"I went because Rekemheb..." She stopped, appalled. "Are you saying that he engineered my death?"

This time the smile was unmistakable. "Yes, my dear. You have been tricked. Jehuti has brought you here to write his Book and resurrect a dead religion. Do you fancy yourself a Moses, or Mohammed, able to formulate the central gospel of a religion? What message do you have, anyhow?"

She could think of nothing to say and looked around. Where was Jehuti, to make his case?

Seth pressed his argument. "He has torn you away from life and your friends and set you working for them. If I were you, I would give thought to getting out of here."

Her hands went to her hips. "Why? I just went through an ordeal getting in here."

"But you died for nothing." He blinked slowly, and she saw for the rst time that he had long, rather beautiful, eyelashes. "The Bedouin woman still lives."

"Nekhbet is not dead?"

"No, she is not. But you are, aren't you? And all for nothing. And your Ka will last only as long as your cadaver. Did you think they had changed the rules for you? Jehuti is gambling everything on you, on your writing his chronicle quickly, before your Ka dies its second death, and while you scribble, your mortal body is cooking in the sun."

She imagined herself lying on the desert oor and felt her Ka-light darken. "Then why did they kill me in the rst place? I could have written their Book in life."

Seth glanced sideways, as if preparing his words. "You...are not like the sons of Rekemheb. You are...compromised, not altogether theirs, the gods would say, and in your own world most unpredictable.

Only in the Duat can the gods control you."

* 238 *

Valerie stood speechless. Of their own accord her hands rolled up the blank papyrus. It t smoothly inside the incantation scroll in the hollow ivory palette.

Seth added the nal stroke. "Do you know what has happened to your loved ones?" He took a step forward. "They are wandering in the desert, bleeding and thirsty. Wouldn't you rather be there, helping them-than here?" He gestured once again toward the empty landscape.

"Go back," he repeated. "Jehuti has overstepped himself in letting you die for his foolish project."

She chewed her lip for a moment, then met his cold eyes. "Even if I wanted to go back, I couldn't. You know that."

His camel mouth formed what might have been pursed lips. "It is true that none has gone back, but then, none like you has ever come here before. You must only reverse your path. The judges cannot stop you if you do not wake them. And once you have passed through the Hall of Judgment, you need only cross the river."

"The river, right. Will the ferryman take me back to the other shore? And what then? How can you reverse death?"

Seth raised his own hand, reassuringly. "Do not worry about these things that you do not understand. Flee this place. It is the darkness from which the one light has sprung." He stood with his feet spread apart, his unmuscled arms folded across his chest. His voice became almost kind. "Go back quickly. You may still be saved."

Uncertain, she walked back up the path, hanging the scroll case again on her shoulder. The two arguments warred in her mind. She was part of a great mystery of renewal. Or she was a fool. Why during the whole misadventure hadn't anyone asked her what she thought or wanted? What did she want anyhow? As she stood nally before the rear portal to the Hall of Judgment, she knew. She wanted life.

The great doors stood partly open, though guards stood before them, as they did at the front portal. She feared she knew why; the way back was forbidden. As she approached, her fears were con rmed, for the guards stepped forward and crossed their spears in front of her.

It was a small obstacle, one that she would have easily gotten around a few weeks earlier. But now, the sum of all the shocks, fears, and horrors came together in that one gesture, and it broke her. She threw herself against the guards, seizing their spears, one in each hand, and forced them back a step. But the other two joined them, and the * 239 *

four of them fought her off, throwing her to the ground.

Then something terrible occurred that had not happened to her since she was a child. The recollection of her losses accumulated in her like a oodwater, and she suddenly dissolved in tears. Clutching the front of her shirt, she wept incoherently for all that had been taken from her: for her career that had been ruined, for her friends who had been harmed on her behalf, and for herself, robbed of life for a mystery.

It seemed so unfair. She had asked for so little from life and had worked so hard. No family had supported her; no great love had sustained her. She had dragged herself up to success as if climbing from a pit and had been thrown back in, her sense of self and purpose shrunken to the mere urge to live. Broken, she covered her face with her hands.

Then she heard it. She was not sure at rst; it seemed impossible.

But then she made out the high delicious sound, the faint melody, and she recognized the words coming from inside the Hall.

"Che far senza Euridice..."

She looked through the space between the great doors.

Unbelievable. There he was, on the other side of the Balance, hands outstretched to the judges overhead. A long scarf-it looked like Yussif's khaf a- was draped over one shoulder and the other forearm.

