Khai of Khem

  KHAI

  of

  KHEM

  TOR BOOKS BY BRIAN LUMLEY

  THE NECROSCOPE SERIES

  Necroscope

  Necroscope: Vamphyri!

  Necroscope: The Source

  Necroscope: Deadspeak

  Necroscope: Deadspawn

  Blood Brothers

  The Last Aerie

  Bloodwars

  Necroscope: The Lost Years

  Necroscope: Resurgence

  Necroscope: Invaders

  Necroscope: Defilers

  Necroscope: Avengers

  THE TITUS CROW SERIES

  Titus Crow Volume One: The Burrowers Beneath & The Transition of Titus Crow

  Titus Crow Volume Two: The Clock of Dreams & Spawn of the Winds

  Titus Crow Volume Three: In the Moons of Borea & Elysia

  THE PSYCHOMECH TRILOGY

  Psychomech

  Psychosphere

  Psychamok

  OTHER NOVELS

  Demogorgon

  The House of Doors

  Maze of Worlds

  Khai of Khem

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi

  The Whisperer and Other Voices

  Beneath the Moors and Darker Places

  Harry Keogh: Necroscope and Other Weird Heroes!

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  KHAI OF KHEM

  Copyright © 1980 by Brian Lumley

  First published in the United States as Khai of Ancient Khem

  in 1981 by Berkley Books, New York

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book,

  or portions thereof, in any form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Map by Mark Stein Studios

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of

  Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lumley, Brian.

  Khai of Khem / Brian Lumley.—1st Tor ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-765-31047-3

  EAN 978-0765-31047-7

  1. Immortalism—Fiction. 2. Time Travel—Fiction.

  3. Weapons—Fiction. 4. Egypt—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6062.U45K46 2004

  823’.914—dc22

  2004048043

  First Tor Edition: October 2004

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  for

  M. Evelyn Hartley,

  who had a great

  deal to

  do with it

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  I At the Pool of Yith-Shesh

  II The Dreams in the Pool

  III Manek Thotak

  IV In the Queen’s Tent

  V Khai’s Sickness

  VI Time Capsule

  PART TWO

  I The Dream Lovers

  II Paul Arnott of London

  III Memories out of Time

  IV Arnott’s Story

  V The Awakening

  PART THREE

  I Khai’s World

  II The God-King’s Parade

  III The God-King Commands

  IV The Architect’s Apprentice

  V The Time Draws Nigh

  VI The Pharaoh’s Wrath

  VII Horror on High

  VIII Inside the Pyramid

  PART FOUR

  I The Nuptial Chamber

  II Enter the Pharaoh

  III The God-Monster

  IV Plot for Freedom

  V Escape from the Pyramid

  VI King of Slaves

  PART FIVE

  I Adhan’s Revenge

  II Ramanon’s Visit

  III Out of the City

  IV Slave Ship

  V On Mhyna’s Barge

  VI The Parting of the Ways

  PART SIX

  I The Slavers

  II The Trap

  III Back to the River

  IV The Mercenaries

  V Red Rape!

  VI The Coming of Khai

  PART SEVEN

  I Deathspell

  II Khai . . . of Kush!

  III Run for the Hills!

  IV Melembrin Runs the Gauntlet

  V The Keep at Hortaph

  VI Rain of Death

  PART EIGHT

  I Khai’s Progress

  II The Coming of the Mages

  III Message of the Mages

  IV Pharoah’s Frenzy

  V Kush Resurgent!

  VI Khai and the Candace

  PART NINE

  I The Iron Invaders

  II Wizards at War

  III The Winged Legions

  IV Siege on Asorbes

  V Black Bargain

  VI Red Arrows

  VII Green Fire!

  PART TEN

  I “Take the Pyramid!”

