VI
KHAI AND THE CANDACE
Long into that night Ashtarta, her generals and chiefs, talked and planned around the old table in the great hall of her house. The seven mages were there too, having come out of the southwest together a little after the reuniting of the tribes. Shortly after midnight, when all plans were laid—at least in broad outline—when the meats were eaten and the wine jars half-emptied, then there came a wind from outside that found its way into and whined through the great hall. It set all the lamps sputtering, that wind, as well it might; for its breath was nearly as warm as that of the man-made fires. This was the Khamsín, the scorpion wind from the western deserts legended to lie beyond Hyrksos, which stirred the blood of men as other great winds stir oceans to their bidding.
At its coming, the seven mages nodded and smiled their knowing smiles, then muttered together where they sat apart, and Ashtarta saw them. Since all business was done and the chiefs were now content to growl, thump tables and mull over old times together, she made to leave the hall. On her way out and escorted at a discreet distance by her straight-faced, near awesome Nubians, whose weapons were long-handled hard-wood clubs of great weight and thickness, she paused by the seven mages and asked:
“And is the Khamsín your doing also? I think not, for this is its season—or have you merely hastened it by a day or two? And if so, for what reason?”
“We have not hastened it, Ashtarta, O Candace,” the whispering yellow mage answered. “Though certainly it was a good idea and fits well with your proposals for war. Six days from now, when your warriors ride on Khem, the Khamsín will have left firm footing for them, where only the deepest and most persistent marshes shall bog them down. No, we have not done it—other hands have stirred the pot this time. . . .”
By now the sounds of boasting and tales of skill and battles bold were tumultuous in the hall as the chiefs and their aides set about to finish off the last of the wine. The hot wind no longer howled outside, had dropped its heat like a fiery blanket over Nam-Khum and seemed to be saving its breath for the bigger blow to come, when it would move east into the valley of the Nile. Ashtarta looked about her at the great hall, stripped bare of its furnishings three-and-a-half years gone and not yet put to rights, then returned her attention to the mages.
Unheard by the others in the room, she asked: “If not your hands, then whose?”
“Pharaoh’s Dark Heptad, Majesty. Khasathut needs the Khamsín more than we do, who in the space of only fourteen days plans to hurl three hundred thousand of his finest soldiers into Siwad and Nubia!”
“But then he’ll surely win!” she gasped. “For without the Generals Khai and Manek, how can—”
“No, O Candace,” the yellow mage shook his head and smiled. “It will not come to that. Pharaoh merely poises his spear; he has not yet thrown it. Nor shall he, for before then the armies of Kush shall strike across the swamps and savannahs, and the forces of Khem will turn to face them, trapped between them and the nations they sought to destroy.”
“You did not say this before,” Ashtarta accused, “and it is not quite in accordance with the plans we made tonight.”
“We did not know before, Majesty. It was the Khamsín’s coming which told us, who have learned to commune with the elements. As for the plans: they were good and need not be altered.”
“But three hundred thousand Khemish soldiers,” she whispered, almost to herself.
“More than that, O Candace, for even now mercenaries pour into Khem in droves fresh from Therae and Arabba.”
For a moment she was silent, then asked: “Can we win this war?”
“Yes, Majesty, we can,” the yellow mage told her. “It is not the winning, however, but the time taken in the winning. We will use what powers we may in your aid, of course—but Pharaoh’s Dark Heptad also have powers, and they work for him. If Kush is victorious, and when Pharaoh sees that he is beaten—he might yet call up forces which no man, not even a God-king, can control.”
She looked at the seven and said, “You have not eased my mind.”
“That would be easy, Ashtarta—but the truth is always harder.”
As she turned to go, the yellow mage added: “It would be unwise to worry greatly, O Candace, for tomorrow and the next day and the days to follow, they shall come, no matter how you or I say or do.”
She nodded and left, and her Nubians also nodded gravely as they followed her from the hall.
