'Will he not return?' Nefer asked. 'He was my bird. I felt it in my heart. He was my bird. He must return.'
'He is part of the godhead,' Taita said softly. 'He is not part of the natural order of things.'
'But why did he refuse? There must be some reason,' Nefer insisted. Taita did not reply immediately, but went to release the pigeons. After all this time their wing feathers had grown again, but as he freed their legs from the horsehair fetters they made no attempt to escape. One fluttered up and perched on his shoulder. Gently Taita took it in both hands and threw it aloft. Only then did it fly up the cliff face to its roost on the high ledge.
He watched it go then turned and walked back to the entrance of the cave. Nefer followed him slowly, his heart and legs leaden with disappointment. In the gloom of the cave Taita seated himself on the stone ledge below the back wall, and leaned forward to build up the smoky fire of thorn branches and horse dung until it burst into flames. Heavily, filled with foreboding, Nefer took up his accustomed place opposite him.
They were both silent for a long while, Nefer containing himself, although his disappointment at the loss of the falcon was a torment as intense as if he had thrust his hand into flames. He knew that Taita would only speak again when he was ready. At last Taita sighed, and said softly, almost sadly, 'I must work the Mazes of Ammon Ra.'
Nefer was startled. He had not expected that. In all their time together Nefer had only seen him work the Mazes twice before. He knew that the self-induced trance of divination was a little death that drained and exhausted the old man. He would only undertake the dreaded journey into the supernatural when no other course was open to him.
Nefer kept silent, and watched in awe as Taita went through the ritual of preparing the Mazes. First he crushed the herbs with a pestle in a mortar of carved alabaster, and measured them into a clay pot. Then he poured boiling water from the copper kettle over them. The steam that rose in a cloud was so pungent it made Nefer's eyes water.
While the mixture cooled, Taita brought the tanned leather bag that contained the Mazes from its hiding-place at the back of the cave. Sitting over the fire, he poured the ivory discs into one hand and rubbed them gently between his fingers as he began to chant the incantation to Ammon Ra.
The Mazes comprised ten ivory discs, which Taita had carved. Ten was the mystical number of the greatest potency. Each carving depicted one of the ten symbols of power, and was a miniature work of art. As he sang he fondled the discs so that they clicked between his fingers. Between each verse of the invocation, he blew on the discs to endow them with his life force. When they had taken on the warmth of his own body he passed them to Nefer.
'Hold them and breathe upon them,' he urged, and while Nefer obeyed these instructions, Taita began to sway in rhythm to the magical verses he was reciting. Slowly his eyes seemed to glaze over as he retreated into the secret places in his mind. He was already in the trance when Nefer stacked the Mazes in two piles in front of him.
Then with one finger Nefer tested the temperature of the infusion in the clay pot as Taita had taught him. When it was cool enough not to scald the mouth, he knelt before the old man and with both hands offered it to him.
Taita drank it to the last drop, and in the firelight his face turned white as building chalk from the quarry at Aswan. For a while longer he kept up the chant, but slowly his voiice dropped to a whisper, the descended into silence. The only sound was his hoarse breathing as he succumbed to the drug and the trance. He subsided on to the floor of the cave, and lay curled like a sleeping cat beside the fire.
Nefer covered him with his woollen shawl, and stayed beside him until he started to twitch and groan, and the sweat streamed down his face. His eyes opened and rolled back in their sockets until only the whites glared blindly into the dark shadows of the cave.
Nefer knew there was nothing he could do for the old man now. He had journeyed far into the shadowy places where Nefer could not reach him, and he could no longer bear the terrible distress and suffering that the Mazes inflicted upon the Magus. Quietly he stood up, fetched his bow and quiver from the back of the cave and stooped to see out through the entrance. Across the hills the sun was low and yellow in the dust haze. He climbed the western dunes, and when he reached the top and looked out across the valleys he felt so strongly his disappointment at the lost bird, his concern for Taita in his agony of divination, and his sense of foreboding at what Taita would discover in his trance, that he was seized by the urge to run, to escape as though from some dreadful predator. He bounded away down the face of the dune, the sand cascading and hissing beneath his feet. He felt tears of terror brim in his eyes and stream down his cheeks in the wind, and he ran until the sweat poured down his flanks, his chest heaved and the sun was on the horizon. Then at last he turned back towards Gebel Nagara and covered the last mile in darkness.
Taita was still curled under the shawl beside the fire, but he was sleeping more easily now. Nefer lay down beside him, and after a while he, too, fell into a sleep that was restless with dreams and haunted by nightmares.
When he awoke dawn was glimmering at the entrance to the cave. Taita was sitting at the fire, grilling gazelle cutlets on the coals. He still looked pale and sick, but he skewered one on the point of his bronze dagger and offered it to Nefer. The boy was suddenly ravenous, and he sat up and gnawed on the bone. When he had devoured the third portion of sweet tender meat he spoke for the first time. 'What did you see, Tata?' he asked. 'Why did the godbird refuse?'
'It was obscured,' Taita told him, and Nefer knew that the omen had been unpropitious, that Taita was protecting him from it.
They ate in silence for a while, but now Nefer hardly tasted the food and at last he said softly, 'You have freed the decoys. How can we set the net tomorrow?'
'The godbird will not come to Gebel Nagara again,' said Taita simply. 'Then am I never to be Pharaoh in my father's place?' Nefer asked.
There was deep anguish in his voice, so Taita softened his answer. 'We will have to take your bird from the nest.'
'We do not know where to find the godbird.' Nefer had stopped eating. He stared at Taita with pitiful appeal.
The old man inclined his head in affirmation. 'I know where the nest is. It was revealed in the Mazes. But you must eat to keep up your strength. We will leave before first light tomorrow. It is a long journey to the site.'
'Will there be fledglings in the nest?'
