Gary Gygax - Dangerous Journeys 2 - Samarkand Solution (21 page)

"In truth I—" The man looked hard at the ur-kheri-heb, cutting off his words in order to assess the magister. "I have been," he finally said with a certain pride, "for I disavow involvement in matters of politics—state politics, that is."

"As I thought. Come, Prophet Eketi, you haven't taken this unfair treatment without some coun-termeasures, have you?"

"Not in the least, sir, not in the least. I've made a complete record of everything."

"Please show Chief Inspector Tuhorus and me your records, then—especially those pertaining to the staffing of the temple. I'm certain you maintained notes on personnel—your
own
roster, not that which the high priest retained.''

Eketi gave a sly smile and took them into his own cramped office. There he produced several little diaries: his carefully scribed notes on what had occurred in the temple over nearly five years' time. One with a dull red binding had lists of all ecclesiastic and secular personnel employed over that period of time. "Do you desire information on slaves? workers? priestesses? or priests?"

"Unquestionably detailed," Tuhorus murmured as he glanced over the cleric's shoulder at the book.

"On priests—uab rank, to be exact. Do you have an Absobek-khaibet listed?"

"Yes," Prophet Eketi said smugly, "of course I do. Here. Uab Absobek-khaibet joined us six months ago, coming here from the south by recommendation of the Innu Temple.. .. Now that's odd!"

"What do you mean?" prodded the magister.

"It is decidedly unlike me not to have made any notes regarding the fellow's performance here—his habits, predilections, weaknesses and .. . well, you understand." The cleric wasn't satisfied with that, however. He went back to his collection of materials and found another work, this one a record of attendant priests promoted to uab status. After several minutes of page turning and mumbling, Eketi exclaimed, "Here!" He handed the notebook to Magister Inhetep, one yellowish, long-nailed finger pointing to an entry. "This is the fellow."

Tuhorus came to view the entry, peering around the tall priest-wizard's shoulder. There, where the priest of Set pointed, was an entry noting that an attendant cleric, Absobek-khaibet of Ab-ydos, had attained uab status after serving in various lesser capacities for nine years. "I note that at that time he was posted to Suakin," the policeman commented.

"Yes," the cleric said, without looking at either of the two. "I wonder why I didn't note that in my journal when he was sent here. Such a place! How he managed to connive a transfer from there to Innu is beyond all understanding."

"We've seen enough, thank you, Prophet Eketi. Chief Inspector Tuhorus and I will now examine Matiseth Chemres' quarters—you'll certainly wish to make a note of that fact, won't you?"

Tuhorus saw the wizard-priest wink as Inhetep turned and left the cell-like room so filled with records. He couldn't help winking back, for Eketi was so petty and grasping. The prophet, however, failed to notice the jape and was scribbling furiously away in yet another of his tomes. "Of course, Ur-kheri-heb-tepi of Thoth. I must note that and the potential conflict between your position in the Utchatu and your devotion to the . . ."

They left him mumbling on as they proceeded toward the place where Chemres had dwelled. There were altogether five rooms and a private garden provided for the high priest of the temple. The outside wasn't of interest, nor the council room. The other four chambers, including the bath, had to be searched, "just what are we seeking, Magister?" queried the policeman.

"Sssh!" Inhetep cautioned as he used a dagger to cut the lead seal on the door. "We'll come to that in a moment, Tuhorus," he whispered. "For now, let's just be as stealthy as burglars."

"What on Yarth for?" asked the chief inspector in an equally hashed tone. "This area is— was—sealed. Are we going to surprise beetles and rodents?"

The magister looked down into the policeman's eyes and nodded. "Indeed, Tuhorus, indeed. We just might happen upon a rat, and a highly dangerous one at that. If you aren't highly adept at using heka in self-defense, Chief Inspector, I suggest that you have a weapon ready. No sword?" As he spoke, Inhetep eased open the heavy door and slipped through into the darkness beyond.