That night Ashtarta dreamed of Khai, as she had dreamed of him often enough, but this time the heat of the Khamsín was in her dream. When she awoke with a cry, a handmaiden was by her side, but when the Candace saw who it was—only a girl and not the figure of her dream—she sent her away with words which were unjustly harsh. She knew now, however, that it was time she paid her debt to the Khemite. With him so near, it was hard to concentrate on . . . on anything! Better to act shamelessly and put the matter behind her one way or the other, than to let it drag on.
If he would not come to her, then she must go to him, but it must be done carefully. She did not want the General Manek to know of her feelings for Khai, not before the fight with Khem. Something told her it could only cause bad blood between them. And so, though she hated it, she knew she must be secretive. She tossed in her bed a long time before returning to sleep, and though she could not know it, she was not alone in her restlessness. Khai, too, lay in a sweat and wide awake. But as for Manek Thotak: his was the sleep of a baby.
In the morning the Khamsín blew again, not furiously but with such heat that the very air burned the throats of them that breathed it, so that Ashtarta was glad to stay in the cool shade of her house. As for Khai and Manek: they were out on the steppes where, for all the Khamsín’s furnace breath, they practiced the arts of the charioteer. In the afternoon, the wind died away and the heat seemed to lift a little, and Ashtarta went to find the General Manek, ostensibly to talk of the plans they had made the previous night and tell him of the words of the seven mages. In fact, she went to see him so that later she might see Khai.
She found Manek in his army’s camp—half-deserted now that the married men had gone off with their wives to establish themselves once more in their villages and settlements, from which they must soon return to ready themselves for war—and spent an hour with him deep in conversation. It was a valiant effort on Ashtarta’s part, but her heart was not in it. She could only think of Khai.
Finally, unable to keep up the pretext a moment longer and knowing that she must soon give herself away, she told Manek that she would now find Khai and tell him also of the words of the mages. Her Nubians sat her in her litter and took her straight to Khai’s encampment, where she learned that he had gone off to bathe in a mountain pool. Now she knew where Khai was, for there was a favorite place where he had used to swim, where the water lay cool and deep over a bed of rounded pebbles.
She took the senior man of her eight with her and drove her chariot in a southwesterly direction for a distance of some four miles, until she came to the spot beneath a rocky outcrop where a spring filled the pool and fed a tinkling stream. Sure enough, there in the shade of the rocks, she found a chariot and pair, tethered where the ponies could crop lush grass. Dismounting, she told her man to go and tell Khai that she had come to speak with him, and that he should now robe himself to receive her. After a few minutes, the black returned and reported that the General Khai awaited her.
She found him seated on a flat boulder by the side of the pool. Trees grew over him and the sun, striking through their branches, dappled his face with its light. He rose as she approached, but she indicated that he should sit. She stepped up onto the rock beside him and threw down a square of linen, seating herself not too close and facing slightly away from him. After a little while, she said:
“Khai, I—”
“Yes, Majesty?”
“I—I want to tell you what the seven mages told me, about the Khamsín.”
“It will dry out the land,” Kh
ai answered, almost unconsciously. “That’s what Khasathut wants for his soldiers—but it’s also what we want for our chariots. With the chariots and our iron swords, we’ll cut them to pieces.”
“That is what they say, yes,” she breathlessly answered. “Also that we should first strike in the Siwadi- and Nubia-Khem borderlands. This will mean that—”
“That Pharaoh’s troops, where they gather to hurl themselves against Nubia and Siwad, will turn to face us, trapping themselves between the—”
“Have the mages already spoken to you?” she suddenly snapped.
“No, Candace,” he turned surprised eyes on her. “But it seems obvious to me that—”
“Oh, Khai,” she cut him off again, the words sighing from her, almost pleading. “If you are so wise and if so many things are obvious to you, why is it you have not seen the most obvious thing of all?”
“Queen, I—” he looked puzzled, uncomprehending, and his slowness angered her.
