They had converted the landing at the top of the staircase, outside the plaster-seated entrance to the tomb, into their workshop. Royan spread her drawings and photographs and reference books on the rough table of handhewn planks that Hansith made for her. Sapper had placed one of the floodlamps above this crude desk so that she had good light to work by. Against one wall of the landing they had stacked the ammunition crates which contained the eight sacred statues. Nicholas had insisted on storing all their discoveries where he could safeguard them adequately. Mek's armed men still kept a twenty-four-hour guard on the causeway over the sink-hole.
While Nicholas completed his photographic record of the walls of the long gallery and the empty burial chamber, Royan sat at her table and pored over her papers for hours at a time, scribbling notes and calculations from them into her notebooks. Now and then she would jump up from her desk and dart through the hatch in the white plaster doorway into the long gallery to study a detail on the decorated walls.
Whenever this happened, Nicholas straightened up from his camera tripod and watched her with a fond and indulgent expression. So intent was she that she seemed completely oblivious of him and everybody else about her.
Nicholas had never seen her in this mood, and the depth of her powers of concentration impressed him.
When she had worked for fifteen hours without a break he went out on to the landing to rescue her and to lead her, protesting, back down the tunnel to the pool where there was a hot meal waiting for them. After she had eaten he led her to her hut and insisted that she lie down on her inflatable mattress.
"You are going to sleep now, Royan," he ordered.
He woke to hear her creeping stealthily out of the hut next door to his, back along the ledge to the entrance to the tomb. He checked his watch and grunted with disbelief when he realized that they had slept for only three and a half hours. He shaved quickly and bolted back a slab of toasted injera bread and a cup of tea before following her into the tomb. He found her standing in the long gallery before the empty niche in the shrine where the statuette of Osiris had stood. She was so preoccupied that she did not hear him come up behind her, and she started violently when he touched her arm.
"You startled me," she scolded him.
"What are you staring at?" he asked. "What have you discovered?"
"Nothing," she denied swiftly, and then after a moment, "I don't know. It's just an idea."
"Come on! What are you up to?"
"It's easier for me to show you." She led him back to her table on the stone landing, and rearranged her notebooks carefully before she spoke again.
"What I have been doing these last few days is going through the material on the stele of Tanus's tomb, picking out all the quotations that I recognize from the classical books of mystery, the Book of Breathings, the Book of the Pylons and -the Book of Thoth, and setting those on one side." She showed him fifteen pages in her neat small script.
"All this is ancient material, none of it original compositions by Taita. I have discarded it for the time being."
She set the first notebook aside and picked up the next. "All this is from the fourth face of the stele. It's nothing that I recognize, but seems to be only long lists of numbers and figures. Some sort of code, perhaps? I am not sure, but I do have some ideas on it that I will come to later.
Now this here," she showed him the next book, "this is all fresh material that I don't remember reading in any of the ancient classics. Much of it, if not all of it, must be original Taita writings. If he has left any more clues for us, I believe they will be here, in these sections."
He grinned, "Like that marvelous quotation describing the pink and private parts of the goddess. Is that what you are referring to?"
"Trust you not to forget that." She flushed lightly and refused to look up from her notebook. "Look at this quotation from the head of the third face of the stele, the side Taita has headed "autumn". It's the very first one that caught my attention."
Nicholas leaned forward and read the hieroglyphics aloud: "'The great god Osiris makes the opening coup with deference to the protocol of the four bulls. At the first pylon he bears full testimony to the immutable law of the board."' He looked up at her. "Yes, I remember that quotation. Taita is referring to bao, the game that the old devil loved so passionately."
"That's right." Royan looked slightly embarrassed. "But do you also remember that I told you about a dream that I had in which I saw Du raid again in one of the chambers of the tomb?"
"I remember." He chuckled at her discomfort. "He said I of the four bulls. Now
4 something to you about the protoco we are going in to the, realm of divination by dreams, are we?"
