I have witnessed this. Thus the prophecy begins."

"Don't tell me that!" Derek leaned toward the priest, both hands on the sarcophagus. "Nothing in the prophecy said anyone had to die.

If I had known that, I wouldn't have gone along with this. I want her back, Rekemheb. You can do that. I'm sure you can. You can go into the underworld."

"No one can bring her back. She has been summoned to carry out her part, just as you have. The gods have chosen you both."

"You're telling me Valerie was 'chosen' to die, and I was 'chosen'

to abandon her body to go and play husband to a woman I don't love?

Or has Auset been 'chosen' to die too?"

"No. She is well. She will be called to the temple of Hathor when her time comes, and you will too."

"Oh, will I? Commanded to appear? And what if I refuse?" Derek paced the short width of the chamber. "You never mentioned that we could get killed doing this. What sort of gods are these who can't protect their 'chosen ones' from one petty tyrant with a gun?"

"There are those who would seize power among the gods too."

Rekemheb frowned. "It is the same con ict, both here and there. That is why your friend has been called to the Duat." The Ka laid gentle hands on his descendant's shoulders. "But your role is given here, as father of the child. Go to Dendara."

"The child is dead, and for all I know, Auset is too!" Derek knocked the spectre's hand from his shoulder and leaned his forehead against the stone wall of the cave. "Besides, if the gods were trying to make a 'holy family,' they got it all wrong. Yussif is the one who loves Auset. He should have been the father. Valerie is...was...a scientist who didn't believe in God at all. And me?" He ngered the turban that was still draped across his chest . "I just liked the costumes."

"Auset lives and needs you. The gods of Egypt need you too."

Rekemheb pressed his palms together as if in prayer. "Do not weaken, son of my sons. It is a great advent, whose hour has come. Do not fail * 220 *

it."

Derek turned his back to the Ka and knelt down between the bodies of the two women. He adjusted the cloth covering the Bedouin's face and murmured, "If your spirit still hears me, forgive us for causing your death." Then he bent over the body of his friend, taking her cold hand in his. Tears streamed down his face again.

"Valerie Marie Ghislaine. Who would have thought we would nd ourselves here in a tomb together, Radames and Aida, in the middle of the grandest opera of all? You can almost hear the orchestra getting ready for the nal act." He entwined his ngers with hers, while with the other hand he drew her pistol from his belt. He closed his eyes.

"Forgive me, Jesus," he said weakly, and red into his own heart.

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CHAPTER XXXI:.

DUAT.

Valerie Foret awoke in terror. Armless, legless, incorporeal, she sensed suffocating con nement. Her whole mind a single wail of fear, she labored, writhed, twisted upward from some dark narrow place and at last broke free.

Tendrils of thought curled outward to sensation of something that was self. Appendages. She urged her will into them like blood and felt them open awkwardly. She uttered, tumbled, uttered again, and felt herself lift up. Exultant, she ascended, higher and higher, then turned to circle over the fearsome place that had just released her. "Oh, gods."

The body of Valerie Foret lay below her on the desert oor; the mortal lips from which she had broken free were still open.

The Ba shot upward, eeing her cadaver. High overhead she hovered, panting, sensing the roundness that was her chest swell and contract painfully.

Below her she saw the riverbank and the familiar crossing barque; a slender ferryman in a linen kilt stood at its stern. She spiraled downward again to water and saw the bird form re ected. She recoiled at the con rmation and then, exhausted, let the wind carry her to shore.

The ferryman turned slowly toward her and beckoned. She wondered if there were other passengers, and then she saw what lay on a bier along the ferry's center. Black and without dimension, it was the shadow of herself. Behind it, another gure crouched, and as she approached, it too turned and smiled at her with her own face.

Understanding leapt into all the entities at once.

Suddenly she could see herself perched on a stone. She studied the parrot-like creature that had no beak but only her face in miniature and felt the reciprocal perceptions of her several selves. Her thoughts came * 223 *

in disparate tones from three directions: timorous and hysterical in the Ba, thick and plodding in the shade, and nally focused into words within her Ka. Her Ka-self said to the ferryman, "Take me across."

