Nightmare Passage

by James Axler

  "This evening, at the southwest corner of the pyr­amid. If anything goes wrong and I'm not there, you'll have to find your way back to Fort Fubar…and to Dean."

  Mildred gazed at him worriedly. "What's your plan?"

  Ryan shook his head, face contorted as if he tasted something sour. "I'm hoping one will occur to me…eventually."

  THE SUN WAS HOT on his face despite the shade pro­vided by the brittle bush he lay beneath. Sand fleas hopped along his exposed hands and face, biting him. Dean didn't slap them away. He was watching the towering walls of the city of Aten, less than half a mile away. It lay bathed in golden glory of the midafteroon sun.

  Beyond, seeming to block half the sky and the horizon, a massive monument reared from the sands. On the very top of it, supported by a wooden frame­work, a smaller version of the pyramid glistened and sparkled in the brilliant light, as if it were coated with diamonds.

  Dean had never seen anything like it as he peered through the telescopic sight of the Steyr. The gates of the city hung open, and people milled to and fro, seeming to leap, caper and dance. Faintly, he heard the shrill piping of flutes, the blare of horns and ceaseless, distant roar of many raised voices.

  He had departed Fort Fubar at noon, like he had vowed. The chariot clicked and carried him away from the forlorn collection of buildings and the for­lorn figure of Danielson, standing in the street and watching him go.

  He felt bad about leaving the old man, but not bad enough to go back on the promise he had made to himself—to find either his father or his fate.

  He had draped himself in a bed-sheet burnoose and carried plenty of water, then followed the tracks cut by the chariot that had conveyed Ryan and his friends away four dawns earlier.

  The wag maintained a steady twenty-five miles per hour, even over some treacherous sand drifts. It wasn't quite two o'clock when the desert turned into a road and he sighted the lofty ramparts of Aten. Parking the chariot in inadequate cover in a patch of weeds, he had walked the rest of the way, the rifle beneath the burnoose.

  Dean had been checking out the zone for the past ten minutes. He had no idea what was going on in the city, but the activity seemed celebratory, like a big wild party.

  He figured to devote another few minutes to screwing up his nerve, then he would stroll right in and crash it.

  AKHNATON STOOD on a balcony, staring down into the feasting hall. Hanging draperies obscured him from any eye looking up from below, but he could see clearly through the gauzy material.

  His court staff lay sprawled on nests of cushions and pillows, forming a semicircle around platters of delicately spiced mutton, chilled goblets of wine, mounds of fruit and pastries.

  Sinuous serving girls slid among the men, allow­ing themselves to be caressed, fondled and groped. Their tawny, oiled bodies were naked except for a few jeweled bangles.

  His eyes scanned the slack, drunken faces. He didn't expend any energy on probing their minds. Their feelings were displayed for even the most unperceptive of creatures to recognize.

  He had awakened at dawn and dressed himself in ceremonial robes dyed with thirty contrasting colors. The heavy golden collar of state rested on his broad shoulders. He wouldn't don the king-cobra head­dress until it was time for the processional march to the pyramid.

  The bioaural field in the balcony shifted ever so slightly. Without turning, he asked, "Is my bride prepared?"

  "Yes, Pharaoh," Nefron answered meekly. "You have chosen well. She is every inch a goddess."

  "Come here," Akhnaton said.

  Nefiron soft-footed to his side. He nodded to the feasting hall. "Look there. Whom do you see?"

  "Your counselors and retainers, my lord," she responded crisply.

  "Whom do you not see?"

  Nefron hesitated a long moment before answer­ing. "I do not understand."

  "I think you do. You do not see Mimses. Do you know where he is?"

  "No, my lord Pharaoh, I do not."

  Like a pair of striking asps, Akhnaton's hands darted out, clasped the sides of Nefron's head and turned it up and toward him. He stared unblinkingly into her eyes. She didn't struggle or glance away. She returned his stare, and a reflection of his crim­son orbs glinted in her dark eyes.

  He released her as swiftly as he had grabbed her. "I had hoped to take you by surprise, before you had the chance to erect your defenses. I should have known that you never let your defenses down."

  Nefron didn't respond.