  II Makers of Madness

  III Death of Deaths

  IV A Spell of Fascination

  V Out of the Stars

  VI A City Doomed

  EPILOGUE

  part

  ONE

  I

  AT THE POOL OF

  YITH-SHESH

  Ashtarta—dark-eyed, raven-haired Ashtarta, with skin of a pure, light-olive complexion—knelt by the Holy Pool of Yith-Shesh in a cave high in the foothills of the Gilf Kebir Plateau. The pool, which did not contain water but a thick liquid seeped at the dark of the moon from a crack in the floor of the cave, was black as Ashtarta’s huge, slanting eyes and still as her face. Its surface, like her outward appearance, was calm . . . for the present.

  But beneath that surface . . .

  Mirrored in the pool, the queen’s face stared back at her with eyes in which the shiny jet of the pupils was almost indistinguishable from the flawless ebony of the irises. Her eyelashes, painted blue, were long and curving; and above them her thin eyebrows, which like her hair were so black as to be near-blue, tapered to the point where they almost touched the square-cut fringe that decked her brow. At the back of her head and at its sides, falling so as to cover her small flat ears, her hair looked almost metallic in its lacquered sheen. Parted at the nape of her neck, it was drawn forward over her shoulders and caught together again with a clasp of crimson gems in the hollow of her long neck; from where it fell in a wide flat band to be cut square just above her navel. Her nose, small and straight, was perfect in its symmetry and given to a haughty lift; when tiny nostrils would show dark, tear-shaped and occasionally flaring. Her chin was small but square and firm, and it too could tilt warningly when Ashtarta was angry.

  The facial features at which she gazed—her own—were utterly beautiful, classic as those of another woman whose face would grace the pages of textbooks thousands of years in the future; but Nefertiti would be a Queen of Khem (or Egypt, as Khem would become before Nefertiti’s time) while Ashtarta was a Candace of Kush. And Khem and Kush were enemies poles apart, had been so for hundreds of years and would continue to be until one was finally destroyed—or until both were swept away by time and the ravages of war.

  It was because of the present war between Khem and Kush that Ashtarta was here in the cave, kneeling by the side of the black Pool of Yith-Shesh. Her army, under command of the generals Khai Ibizin and Manek Thotak, had gone down from the Gilf Kebir into Khem, to the waters of the Nile itself to strike at the very heart of the Pharaoh Khasathut’s kingdom. They had laid seige on the massively walled slave
-city Asorbes—whose center was Khasathut’s future tomb, a great pyramid forty years in the building and almost ready now to receive his mummy when at last the tyrant died—and by now the Candace should have received news of their victory.

  Could it be, she wondered, that the Pharaoh’s wizards and necromancers had turned her army back? Surely not. And yet she had seen enough in the five years of her reign to know better than to discount such an idea out of hand. That was why she was here now, waiting for Imthra, the mage who had promised her a vision. But Imthra was old now and could not climb the mountain of the pool as fast as he used to. It seemed to Ashtarta that she had been waiting for him for a long time. Now, as finally she heard the wheezing rattle of the old magician’s breath and the shuffle of his sandaled feet, she looked up.

  The old man, whose flowing white hair and long white beard seemed to burn golden as they trapped the mid-afternoon sun before the shadow of the cave’s mouth fell over him, shuffled at last into his sovereign’s presence. The golden glyphs of his wide-sleeved, black mage’s robe continued to glow even in the gloom of the cool cave, while a redder light burned through the holes in a tiny firepot which hung from his wrist on a leather thong; and as his ancient eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, so they saw Ashtarta where she kneeled at the edge of the pool.

  He saw her and held his breath. For frail with years as he was and most of the fire burned out of him—indeed, and the Candace the great granddaughter of his own long-dead brother—nevertheless her beauty was such as to lend even his old heart wings. It was a beauty, he thought, which might wake the very dead.