The man leaned on his oar, pushing the ferry from the shore and urging it in gentle surges toward the other side.

She shifted perspective and studied her Ka form, translucent and yet familiar. Even the ivory scroll case she had with her at the moment of her death still hung on her shoulder, not quite substantial. Questions rushed uselessly into her mind, like clowns crowding in a doorway.

What waited, in what form, and who else would be there? What were the gods like in their own kingdom?

Something bumped the boat suddenly, and the ferryman stopped his rowing.

"What's that?" she asked, alarmed, but she already knew.

"Apophis," he replied somberly, hunching over his oar.

She stared over the side and saw a dark mass slide by just below the surface of the water. Like a whale, it curved downward, as if to dive, but no uke broke the surface; only a seemingly endless length of mottled gray slid past. He must have been enormous.

The tomb portrayals had been correct. The monster lurked within the water of the underworld, ever threatening the barque that crossed.

"Does he ever...succeed?" she whispered as the dark creature thumped again against the craft. "I mean, what happens then?"

"He consumes the Ka, undoing its creation. All the Duat must stand guard against him."

The monster seemed to lose interest and remained below. The ferryman, seeming relieved, rowed more vigorously toward the opposite shore.

She noted that, while the departure side was at, with gentle palm-studded banks, the side toward which they sailed was more uneven. It rose in places to rocky elevations and descended again to beach and marsh.

Then she saw him, a gure waiting on the other shore. He was unmistakable. Anubis, the Opener of the Way, stood stif y, his arms hanging motionless at his side. Valerie's momentary fright gave way to the scientist's amazement at how perfectly his man's body was joined with the long jackal head and high pointed ears. He stepped toward the water as the ferry neared in pulses. Finally, they beached on the dark bank, and the three parts of her gathered before the Jackal-god.

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She waited for his pronouncements, but the Jackal-god's greeting was only a silent nod and a sweep of the hand to indicate direction.

"Hurry," he said, and turned away.

"This way to customs, eh?" she muttered as she followed him, trying to dispel the persistent fear. What was the rush, she wondered.

The canine deity led her several selves at a rapid pace along a rising path. On both sides, elds of reeds dropped to marshes with pools of silvery water. Rising above the lowland, the winding path approached a great edi ce fronted by pylons. A palace, right at the waterfront, as splendid a structure as she had ever seen, surpassing even Karnak. A row of guards stood before it, each man holding a spear taller than himself.

"What do they guard against?" she asked the ferryman.

He spoke brusquely, glancing over his shoulder at her. "Against Apophis, the undoer, eater of words." He raised his hand in signal. The line of guards broke in half and, between them, great bronze doors swung open to the vast chamber.

Awestruck, she started to follow him through the portal, but at that moment, she saw the inch of one of the guards behind her. She looked back in time to see the great snake, with a diameter the size of a train, rise up above the surface of the water. It swayed for a moment, terrifying to behold, before it sank again. Valerie hurried after the Jackal-god, relieved to hear the sound of the great doors closing behind her.

The Hall of Judgment was breathtaking. How little justice was done to it in the tomb paintings and on papyri, for it was vast. Its stone pillars reached high overhead, dwar ng those at Karnak and disappearing into mist. On each side of the Hall, the judges sat in rows.

She did not need to count to know there were twenty-one on each side.

The Messengers of Osiris.

At the center of the Hall, brass scales the size of a house caught the light of the torches in the Hall. She had not expected it to be so beautiful. Yet, crouching below the scales, waiting to consume her if her heart was found wanting, the Devourer drooled menacingly from crocodile jaws.

Osiris sat mummy-wrapped before the scales on a simple block throne of gold. Green hands protruded from the wrappings, holding a king's crook and ail. On his unwrapped boyish face were the false beard and the kohled eyes of a king, and on his head the crown of Upper Egypt.

* 225 *

Anubis drew her Ka forward and she bowed. "Lord Osiris," she said.

The mummy did not move, but the god's eyes sparkled recognition.

Anubis motioned her toward the center of the Great Balance. In the one scale she saw her heart, bloodless and quiescent. In the other scale, the Ma'at feather of truth and justice stood upright.

