Текст книги "The Seventh Scroll"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Even though she knew it was part of the campaign of nerves they were

waging against her, she had to break it.

"I have travelled most of the night in an army truck," she said. "I am

tired, and I need to go to a lavatory."

"If what you need to do is urgent you can do it where you are standing.

Neither Mr Helm nor I will be offended." Nogo ditered in a surprisingly

girlish manner, but did not look up from his book.

She looked over her shoulder at the door, but Helm crossed to it and

turned the key in the lock, slipping the key into his pocket. She knew

she must show no weakness in front of these two, and, though she was

tired and afraid and her bladder ached, she feigned an air of confidence

and assurance and crossed to the nearest chair. She pulled it from the

table and sat down in it easily.

Nogo looked up at her and frowned. He had not expected her to react this

way.

"You know the shufta bandit Mck Nimmur the accused abruptly.

"No," she said coldly. "I know the patriot and democratic leader Mek

Nimmur. He is no shufta."

"You are his concubine, his whore. Of course, you will say this."

She looked away from him with disdain, and his voice rose shrilly.

"Where is Mek Nimmur? How many men does he have with him?" Her composure

was beginning to rattle him."

She ignored the question, and Nogo scowled at her furiously. "If you do

not cooperate with us, I will have to use stronger methods to make you

answer my questions," he warned.

She turned in her chair and stared out of the window.

In the long silence that followed, Jake Helm crossed the room and went

to the door behind Nogo that led through to the rooms at the rebir of

the hut. He disappeared through it, and closed it behind him. The walls

of the hut were thin, and Tessay made out the murmur of voices from the

room beyond. The cadence and inflection were neither English nor

Amharic. They were using a foreign language in there. She guessed that

Helmw'as receiving instructions from a superior, who did not want her to

be able to recognize him at some later date.

After a few minutes Helm re-emerged and closed the door behind him

without locking it. He nodded to Nogo, who at once stood up. They both

came across to stand in front of Tessay.

I think that it will be better for all of us if we finish this business

as quickly as possible," said Helm softly. "Then you can go to the

bathroom, and I can go to my breakfast." She raised her chin and stared

at him defiantly, but did not answer him.

"Colonel Nogo, has tried to be reasonable. He is bound by certain

niceties of his official position. Fortunately I do not have the same

restraints. I am going to ask you the same questions that he did, but

this time you will answer them."

He took the dead cheroot from his mouth and examined the tip. Then he

threw the butt into a corner of the room and took a flat tin from his

hip pocket. From it he selected a fresh cheroot, long and black, and lit

it carefully, holding the match to it until it was drawing evenly. Then,

amid a cloud of pungent tobacco smoke, he waved the match to extinction

and asked, ",Ihere is Mek Nimmur?"

She shrugged and looked away, out of the side window of the hut.

Abruptly, without signalling the blow in any way, he hit her open-handed

across her face. It was a savage blow, delivered with a force that

snapped her head around, Then, before she could recover, he swung back

again and slammed his knuckles across her jawline. Her head was thrown

back violently in the opposite direction and she was knocked flying from

her chair.

Nogo stooped over her and seized her arms, twisting them up behind her

back. He lifted her back into the seat and stood behind her. He held her

in such a surprisingly powerful grip that she could feel the skin of her

upper arms bruising beneath his fingers.

"I have no more time to waste," Helm said quietly, taking the burning

cheroot from his lips to inspect the glowing tip. "Let us start again,

Where is Mek Nimmur?" Tessay's left eardrum felt as if it had burst with

the ferocity of those blows. Her hearing buzzed and sang. Her teeth had

been driven halfway through the flesh of her cheek, and her mouth filled

slowly with her own blood.

"Where is Mek Nimmur?" Helm repeated, leaning his face closer to hers.

"What are your friends doing with the dam in the Dandera river?"

She gathered the blood and saliva in her mouth, and suddenly and

explosively spat it into his face.

He recoiled violently and wiped the bloody mess from his eyes with the

palm of his hand.