  She wore a clinging scarlet sheath of a shift with one clasp at her left shoulder. Her arms, neck and right breast were bare. But however simply attired, her beauty seemed almost immortal to the old man; like a perfect pearl in the dark flesh of an oyster, so Ashtarta stood out in the gloom of the cave. She looked more a goddess than a mere queen, thought Imthra, except that he no longer believed in the old deities. No, for they were dead as the recently green Sahara, mocked at, spat upon and murdered by Khasathut’s black cruelties, destroyed by his necromancers and wizards.

  Imthra prostrated himself, ancient joints creaking as he went down on one knee, then to all fours in the dust of the cave’s floor. Ashtarta made no attempt to stop him. It would be pointless. Too late now to protest a love, loyalty and devotion that spanned eighty years, which the old magician had given Ashtarta, her father and his father before him.

  He touched his head to the floor and she put her hand on his white locks. “Up, father,” she said, “and let’s be at the seeing. It seems to me that if all were well we should surely have heard from Khai and Manek by now.”

  “Aye, Candace, you could well be right,” he answered, kneeling beside her at the pool’s edge. “But I must warn you that the Pool of Yith-Shesh is no longer the bright crystal it once was. Its pictures may no longer wholly be trusted, and their meanings are often obscure.”

  “Still,” she told him, “we shall see what we shall see.”

  They turned to the shiny black surface of the pool and Imthra flicked upon it the contents of a small leather pouch. Then, beckoning the queen back a little from the pool, he commenced an invocation handed down immemorially from his magician ancestors. Strange and alien the cadence of his old voice, and weird the energies that soon began to fill the air of the cave.

  Then, at the height of his chanting, he began to whirl the firepot by its thong about his head. Soon it issued a scented smoke, at sight of which Imthra caught the jar in his free hand and unstoppered its perforated top. Done with his invocation and as its echoes died away to be replaced by an eery wind that filled the cave, the old man stretched out a trembling hand and tipped the glowing contents of the small vessel onto the surface of the pool.

  II

  THE DREAMS IN THE POOL

  At once the pool caught fire, burning with a lambent blue light formed of a million tiny flickering flames that danced on the dark surface and turned it a luminous blue. The herbal substances that Imthra had scattered on the pool burned, issuing heady, scented fumes that immediately assailed Ashtarta’s and the mage’s own senses.

  There where they kneeled amidst softly flickering shadows, the minds of the old man and the young queen suddenly reeled—whirling chaotically for the space of a half-dozen heartbeats—then steadying as the little flames began to die on the surface of Yith-Shesh’s pool. And as the flames flickered and died, so the play of blue fires upon the dark mirror surface seemed to form moving pictures.

  The two sighed as one, leaning forward the better to read the message of the flames. They looked and . . . they saw. And as the rising fumes thickened in the cave, at last Imthra and Ashtarta succumbed—just as the old mage had known they would—falling into drugged dreams of ethereal figures and formless phantoms. . . .

  “Candace, majesty, please wake up! And you, magician—you, Imthra—rouse yourself!”

  “What? Who is this?” mumbled the old man, shaken awake at last by none-too-gentle hands. He looked up from the cave’s floor and saw a young warrior kneeling beside him. The youth wore the insignia of a charioteer, but his left arm was in a sling. That was why he had not gone with the army three months ago, down from the mountains to do battle with Khasathut’s troops in the valley of the Nile.

  “Wake up, Imthra. It is I, Harek Ihris. Up, old man, and bring the queen awake. A rider comes, two or three hours away. The mirrors signal his coming.”

  “What? A rider? A messenger!” Assisted by Harek Ihris, the old man sat up. The queen, too, awakened by their excited voices, stirred herself.

  “Candace,” Imthra wheezed, “a rider comes from Asorbes, from the battleground. Doubtless he brings news. The mirrors foretell his coming, which will be in a few hours’ time. At the onset of night, then he will be here.”

  Ashtarta stood up and Harek Ihris assisted Imthra to his feet. They passed out of the cave into the cool air of early evening. Low in the western sky hung the ball of the sun, and away to the east something flashed briefly, brightly, reflecting the golden glow of the slowly sinking orb.