Her Ba ew to its place at the top of the scales, and she stood for a moment, awaiting instructions. None came. Forty-two pairs of eyes looked down on her from galleries around the Hall. Then she realized what they waited for: the Negative Confessions. Fragments of them came to her, bits and pieces of the more lyrical oaths. But she had no hope of reciting them all from memory.

She clapped her hand to her side. Yes! She smiled into the air. The ivory case had passed with her into the afterworld, and it held the list of invocations.

She raised both her hands to the galleries. "Hail to you, Great God, and to you, Lords of Justice. I know you and I know your names.

You live on truth and gulp down truth. Behold, I have brought you truth as well." She turned around the room, sweeping with a grand open-armed gesture past the faces of all forty-two judges. "I have come to you without falsehood, and no one testi es against me."

An approving murmur arose from the judges. So far so good, she thought, and drew the papyrus from the scroll case. There they were, in formal temple hieroglyphs, as bright as the day they were painted.

She made another respectful rotation with uplifted hand and then began to read. "'O Far-Strider of Heliopolis, I have committed no falsehood against men. O Fire-Embracer, I have not robbed. O Swallower of Shades, I have not stolen. O Twofold Lion, I have not destroyed food. O Green of Flame, I have not stolen the god's offerings.

I have not impoverished my neighbors. I have done no wrong in the Place of Truth. I have not encroached on cultivated land or deprived the orphan of his property.'"

She stopped for a breath. The eyes of Osiris sparkled as before.

Anubis nodded encouragement.

Valerie continued, addressing each judge with a declamation.

"'I have not driven animals from their pasturage. I have not diverted the water in its season or built a dam against its free ow. I have not tampered with the balance-plumb. I have not caused any to labor in * 226 *

excess of what was due. I have not made hungry or to weep. I have not betrayed the servant to his master. I-'"

"Abomination!"

She stopped in her recitation. A gure came from behind the Great Balance, unlike the other gods. A narrow camel-like skull curved downward to a snout. Rectangular ears that stood upright atop his head recalled no animal at all. But she knew this god.

"Seth, Great of Strength, speak your thoughts," the God of the Underworld said.

The feral lips opened over clenched teeth. "These confessions carry no weight, for this mortal is a nonbeliever. She has desecrated tombs, exposed their mummies, and extinguished the light of the justi ed." He turned to face her, his eyes bright with rectitude.

She knew what he said was true. With every mummy she had excavated and sent to a museum or-worse-to a laboratory, she had severed the ties between spirit and esh. One by one, year after year, she had murdered the dead.

At that moment the heart scale on the Balance sank with a crash.

On the other side, the delicate Ma'at feather ew upward and wafted to the oor.

The voice of Osiris, God of the Dead, sounded throughout the Hall. "If this is so, and none speak for her, she must be condemned."

The Devourer beast padded forward panting and with fetid breath clamped its wide jaws around her leg. She felt the pressure of its teeth and wondered if the dead could still feel pain.

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* 228 *

CHAPTER XXXII:.

THE STORY THAT YOU TELL.

At the back of the Hall a door thundered open, and the heads of the judges turned. Down the center aisle of the Hall a male gure strode-virile, rapacious, hawk-headed. He stopped halfway to the Balance, but his piercing voice carried the length of the chamber.

"Horus speaks for her." His eyes darted around the Hall, defying contradiction.

"This mortal came upon me in captivity among the wandering people, and she bought me free. Even as a child, she heard my suffering and wept for me. My brother Seth misspeaks. This Ka is true of voice."

Around the Hall, the judges murmured acknowledgment.

From the side, a female form drifted in, her very substance twinkling stars. "She has lain beneath me in the wilderness and spoken my name when others saw me not." Sparks effervesced from her hand as she gestured toward the accused. "Let her heart be light, for the Goddess Nuut speaks for her."

The judges murmured again.

From across the Great Hall a robust gure stood up. A single plume grew upright from his head and uttered in the tiny tempest that swirled around him. "This woman has called upon me in the desert. I have avenged her, and I have guided her companion back to her. Before the messengers of Osiris, the Wind-God Shu speaks for her."

"Ahh." The sound repeated itself all along the gallery of judges.