Max Allan Collins

She looked at him, her lovely face blank, her eyes unblinking, and said nothing.

'When that time comes, when the prophecy is fulfilled,' he said, 'you shall take your place beside me.... On a throne, of course .. . and in my bed.'

She smiled—a tiny smile. 'Only a virgin can be blessed with second sight. My lord, in your bed of delight, I would lose my gift .. . and you would lose your advantage on the field of battle.'

He returned the smile and studied her perfect features. 'Ah, my beautiful sorceress ... When I am king of the world, I will no longer need your visions ... all I will require is the vision of loveli­ness that you are.'

And Memnon ran his hand up the expanse of her bare arm, fingers gentle on her flesh; but even as he savored the thought of the ecstasies that awaited him . . . them ... the sorceress flinched, feeling a chill, and a wave of revulsion.

She drew away from the warlord, brushing the hilt of a knife on his belt, unaware that this weapon was the confiscated throwing knife that had be­longed to the Akkadian, Mathayus.

And contact with a belonging of the assassin's sparked a psychic contact, and a new vision seized her mind, her being, took her at once to the desert, where she saw . ..

... a scrawny, scruffily bearded man running alongside a strange, white camel on which rode the Akkadian—Mathayus!

So the assassin lived! Was her life still threat­ened, then? she wondered.

But she did not share the vision—threat or not— with Memnon, even when—noting the surprise in her eyes, sensing another vision had come—he asked, 'What is it?'

Instead she merely informed her lord that she was tired from their journey.

Memnon searched the woman's face for deceit or trickery, but saw nothing, and suggested she rest.

'I will have need of you tomorrow,' he told her, 'when my generals come caning.'

She bowed her head. 'Thank you, my lord,'

When she turned and walked away from him, the warlord called to her. 'Cassandra)'

She stopped, but she did not turn to him.

He said, quietly, 'Your well-being is of the ut­most importance to me. You know that, don't you?'

That was as close as this proud warlord could come to telling the woman that he loved her. Ad­mitting his thirst for her—the lust in him—was far easier than acknowledging the tender emotions he felt, which shamed him.

'Yes, my lord,' she said, hating him. 'You are most generous.'

And as she glided from the throne room, the mighty warlord watched her go, drinking in every supple curve of her body, relishing the bounce of her dark hair on her shoulders and the tinkle of her jewelry and the grace of her movements.

Like a drunk who has forsworn the bottle, this strong man wallowed in the weakness of loving her, and longed for the day her purity would no longer matter, when he could love and defile her.

At the crest of a rocky slope, Mathayus—leading his camel, tagged along after by the horse thief-— paused to survey the valley below ... and the for­tified, walled city whose structures, humble and grand, were lorded over by a castellated palace.

'So,' the Akkadian said with dry bitterness, 'this is the house of the hollow king.'