In the ranks overhead, the judges did not sit but stood at the balustrade, and they seemed agitated.

What was he doing? Singing in Italian to Egyptian judges? He was mad. And yet the bright sound rose up, plangent and compelling, and the judges seemed to listen.

"Dove andr senza il mio ben. "

He turned back and forth to both ranks of judges as she herself had done, sweeping the air with supplicant hands. The drapery wafted gently back and forth as he moved and postured, a black Apollo Belvedere.

"Euridice! Euridice! Oh Dio! Rispondi!"

The door guards too were affected, and they watched him, speechless. She had heard him a score of times in concert halls surrounded by an enraptured public, but this-there was never anything like this.

"Io son pure il tuo fedel!"

"Fedel." Oh, yes, he was faithful, following her into the underworld. More faithful than any lover.

* 240 *

"Piu soccorso piu speranza. Ne dal mondo, ne dal ciel!" He nished his aria on a delicate, high pianissimo. She waited, breathless, for the murmur of the judges.

For a moment there was no reaction at all. Then, quietly at rst but with increasing volume, the tapping began, and the clattering of the judges' staffs made its stately way around the Hall.

Derek then simply walked around the Balance. The heart-dish and the feather-dish had never moved, neither up nor down, as if the rules of judgment had been suspended for him. The Devourer sat in his place panting like a housedog as the singer walked the length of the Hall. At the rear doors, he stepped out and, as if enchanted, the guards stepped back.

"Hello, you!" Valerie whispered as he came near, and she waited for his exuberant embrace, his reciting of all her names. But as he arrived in front of her, he closed his eyes. Behind him in the Hall, the judges hardened once again to stone.

"What's wrong?" Valerie laid her hand on his chest.

He did not reply, but with both eyes still tightly closed, he made an about-face and stepped back into the quiescent Hall.

"What are you doing?" She followed him, reaching out again to touch his shoulder.

He curled his ngers over hers without speaking. Leaning forward, he pulled her with him back through the Hall, looking nervously up at the frieze of rigid judges.

"Please tell me what's going on. You came all this way, sang your way into the Underworld, and now you refuse to even recognize me!"

Derek halted abruptly. Though she could not see his face, the sudden tilt of his head told her he rolled his eyes in exasperation.

"Oh." She nodded, nally getting it.

"Whew," he sighed, reaching back to pat her ngertips on his shoulder.

"Well, then. Let's get out of here," she whispered.

They tiptoed forward together down the center of the vast chamber, toward the front portal. They crept, step by soundless step, and there was no reaction.

Finally they came to the Balance, where the mummi ed Osiris sat staring vacantly and the Devourer beast slept. The Balance and the Book, Valerie thought, and felt Jehuti's scroll case brush against her * 241 *

hip. She began to have doubts. Jehuti had chosen her, thousands of years ago, and now she ed from him. A twinge of guilt arrived like a prod in her chest.

The Balance tipped with the squeaking of unoiled metal. One of the dishes suddenly held a heavy heart, and its weight drew the dish downward. A judge turned his head ominously. The Devourer beast stirred.

"Merde!" she thought, taking another step forward. The Balance creaked again.

"Be light of heart, light of heart," she whispered to herself. She called up happy memories-the rendezvous at the souq in Cairo, Derek's laughter, Nekhbet's kiss.

Nekhbet.

The heart-dish crashed to the marble oor, and Osiris's eyes ew open. The stony judges burst as one into color, and their indignation rumbled around the chamber. The Devourer huffed to its feet.

"So much for silence!" Derek seized Valerie's hand and propelled them both toward the front. At the portal, they threw their weight together against the huge doors. At the rst opening, they squeezed through, one at a time, and broke again into a run. Behind them the great bronze doors thundered closed again, but the row of guards and the Devourer beast pursued them.

Concentrating on her footing as she descended the hill, Valerie dared not look back, but she sensed something in pursuit; through its eyes she could see herself eeing. Then, smiling inwardly, she realized it was her own Ba, eeing the underworld with her.

But all that stretched before them was the dark river. The ferry to the other side, to life, was gone. Seth had lied.

"What now?" Derek called out without turning.

"Don't know!" she called back breathlessly. She was so sick of running, of being manipulated, cheated. Would something always be at her heels? And now there was simply no place left to run. Nothing but the endless shore that rose over rocky promontories and descended again to beach. And they had blundered to a cliff. The guards were on them now; she felt a hand brush against her back, about to seize her.