Hold herV he said to Nogo, and seized the front of her blouse. With one

heave he ripped it open down to her waist, and Nogo giggled and leaned

forward over her shoulder to look at her breasts. He giggled again as

Helm took one of them in his hand and squeezed out the nipple between

his finger and thumb. It was the dark purple colour of a ripe mulberry.

He held her like that, pinching her flesh with his nails until the skin

tore and a droplet of blood welled up and trickled over his thumb. Then

with his other hand he took the burning cheroot from his lips and blew

on the top until it glowed hotly.

"Where is Mek Nimmur?" he asked, and lowered the cheroot towards her

breast. "WHAt are they doing in the Dandera river?

She stared down in horror as he brought the burning cheroot closer, and

tried to wriggle away from him. But Nogo held her firmly from behind.

She screamed once, on an agonized drawn-out note, as the glowing coal

touched, the tip of her nipple and the delicate skin began to blister.

inter," said Royan, spreading the enlargement of the fourth face of the

stele from Tanus's tomb under the bright glare of the floodlamp. "This

is the side that contains Taita's notations, which I am postulating are

those of the bao board. I don't understand all of them, but by a process

of elimination I have determined that the first symbol denotes one of

the four sides, or as he terms them the castles of the board., She

showed him the pages of her notebook on which she had made her

calculations.

"See here, the seated baboon is the north castle, the bee is the south,

the bird is the west and the scorpion the east." She pointed out to him

the same symbols on the photograph of the stele. "Then the second and

third figures are numbers – I believe that they designate the file and

the cup. With these we can follow the moves of his imaginary red stones.

The reds are the highest-ranking colours on the board."

"What about the verses between each set of notations?" Nicholas asked.

"Such as this one here, about the north wind and the storm?"

"I am not sure about those. Probably merely smoke, screens, if I know

Taita. He is never one to make life too easy for us. Perhaps they do

have significance, but we can only hope to unravel them as we work

through the moves of our stones."

Nicholas studied her figures a while, then grinned ruefully. "Just think

how remote was the possibility that anybody would ever be able to

decipher the clues he left behind. The first requirement is that the

searcher must have access to both chronicles, the seventh scroll and the

stele of Tanus, before he had any chance of understanding the key to the

tomb."

She laughed – a throaty, well'satisfied sound. "Yes, he must have

believed that he was perfectly safe. Well, we will see now, MasteTTaita.

We will see just how clever you really were." Then, sober and

businesslike once more, she looked up the stone staircase that led to

Taita's maze.

"Now we have to see if my figures and theories fit into the hard stones

and walls of Taita's architecture. But where do we start?"

"At the beginning," Nicholas suggested, "the god plays the first coup.

That's what Taita told us. If we start here in the shrine of Osiris, at

the foot of the staircase, then perhaps that will give us the alignment

of his imaginary bao board."

"I had the same idea," she agreed immediately. "Let's postulate that

this is the north castle of Taita board. Then we work the protocol of

the four bulls from here."

It was slow and painstaking work, trying to work their way into the mind

of the ancient scribe by probing the labyrinth of passages and tunnels

that he had built four thousand years previously. This time they moved

into the maze with more circumspection. Nicholas had filled his pockets

with lumps of dried white river clay, and he used these like a

schoolmaster's stick of chalk to write on the stone walls at each branch

and fork of the tunnels, setting out the notations from the winter face

of the, stele and marking a signpost to enable them not only to find

their way through the maze but to relate it to the model that Royan was

drawing up in her notebook.

They found that their first assumption that the shrine of Osiris was the

north castle of the board seemed to be correct, and they happily

believed that with this as the key it would be a simple matter to follow

the moves of play to their conclusion. But these hopes were soon dashed

as they realized that Taita was not thinking in the simple two

dimensions of the conventional board. He had added the third dimension

to the equation.

The stairway leading up from the shrine of Osiris was not the only link

between the eight landings. Each of the passages leading off from it was

subtly angled either upwards or downwards. As they followed the twists

and turns of one of these tunnels they did not detect the fact that they

were changing levels. Then suddenly they reemerged on to the central

staircase, but on a landing higher than the one they had entered from.

