The Seventh Scroll (71 page)

"Please," she whispered to her guard, but before she could say more he kicked her painfully in the belly. -iftu vvurta 3 ivium i-utar vyo

"Keep quied' he used the derogatory term of address only applied to an animal or a person of the lowest order, and as she lay doubled up on the ground she realized the futility of appealing to them. A feeling of weakness anded her and she found herself weeping resignation overwhelm softly and hopelessly in the darkness.

er swollen lids, \&Then she looked up again through oonlight for her to see that the grave there was sufficient was now so deep that the two men still digging in it were out of her line of sight. Spadefuls of dirt flew over the lip of the hole and splattered on to the growing pile. Her and sauntered over to the guard left her side for a momen edge of the hole. He looked down in it and then grunted.

"Good. That is deep enough, Call the lieutenant." The two soldiers scrambled up out of the grave, then off into gathered up their tools and weapons and traipsed the darkness of the grove. Chatting amicably amongst wards where the truck was themselves they headed back to parked, leaving Tessay and her guard.

the cold and with terror, She lay there shivering with puffed while her guard squatted at the lip of her grave and her on his cigarette. She thought that if she could get ton for feet she could kick him into the hole and make a ru ut when she tried to sit up her it, back through the trees. movements were stiff and slow, and she he no feeling in her hands or feet. She tried to force herself to move, but at that moment she heard Lieutenant Hammed coming from the truck and she slumped back in despair, rch. He flashed it Hammed was carrying an electric to down into the grave.

ugh."

"Good," he said loudly. "That is deep eno He switched off the torch and said to the man guarding Go back and wait at the truck. When her, "No witnesses.

come back with the others to help me you hear the shots, fill the hole." over his shoulder and disap The guard slung his rifle JI peared amongst the trees. Hammed waited until the man was well out of earshot, then he came to Tessay and hoisted her to her feet. He pushed her to the edge of the grave, and then she felt him fumbling with her clothing. She tried to lash out at him, but her arms were still bound behind her.

"I want your shanitna." He pulled the white woollen cloak off over her shoulders, and then went with it to the edge of the grave, He jumped down into the hole and she heard him scuffling about in the bottom.

His voice came back to her, speaking softly. "They must see something here. A body-'

He climbed back beside her, puffing with the exertion, and stepped behind her. She felt the touch of cold metal on the inside of her wrists, and then he was sawing at the leather thong. She felt her bonds fall away, and she gasped at the pain as the blood poured back into her numb hands.

"What are you doing?" she whispered in confusion. She looked down into the grave and saw the pale shamnia arranged to look like a human body.

"Are you going-'

"Please don't talk," he instructed her softly, as he took her by the shoulder and led her back amongst the trees.

"Lie here." He pushed her down and made her lie flat, with her face to the ground. He began piling dead leaves and fallen branches over her.

"Stay here! Do not try to run. Don't. move or speak until we are gone." He flashed the torch briefly over the mound of dead branches to make certain she was covered, then he left her and hurried back to the graveside, unbuckling the flap of his pistol holster as he went. Two spaced pistol shots cracked out in the night, so loud and unexpectedly that she jumped and her heart raced wildly.

Then she heard Hammed shout, "Come, you men.

Let's get this thing finished."

They trooped back into the grove, and she heard the sound of their spades and the thump of earth clods falling into the grave.

nant," a voice

"I cannot see what I am doing, lieute complained. "Where is your torchlight?"

"You dorA need a light to fill a hole," Hammed snarled.

"Get on with your work. Tramp that loose soil down. I don't want anybody stumbling on this place."

She lay quietly, trying to stop the wild tremors that shook her body. At last the sound of the shovels let up, and she heard Hammed's voice again.

"That will do. Make certain you leave nothing here.

Back to the truck!'