She looked annoyed by his levity. "All I am suggesting is that my subconscious had been -digesting the quotation and come up with an answer, which it put into the mouth of Duraid in the dream. Can't you be serious just for one moment?
"Sorry." He was contrite. "Remind me what you heard Duraid say."
"In the dream he told me, "Remember the protocol of the four bulls - Start at the beginning."'
"I am no expert on the game of bao. What did he mean?"
"The rules and subtleties of the game have been lost in the mists of antiquity. But as you know, we have found examples of the bao board amongst the grave goods in the tombs of the eleventh to the seventeenth dynasties, and we can only guess that it was an early form of chess." She began to sketch for him on one of the blank pages at the back of her notebook.
"The wooden board was laid out like a chessboard, eight rows of cups wide and eight rows deep. Like this." She drew it in with quick, deft strokes of her ballpoint pen.
"The pieces were coloured stones that moved in a prescribed fashion. I won't go into all the details, but the protocol of the four bulls was an opening gambit in the game favoured by grand masters of Taita's calibre. It consisted of making sacrifices to mass the highest-ranking stones in the first cup from where they could dominate the important centraffiles of the board."
"I am not sure where we are going, but lead on. I am listening."Nicholas tried not to look too mystified.
"The first cup of the board." She indicated it on her sketch, as though instructing a backward child. "The beginning, Duraid said, "Start at the beginning" Taita said, "The great god Osiris makes the opening coup."'
"I still don't follow you. "Nicholas shook his head.
"Come with me." Carrying the notebooks, she led him through the hatch in the white plaster doorway and stood beside him at the shrine of Osiris.
"The opening coup. The beginning."
She turned and faced down the gallery. "This is the first shrine. How many shrines are there altogetherr
"Three for the trinity, then Seth, Thoth, Anubis, Hathor and Ra," he listed.
"Eight altogether."
"Glory be!" She laughed. "The lad can count! How many cups in the files of the bao board?"
"Eight across, and eight down-' he broke off and stated at her, "You think?" She did not answer, but opened the notebook. "All of these numbers and extraneous symbols - they spell no coherent words. They do not relate to each other in any way, except that no number in the list is greater than eight., "I thought I had caught up with you, but I just lost you again."
"If somebody were to read the notations of a game of T, chess four thousand years from now, what would he make of it?" she asked.
"Wouldn't it just be lists of numbers and extraneous symbols to him? You really are being extremely dense, aren't you? This is like pulling teeth."
"Oh, Lordy, Lordy!" His face cleared. "You clever lady!
Taita is playing the game of bao with us."
"And this is the first pylon, where it starts." She gestured to the shrine.
"This is where the great god Osiris makes the opening coup. This is where we must start at the beginning of the sacred bao board. This is where we counter his opening move."
They both looked around the shrine for a while, studying the curved walls and the high domed roof, and then Nicholas broke the silence. "At the risk of being called extremely dense and having my teeth pulled, may I ask a question? How the hell do we play a game when we don't even know the rules?"
olonel Nogo exuded confidence and self, importance as he swaggered into the conference room to answer von Schiller's summons.
Nahoot Guddabi bustled along behind him, determined not to be excluded from any of the proceedings. He too tried to look confident and important, but in truth he felt his position was very insecure and that he needed to justify himself to his master, Von Schiller was dictating correspondence to Utte Kemper, but as soon as they entered the room he stood quickly and stepped on to the carpeted block.
"You promised that you would have a report for me yesterday," he snapped at Nogo, ignoring Nahoot. "Have you not heard anything from this informer of yours in the gorge?"
"I apologize for keeping you waiting like this, Herr von Schiller." Nogo was immediately deflated by this sharp attack, and he became restless and uneasy. The German frightened him. "The women were a day late returning from Harper's camp. They are very unreliable, these country people. Time means very little to them."
"Yes, yes." Von Schiller was impatient. "I know the failings of your black brethren, and I might add you are not completely innocent of these yourself, Nogo. But tell me what news you have for me."
