was diminutive when compared to some of the astral colossi, no other body in the heavens could match its splendour. Taita felt his love for Lostris burn steadily, undiminished, warming his soul. Suddenly his whole body stiffened with alarm and a coldness spread through his veins towards his heart.
'Magus!' Mefen had sensed his change of mood. 'What ails you?'
He clasped Taita's shoulder, his other hand on the hilt of his sword.
Unable to speak in his distress, Taita shrugged him away, and continued to stare upwards.
In the interval since he had last laid eyes upon it, Lostris's star had swollen to several times its normal size. Its once bright and constant aura had become intermittent, the emanations fluttering as disconsolately as the torn pennant of a defeated army. Its body was distorted, bulging at each end and narrowing in the centre.
Even Meren noticed the change: 'Your star! Something has happened to it. What does this mean?' He knew how important it was to Taita.
'I cannot yet say,' Taita whispered. 'Leave me here, Meren. Go to your sleeping mat. I must have no distraction. Come for me at dawn.'
Taita kept watch until the star faded with the approach of the sun, but by the time Meren returned to lead him down from the tower, he knew that Lostris's star was moribund.
Though he was exhausted from his long night's vigil, he could not sleep. The image of the dying star filled his mind, and he was harried by dark, formless forebodings. This was the last and most awful manifestation of evil. First there had been the plagues that killed man and beast, and now this terrible malignancy, which destroyed the stars. The following night Taita did not return to the tower but went alone into the desert, seeking solace. Although Meren had been instructed not to follow his master, he did so at a distance. Of course, Taita sensed his presence and confounded him by cloaking himself in a spell of concealment. Angry, and worried for his master's safety, Meren searched for him all night. At sunrise when he hurried back to Gallala to raise a search party, he found Taita sitting alone on the terrace of the old temple.
'You disappoint me, Meren. It is unlike you to wander away and neglect your duties,' Taita chided him. 'Now do you propose to starve me? Summon the new maidservant you have employed, and let us hope her cooking is not eclipsed by her pretty face.'
He did not sleep during that day, but sat alone in the shade at the far end of the terrace. As soon as they had eaten the evening meal he climbed to the top of the tower once more. The sun was only a finger below the horizon, but he was determined not to waste a moment of the hours of darkness when the star would be revealed to him. Night came, as swiftly and stealthily as a thief. Taita strained his eyes into the east.
The stars pricked through the darkling arch of the night sky, and grew brighter. Then, abruptly, the Star of Lostris appeared above his head.
He was amazed that it had left its constant position in the train of the planets. Now it hung like a guttering lantern flame above the tower of Gallala.
It was no longer a star. In the few short hours since he had last laid eyes upon it, it had erupted into a fiery cloud and was blowing itself apart. Dark, ominous vapours billowed around it, lit by internal fires that were consuming it in a mighty blaze that lit the heavens above his head.
Taita waited and watched through the long hours of darkness. The maimed star did not move from its position high above his head. It was still there at sunrise, and the following night it appeared again in the same heavenly station. Night after night the star remained fixed in the sky
like a mighty beacon, whose eerie light must reach to the ends of the heavens. The clouds of destruction that enveloped it swirled and eddied.
The fires flared up in its centre, then died away, only to flare again in a different place.
At dawn the townsfolk came up to the ancient temple and waited for an audience with the magus in the shade of the tall columns of the hypostyle hall. When Taita descended from his tower they crowded around him, begging for an explanation of the mighty eruption of flames that hung over their city: 'O mighty Magus, does this herald another plague? Has Egypt not suffered enough? Please explain these terrible omens to us.' But he could tell them nothing for their comfort. None of his studies had prepared him for anything like the unnatural behaviour of the Star of Lostris.
The new moon waxed full and its light softened the fearful image of the burning star. When it waned, the Star of Lostris dominated the heavens once more, burning so brightly that all other stars paled into insignificance beside it. As if summoned by this beacon, a dark cloud of locusts came out of the south and descended on Gallala. They stayed for two days and devastated the irrigated fields, leaving not a single ear of dhurra corn or a leaf on the olive trees. The branches of the pomegranates bent under the weight of the swarms, then broke off. On the morning of the third day the insects rose in a vast, murmurous cloud and flew westward towards the Nile, to wreak more devastation on lands already dying from the failure of the Nile flood.
The land of Egypt quailed, and the population gave in to despair.
Then another visitor came to Gallala. He appeared during the night, but the flames of the Star of Lostris burned so brightly, like the last flare of an oil lamp before it expires, that Meren could point out the caravan to Taita when it was still a great distance away.
'Those beasts of burden are from a far-off land,' Meren remarked. The camel was not indigenous to Egypt and was still rare enough to excite his interest. 'They do not follow the caravan route but come out of the desert. All this is strange. We must be wary of them.' The foreign travellers did not waver but came directly to the temple, almost as though they were guided there. The camel drivers couched their animals, and there was the usual hubbub of a caravan setting up camp.
'Go down to them,' Taita ordered. 'Find out what you can about them.'
Meren did not return until the sun was well clear of the horizon.
'There are twenty men, all servants and retainers. They say they have travelled for many months to reach us.'
'Who is their leader? What did you learn of him?'
'I did not lay eyes on him. He has retired to rest. That is his tent in the centre of the encampment. It is of the finest wool. All his men speak of him with the greatest awe and respect.'
'What is his name?'