They stood there and stared at each other in horrified disbelief.

Royan spoke first. "I didn't even have the feeling that we were

ascending," she whispered. "The whole thing is infinitely more complex

than I first assumed."

"It must be constructed like one of those nuclear models of some

complicated carbon atom,'Nicholas agreed with awe. "It interlinks on all

eight planes. Quite frankly, it's terrifying."

"Now I have some– inkling what those extraneous symbols signify," Royan

muttered. "They set out the levels.

I We are going to have to rethink the entire concept.

matic rules.

"Three'dimensional bao, played to enig What chance have we got against

him?" Nicholas shook his head ruefully. "What we really need is a

computer. Taita.

without good reason. The wasn't Puffing his own virtues old hooligan

really was a mathematical genius." He shone the lamp back down the

tunnel from which they had come.

"Even when you know it's there you cannot actually see the fall in the

floor level. He designed and built it without even a slide rule or a

spirit level in his back pocket. This maze is an extraordinary piece of

engineering."

"You can form Your fan club later," she suggested. "But right now let's

start grinding those numbers again."

I am going to move the lights and the desks up here, on to this central

landing of the staircase."Nicholas agreed, I think we should work from

the centre of the board. It may help us to visualize it. Right now he

has got me thoroughly confused."

The only sound in the room was the soft on the sobbing of the

woman who lay curled Milan floor in a puddle of her own blood and urine.

Tuma Nogo sat at the long conference table and lit a he looked

cigarette. His hands trembled slightly, and gh the sickened, He was a

soldier, and he had lived through Mengistu terror. He was a hard man and

accustomed to violence and cruelty, but he was shaken with what he had

just witnessed. He knew now why von Schiller placed such The man was

barely human.

reliance on Helm Across the room Jake Helm was washing his hands in

tediously and then dabbed the small basin. He dried them fas at the

stains on his clothing with the towel as he came back and stood over

Tessay.

"I don't think there is anything else she can tell us," he said calmly.

"I don't think she held anything back."

Nogo glanced down at the woman, and saw the livid burns that spotted her

chest and her cheeks like the running ulcerations of some dreadful

smallpox. Her eyes were closed, and her lashes were frizzled away. She

had held out well. It was only when Helm had touched her eyelids with

the burning cheroot that she had at last capitulated, and gabbled out

the answers to his questions.

Nogo felt queasy, but he was relieved that it had not been necessary to

hold her lids open, as Helm had ordered, and to watch as he quenched the

flame of the cheroot against her weeping eyeballs.

"Watch her," Helm ordered, as he rolled down his sleeves. "She is a

tough one. Don't take any chances with her."

Helm walked past him, and went to the door in the far end of the hut. He

left the door open, and Nogo could hear their voices, but they were

speaking in German so he could not understand what they were saying. He

understood now why von Schiller had chosen not to be present during the

questioning. He obviously knew how Helm worked.

Helm came back into the room, and nodded at Nogo.

"Very well. We are finished with her. You know what to do., Nogo stood

up nervously and placed his hand on the webbing holster at his side.

"Here?"he asked. "No!"

"Don't be a bloody fool," Helm snapped. "Take her away. Far away. Then

get somebody in here to clean up this mess." Helm turned on his heel and

went back into the rear room.

Nogo roused himself and then went to the door of the hut. He walked wide

of where Tessay lay, so as not to soil his canvas paratrooper boots.

"Lieutenant Hammed!the called through the door.

t Hammed and Nogo lifted Tessay to her feet. Neither  them spoke and

they were subdued, almost chastened, as torn and bloodied clothing.

they helped her into her yes from her naked body and the Hammed averted

his ed her glossy amber skin.

burns and other injuries that marre He draped the shamnw over her

shoulders, and led her towards the door, When she stumbled he caught her

before her with a hand under her elbow.

she fell and supported truck, and she moved He led her down the steps to

the sat in the passenger seat slowly, like a very old woman. She her

cupped hands.

with her burned and swollen face in Nogo summoned Hammed with a jerk of

his head, and led him aside. He spoke quietly to him, and Hammed's

listened to his orders. At expression became stricken as he one point he

started to protest, but Nogo snarled at him savagely and he chewed his

lower lip in silence.