Tuhorus took him at his word, unsheathed his blade and showed the dagger to Inhetep, as he crept into the room. Inhetep shut the door and the chief inspector stood still, allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom, for the only illumination there came from dimly glimmering motes high above on the ceiling. This was the personal chapel of the hem-neter-tepi, with a screened sanctuary for Set and two other associated deities. Besides some typical furnishings for such a place—incense burners on slender-legged stands, chests for service pieces, and the like—the room was clear and uncluttered. Across its length, at its left-hand corner, was a hanging which covered the archway leading to the chamber beyond. There was no sound audible or light visible behind that screening drapery, nothing at all to indicate there was another soul present in the dead high priest's suite. "Shall we begin searching?" asked Tuhorus in a hushed voice.

"No, not quite yet," Inhetep hissed in response. "Luck might truly be with us. Come on! Let's have a peek inside the bedroom and then see about his study." Together the two men stole on tiptoe to the inner opening and peeped into Chemres' bed chamber. It was similarly silent and deserted, so they moved the curtain and went in. "There!" the ur-kheri-heb mouthed silently, touching Tuhorus' arm and pointing. A thin line of golden light was visible at the bottom of the door which closed this room from the one next in sequence.

It could be that one of the police officers had simply left a lamp alight, but Tuhorus doubted that. With his weapon ready, he stood back so as to be able to rush into the study when the magister opened the door. Inhetep didn't yank it open immediately, however. With one hand on the latch, the tall wizard-priest paused and pressed his ear against the panel. Then he moved back, signaled to his companion, and pulled with all his might. The light which spilled suddenly into their room nearly blinded the policeman, but he blinked and darted into the adjoining chamber nonetheless, crouching low and looking right and left to avoid being ambushed.

Every book, manuscript, and scroll in the place was disturbed. These items were piled on the floor, atop the desk, and every other flat surface as well. Someone was hunched over what must have been a small stack, the last of the volumes from the last shelf, turning the pages of the topmost book as the chief inspector leaped into the study. "Don't make a move!" Tuhorus cried.

Inhetep suddenly sprang up behind the policeman. He had shut his eyes for a second before opening the door, hoping that they'd adjust quickly enough thereafter so that he could use the casting he had ready to use on the one lurking within, inflicting muscle rigidity. The mag-ick was of the sort quickly evoked, and though its effect lasted only a few seconds, the subject creature—human or otherwise—was held motionless during that time by nervous energy which locked muscles into knotted rigor. To activate the charm required but a little heka, but to lay it properly the priest-wizard had to himself freeze into immobility, consciously tense his whole body, and then transfer the magnified attitude to the other creature. Inhetep fixed his gaze on the figure by the flaring oil lamp.

Whomever was hunched there had so muffled itself in a cloak that no features were immediately distinguishable, save for dark, glaring eyes which met the ur-kheri-heb's own for a split second. Setae raised his arm and began uttering the few syllables which would transmit the store of magickal energy from his own body to that of the intruder. Yet before he could manage to get the last sound out of his mouth, the magister saw the cloaked figure move with lightning speed, a dark hand flashing toward the lamp as if to extinguish its flame. Inhetep bit off his dweomer and cried out instead, "Back, Tuhorus!"

The same sort of dweomer which had brought the fiery efreet and consumed the zombie Aufs-eru now caused the lamp to send forth its oily contents in a geyser. That jet of fuel was magnified in volume, somehow intermixed with air, and augmented at the same time with some other substance, so that as it shot up and outward it burned with a hellish brightness and blastfurnace heat. The policeman instinctively obeyed Inhetep's warning shout. The magister hurled himself backward even as he called out, and Tuhorus dived off to the side and rolled. There was a roar as the lamp's tripled volume of oil was consumed in an instant. The brass container itself was turned to a molten puddle, and then there was dead blackness, save for the red glow of the metal and the faint illumination from overhead.

"Are you all right, Tuhorus?"

The man grunted in pain but said, "Fine—a bruised knee from getting out of the way is all. I can stand on it. What happened to the intruder?"