  "One of Mimses's Incarnates came to me not an hour ago," Akhnaton said conversationally. "He re­ported he had found the sack of suet dead by stran­gulation. He mentioned the female newcomer. Your name figured prominently, as well."

  Nefron still refused to speak.

  Akhnaton sighed. "I will not miss Mimses. Nor will I divert my attention to finding either the woman…or your other conspirators in whatever in­trigue you have schemed. I will say only this and I urge you to believe it—if anything happens to dis­rupt today's ceremony, before, after or during, I will hold you responsible, even if you are not. You will die a particularly undignified death."

  Nefron finally spoke, a contemptuous edge to her voice. "Like mother like daughter."

  Akhnaton's face twisted into an ugly scowl of sudden rage, then quickly composed itself into a mocking smile. Softly, intimately, he said, "You know me so well, daughter. Now, get out of my sight."

  THEY WERE SOME of the grimmest, most bleak and hopeless hours Ryan Cawdor had ever known.

  He mingled with the crowd flowing and eddying in the compound. His jaw muscles ached with the strain of keeping a half-witted, vacant grin frozen on his face. He allowed wine to be poured on him, garlands of flowers hung around his neck and drunken women to plant slobbery kisses on his lips. He kept moving, constantly shifting, sometimes joining in with a snatch of ludicrous song, moving his lips to the lyrics he didn't know.

  Always he kept watch for an animal-headed In­carnate. He assumed the worst, that Mimses's body had been discovered or that Fasa had been released from his cramped confinement. Regardless of the ri­otously festive mood in the city, the newcomers would be sought out.

  As the afternoon staggered toward sunset, Ryan found it more and more difficult to keep the fire of hope and courage burning inside of him. He had believed he had lost Krysty before, but to death, the inevitable dark embrace no one could truly escape. The possibility that she was enraptured, seduced by the charismatic Hell Eyes, was almost too agonizing for him to consider.

  Ryan had called him a mutie with an attitude, but that was so far from the truth it wasn't even a lie. He realized he couldn't truly comprehend exactly what he was. He wondered if the last Neanderthal had felt the same way when he snarled at the smooth, intelligent countenance of the first Cro-Magnon, understanding on a deep, visceral level he had met not only his superior but the symbol of his extinction.

  Ryan tried to dispel the notion. A superhuman Hell Eyes might conceivably be, but he was still driven by ordinary human emotions, still weakened by human frailties.

  He joined a clot of people near the open gate and relaxed into them, allowing himself to carried by the current out of the compound. Already a considerable number of Aten's citizenry clustered around the base of the pyramid. He looked up toward its apex and saw the capstone resting on a platform made of wooden timbers. The sun shone from its crystal-shot surface in a thousand dancing, sparkling pinpoints.

  From what he had overhead in the crowd of cel­ebrants, the pyramidion had been rolled into place right at sunset, by a select crew of laborers—evi­dently purified, as Fasa had said. When the time came, men with huge mallets would knock the sup­porting timbers out from under it, and the capstone would settle atop the monument and imbue Pharaoh and his bride with the power of the gods.

  The crowd was large and noisy around the mon­ument, and a band of musicians strolled among them, the stuttering whine of flutes and the bleat of horns lifted above the beat of drums.

  Ryan sta
yed deep within the jostling, singing and laughing throng, refusing to acknowledge his grow­ing claustrophobia. He had spent too many years in the wild, unpopulated places of Deathlands to be comfortable in crowds. He kept consulting the po­sition of the sun, willing it savagely to sink. Like he expected, it ignored him.

  He continued to shuffle around, past and with the people. He ceased to think about much of anything except to keep his feet from being trod upon.

  Suddenly, the music stopped and the tempo of the crowd's voice quieted. Ryan dully looked up and saw a pastel mixture of oranges, yellows and muted reds spreading across the sky. Silence seemed to de­scend on the crowd as if a giant bell jar had dropped over it. The wind hissed eerily through the sand.

  A new sound began, a steady squeak underscored by a dry, castanetlike clicking. Ryan concentrated on the rhythmic noise, tracked it to a spot high above, somewhere on the pyramid itself.

  On the railed track overhead, a shape rolled into view, a silk-veiled and flower-drenched palaquin. It was slowly pulled up to the pyramid by men work­ing at the winch and pulley from a concealed recess on the side of it.