Their footsteps and their voices died away. At a distance she heard the truck engine whirl and fire. The headlights shone through the trees as the truck backed and filled, turning in the direction from which they had come. sound of the engine had died away Long after thee pile of dead completely, she continued to lie under the tree shaking with the cold and weeping branches. She was St. elief.

silently with exhaustion and pain and softly and off herself and Then slowly she pushed he branched it to pull crawled to the trunk of the nearest tree. She, used and then stood there, swaying weakly herself up to her feet, in the darkness. elmed her. "I have it was only then that guilt overwh betrayed Mek," she thought sickeningly. "I have told everyI must get back to thing to his enemies. I must warn him him and warn him-'

treetrunk and She pushed herself away from the ds the track.

blundered back through the darkness towar he only means of ascertaining if they had solved Taita's codes correctly was to play out BE& the moves he had listed. They went very through the tunnels of the maze, stepping out the carefully moves that he had noted and marking then-' on the walls in white chalk figures.

There were eighteen moves set out on the winter face of the stele. Using Royan's first interpretation of the symbols, they were able to advance through twelve of theseL. Then they found themselves at a dead end, confronted by a blank stone wall and unable to make the next move.

"Damnation!" Nicholas kicked the wall, and when this had no effect he hurled the chunk of white chalk at it. "I wish I could get my hands on that old devil. Castration would be the least of his worries."

"Sorry." Royan scraped the hair back out of her eyes. thought I had it right. It must be the figures in the second column. We will have to invert them."

"We will have to start again,'Nicholas groaned.

"Right at the very beginning," she agreed.

"How do we know when we have finally got it right?

he wanted to know.

"If by following the clues we art ive at one of the winning combinations, a bao equivalent of checkmate, on precisely the eighteenth move. There will be no logical move after that, and we can assume we have worked through it correctly."

"And what will we find if we ever reach that position?"

"I will tell you when we get there." She smiled at him sweetly. "Cheer up, Nicky. It's only just starting to hurt."

Royan inverted the values of the second and third numbers of Taita's notations, taking the first as the cup value and the second as the file value. This time they completed only five moves before they were stymied and could proceed no further.

"Perhaps out assumption about the third symbol being the change of level is incorrect?" Nicholas suggested. "Let's start again and give that the second value."

"Nicky, do you realize just how many possible combinations there are, given the three variables?" She was at last starting to waver. "Taita has assumed an intimate knowledge of the game. We have only the sketchiest notions of how it was played. It's like a grand master trying to explain to a novice the intricacies of the King's Indian Defence."

olas embroidered the simile. "At this

"In Russian!" Nich rate we are getting nowhere in a hurry. There must be some other way of approaching it. Let's go over the epigrams Taita stuck in between the notations again.

"All right. I'll read and you listen." She hunched over her notes. "The trouble is that a subtle variation of the translation might change the sense. Taita loved puns, and effect. One wrong twist a pun can rely on a single word fo or slant to a word and we have lost it."

"Try anyway," Nicholas encouraged her. "Remember that even Taita had never played bao in three dimensions be at the very before. if he left a clue it would have le of beginning of the stele. Concentrate on the first coup notations and the epigrams that separate them."

"We'll try it that way," Royan agreed. "The first notambers five and seven and tion is the bee followed by the nu the sistrum."

I have heard that so often Nicholas grinned. "Okayt What follows?, already that I will never forget it er over the ation." She ran her ring

"The first quot can be known hieroglyphics. "'What can be given a name What is nanwiess can A be felt. i sail with the tide behind me and the wind in my face. 0, my beloved, the taste of You is sweet uPon my UPs."'

"Is that all?" he asked.

"Yes, then the next notation. The scorpion and the number two and three and the sistrum again." make Slowly! Slowly! First things first. What can out of the 1sailing" and the "beloved'T

They riddled and wrestled with the text of the stele, So until their eyes burned and they had lost track of day or night. They were eventually recalled to reality by Sapperjs voice echoing up the staircase. Nicholas stood up from the desk and stretched before he looked at his watch.

"Eight. 'clock. But I' not sure if that is morning or evenin Then he started as Sapper came up the staircase, and saw that his bald head was shining with moisture and his shirt was soaked.