"Harper finished work on the dam seven days ago, and immediately he moved his camp downstream, to a new place on the hills above the ravine. He then built some sort of bamboo ladder down into the ravine. My informer tells me that they are clearing a hole at the bottom of the empty pool-'
"A hole? What kind of hole?" Von Schiller turned pale as he listened, and began sweating in a light sheen across his forehead.
"Are you all right, Herr von Schiller?" Nogo was alarmed. The German looked very ill, as if he were about to collapse.
"I am perfectly well," von Schiller shouted at him.
"What hole was this? Describe it to me."
"The woman bringing the message is a stupid peas ant." Nogo was uncomfortable, squirming under von Schiller's grilling. "She says only that when the river water fell, there was a hole in the bottom that was filled with rock and rubbish and that they have cleared this out."
"A tunnel!" Nahoot could contain himself no longer.
"It must be the entrance tunnel to the tomb."
"Be quied' Von Schiller turned on him furiously. "You have no facts to back up that supposition. Let Nogo finish." He turned back to the colonel. "Go on. Give me the rest of it."
"The woman says that there is a cave at the end of the hole. Like a rock shrine, with pictures on the walls-' "Pictures? "What pictures?"
"The woman said they were pictures of the saints." Nogo made a deprecating gesture. "She is a very uneducated woman. Stupid
"Christian saints?" von Schiller demanded.
Nahoot interjected, "That is not possible, Herr von Schiller. I tell you that Harper has discovered the tomb of Mamose. You must act swiftly now."
"I will not warn you again, you miserable little man," von Schiller snarled at him. "Keep quiet."
He turned back to Nogo. "Was there anything else in the cavern? Tell me everything the woman said."
"Pictures and statues of the saints." Nogo spread his hands. "I am sorry, Herr von Schiller, that's what she said.
I know this is all nonsense, but that is what the woman told me."
"I will judge what is and what is not nonsense," von Schiller told him.
"What did she say happened to these statues of the saints?"
"Harper has packed them in boxes."
"Has he removed them from the shrine?"
"I do not know, Herr von Schiller. The woman did not say. Von Schiller stepped down from his block. He began to pace up and down the length of the hut, muttering to himself distractedly.
"Herr von Schiller-' Nahoot began, but the German waved him to silence. At last he stopped in front of Nogo and stared up at him.
"Did they find a mummy, a body, in the-shrine?" he demanded. do not know, Herr von Schiller. The woman did not say.
"Where is she?" Von Schiller was so agitated that he clutched the front of Nogo's uniform jacket and stood on tiptoe to thrust his face up close to his.
"Where is this woman? Have you let her go?" Tiny droplets of spittle flew into Nogo's face and he blinked and tried to duck, but von Schiller had him in a death grip.
"No, sir. She is still here. I did not want to bring her to you-, "You fool. All you are telling me is secondhand.
Bring her in here immediately. I want to question her face to face." He shoved Nogo away from him. "Go and fetch her."
Nogo returned minutes later dragging the woman into the room by one arm. She was young, and despite the blue tattoos across her cheeks and chin she was pretty. She wore the long black robes and head-covering of a married woman, and carried an infant on her hip.
As soon as Nogo released her arm she sank to the floor and whimpered with terror. The child she carried whined in sympathy. Its nostrils were plugged with white crusts of dried snot. The woman opened the top of her robe with a shaking hand, fished out one of her milk-swollen breasts and thrust the nipple into the child's mouth. Infant and mother stared at von Schiller with terrified eyes.
"Ask her if there was a coffin or body of the saint in the shrine," von Schiller ordered, eyeing the woman with distaste.
Nogo questioned her for a minute and then shook his head. "She does not know anything about a body. She is very stupid. She does not understand very well."
"Ask her about the statues of the saints. What has Harper done with them?
Where are they now? Has he removed them from the shrine?"
After another long exchange with the woman, Nogo shook his head. "No. She says that the statues are still in the shrine. The white man has packed them into boxes and the soldiers are guarding them."
"Soldiers? What soldiers?"