* * *
Up the passages they could still hear the panic-stricken yells as the guards ran. The words “Cushite sorceress!” were the most frequently repeated. Liz used the abandoned spear to persuade the cobras to let them pass, and the trio walked off into the passages, away from the yelling.
Hearing the sound of panicky female voices added to those of the guards, Liz paused for a moment to study the ornamentation of the hallway.
“Congratulations, Lamont,” she chuckled. “I think you’ve achieved every man’s fantasy. We’re locked into the Harem.”
* * *
The eunuchs guarding the Harem might be lackadaisical in their attitude to prisoners. But as Jerry, Cruz, Mac and Henri had learned, the regular soldiers of Sebek’s army were not. Merely being trussed and tossed into a cell would have been the height of luxury for the “official” men of the party. Instead they’d been hung on the ends of offertory poles. Their gags had been refreshed. The poles were long and pivotable, rather like those used for a shaduf. A weight at one end counterbalanced the dangling humans, who were then swung out over the lake. Glancing from side to side, Jerry thought they looked for all the world like a row of fishing poles with baits about to drop into the water.
In the limpid water below, the crocodiles were beginning to gather.
At least they weren’t hanging upside-down. On the other hand, that would have meant the crocodiles got the head-end first. Once you’d lost your head, at least your troubles were over. This way it would last longer—although, to judge by the gaping maws, not much longer.
Jerry had been thinking about what was required for Egyptian magic. It was unusual in that mere mortals could, given the correct words and intonation and use of secret names, compel even gods to serve them. All that was required of a magician was that he should be an “appropriately constituted authority.”
And he did have a Ph.D., after all. Now if only he had the ability to speak.
* * *
The women in the colonnaded room that Lamont, Liz and Medea had entered were proving that they certainly had the ability to shriek. Their weaving abandoned in a chaos of scattered skeins, they huddled together in the far corner of the room and attempted to deafen their “attackers”—or, at the very least, lift the roof.
“Don’t kill us, Sorceress,” begged the elderly nineteen-year-old matron of the crowd, who was a veritable Methuselah compared to the others.
“If you don’t scream again,” said Liz, brandishing the spear.
She might as well have been waving a stick of limp celery for all the attention the scantily clad damsels paid to her. “Eeee!!!!” they shrieked.
“Oh—shut up!” snarled Lamont, clutching his head. “I’m still feeling a bit fragile.” He said it in rather a gruff voice.
There was a silence. A long jelly-like silence.
“She’s a man,” whispered a girl with a particularly ornate hairdo. Her expression went from one of fear to one of predatory interest. “A man!”
* * *
Lamont instantly realized two things, which had taken Faust far more time to understand. Firstly, fantasies are more fun as fantasies than as realities. Secondly, no matter what trouble you’re in, it can almost always get worse. A minute later, he had his dress hitched up around his thighs and he was sprinting away with Liz and Medea behind him, and a pack of young women behind them.
“Why did you run?” panted Liz.
Lamont risked a hasty glance back. “There must have been forty women in there. They’d have torn me to shreds. Quick. Up here.”
Behind them, Sebek’s Harem echoed to the sounds of two packs of relentless hunters. One of the groups of pursuers, the eunuchs, was so heavily laden with jangling charms and amulets that a fast shuffle was all they could manage. The other ranged from scantily clad on down, and were making very good time.
Among the crocodile-god’s faults, plainly enough, was neglect of his Harem. Maybe he was cold-blooded. Maybe he preferred lady crocodiles. Or maybe several dozen young women chosen for their attractiveness and high libido were simply too much for one old croc.
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