"The Soul of Amun dies not, stranger." She held out her hand and the Rod arose from the floor, returned to her. Once in her grasp it flowered again with the same brilliance, yet Tallaha.s.see felt the drain of her energy into the Queen"s increase even as that brilliance grew.
"With this"-Khasti held the ring a fraction higher as if so to draw all their attention-"I can drain your "soul" again and again and yet not be harmed."
"Daughter-of-Apedemek"-it was Zyhlarz"s resonant voice that cut across Khasti"s arrogant words-"whom have you brought with you into this place?"
He pointed into the air between Khasti and the Candace. Tallaha.s.see could see the curling of the air, even though she had not yet felt the presence of the wraiths.
"Ask of them who and what they are, Son-of-Apedemek," Jayta replied. "They sought us in darkness, but they seek another more eagerly."
Again Khasti laughed. "They are my discarded tools, priest. To such can I reduce men. They served me, not too well. Now they would come to beg life once again. In their weakness they cannot harm me."
"Opener of Forbidden Gates," Zyhlarz answered him, "perhaps you have opened one too many."
There were three writhings in the air. They moved to box Khasti in on three sides. But he shrugged and smiled.
"I am not one to be driven from my goal by ghosts-nor by such "Knowledge" as you cling to, old man. The Talent has run very thin, has it not? And my machines can best it in the end."
Tallaha.s.see raised her own voice then: "Akini!" she called. "I name your name, I give you what I have to offer..."
She held out the hand that had hung by her side, but she did not break contact with the Candace and through her with Jayta. One of the troublings in the air, the one behind Khasti, swooped closer.
"She has named a name!" Zyhlarz"s voice swelled through the lofty hall. "Let hers be the Power!"
Just as energy had drained from her as Naldamak had wrought with the Rod-seemingly to no purpose-now it came flooding into her.
Her flesh tingled along the length of her slender body. She could feel a stirring on her scalp as if her clipped hair moved, each strand rising to discharge some force.
Something touched her outheld palm-so cold that it was like a thrust of pain following on the stroke of a knife. But Tallaha.s.see held steady. And from that touch, even as had happened in the cage, a substance arose, milked out of her, absorbed by the thing in the air.
She saw Khasti half wheel, turn his circuit in her direction, but between him and her those two other disturbances of the air slid into place, so that his figure wavered before her eyes. But she did not drop her hand and the thing that fed on her strength continued to draw nourishment.
What was forming in the air bore no resemblance to a manlike form though that had been what she expected to see. Rather it was a serpent, ever thickening, ever pulling on her strength, draining not only herself but her companions also. Now, dimly, she could hear a rising chant from Jayta, saw from the corner of her eyes to the right that the Priestess was using the flashing Key to draw lines in the air, lines that glowed dimly and hung even after the key withdrew.
Tallaha.s.see thought, with a stab of fear, that her strength was being sapped past the point of no return. Yet that thing she had allowed to fasten on her did not abate its sucking. Had she condemned them all to failure?
"Akini!" That was Zyhlarz"s call. "The door has been made ready-do you come through!"
The snake-thing loosed its hold from the girl"s palm and her hand dropped weakly of its own volition to her side. She could see, even without turning her head, that there was indeed a doorway sketched upon the air.
But Khasti, his lips flattened against his teeth, his eyes showing a trace of madness, was raising his circlet, not aimed any longer at the priests and priestesses he had held so long at bay, but rather as if he would focus whatever force he controlled through it on the door in the air.
"Akini!" After Zyhlarz"s call, her own voice sounded very weak and thin as if it came not from her lips and throat but from a far distance.
The serpent coiled in the air, looping as if it rejoiced to own even this much of a form. But neither it nor the whirling wraiths made any attempt to go through that opening Jayta had provided for them. A door to here from there, there, wherever there might be. Yet they did not come. wherever there might be. Yet they did not come.
Instead the whorls kept guard between Khasti and the three he menaced. And the serpent thing-it launched at him as might a rope sent flying on Tallaha.s.see"s own world to ensnare a wild steer. It lifted itself above the level of his hands and the circlet, making for his head. He tried to dodge, dropped the thing he held, raising his arms to beat off the serpent.
But it was not to be denied. Wreathing itself around his head, it blotted out his features, covered his face instantly. He tore at it with no effect, staggering forward. Now the whorls ranged themselves on either side so that when he stumbled and wavered, he seemed to bounce from one to the other, they keeping him upright and urging him on. It was he whom they hurried, blinded, perhaps suffocating under the serpent folds, into the door Jayta had opened.
He took one step and then another-and-was gone! The door vanished even as he pa.s.sed through, leaving an eerie feeling of emptiness in the chamber, as if something had been closed, drawing with it a part of their lives in a way Tallaha.s.see could not describe even to herself.
"But-I thought they wanted to come through to us," she said blankly. The Temple people were hurrying forward. "Why did they not come through?"
"Perhaps they could not. They had been so long exiled to that existence. What they wanted more," Jayta said slowly, "was him who had sent them there."
"Then-he will be a wraith..." Tallaha.s.see could see the peril of that. She had felt the danger from those others, and they had been weaklings in strength of purpose when compared to the stranger out of the desert. What if he returned so to haunt them?