"Remember!" Nogo repeated. "Well away from any of the villages. Make

certain that there are no witnesses.

Report back to me immediately."

Hammed straightened his shoulders and saluted before  up into the seat

he marched back to the truck and climbed  the driver a curt order and

they beside Tessay. He gav drove out of the camp, following the track

back towards Debra Maryam. sed and in such pain that she had Tessay was

so confu s, she lurched lost all sense of time. Only half-consciou ugh

icularly ro about in the seat when the truck hit a part ead rolled

loosely on her stretch of the track, and her  shoulders. Her face was so

swollen that it required an effort and when she did she thought to force

her eyelids apart, that her vision was failing and that she was going

blind.

sun, had set and darkness had Then she realized that the in the hut with

fallen. She must have spent the whole day Helm.

She felt a mild lift of relief that the burns on her eyelids had not

done more damage. At least she was still

form able to see. She peered out through the windscreen, and found

that in the headlights the road was unfamiliar.

"Where are you taking me?" she mumbled. "This is not the way back to the

village."

Lieutenant Hammed sat slumped beside her in the seat and would not

answer. She relapsed into a daze of pain and exhaustion.

She was jerked awake when the truck braked abruptly and the driver

switched off the ignition. Rude hands dragged her out of the cab and

into the glare of the headlights. Her hands were jerked behind her back

and her wrists were bound together with a raw-hide thong.

"You are hurting me," she whimpered. "You are cutting my wrists." She

had used up the last of her strength and courage. She felt beaten and

pathetic, with no fight left in her.

One of the soldiers yanked on her bound wrists and shoved her off the

road. Two others followed, each carrying trenching tools. There was

enough of a moon for her to see a grove of eucalyptus trees about a

hundred metres from the side of the road, and they led her there. They

pushed her down at the base of one of the trees and the man who had tied

her wrists stood over her, holding his rifle casually aimed down at her

and smoking a cigarette with his free hand. The others stacked their

rifles and began digging.

They seemed to take no interest in her at all, but were discussing the

All Africa Soccer Championships that were being held in Lusaka, and the

Ethiopian team's chances of reachin the finals.

It was only after a while that it began to sink into Tessay's befuddled

mind that they were digging a grave for her. The saliva in her injured

mouth dried up and she looked around desperately for Lieutenant Hammed.

But he had stayed with the truck.

"Please," she whispered to her guard, but before she could say more he

kicked her painfully in the belly. -iftu vvurta 3 ivium i– utar vyo

"Keep quied' he used the derogatory term of address only applied to an

animal or a person of the lowest order, and as she lay doubled up on the

ground she realized the futility of appealing to them. A feeling of

weakness anded her and she found herself weeping resignation overwhelm

softly and hopelessly in the darkness.

er swollen lids, &Then she looked up again through  oonlight for her to

see that the grave there was sufficient  was now so deep that the two

men still digging in it were out of her line of sight. Spadefuls of dirt

flew over the lip of the hole and splattered on to the growing pile. Her

and sauntered over to the guard left her side for a momen edge of the

hole. He looked down in it and then grunted.

"Good. That is deep enough, Call the lieutenant." The two soldiers

scrambled up out of the grave, then off into gathered up their tools and

weapons and traipsed the darkness of the grove. Chatting amicably

amongst wards where the truck was themselves they headed back to parked,

leaving Tessay and her guard.

the cold and with terror, She lay there shivering with puffed while her

guard squatted at the lip of her grave and her on his cigarette. She

thought that if she could get ton for feet she could kick him into the

hole and make a ru ut when she tried to sit up her it, back through the

trees.  movements were stiff and slow, and she he no feeling in her

hands or feet. She tried to force herself to move, but at that moment

she heard Lieutenant Hammed coming from the truck and she slumped back

in despair, rch. He flashed it Hammed was carrying an electric to down

into the grave.

ugh."

