The circle of gold had adhered to the resin-soaked skin of the king's
forehead. In order to remove it Nahoot and Reeper first had to lift the
complete body out of the coffin and lay it on the stainless steel
mortuary stretcher which already waited to receive it. Then the resin
had to be softened and removed with specially prepared solvents.
The whole process took as long as Nahoot had predicted, but finally it
was completed.
They laid the golden uraeus upon a blue velvet cushion, as if for a
coronation ceremony. They dimmed all the other lights in the main
chamber of the vault, anded a single spot to fall upon the crown. Then
they arrang both went upstairs to inform von Schiller.
He would not let the two archaeologists accompany him when he returned
to the vaults to view the crown.
Only Utte Kemper was with him when he keyed the lock to the armoured
door of the vault, and the heavy door slid open.
The first thing that caught von Schiller's eye as he entered the vault
was the glittering crown in its velvet nest.
immediately he began to wheeze for air like an asthmatic, and he seized
her hand and squeezed until her knuckles crackled with the pressure and
she whimpered with pain. But the pain excited her. Von Schiller
undressed her, placed the golden crown upon her head and laid her naked
in the open coffin.
'I am the promise of life,' she whispered from the ancient coffin. 'Mine
is the shining face of immortality.' He did not touch her. Naked, he
stood over the coffin with his inflamed and swollen rod thrusting from
the base of his belly like a creature with separate life.
She ran her hands slowly down her own body, and as they reached her mons
Veneris, she intoned gravely, 'May you live for ever!'
The wondrous efficacy of the crown of Mamose was proven beyond any
doubt. Nothing before had produced this effect upon Gotthold von
Schiller. For at her words, the purple head of his penis erupted of its
own accord and glistening silver strings of his semen dribbled down and
splattered upon her soft white belly.
In the open coffin Utte Kemper arched her back, and writhed in her own
consuming orgasm.
It seemed to Royan that she had been away from Egypt for years instead
of weeks. She realized just -how much she had missed the crowded and
bustling streets of the city, the wondrous smells of spices and food and
perfume in the bazaars, and the wailing voice of the muezzin calling the
faithful to prayer from the turrets of the mosques.
That very first morning she left her flat in Giza while it was still
dark, and since her injured knee was still swollen and painful she used
her stick as she limped along the banks of the Nile. She watched the
dawn cobble the river waters with a pathway of gold and copper and set
the triangular sails of the feluccas ablaze.
This was a different Nile from the one she had encountered in Ethiopia.
This was not the Abbay, but the true Nile. It was broader and slower,
and the muddy stink of it was familiar and well beloved. This was her
river and her land. She found that her resolve to do what she had come
