Gary Gygax - Dangerous Journeys 1 - Anubis Murders (13 page)

The jackals had been another matter. He might have taken care of them by summoning a great sphinx, for example. Even spirit-jackals— what those things were, feared such a monster as that, just as ordinary jackals fear a lion. That would certainly have announced to his enemy that the ur-kheri-heb was there in person. Not six practitioners in all the Yarth could conjure a great leosphinx at the drop of a word. Changing his structure from normal to semi-aetherial was risky, especially since the ones who had brought the "megajackals" to the temple could easily send those monsters into the same state in pursuit of their quarry, and he had assumed there would be wards and traps set for anyone trying to enter or leave the place magickally except via secretly established paths. No form of invisibility possible on short notice would fool the keen-sensed jackal-things, so Setne had had to improvise in the split-second allowed him by their attack. The instant the two impacted, the Egyptian had changed himself into a replica of themselves. Their proximity, auras, odor, and even a bit of hair snatched from one's mangy hide had enabled the transformation.

The shift had cancelled the ruby light which had marked him, and as far as any onlooker could tell, there were three of the horrible creatures now, not two. Even the spirit-jackals weren't sure which was which. One bit at him, he bit back, and so did the other. The three whirled round in a frenzy of fighting, Inhetep recalled with a smile. Then he had nipped a nearby worshipper on his rear. That was sufficient for the other two. The megajackals fell to biting nearby folk with indiscriminate fury and lust for blood, their mentally given command to attack only the "Phonecian" quite forgotten. There wasn't a prayer of setting matters right then. Until the monsters were subdued, and order restored, the whole temple was a battleground.

The commotion resulted in the barred door being opened. They had no choice, for the folk inside would have died under the fangs of the spirit-jackals, and there went the carefully planned "brotherhood." The pretend-ecclesiastics—the priest in his jackal-mask, the priestesses, and some other individual, too—had rushed into the press. They tried to subdue the crazed beasts and get the normal worshippers out while keeping Inhetep in. Pretending to attack viciously, Setne recoiled, slipped belly-down between legs and running feet to get out the door before anyone with magickal power could intervene. He had bounded up the stairs on four strong legs, shot past a bug-eyed guard, and disappeared into the dark. He supposed that the two actual spirit-jackals had quickly been set in chase after the false one. Too late.

Magick to return to normal form—that of Setne Inhetep. More dweomers to wipe out all trace of the transformation and to prevent tracking by scent. That was over too swiftly for the pursuing beasts to stop. Then the Egyptian made a point of sending himself elsewhere very rapidly. Now he could be seen far away at about the same time the chase was on in Scathach; there would be a different sort of hunt when the pack came up with an empty bag. Meanwhile, Setne had a lot to accomplish. The kidnap of Rachelle was a complication he most certainly didn't need! He had to locate the girl and rescue her first, and the Master of Jackals would have to wait.

"That's what they want!" he said suddenly aloud, taken by the obviousness of the whole event.

"What's yer trouble?" the surly waitress demanded.

Setne grinned his most evil grin. The "Phoenician's" look was more than enough to make the woman jump back and clutch at herself. "I'll 'ave yer waggin' worm of a tongue, I will, next time ya speaks thatta way, bag!" he growled menacingly. She fainted, and Inhetep strolled out of the place. He no longer cared if anyone remembered the Phonecian. "They know why I am here, what I am meant to do, and will stop at nothing to see that I fail," he said to himself as he stepped into the street. He saw a peripheral movement and managed to jerk his head aside in time. A thumb-thick bolt from a crossbow, reeking of venom, stood buried in the timber frame of the building. It was an inch from his ear.

= 8
-

HIGH ROAD, LOW ROAD

There was nothing to do but run. Setne ran as fast as he could, bobbing and weaving as he went. Another of the quarrels zipped by his head, its passage making a nasty humming in the air as if it were a live and hateful thing. He fumbled in his garments. The assassin was indeed using living missiles. No. More properly, the killer was seeking the Egyptian's life with bolts enchanted to a state resembling that of life. These missiles would seek him out as would hungry mosquitoes, only their sting would be as poisonous as an asp's. Inhetep invoked the force of the talisman he had drawn from one of the little pockets inside his tunic. It was fashioned of hard, red stone—a carnelian shaped into a cobra's head. Even as he called forth its power, the wizard-priest continued his evasive running. Turning a corner, which he was certain was out of sight of the crossbow-armed assassin, Inhetep flattened himself against the wall and held the red-hued serpent form up before his face, as if he were peering at it.

