Брайан Ламли - Khai of Khem

Khai remembered his father’s words to this very day. Well, he did not have the hide of a hippo, but he did have these rush mats and a linen pallet full of shredded straw. Also, if he could divert a little water from the mouth of the inlet and down the sloping face, perhaps that would lubricate his way to excellent effect. For a moment, as he retraced his steps by the light of his tiny lamp to a place where a narrow chimneylike flue appeared in the ceiling over his head, Khai was so afraid that he almost abandoned his plan there and then. But only for a moment. Death was far more to his liking than the life he would be forced to lead if he remained here.

And so he climbed into the flue and wound his way upward, pushing his lamp before him and placing it in whichever niches he could find while he used his hands and feet for climbing. It was not a hard climb but seemed interminable, just as it had five years ago. Hand and footholds were plentiful, a stairway almost, designed to give maximum assistance to any workman called upon to inspect the watercourse up above; and there were places where Khai could actually pause and rest, sitting on tiny ledges while his feet dangled into the black throat of the flue.

So he progressed, and within an hour of leaving his room he crept over the lip of the chimney and felt a cool breeze blowing from ahead. Rounding an awkward bend, he saw the stars of night set in a jet sky, and a moment later, his light sputtered and was blown out. Crawling on all fours with his head occasionally scraping against the low ceiling, Khai felt the rim of the brick pipe that descended into the bowels of the pyramid. Beyond the pipe, he followed the channel of the gutter that fed it with water and was pleased when his hands felt a trickling of cool liquid. So efficient was the system that water began to collect and flow soon after the sun went down, the flow increasing all through the night until, with the dawn, the gutters and pipes would be veritable rivers and waterfalls in miniature. Khai knew he must be gone long before then, however, and so hurried forward, eager now to put his plan into operation.

At last, he reached the end of the inspection tunnel where it narrowed to a circular opening high in the pyramid’s sloping face. From here he looked out, as he had done five years ago, on the sleeping city of Asorbes. He had emerged on the south face and to his left could see the night-shining Nile wandering down from its vastly distant sources. The moon was thin-horned and gave little light, which was just as well. The air he breathed was full of familiar odors, of fires and cooking and spices, and other smells which seemed wafted to him from lands beyond. Lands of mystery and adventure.

Although there were nine such water-inlets—three to each face except the incomplete east face which overlooked the Nile and faced the rising sun-god, Re, reborn each day—the boy had deliberately chosen this one, set central in the south face. He had done so for a number of reasons. He knew there was a massive pile of soft sand at the base of the monument at this spot, soon to be used for filling in a disused subterranean vault; he knew also that the southern quarter of the city housed the vast majority of slaves of foreign origin— Nubians and Siwadis, a few Theraens, Syrans and Kushites—and that Pharaoh’s guards and patrolmen rarely entered such areas at dead of night; and furthermore, beyond the slave quarters and close to the city’s south wall, there dwelled his father’s old friend Arkhenos. Arkhenos of Subon, a fortress city on the Khem-Therae-Nubia border. If anyone could help him flee the city, he was sure that Arkhenos would be the one….

Cupping his hands at the limestone lip where the dripping water gathered, Khai spent almost an hour diverting the steadily increasing rivulet down the pyramid’s exterior face. When he could see the thin moonlight reflected in a silvery path that reached almost to the ground far below, then he knew he was ready. Quickly, he soaked his pallet and rush mats in what little water had escaped his hands to fill the gutter, then tied the bundle at its corners so that the mats lay beneath the pallet.

Now he pushed the entire contraption out through the water inlet, holding on to it and edging forward until he sat on the lip of the inlet with his legs outside. Then he pulled the reinforced pallet up under himself until he could hook his sandaled feet into the forward corners while his hands grasped the knots slightly to his rear. In this position, with his head and shoulders slightly raised, he once more bumped and edged his body forward until, in one hair-raising moment, he felt his backside bump over the lip of the inlet onto the sloping surface of the outside face.

At first, it seemed that he was stuck there, immobile, but then, with a jerk and a slither, he felt the stone begin to slip by beneath him and almost immediately he started to gather speed. In the space of a few heartbeats, it was as if a wind blew upon him, though he knew the air was almost completely still. Then, too, his sled began to rotate, so that in a moment, he was riding side-on and could feel the pallet beginning to buck beneath him, threatening to spill him. A moment more and he was speeding backwards down the steep wall, then rotating the other way until he was back in his original position.

Feeling the pallet bucking again, he lay his head and shoulders back to flatten his profile and watched the stars overhead turning as he continued to rotate. And all the time he accelerated and the wind blew more wildly upon him, showering his face with rush fragments from the disintegrating mats as he thundered down the side of the pyramid, until he smelled smouldering linen and knew that his pallet must soon burst into flames!

Rotating faster and faster, while the stars above seemed to form a vast heavenly wheel, Khai felt a hideous sickness welling inside and closed his eyes. In another moment, the pallet bucked wildly and Khai guessed that he had reached the lower part of the pyramid, where his diverted stream of water had petered out. Again the battered, disintegrating sled bucked and rose up beneath him, this time leaping free of the stone face and tumbling over and over in mid-air.

Now he clung desperately to his smoldering pallet, his eyes tightly shut, expecting at every moment to feel the bite of the pyramid’s stone face. Instead, he was dashed down in soft sand made hard by his rate of descent.

Mercifully, he had landed on the outward sloping side of the sandpile with the remains of his pallet still beneath him, breaking his fall. Wildly, he rolled and bounced, still falling and now completely out of control, but by the time he reached bottom, his speed was greatly reduced. At last, with a jolt that knocked the last remaining ounce of air out of him, he came to a halt on firm ground.

His first thought was to be up on his feet and feeling to see if anything was broken; but even the act of sitting up made him feel dizzy and sick, so that for the moment he lay still. Eventually, when the roaring had gone out of his head and the stars had steadied in the sky, he propped himself up on one elbow, gazing about at night’s black shadows and wondering if his escape had been witnessed. It was unlikely, he knew, for the south face overlooked only the slave quarters, but nonetheless he could not stay here.

He forced himself to his feet and staggered for a moment while once more the night sky seemed to revolve. Then, crouching low and heading south, he ran as fast as he could over rough and pitted earth. In a matter of minutes he had left the shadow of the pyramid behind and the jagged silhouettes of the tumble-down slave quarters loomed ahead. At last Khai began to breathe more freely and he had to repress a mad urge to shout for joy. He was free of the pyramid, free—at least for the moment—of the Pharaoh, and in his freedom his heart soared like that of a small bird.