Брайан Ламли - Khai of Khem

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 Khamsin 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 Khamsin 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 Khamsin 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 Khamsin’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 Khamsin 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 Khamsin 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 Khamsin’?, 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 Khamsin.”

“It will dry out the land,” Khai 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.”