Another of the buzzing missiles shot round the corner, the quarrel seeking him out as if tied to Inhetep by a cord. The thick shaft touched the talisman as it sped to pierce the Egyptian's eye. Both bolt and stone evaporated in a little puff of smoke. "Rot you!" Setne cursed, aiming the useless words at the unseen attacker. There was no time for him to work up anything really effective against whomever it was, and the magick cast upon the little arrow had been so strong as to destroy his prized ward against poisonous attack! Without hesitation, Setne again began running, ducking into an alley, pounding along a covered passage, thus eluding further missiles and possible pursuit—for the moment.

His enemy knew him as the "Phonecian," and that meant that Inhetep was now in an impossible situation. If he shifted to some other guise, he would be draining yet more of his precious reserve of heka-power needed to survive the lethal assaults which were sure to be forthcoming. Yet he had no time to rest and restore his energy until he could manage to hide himself. In this form or his own, the Egyptian would be recognized and hunted. Probably any other physical guise he took would likewise be identifiable to those who were seeking him. The forces being used against him were impossibly great; the foe was employing dweomers of a sort not possible to humans. To combat the threat, Setne had to get back to his own lodging, get to his belongings somehow, and arm himself for the contest. How to do so without being seen? There was an easy but obvious method. It was so obvious (and dangerous) that the wizard-priest opted to try it. The Master of Jackals and his thugs would probably dismiss the possibility of Inhetep trying it.

A little brown sparrow winged just above the tall rooftops of Camelough, arched upwards for a minute, circled, and then sped straight ahead, diving as it went. A sparrow hawk nearby gave chase, thinking to take the prey unsuspecting, but it vanished into an open vent in a gable, and the raptor gave a frustrated "kreeep!" The hawk flapped up and then shot down into an enclosed courtyard where it changed into a brown-robed man.

The rats in the walls of the inn scurried aside to make a wide berth for the big, reddish one that scuttled along their avenues. Something about it was unnatural, and it was too fierce-looking to approach. Ignoring poison and traps, Setne-the-rodent located the area of his room and found a narrow opening that he could just squeeze through. He peeped out with beady black eyes first, just in case. . . .

"Don't touch anything!" the blond man said to the pair of armed soldiers in the room. "It is dangerous to probe the effects of any mage, let alone a wizard-priest's things." The two guardsmen grumbled a little at the thought of not being able to filtch anything but were careful to avoid even the furniture. "You two, stand watch outside. Give the alarm if anyone comes in—or even if you so much as hear noise from this room! Clear?" Both soldiers assented. The man with straw-colored hair tarried in Setne's bed chamber, eyeing the various objects scattered about.

Even as a rat, the Egyptian could sense that the fellow was a practitioner of some sort. The man was probing for auras and magickal emanations. The rat scurried beyond range. He waited until the blond police official left, then, he squeezed his rat form through the narrow opening. Setne performed the little dance and accompanying chitterings to negate the transformation, and if the pair of guardsmen heard the rat sounds, they ignored them. It took only seconds. "That's better," the wizard-priest whispered to himself as he stood once again in normal form. It was an easy matter for him, then, to lay a casting which muted all sounds in his chamber, even though it took nearly all of his remaining heka to do so.

In a matter of moments, the wizard-priest had gathered everything he needed, including his personal reservoirs of magickal energy. Then he changed his garments, slipped a few clean clothes into a small leather valise, and headed straight for the door, where the pair of soldiers stood guard. The magister was, frankly, in high dudgeon. Their backs were turned away from the bedroom as the two stood chatting idly, attention focused vaguely upon the entry to the suite. Inhetep stepped forward, touching each man on the neck with either hand. "You are alone together," he said softly. The cloaking spell existed only in the inner room, and the guards nodded as they heard the Egyptian's voice. "You have seen nobody at all, have you?" Each man agreed with that, too. "Good!" Setne said with hearty comradery. "But you must be ready, because the next person to enter through that door will be the fugitive, Inhetep!"

"We'll knock him senseless the moment he comes in!"