  Ryan pushed his way through the motionless, si­lent, upstaring people to get a better view. An open­ing gaped in the casing stones beside the long stair­way, at a little above the midpoint of the monument. From the opening, taut ropes stretched up to eye-bolts on the underside of the wheeled palaquin.

  Ryan's gaze followed the lines and he squinted at the colorful cart.

  Though the interior was obscured by fluttering pennants, he was able to see two figures standing there. Bright scarlet tresses floated in the wind like flames.

  Ryan elbowed and pushed people out of his path as he headed for the stair.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  A silent scream of frustrated fury welled in Krysty's throat. She choked it back, beat it down, not allow­ing the ferocity of her emotions to be mirrored in her dreamy, slightly aloof eyes.

  Standing beside Akhnaton in the flower-and-silk-bedecked palaquin, she kept her eyes fixed on the glittering capstone of the pyramid, not on the people milling around below. She was aware of the man's crimson gaze upon her, but she refused to meet it.

  Akhnaton heaved a gusty, weary sigh. "My be­loved, you are shielded from me."

  Krysty groped for a reply, then decided she had no more tolerance for dissembling. "How do you know?"

  "I reached out for your feelings. I touched only a cold void. Like a squall of static."

  Slowly, Krysty swiveled her head. Akhnaton's ex­pression was unreadable. "Now what? Will you cancel the ceremony?"

  A hard smile touched his lips. "And disappoint my subjects? They are anxious to be ruled by a god and goddess and will be inconsolable if they are not. Therefore, their wishes shall be granted."

  "Against my will?"

  Akhnaton shrugged. "Will is malleable, putty and clay to be shaped and molded by the master crafts­man."

  "You won't be molding me again," Krysty re­plied grimly.

  Akhnaton's smile broadened. "I should remind you that by wearing an ankh on your person, you will not benefit from the energies pouring into the King's Chamber. You will remain a mortal, wed to a god."

  "Like Connie Harrier?"

  "Exactly. And you may share her fate."

  The palaquin lurched slightly on the tracks. Akhnaton reached out to steady her, but she slapped his hand away. "Or mebbe I'll share the fate of your first predestined mate, Epsilon," she said coldly. "You arranged for the accident that killed her. Even at such an early age, you couldn't stand the thought of dividing the world with an equal. Even as an infant, you were a jealous god."

  "I want you to be a goddess, ruling at my side." Akhnaton's voice was pitched low.

  "You want me to be a thing at your side, a god­dess under your mastery. You instinctively knew you couldn't control Epsilon because she was bred to be your equal. Who knows, she might have ma­tured to be your superior. That notion terrified you, didn't it?"

  "The world must be brought under control," he said calmly. "And that cannot happen unless the people on it are brought to heel. Ancient Egypt was one of the most orderly civilizations in the history of humankind. People respond best when they work to earn the approbation of a superior, a pharaoh, a god. I'm only applying that old system to the present day. You and I will build a Utopia."

  Krysty snorted. "You'll build another tyrannical fiefdom, no different than all the other petty little kingdoms ruled by petty little dictators. I won't help you build another."

  Akhnaton sighed again. He lifted a hand as if to stroke her face. His fingers closed around her throat, pressing the golden collar cruelly into the soft flesh of her throat. Krysty didn't struggle. She stared fear­lessly into his hell-hued eyes.

  "It's too late for you to think you have a choice," he rasped. "Too late to rebel, too late to find a spine. You'll cooperate with the ceremony. You'll join me in the sarcophagus as I undergo the transformation, the ascension. You will submit to me as I fill you with my sperm. You will carry the seeds of my dy­nasty."

  Akhnaton released her as swiftly as he had grabbed her. She swayed, catching herself on the edge of the cart. He stared at the pyramidion and said tonelessly, "I hoped to love you, Krysty. I wanted to love you. If I cannot have that, then I'll accept your obedience as a substitute."

  Krysty said nothing. She followed his gaze to the sparkling capstone, but focused her vision through it, beyond it. It was difficult to call on the power of the Earth Mother without a short period of medita­tion. She wasn't sure if she could do it, but it was the only alternative left to her.

