Max Allan Collins

gods, with just a touch of help from science.'

And, in the lower recesses of the palace, the sparking fuse was racing through the corridors. In the courtyard, in the moonlight, Memnon emerged with Cassandra over his shoulder. He set her roughly down and paused to catch his breath— not so much from hauling the lightweight woman as recovering from the throne-room clash with Matha­yus, as hard fought a contest as the Great Teacher had ever endured.

Cassandra was breathing hard too, clutching her stomach from the nasty blow she'd received from Memnon, when he tackled her up into his clutches.

Memnon himself leaned over in exhaustion, breath heaving, hands on his thighs. His upper lip curled into a caustic sneer. 'All... all these years ... lying to me.'

She shook her head, managed to speak. 'I never ... never lied.'

Around them in the windows of the palace, fire was raging, spreading from the throne room. A great tapestry suddenly dropped, slumping over the en­trance from the palace, through which they had just come, blocking entry in a snapping, flapping, leap­ing wall of flame.

His breath was returning to normal. 'And what of my great victory that you foresaw?'

'I saw that—I did see it.' Now her lip curled into a sneer—a defiant one. 'And I hoped to prevent it!'

The warlord moved toward her, and she backed up as he came. 'Guarding your chastity like a pre­cious stone—only the 'diamond' was nothing more than cheap glittering glass!'

'Don't touch me. ... Mathayus will kill you, if you touch me.'

'He'll try, anyway.' Memnon stopped, and looked into the sky, where the moon had nearly reached its apex, luminous in the purple shroud of the night—peaceful, lovely, in contrast to the raging flames consuming the palace, and the bitter battles waged there. 'Well, my dear, your deception has come to naught.'

Quick as a cobra, he lashed out and grabbed her by the arms and spun her around, holding her to him from behind, slipping his arm around her slender throat, his forearm pressed against her Adam's ap­ple.

'The time has come, my love,' he said tenderly, dragging her across the courtyard, as she struggled to no avail. 'I will ascend these steps and become one with the gods.'

Choking, Cassandra clawed at Memnon's arm, futilely, as he yanked her along, towing her toward the grand altar the Great Teacher had erected to him­self, a dozen stone steps rising to a platform bor­dered by rams, overseen by a statue of a god resembling himself.

'Let your eyes bear witness,' he said. 'Perhaps they no longer are blessed with a sorcerer's vision, but they will soon be filled with my vision of the future—a world ruled by Memnon!'

The warlord had just hauled the squirming, re­sisting woman to the bottom of the altar steps when that burning tapestry, blocking entry from the pal­ace, seemed to split itself in two!

The Akkadian's sword had, with one mighty slash, cut a passage for himself, and he burst through the blaze, a godlike vision emerging from smoke and flame at a dead run, relentless, enraged, his eyes trained on Memnon in as sure and lethal a fashion as if he'd been sighting an arrow.

The warlord released Cassandra, roughly, hurting her to one side, and then Memnon was upon him. Cassandra hit the stone floor hard, skinning an arm, wind again knocked from her; but—even heaving for breath—she watched with hope and fear as Ma­thayus attacked.

Memnon withdrew a sword and blocked the Ak­kadian's first, crushing blow, but barely; and now, in the open air of the courtyard, rippling bodies highlighted by the moon's ivory and the fire's or­ange, the two men again clashed swords, the clang and clack ringing, echoing.

In the throne room, Balthazar had killed or at