'That will do. Make certain you leave nothing here.
Back to the truck!'
Their footsteps and their voices died away. At a distance she heard the
truck engine whirl and fire. The headlights shone through the trees as
the truck backed and filled, turning in the direction from which they
had come.
sound of the engine had died away Long after thee pile of dead
completely, she continued to lie under the tree shaking with the cold
and weeping branches. She was St. elief.
silently with exhaustion and pain and softly and off herself and Then
slowly she pushed he branched it to pull crawled to the trunk of the
nearest tree. She, used and then stood there, swaying weakly herself up
to her feet, in the darkness. elmed her. 'I have it was only then that
guilt overwh betrayed Mek,' she thought sickeningly. 'I have told everyI
must get back to thing to his enemies. I must warn him him and warn
him-'
treetrunk and She pushed herself away from the ds the track.
blundered back through the darkness towar he only means of ascertaining
if they had solved Taita's codes correctly was to play out BE&
the moves he had listed. They went very through the tunnels of the maze,
stepping out the carefully moves that he had noted and marking then-' on
the walls in white chalk figures.
There were eighteen moves set out on the winter face of the stele. Using
Royan's first interpretation of the symbols, they were able to advance
through twelve of theseL. Then they found themselves at a dead end,
confronted by a blank stone wall and unable to make the next move.
'Damnation!' Nicholas kicked the wall, and when this had no effect he
hurled the chunk of white chalk at it. 'I wish I could get my hands on
that old devil. Castration would be the least of his worries.'
'Sorry.' Royan scraped the hair back out of her eyes.
thought I had it right. It must be the figures in the second column. We
will have to invert them.'
'We will have to start again,'Nicholas groaned.
'Right at the very beginning,' she agreed.
'How do we know when we have finally got it right?
he wanted to know.
'If by following the clues we art ive at one of the winning
combinations, a bao equivalent of checkmate, on precisely the eighteenth
move. There will be no logical move after that, and we can assume we
have worked through it correctly.'
'And what will we find if we ever reach that position?'
'I will tell you when we get there.' She smiled at him sweetly. 'Cheer
up, Nicky. It's only just starting to hurt.'
Royan inverted the values of the second and third numbers of Taita's
notations, taking the first as the cup value and the second as the file
value. This time they completed only five moves before they were stymied
and could proceed no further.
'Perhaps out assumption about the third symbol being the change of level
is incorrect?' Nicholas suggested. 'Let's start again and give that the
second value.'
