when he touched her arm.
'You startled me,' she scolded him.
'What are you staring at?' he asked. 'What have you discovered?'
'Nothing,' she denied swiftly, and then after a moment, 'I don't know.
It's just an idea.'
'Come on! What are you up to?'
'It's easier for me to show you.' She led him back to her table on the
stone landing, and rearranged her notebooks carefully before she spoke
again.
'What I have been doing these last few days is going through the
material on the stele of Tanus's tomb, picking out all the quotations
that I recognize from the classical books of mystery, the Book of
Breathings, the Book of the Pylons and -the Book of Thoth, and setting
those on one side.' She showed him fifteen pages in her neat small
script.
'All this is ancient material, none of it original compositions by
Taita. I have discarded it for the time being.'
She set the first notebook aside and picked up the next. 'All this is
from the fourth face of the stele. It's nothing that I recognize, but
seems to be only long lists of numbers and figures. Some sort of code,
perhaps? I am not sure, but I do have some ideas on it that I will come
to later.
Now this here,' she showed him the next book, 'this is all fresh
material that I don't remember reading in any of the ancient classics.
Much of it, if not all of it, must be original Taita writings. If he has
left any more clues for us, I believe they will be here, in these
sections.'
He grinned, 'Like that marvelous quotation describing the pink and
private parts of the goddess. Is that what you are referring to?'
'Trust you not to forget that.' She flushed lightly and refused to look
up from her notebook. 'Look at this quotation from the head of the third
face of the stele, the side Taita has headed 'autumn'. It's the very
first one that caught my attention.'
Nicholas leaned forward and read the hieroglyphics aloud: ''The great
god Osiris makes the opening coup with deference to the protocol of the
four bulls. At the first pylon he bears full testimony to the immutable
law of the board.'' He looked up at her. 'Yes, I remember that
quotation. Taita is referring to bao, the game that the old devil loved
so passionately.'
'That's right.' Royan looked slightly embarrassed. 'But do you also
remember that I told you about a dream that I had in which I saw Du raid
again in one of the chambers of the tomb?'
'I remember.' He chuckled at her discomfort. 'He said I of the four
bulls. Now
4 something to you about the protoco we are going in to the, realm of
divination by dreams, are we?'
She looked annoyed by his levity. 'All I am suggesting is that my
subconscious had been -digesting the quotation and come up with an
answer, which it put into the mouth of Duraid in the dream. Can't you be
serious just for one moment?