  “See,” said Imthra, pointing a trembling finger. “The mirrors of our watchers speak to us with Re’s own voice.”

  “Re is a god of Khem, old man,” the Candace sharply retorted, frowning. “And we are children of Kush. The sun is the sun, no more a god than the so-called ‘sacred’ crocodiles that the Pharaoh’s people also worship.”

  “Just so, Queen,” the old magician mumbled his agreement, though deep inside he felt that there would always be a godliness about the blazing solar furnace. He turned to Harek Ihris. “You go on ahead, young man. We will follow in our time. We have things to talk about.”

  As the young soldier started off quickly down the steep mountain path, Ashtarta called after him: “And when the rider comes, make sure he knows that he is to be brought straight to my tent. And let there be meat and wine ready. . . .”

  An hour later, as they neared the foot of the mountain—more a high, steep foothill than a mountain proper—finally Ashtarta and Imthra found time to talk. Until then they had saved their breath, assisting each other in those places where the path was at its steepest or its surface loose and treacherous. Now, as the slope gentled toward the tents of the encampment, which lay about a pool surrounded by trees, palms and green shrubs, Imthra asked: “Did you see anything, daughter, in the black crystal Pool of Yith-Shesh?”

  She looked at him and frowned, then nodded. “Yes, I saw something—many things. But they were to me a nonsense. Come, Imthra, you are the magician. What did you see in the pool?”

  “Candace, I—” He hesitated, then quickly went on: “But as I have explained, often the pool’s pictures lie, or at best they present an obscure or confused—”

  “You saw evil, is that it?”

  Imthra looked down at his sandaled feet and appeared to pick his way most carefully. “I saw . . . something. Its meaning may not be easy to explain. Therefore do not
ask me, Ashtarta, for my vision would only disturb you—perhaps unnecessarily. Young eyes, however, often see far more clearly than old ones. What did your eyes see in the Pool of Yith-Shesh?”

  For all that she was young, Ashtarta was wise. She did not press the magician for an answer but told him instead of her own visions. “I saw carts without oxen, without horses, moving fast as the stars that fall from the sky,” she began, her great slanted eyes filling with wonder. “The carts carried many people, all dressed in a strange and wondrous garb. I saw great birds that served these people, carrying them in their bellies without eating them; and ships that went without sails on the ocean, which were as long as the side of Khasathut’s pyramid! Aye, and I saw vast encampments greater by far than all of Kush and Khem camped together, with dwellings of stone taller than mountains and teeming with peoples of all kinds and colors in their millions. Then—”

  She turned quickly, catching Imthra off guard, her troubled eyes searching his face. “Then I saw the general Khai, my future husband, who came to me as a boy out of Khem. Did you, too, see Khai, Imthra?”

  “Khai? Khai the general? The Warlord?” He did his best to look surprised.

  “Do you know of any other?” She peered at him suspiciously through silk-shuttered eyes, like a cat at the cautious pattering of a mouse.

  “No, Candace, of course not,” Imthra mumbled. “And no,” he lied, “I did not see Khai in the Pool of Yith-Shesh. My visions were of no consequence compared with yours. Now please continue, daughter,” he urged. “Go on, tell me what else you saw. Tell me of Khai the general.”

  For a moment longer, the Candace peered into Imthra’s lined old face. Then she relaxed and said: “There is little more to tell. He had wings; he stood on a green mountain in a wild, craggy and alien land; he flew. Then . . . something swooped on him out of the sky like a great hawk. He crashed to the ground. After that I saw no more.”

  They were walking now through tufts of spiky, coarse grass between the tents. Directly in front of them, beside the springfed oasis pool, Ashtarta’s large, pavilion-like tent stood scarlet and gold in the last rays of the sun as it sank down between twin peaks. Silhouetted against the tent, whose color merged with that of her dress, Ashtarta’s flesh seemed almost green, exotically beautiful.