  RYAN BOUNDED UP THE SIDE of the pyramid like a cat. The crowd below him paid no attention. They stood silent and spellbound, struck dumb by the spectacle of the palaquin reaching the apex of Pha­raoh's monument.

  Ryan sluiced sweat away from his forehead be­fore it flowed into his eye and blinded him. Air whistled in his throat, and his lungs labored. Leg muscles strained and twinged with the effort of pro­pelling him at a reckless speed up the steep stairs.

  He had no plan except to do what he could do to disrupt the ceremony of Hell Eyes. He refused to speculate on Krysty's possible willing participation in it.

  By the time he reached the opening in the face of the pyramid, Ryan's legs were weak and rubbery and his heart pounded heavily. The steady creaking from the winch and pulley had ceased. In spite of the silence, the atmosphere around the pyramid was electric with expectancy. In the dimming light of the setting sun, Aten seemed to wait breathlessly.

  Ryan didn't wait, despite wanting to sit down to find his second wind. He stepped over to the re­cessed opening, feet on the stone lip, and pulled himself inside, holding on to a taut rope for support. The drum of the winch occupied most of the space, and he squirmed around it. A sharp edge caught a fold of his tunic and it ripped.

  "Hey, you!" a surprised voice called from the dimness. "What are you doing here?"

  "I'm lost," Ryan called back.

  "What?"

  Two figures emerged from the shadows, dressed in the animal helmets of the Incarnates and carrying the metauh staves. One wore the likeness of Thoth, the other of Set. Due to their size and strength, they had been given the honor of winching Pharaoh and his bride to the place of marriage.

  Ryan's hands explored swiftly the area around the drum and winch, searching for anything he could use, or even improvise, as a weapon. All he found was a crank handle propped against the wall. It was of heavy cold-rolled iron, with one end bearing thick flanges.

  Snatching it up, he hefted it experimentally and sprang out of the alcove in blind desperation. All of his strength and weight went into the arm that swung the handle. It crashed against the side of Thoth's jaw, and the big man rolled lifeless to the floor, face shattered, cervical vertebrae fractured.

  Set cursed, and the prongs of the metauh rod stabbed toward Ryan, light dancing in a strobing flicker from them. Ryan felt like a bucket of water drawn from a polar
sea had been dashed into his face. A shocking cold penetrated to his bones. He kept lunging, and a sweeping backhand swept the metal rod from Set's fist and caught him squarely across the belly.

  The Incarnate bent double and staggered, fetching up against the wall. He bounced away from it and directly into an overhead blow with the handle that cleft his helmet and the cranium beneath. He fell face first to the floor, staining the stone with blood and brain matter.

  Tremors shook Ryan's body, but they passed quickly. Fingering the ankh beneath his tunic, he felt it tingle to his touch. He whirled toward a square doorway at the end of the short hallway. Yellow light streamed from it. Pausing at its edge, he looked out. Wonder rose in him.

  The chamber was shaped like a pyramid and much larger than looked possible from the outside. A dim glow shone down from the pointed roof, two faint columns of light beaming from twin openings. The light gleamed from an elaborately carved sar­cophagus resting in the exact center of the floor.

  Between the slanting shafts of light stood three people—a shaved-headed man dressed in an elabo­rately embroidered robe reading aloud from a scroll, Akhnaton and Krysty.

  The bald man Ryan took to be a priest or mum­mer of some kind, since he mumbled and bobbed his head over the square of papyrus. He looked at Krysty's pale face and felt prickles of pain all through his heart and mind. Dressed and made up as she was, she looked heartachingly beautiful, but her green eyes were dull and vacant, and her lips moved silently, as if she were mouthing the words read aloud by the priest. Like, he thought despair­ingly, a puppet.

  Akhnaton towered over her, as grim and as im­passive as a statue wrought of brass. He slipped an arm around her waist and rested a hand possessively on her hip.

  Fury erupted within Ryan. He became the fury, filled with the mad need to claw, to bite, to kill. His surroundings receded and faded, and he saw only Krysty with Akhnaton's hand on her body.

  Ryan bounded forward across the chamber, vault­ing the sarcophagus, swinging the winch handle over his head like a battle-ax. The iron bar crunched against the back of the priest's bald head. His mum­blings terminated in a gurgling cry before he rolled to the floor.