"They closed the door, Daughter." Zyhlarz was beside her. "You had the courage to treat with them after a fashion, and they have now removed him who alone had the power to destroy everything we are and have done."
"He was-" Jayta said, but Zyhlarz held up his hand in warning.
"Let it not be spoken aloud as to what he was. Such knowledge lies buried in the past and well buried. It is enough he was not of our flesh or of our world."
"There are those who have come seeking him," Naldamak said then.
"They will have their own way of knowing that he is gone. And on such a journey as even they are not ready to face. Time and s.p.a.ce may be conquered by man-there remain other dimensions we dare not venture into if we would remain human."
Tallaha.s.see sat in the Candace"s garden. The city which had been in turmoil was now patrolled by loyal guards. Also the Temple was open so that there flowed out of it a peace that could soothe inflamed minds and quiet restless spirits.
Restless spirits! Since the vanishing of Khasti she had found herself at intervals watching the air, listening, sending out that inner sense of which Ashake made so much to test for alien thought, an alien wraith. Was it true that when Khasti had been swept away, by the "tools" he had despised, he had indeed been sealed from this world? He had been summarily thrown into another s.p.a.ce-time even as she had been in the ruins of ancient Meroe?
Another s.p.a.ce-time...
She was Tallaha.s.see tonight as she sat here alone in the dusk. Though her begrimed uniform had been changed for the silken robes of her borrowed personality, a wig of ceremony covered her head, she was not not Ashake! Ashake!
She thought of what Jayta had hinted in the last council they had held a few hours ago-that Khasti had not come out of time but out of s.p.a.ce. That the fabric of Khem itself in the earliest days had been born of the experiments made by intelligences not of this world, and that their blood and gifts had lingered on in certain descendants, to become part of another path of knowledge, turning inward. Thus, those whose far-off forefathers had known the stars now chose rather to know themselves, perhaps better than any of their species had done before.
They had seen no more of that second stranger. Perhaps they could believe it was true he and those he represented had known of their quarry"s fate and gone their own ways thereafter.
But there remained Tallaha.s.see Mitford, who was not of Amun and who should now go her way, too. She had seen Jayta open a door through which Khasti had vanished. But she did not want to be caught in the non-life of a wraith. If there was a door possible between her world and this it must be real- "You think strange thought, Royal Lady."
Tallaha.s.see raised her eyes from the shadowed path at her feet. Jayta and Naldamak, and with them, Herihor, one arm in a sling to bear witness that he was not Prince General to order and not lead his men into battle, and lastly, Zyhlarz, stood there. Now to these four she must speak the truth, no matter what would come of it.
"I am not your Royal Lady. You"-she spoke directly to Jayta-"know who and what I am. Now I ask you, since I have served your purpose, to let me go."
Jayta must have shared her knowledge with the others. Even in this dim light Tallaha.s.see could see that none showed surprise.
"My daughter-" Zyhlarz began, when she interrupted.
"Lord Priest, I am not your daughter, nor one of your kind!"
"No, you are less and more-"
"Less and more? How can one be both?"
"Because we are each shaped from our birth, not only by the blood and inheritance that lies behind us, but also by those we love and by whom we are loved in turn, by the knowledge given to our thirsty minds, to the learning of ourselves. You are not Ashake-though Ashake, in part, has become you-nor can you indeed ever tear her out of your memory and thought. But you are also yourself and so have different qualities-which are yours alone."
"Can you send me back?" She asked that bluntly.
"No." Jayta did not wear her lioness mask now and in the dusk her face looked very tired and drawn.
"Why?" She had seen the priests do things she would have believed impossible. "You have the Key and Naldamak has the Rod-and you," she spoke now to Zyhlarz, "have all the learning of the Upper Way wholly yours."
"There must be an anchor to draw one," Jayta said. "When Akini was sent through, and those others-the nameless ones-they were anch.o.r.ed upon the power of the Rod-first to remove and conceal it. Then the Rod was taken into a place where such like it had once been. When the Key was stolen, it could be borne there also because the Rod was there to draw it.
"But when Ashake went to search, in turn, her hand upon the Rod and Key, her right to hold and call upon them, was such that it drew you also. For you were-in your world-the one whom she would have been had she lived in your time and place-you were equal within you. Do you think otherwise the memories of Ashake could have been given you? Now there is no anchor existing beyond. When Akini and those others were not drawn back in time-you saw what they became. For in your world, it would seem, they had no counterparts-so they were lost between. Perhaps Khasti has so been lost. It is our hope that his like does not exist elsewhere.
"Ashake died because she could not draw her other existing self through without giving the full energy of her body. There is no door left for you because nothing lies there to fasten upon."
"You are Ashake and you are more..." Herihor spoke for the first time.
Naldamak held out both her hands. "The Prince General speaks the truth, Sister. Was this other world of yours so beloved to you that you cannot live without it? If there was a dear love existing there, perhaps that could pull you. But if that were true the Son-of-Apedemek would have known. Thus I say to you, Sister-you are not less than Ashake in our eyes. Look upon us now and read the truth!"
Tallaha.s.see"s searching glance went from face to face of those who shared her secret. Ashake-all Ashake, more or maybe less-but never a wraith out of time. Here she was real, welcomed. She took the hands of Naldamak offered her and accepted all else that was in their faces and hearts as they looked upon her.
THE END.