Derek halted only for a second at the edge and ung himself with outspread arms into the rippling water. Valerie leapt after him, for a moment feeling herself suspended in the air. Then the icy water rushed through her Ka, chilling her. Instinctively she held her breath, although * 242 *

faintly aware that a spirit could not drown.

She saw Derek swimming awkwardly in front of her, his legs kicking froglike. She wondered if they could still make it to the other side. Then she saw it. Apophis, as big as a train, snaked toward him through the water.

He saw it too and stopped, thrashing to turn around, but the creature was on him in an instant. Vast jaws opened over him, and his eyes widened in horror looking up at them. She saw his mouth form a silent scream as the maw closed again, engul ng him.

Scarcely had she turned herself-uselessly, she knew-when the creature was upon her. Blackness surrounded her, but for the line of gray-white teeth that formed an ellipse in front of her. Then the creature's jaws snapped shut, and she was sucked into its gorge.

* 243 *

* 244 *

CHAPTER XXXIV:.

HOUSE OF HATHOR.

Yussif gave a slight wave through the window as the military vehicle pulled away from Luxor International Hospital. He owed the soldiers a lot. They had been surly at rst, obviously annoyed at having been ordered to act as ambulance drivers for reckless civilians.

He could tell by their accents that they were from the hinterlands, and he knew their kind: rough pragmatists whose "honor"-if they had any at all-was purely tribal, and who stayed in the military because they had no place else to go. But he had engaged them, and when it emerged that one of them was from El Dakhla, his own village, they became almost brotherly. Auset, who had slept feverishly, had no idea of the complex tale he had woven of truth and fantasy to keep their goodwill.

He would tell her one day-when it was all over.

The buzzing monotony of television news drew his attention as he slouched against the window sill of the visitors' room. Anything to distract him from the agony of waiting. Another attack on Western business interests, this time by arsonists on an Esso fuel depot. The footage was dramatic. Fountains of ame rose in the air and billowed sideways like speckled orange froth, engul ng sheds and vehicles, which in turn exploded.

The blazing scene outside was followed by somber footage in a jail somewhere. The camera swept along a row of sullen bearded faces.

The government had obviously been swift in its roundup of known Islamists. Terrorists, they called them now. Yes, if they blew up oil tanks, they were surely that, but it unnerved him to see their faces. They looked like all the men he knew, men from the villages, from the poorer streets of Cairo, the shops of the souq. Where would it all end?

"Mr. Nabil?"

* 245 *

Yussif smoothed his soiled shirt, self-conscious in the immaculately scrubbed room. "Dr. Bakar."

A man of his own age approached and held out his hand. The doctor's trim moustache and cleanly shaved chin stood in harsh contrast to his own rough beard peppered by sand.

He shook hands but did not ask the question for fear of the answer.

"Your wife is stable but weak, Mr. Nabil. We have given her antibiotics, but she requires surgery. The bullet that struck her lodged in the curve of the pelvis bone. It must be removed, of course, as soon as possible."

"But the baby..."

The doctor dropped his eyes. "The baby is dead. It appears the bullet passed directly through it. We will remove the dead fetus during the operation, of course. With your permission, I will schedule the surgery for early tomorrow morning."

"I must talk rst to...my wife. Tonight, please."

"Yes, of course. Come this way." With a detached smile, the physician held open the door to the stairwell leading to the women's corridor.

v Auset lay half upright in the rst of the two beds in the room, an IV tube running from her arm up to a pouch of some clear liquid suspended over her. She dozed, her head facing the other empty bed as Yussif came in. She had been bathed, he noted, and strands of her hair hung still damp over her cheeks.

He stood for a moment, uncertain, at the foot of the bed, then walked softly into the connecting washroom. It smelled of lemon and antiseptic cleanser. A bottle of liquid soap stood on the sink, and he helped himself, lathering his arms up to the elbows and washing his face and neck. A week before he would have washed that way for God in preparation for the evening prayer. But now the stranger he saw in the mirror washed for himself alone. The washing felt incomplete, futile.

"Yussif?"

He stepped out into the hospital room and walked toward the bed cautiously. "How are you feeling?"

* 246 *

"I'm all right. Drowsy from the painkillers. But the doctor won't tell me anything."

Her voice was weak and he came closer. He dared not take her hand, and so he set his st on the mattress next to her arm. "I talked to him. He says they have to operate soon to take the bullet out. And...it seems the baby is dead."