb to come to life; to rise into heaven; to see the sun traversing heaven with his company of gods; to see the moon in her courses, scouring the sky with her company of shining stars; and to see the fishes as they swim in the depths of the sea.'
" 'And where lieth this marvelous volume, grandfather?' quoth Sethenes.
" 'It reposeth in the tomb of the princely wizard Nepher-kaphtha of Memphis, my son. Go, an thou wilt, and wrest it from the shade of Nepher-kaphtha.'
"So Sethenes prevailed upon his brother, Inaros, to come with him unto Memphis. There, for three days and three nights, searched they for the tomb among the necropoleis that lie west of the city. And at last, behold, they found that for which they sought.
"Thereupon uttered Sethenes magical words of power, whereat the earth opened before him. Into the tomb descended Sethenes and his brother Inaros. Within the tomb there glowed a radiance that paled their torches. For in the tomb lay Nepher-kaphtha's sarcophagus and in the sarcophagus lay the veritable Book of Thôth, blazing with silvery light, like that of the moon when she standeth at full above the desert.
"Within the tomb, also, Sethenes descried the form of the ka or shade of Nepher-kaphtha; and not only that of the wizard but also those of his wife Aoura and his young son Meros as well. Sethenes knew from his pervestigations that Nepher-kaphtha's wife and son had been buried at Koptos, far up the Nile. Nonetheless, their shades had come down the river to dwell with that of their beloved husband and father.