She jumped to her feet and he rose with her. “I remember a time when there was fire in you,” she snapped, stinging him with her words. “You were a man even as a boy, even as . . . as a Khemite!”
She made to step down from the rock, but her foot slipped and she would have fallen if he had not caught and steadied her. His hands were by no means as gentle as they might have been and she saw anger stamped on his face. His skin was tight with it and his eyes glittered like hard mountain ice.
“You forget yourself, Queen,” he said, his voice harsh. “You can remember when there was fire in me, can you?” He nodded. “Well, and I remember when you were a spoiled brat, but now you are Candace of all Kush! How have I offended you?”
“Spoiled brat?” she raged. “Offended me? Let me go—let me go at once!”
“Damn it—” he said, astonished by her rapid mood changes, “I’m not holding you!” It was true, for he had released her as soon as she was steady. But now it was like one of his dreams of old. It had all happened before—or was yet to happen, he knew not which—but suddenly he knew what he must do, what he must say.
“I should strip you naked as the day I first saw you,” he snarled, catching her hands so that she could not strike him. “I should throw you down on this rock and have you right here, now!”
“What?” she whispered, her eyes wide and amazed. “How dare—”
“What will you give me,” he pressed on, half-afraid that his dream might betray him, “if I free you?”
But now she, too, was caught up in the dream. He knew what her next words would be, but even so breathed a sigh of relief when she voiced them:
“I’ll give you . . . anything.”
“Then give me that,” he said, “which they would have stolen from you!”
In a voice which she no longer recognized as her own, she answered: “One day, you strange, blue-eyed boy, I might just keep that promise of mine—” And he let go of her hands as she threw them round his neck and sought his mouth with hers.
She could feel him against her, feel the core of him straining for her, and she gasped as their mouths filled with blood from the sheer ferocity of their kiss. His hands had slid down her back, were drawing her irresistibly to him. Her long nails went through the damp linen of his shirt and into his back. She tore his flesh and squirmed against him, unable to get close enough. Then—
“No!” she fought free of him. “No, Khai. Not here, not now.”
“Last night,” he gasped, holding out his arms to her, “I didn’t sleep. Tonight I won’t even try! When, Ashtarta? When?”
“When?” she stepped down, almost fell from the rock. She was flushed, lost for words, and her limbs trembled like the wings of a trapped bird. She turned and ran back the way she had come.
“Sh’tarra!” he called after her, his voice a groan of desperation. “When?”
She looked back. “When we camp beneath the Gilf Kebir,” she panted, “the night before you strike at Khem. Then and not before. You must not even see me. Will you come to me then, Khai, to my room of purple walls? Will you come, unseen in the night, like a thief, to the one who loves you?”
“Whenever,” he moaned, his voice a rattle in his dust-dry throat. “Wherever. To the very gates of hell, if you call me. . . .
“Sh’tarra?” But she was gone.
part
NINE
I
THE IRON INVADERS
Time passed all too slowly for Khai from then onward, until at last the day arrived when the armies of Kush were camped below the looming escarpment of the Gilf Kebir. But all talking was done by then and all plans finally sealed and approved. The seven mages were gone up into the plateau-lands, but they had left this promise behind them: that in the battles to come, they would be close, and that when they were needed, then they would come. This had been the seven at their cryptic best, and while Ashtarta’s generals had not understood their meaning—not then—still they had found some comfort in their words.
On the evening before the onslaught commenced, Khai found a quiet pool and washed away all of his worries and tensions as he swam in its cool depths. The Khamsín was gone now, flown down into Khem on furnace wings, but in its wake it had left a heat that came at you from all sides, down from the sky and up from the earth beneath, until the blood seemed to boil in your veins. Khai’s blood boiled . . . but not alone from the heat. Not from any sort of heat which might be felt upon the skin or on the soles of the feet. . . .