"Gone. Fled, but I think we're now ready for the last act of this nasty drama, my friend. Shield your eyes; I'm going to cast a witchlight here so we can find anything our pyromaniacal quarry might have left behind in his hurry to escape. There," Inhetep said as the place was filled with brightness from the dweomer he had imbued into the ceiling. "Now we have proper illumination." Instead of barely twinkling "stars" above, there were beams as intense as sun rays streaming down out of midair. "Already receptive, you see," he remarked to the policeman. "Only a small matter to energize those places into suitable brightness."

"Who was that fiend who tried to blast us?" Tuhorus asked, rubbing his left knee. "He was faster than a cobra."

"Indeed he was. Did you see his feet?"

"No. What about them?"

"Bare and black, my friend. The fellow was none other than Yakeem, the Dahlikil assassin— perhaps the most able killer ever known," the ur-kheri-heb told his associate. "Now I think I have it complete. What do you make of his being here, Tuhorus?"

"He was searching for something. Every scrap of writing in this room had been gone through— except for the bit he was working on when we surprised him, that is."

"Yes. Let's take a look to see if there's anything in that last pile, and then we can move on."

"But what about the assassin—Yakeem? You can't let him escape!"

"Can't? He's already gone, Tuhorus. Nothing we can do in the next few minutes will change that. Don't worry, Chief Inspector. He didn't vanish. We can track him down well enough a bit later—at our leisure," the wizard-priest explained as he began paging through the material that the Dahlikil had been going through. "Here, take this volume and see if it has anything other than the contents it's supposed to—any scraps of paper, notes in the margins, anything, and don't neglect to check the spine and binding."

After some time, they completed the search.

'Nothing at all," the police official said with consternation. "What next?"

"That we found nothing means that Yakeem is unsure of the location of whatever it was he sought, but we know very well where it is."

"What are you talking about, Inhetep?!"

"Absobek-khaibet, of course. He had secreted something to ensure his safety—-at least, he thinks he has. Now all we need to do is locate the means of entrance to the passageways we know lie beneath here, and we'll be ready for the conclusion of the case."

__ 14 —

A SECRET SHRINE OF DEATH

The escape route was concealed behind a panel in a little alcove just a few feet from where the cloaked assassin had been. Neither detective had noted the Dahlikil exit there because of the sudden flare of incandescent light and its roaring. The magister had no trouble discovering that the lamp had been magickally primed for such an effect beforehand. All the killer needed to do was add a chemical compound to the flame, and that seemingly normal tongue of fire changed instantly to a volcano-like display which might destroy any too near it, and worse, provide cover for Yakeem's flight as needed.

"He is a mage as well as a hired slayer, then?" queried Tuhorus.

"I have no doubt he has a considerable amount of skill when it comes to lethal dweomers, Inspector, but I doubt he's truly so able a spell-worker, a full practitioner of the arts. What he did here was carefully prepared, and my guess is that Jobo Lasuti's hand assisted him, directly or indirectly."

"And the uab? For a time I suspected that your assassin and Absobek-khaibet were one and the same man."

"The thought crossed my mind, Tuhorus, but I discarded it. Yakeem isn't accomplished enough at priestcraeft to pass himself off as one of the Pure of Set. No, we'll have to look elsewhere to discover the cleric's identity."

"We already know that."

"Not likely. Somewhere there's undoubtedly a long-dead corpse of the real Absobek. My guess is that his identity was assumed by another when it was time for him to come north."

"What makes you say that?"

Inhetep shrugged. "Mere speculation, perhaps, but the followers of Set aren't generally involved in this sort of thing—not in so blatantly open a manner, anyway. Not one of the priests here in the temple is a party to Chemres' involvement, are they?"

"No," the policeman admitted after a moment of reflection. "Yet I cannot make a connection between that fact and the murder of the actual uab and assumption of his identity you allege."

"Of the Seven Evils, Inspector, which looms larger than Set?"

"The red-one is the greatest save for ... Aapep!"