"What happened to you?" Nicholas demanded. "Did you fall into the sinkholer Sapper wiped his face with the palm of his hand.

"Didn't anybody tell you? It's pissing with rain outside." They both stared at him in horror.

"So soon?" Royan whispered. "It wasn't supposed to start for weeks yet." Sapper shrugged. "Somebody forgot to tell the weatherman."

"Has it set in?" Nicholas asked. "What's the state of the river? Has the level started to rise yet?"

"That's what I came to tell you. I am going up to the dam, taking the Buffaloes with me. I want to keep an eye on it. As soon as it gets unsafe I will send a runner down to you. When I do that, don't stop to argue. Get out of here fast. It will mean that I expect the dam to burst at any moment."

"Don't take Hansith with you," Nicholas ordered. "I need him here." When Sapper had gone, taking most of the workers from the tunnel with him, Royan and Nicholas looked at each other seriously.

"We are running out of time fast, and Taita still has us in a tangle,'

Nicholas said. "One thing I must warn you.

When the river starts to rise "

She did not let him finish. "The river!" she cried. "Not the sea! I was mistaken in the translation. I read it as "tide".

the sea, but it should have I assumed Taita was referring to been

"curyene,.The Egyptians made no distinction between rds." the two wo They both rushed back to the desk and her notebooks.

C4The current behind me and the wind in my face Nicholas changed the quotation.

on the Nile," Royan exulted, "the prevailing wind is lways from the always from the north, and the current a south. Taita was facing north. The north castle."

"We assumed the symbol for the north was the baboon,'

he reminded her.

"No! I was wrong." Her face was alight with the fires of inspirations "', my beloved, the taste of you is sweet upon my lips." Honey! The bee! I had the symbols for the north and south inverted." we find there?"

"What about east and west? What can with fresh enthusiasm. "'MY

He turned back to the texts of bronze sins are red as carnelians. They bind me like cUns the They prick my heart with fire, and I turn my eyes towards evening star."'

"I don't see ation," he stuttered eagerly. -Prick" is the wrong transi ing towards the qt should be "sting". The scorpion look the west. The evening star. "Me evening star is always in rn castle, not the eastern castle." scorpion is the wester

"We had the board inverted." She jumped up excitedly.

"Let's play it that way!'

"We still have not determined the levels," he objected.

"Is the sistrum the upper level, or is it the three swords?"

"Now that we have made this breakthrough, that is the only variable. We are either right or Wrong. We will play work upper level, and if that doesn'

the sistrurn first as the lay it the other way round."

we can tricacies of the maze It was so much easier now. The in had become less forbidding with familiarity. There were the large white chalk signs in Nicholas's handwriting on each corner and at each fork and Tjunction of the tunnels. They moved swiftly through the complex twists and turns, their excitement rising sharply as they followed each notation and "i6und the way still clear before them.

"The eighteenth move." Royan's voice trembled. "Hold both thumbs. If it takes us into one of the open files that threaten the opponent's south castle, then that will be the check coup." She drew a deep breath and read it aloud to him. "The bird The numbers three and five. With the lower level symbol of the three swords."

They paced it out and passed the five junctions into the lowest level of the maze, reading their position from the chalk marks on the stone blocks of the walls at each fork. "This is it!" Nicholas told her, and they stood together and looked about them.

"There is nothing outstanding about this spot." Disappointment was bitter in Royan's tone. "We have passed over it fifty times before. It is just like any of the other turns."

"That is exactly what Taita would have wanted. Hell!

He wouldn't have put up a signpost saying " marks the spot", would he now?"

"So what do we do?" She looked at him, for once at a loss.

"Read the last epigram from the stele."

S he had her notebook in her hand. "'From the black and holy earth of dus very Egypt the harvest is abundant. I whip the flanks of my donkey, and the wooden spike of the plough breaks new ground. I plant the seed, and reap the grape and the ears of corn. In time I drink the wine and eat the loaf. I follow the rhythm of the seasons, and tend the earth."'

She looked up at him. "The rhythm of the seasons? Is he referring us to the four faces of the stele? The earth?"