Max Allan Collins

crashing, making an ungodly music.

When the guards followed into the corridor, Ma­thayus was again spiraling his golden shield along, making their arrows ineffectual. At the end of the hall, the Akkadian dove from behind the revolving orb, allowing it to clatter to a resounding stop as he pitched through waiting doors.

Again he found himself within a strange room of the palace, and he slammed the doors shut and bar­ricaded them with an ornate chest.

He turned to get his bearings.

This was no magician's lair... and yet it was. This was a golden-hued sandstone chamber whose hieroglyph decorations seemed feminine, a sensation enhanced by delightful scents of oil and flowers and incense. He knew at once he was in Cassandra's quarters; not in her bedroom, or living chamber, no—this was an indoor bathing pool.

And he knew it belonged to the sorceress, be­cause Cassandra herself lay within the huge bath, her lovely head and a shoulder looming above a sur­face covered with rose petals.

Her almond eyes grew large—she may have been a prophet, but she had clearly not anticipated his entry into her quarters, and was dumbstruck.

But, then, so was he.

The sorceress's handmaidens, who'd been tend­ing her alongside the pool, which took up most of the floor space in the modest-sized chamber, were not struck dumb: they screamed like frightened chil­dren, and ran into the adjacent rooms of their mis­tress's quarters.

Quickly the regal Cassandra regained her poise, and she rose from the rose-cloaked water, throwing back the damp mane of her long dark hair, display­ing every inch of her golden, well-formed flesh, per­fect breasts, narrow waist, the flare of hips, flawless skin pearled with moisture, every female secret shared.

She stood with her arms at her sides and her chin, and her breasts, held high. No woman had ever been more at ease with her beauty as she said, 'Well, assassin? Are you going to kill me, or just stare?'

Mathayus sighed; first the harem girls . .. now this. 'Decisions,' he said, 'decisions.'

Then someone knocked at the door—rammed at it, actually; guards beyond were yelling as they did their best to batter their way inside.

And now her voice called to him, the defiance, the pride gone; something sweet, something mysti­cal, like a gentle wind drifting across the landscape of his soul. 'Akkadian ... Akkadian ...'

He frowned, and he quietly, all but drowned out by the battering-ram sounds, said, 'Oh no, witch ... Not this time.'

And he dove into the pool, pulling her down un­der, sweeping them both below the rose-petaled skin of the water. The woman cried in surprise, but her scream was cut off abruptly, before it was much of anything really, just a yelp before she disappeared under the petals and water.

It took a while for the guards to butt through that door, and by the time they had, that rosy surface had settled, and the bath appeared empty.

Thorak strode in, sword in hand, looking around the room, frowning in frustration. Lord Memnon had joined the search, personally, and entered the bath chamber on his trusted adviser's heels.

Under the water, Mathayus slipped the tip of the scimitar under an iron grating at the base of pool, prying it open. At once, the bathwater began to rush down the narrow spillway below.

As the pool drained, the shadowy forms under the water began to reveal themselves, and Memnon cried, 'Kill him!'

That spillway was not so narrow,