"Be careful. The Egyptian is tricky," Setne said, his hawk-face smiling. "He might appear as a woman—even your superior!"

"We attack anyway, don't we Flynn!" It wasn't a question, and Flynn nodded his concurrence with hard face.

Inhetep returned to the inner chamber. He rubbed his hands together, the coppery flesh nearly glowing in the subdued light of the room. Inhetep smiled broadly. "I do so love a real challenge! Well, my so-called Master of Jackals, you think to order the course of things, but I shan't comply. No, no indeed I shall not. You think to chivvy me about as a hare, or at worst have me running about seeking for Rachelle. That is what
you
wish. That is of no import, for Magister Setne Inhetep does as
he
wishes. We shall meet anon. Sooner than you think, too, Master Jackal. Until then, dear fellow, you might have a bit of care. You won't enjoy our meeting in the least bit when it comes."

The wizard-priest pulled a cowl over his head, kept his hands concealed beneath his commodious cloak, and whispered a few syllables. There was a rippling in the atmosphere, a faint soughing of air as if a wind blew into the room from some hot desert. Inhetep stepped ahead a pace and vanished. He was gone from Camelough, Lyonnesse—all of Eropa, in fact. He had used his arts to step from the room to his own private place in Egypt as one would step from house to street. That took care of his immediate pursuers. The police and various minions of the government of Lyonnesse could blanket city and country looking for him. It was high time to seek answers to certain important questions. Then he might return to Camelough, or he might not, but he would locate both Rachelle and the Master of Jackals—undoubtedly the former held prisoner in the lair of the latter.

The enemy would certainly have sufficient powers available to scan the immediate past. They would see how the wizard-priest had entered the bedroom, taken care of sounds, guards, and then left. They would not know exactly what he had taken, how Setne had left, nor to what destination his dweomer had carried him. The Master Jackal, however, would certainly be able to eventually trace Inhetep's trail to this place. Setne cast a carefully screened trap just in case he was followed. He laid a spell of duplication, so that if anyone conjured themselves into this place—or sent some nasty visitor from a nethersphere to attack him—that casting would be deflected and shunt the intruder away from his sanctum. In the event it was a dweom-ercraefter attempting to visit him, Setne's magick would flip the other right back to his starting point. However, if it was a heka-binder sending a demon or the like to handle the business, the energy would shift. The assassin would then step instead into the immediate proximity of the one who tried to send the monster elsewhere.

"A nasty little surprise however it occurs," Inhetep said aloud as he completed his work. "Now I'm off to see about this impersonation of deities."

He exited the hidden room and entered his own study. No one was around because it was near midnight in Egypt. That suited Inhetep, for he wanted neither company nor suspicion of his being there. Leaving the villa by a side exit, Setne slipped past a flock of geese. The least disturbance and the birds made more noise than ten times their number of dogs. The gaggle was silent. Then he strode into the wastes which ran westward from the village. His long legs carried him quickly, and soon his sandaled feet were pushing along in loose sand. A mile ahead was a small pyramid, one which was relatively new in terms of this ancient land, for it had been constructed only some two millennia ago by one of Inhetep's forebears, one Neteranubi-f-Hra, to be exact. It had been done ostensibly as the "Eternal House" of the ancestral mage, but in actuality it had another purpose altogether. The secret chamber in the heart of the pyramid was most magickal.

There are many means of moving from one reality to another, to journey from sphere to sphere, plane to plane. The "underworld" of Egypt, the place of many of its most powerful deital and entital beings such as Osiris, Ptah, and Seker, is that nether-realm known as the Duat. Getting from anywhere else in the multiverse to the Duat is a very difficult matter, unless one happens to profess the Egyptian ethos, accept one or more of their pantheon, and then dies. Setne qualified for two of the three conditions, but he had no intention of dying—at least, not soon! Neither had his great-great-great-ump-teenth-great grandfather, Neteranubi-f-Hra. The pyramid had been constructed specifically to allow the passage of a living person from this world, called Yarth, into the manifold planes and their attendant spheres, called the Duat. There the strong and daring dweomercraefter might meet and converse with deity, fiend, serpent, and all manner of strange and mighty beings. Of course, that individual risked much, but that is the nature of the most powerful magicks used by mankind. In such a high stakes game, the rewards were great, but failure could mean death—or worse.