By the time night was setting in he had returned to camp, and in his tent he found Imthra waiting for him. The old wizard had simply sought him out to speak with him of nothing important, for they were old friends now and there had been little enough time for talking since the reuniting of the tribes. So Khai relaxed and they talked and drank a little wine, and the night grew very dark as stars began burning like diamonds in the sky. Then Imthra sensed Khai’s impatience. Believing that the general desired his bed, the old man bade him good night and left him. Khai waited a few minutes more then slipped out under the rear wall of his tent and made his way in darkness to the outskirts of the camp.
He hurried through shrubs and tall grasses to where he knew Ashtarta’s tent stood apart from the camp and backed onto the towering wall of the Gilf. Every sense alert—how had she put it? “Like a thief in the night,”—he approached her huge tent of poles and fine linens and made to slip between its rear wall and the face of the cliff behind it. Before he could take a single step into the gap, however, coming out of nowhere and pinning him to the wall of rock, a massive black fist caught hold of his neck. He sensed rather than saw the huge club held over his head and barely managed to choke out: “Hold, man—it’s me, Khai!”
The grip on his throat relaxed and the huge black man lowered his face to Khai’s own and sniffed at him. “The General Khai!” an amazed voice rumbled. “Why, I—”
“Shh!” hissed Khai, rubbing his throat. “Well done. I can see now how well you guard the Candace—only please be quiet!”
“The General sees poorly in the night,” answered the black guardsman, “for the door to the tent of the Candace is on the other side. Come, Lord, and I will show you. . . .”
“No,” Khai breathlessly answered, taking the other’s huge arm in the darkness. “I . . . I do not wish to enter that way.”
For a long moment, there was silence and the mighty Nubian guardsman peered closely at Khai. Then the starlight caught his teeth and framed them in a huge grin, and Khai frowned as he asked: “Oh, and do you laugh at Khai the Killer?”
“No, Lord,” the black quit his grinning. “My thoughts were wandering—to when I courted the girls back home.”
“Yes,” said Khai sternly, “but I did not desire to be seen and you have seen me.”
“Lord, I have not seen you,” the guardsman turned away. “I have neither seen nor heard you. You are a shadow in the night.”
“Good,” said Khai. He turned back to the gap between the tent and the cliff, but again the Nubian caug
ht him.
“Lord?”
“Yes?”
“Should I also be deaf and blind if my mistress calls out in the night?”
“She will not,” answered Khai. “Now get to your duty.” And in another moment the guardsman had melted with the shadows and was gone. But Khai could swear that he heard the man’s chuckle. . . .
Then . . . it was Khai’s dream all over again, that recurrent dream of his which seemed to have lasted through several lifetimes, except that this time there was no interruption. All else was exactly as it had been: the sandy floor (for the tent stood on the bed of an old stream which long ago had brought down centuries of sand from the heights), the chest of jewels (which Manek had brought out of Siwad, and which—if things did not go according to plan—Ashtarta would use as ransom money to buy the freedom of her commanders), even the color of the linen walls of the Queen’s bedchamber, which was purple.
As for the Candace: she of course was unaware of Khai’s dream; so that when the time came for her to open her body to him she could not understand the curse that escaped his lips, the gritting of his teeth, the way his face twisted in sudden agony—and his sigh of relief when he realized that the time had come and gone and still there had not been that sudden alarm, that nerve wrenching blast of sound which invariably destroyed the dream at this point.
For it was no longer a dream, it was real, and at last Khai felt that he was a whole, complete person. Time and space and the voids between had come together for him in the here and now. Dreams and fancies were suddenly one with reality, a huge puzzle snapping together, and the universe closed in on Khai and his Candace and took them to its bosom. . . .
. . . In the morning, as the sun came up and turned the eastern horizon to mist-haze, evaporating the last of the moisture from the land between Kush and Khem, the wheels of war began to turn against Pharaoh. Rumbling down from the foothills and onto the early morning savannahs, the chariots and carts and armored horsemen were splendid in their color, their eager ferocity, their relish of the battles to come.