I hurried on into the archives, smelling the smoke still and hearing the clamour
Before the image of the sun-god I let the great battle-axe slip from my hand and left it lying on the stone floor. I pushed the stone door open, and propped it with one of the war shields to prevent it swinging closed behind me.
I ran down the staircase. Halfway down I saw the glow of light from the tomb below.
The inscribed doorway with its graven curse of the gods stood open, jammed in the hinge by the cable of the arc-light. The light lay on its side in the centre of the tomb where Louren had dropped it. The bulb still burned, lighting the tomb vividly.
Louren lay on his back at the foot of the huge granite sarcophagus of Lannon Hycanus, the last king of Opet.
He was naked to the waist. His face was deathly pale, his eyes closed, and bright blood stained the corners of his mouth and ran back down his cheeks into his ears and hair.
With the last of my strength I staggered to where he lay and dropped onto my knees beside him. I stooped over him and tried to lift him, my arms around his shoulders.
His skin was moist and burning hot, and his head flopped helplessly backwards. A new bright gush of blood ran out of his mouth, wetting my hands.
‘Louren,’ I cried, holding him to my chest. ‘Oh please, God, help me! Help me!’
There was still life in him, just the last flicker of it. He opened his eyes, those pale blue eyes with the first shadows of death darkening them.
‘Ben,’ he whispered, choking with his own blood. He coughed, spattering droplets of the bright lung blood.
‘Ben,’ he whispered so softly I could scarcely hear it. ‘All the way?’
‘All the way, Lo.’ I whispered, holding him like a sleepy child. His head of golden curls cradled against my shoulder. He was quiet for a little while, then suddenly he stirred again, and when he spoke it was in a clear strong voice.
‘Fly!’ he said. ‘Fly for me, bird of the sun.’ And the life went out of him, he turned to nothing in my arms, the great wild spirit flown - gone.
I knelt over him, feeling my own senses reel. The world turned and swung beneath me. I slipped over the edge of it, down into the swirling darkness of time. Down into a kind of death, a kind of life, for in my dying I dreamed a dream. In my poisoned sleep of death which lasted a moment and a million years I dreamed of long-dead men in a time long passed…
Of the thirty days of the prophecy there were but two remaining when Lannon Hycanus and his train came at last to the Bay of the Little Fish on the farthest southerly shores of the great lake. It was already dark when ten ships of the fleet anchored in the shallow waters of the bay, and their torches and lamps smeared long ruddy paths of light across the black waters.
Lannon stood beside the wooden gunwale of his steering-deck, and looked out across the fields of papyrus and hidden waterways to the south where the open country began and spread away endlessly into the unknown. He knew that here lay his destiny and that of the nation. For twenty-eight days he had hunted and now he felt an unaccustomed chill of fear fan his arms and neck, fear not of the terrible animal he had come to find, but of the consequences of the animal continuing to evade him.
Behind him there were light footsteps on the wooden deck and Lannon turned quickly. His hand on the hilt of the dagger beneath his leather cloak relaxed as he saw the unmistakable shape of the man in the light of the torches.
‘Huy,’ he greeted him.
‘Highness, you must eat now and sleep.’
‘Have they come yet?’
‘Not yet, but they will before morning,’ replied the hunchback, moving closer to his prince. ‘Come now. You will have need of a steady hand and clear eye on the morrow.’
‘Sometimes it seems I have ten wives, not nine,’ laughed Lannon, and regretted the jest when he saw the blood darken the face of the hunchback; quickly he went on. ‘You pamper me, old friend, but I think that tonight I will hunt sleep with as little success as I have hunted the gry-lion these twenty-eight days since my father’s funeral.’ He turned back to the bridge tail and looked across at the other nine ships. The ships of the nine families, come to watch him make good his claim to the throne of Opet and the four kingdoms, come to watch him take his gry-lion.
‘Look at them, Huy.’ And his friend came to his side. ‘How many of them have made sacrifices to the gods for my failure?’
‘Three of them, certainly - you know which I mean. There are perhaps more of them.’
‘And those who are loyal to house Barca, those we can count upon without question?’
‘You know them also, my lord. Habbakuk Lal will stand with you until the seas turn to sand, house Amon, house Hasmon—’
‘Yes,’ Lannon interrupted. ‘I know them, Huy, every one of them, for and against. I was but talking to have the comfort of your voice.’ He touched the hunchback’s shoulder in a gesture of affection, before turning away to gaze once more into the southern wilderness.
‘When the prophecy was made did they ever foresee the day when the great gry-lion would pass from the land? When a prince might search for all thirty of the days allotted to the task without seeing even the marks of the beasts’ paws in the earth of Opet?’ Lannon spoke with sudden anger. He flung his cloak back over his shoulder and folded his arms across his naked chest. His skin was freshly oiled and the muscles glowed in the torch light, he kneaded his own flesh with the long powerful fingers.
‘My father killed on the twenty-fifth day, and that was forty-six years ago. They said even then that the gry-lion was finished. Since then how many have the scouts reported?’