"Good," he said loudly. "That is deep eno He switched off the torch and

said to the man guarding Go back and wait at the truck. When her, "No

witnesses.

come back with the others to help me you hear the shots, fill the hole."

over his shoulder and disap The guard slung his rifle JI peared amongst

the trees. Hammed waited until the man was well out of earshot, then he

came to Tessay and hoisted her to her feet. He pushed her to the edge of

the grave, and then she felt him fumbling with her clothing. She tried

to lash out at him, but her arms were still bound behind her.

"I want your shanitna." He pulled the white woollen cloak off over her

shoulders, and then went with it to the edge of the grave, He jumped

down into the hole and she heard him scuffling about in the bottom.

His voice came back to her, speaking softly. "They must see something

here. A body-'

He climbed back beside her, puffing with the exertion, and stepped

behind her. She felt the touch of cold metal on the inside of her

wrists, and then he was sawing at the leather thong. She felt her bonds

fall away, and she gasped at the pain as the blood poured back into her

numb hands.

"What are you doing?" she whispered in confusion. She looked down into

the grave and saw the pale shamnia arranged to look like a human body.

"Are you going-'

"Please don't talk," he instructed her softly, as he took her by the

shoulder and led her back amongst the trees.

"Lie here." He pushed her down and made her lie flat, with her face to

the ground. He began piling dead leaves and fallen branches over her.

"Stay here! Do not try to run. Don't. move or speak until we are gone."

He flashed the torch briefly over the mound of dead branches to make

certain she was covered, then he left her and hurried back to the

graveside, unbuckling the flap of his pistol holster as he went. Two

spaced pistol shots cracked out in the night, so loud and unexpectedly

that she jumped and her heart raced wildly.

Then she heard Hammed shout, "Come, you men.

Let's get this thing finished."

They trooped back into the grove, and she heard the sound of their

spades and the thump of earth clods falling into the grave.

nant," a voice

"I cannot see what I am doing, lieute complained. "Where is your

torchlight?"

"You dorA need a light to fill a hole," Hammed snarled.

"Get on with your work. Tramp that loose soil down. I don't want anybody

stumbling on this place."

She lay quietly, trying to stop the wild tremors that shook her body. At

last the sound of the shovels let up, and she heard Hammed's voice

again.

"That will do. Make certain you leave nothing here.

Back to the truck!'

Their footsteps and their voices died away. At a distance she heard the

truck engine whirl and fire. The headlights shone through the trees as

the truck backed and filled, turning in the direction from which they

had come.

sound of the engine had died away Long after thee pile of dead

completely, she continued to lie under the tree shaking with the cold

and weeping branches. She was St. elief.

silently with exhaustion and pain and  softly and off herself and Then

slowly she pushed he branched it to pull crawled to the trunk of the

nearest tree. She, used and then stood there, swaying weakly herself up

to her feet, in the darkness. elmed her. "I have it was only then that

guilt overwh betrayed Mek," she thought sickeningly. "I have told everyI

must get back to thing to his enemies. I must warn him him and warn

him-'

treetrunk and She pushed herself away from the ds the track.

blundered back through the darkness towar he only means of ascertaining

if they had solved Taita's codes correctly was to play out BE&

the moves he had listed. They went very through the tunnels of the maze,

stepping out the carefully moves that he had noted and marking then-' on

the walls in white chalk figures.

There were eighteen moves set out on the winter face of the stele. Using

Royan's first interpretation of the symbols, they were able to advance

through twelve of theseL. Then they found themselves at a dead end,

confronted by a blank stone wall and unable to make the next move.

"Damnation!" Nicholas kicked the wall, and when this had no effect he

hurled the chunk of white chalk at it. "I wish I could get my hands on

that old devil. Castration would be the least of his worries."

"Sorry." Royan scraped the hair back out of her eyes.

thought I had it right. It must be the figures in the second column. We

will have to invert them."

"We will have to start again,'Nicholas groaned.

"Right at the very beginning," she agreed.

"How do we know when we have finally got it right?

he wanted to know.

"If by following the clues we art ive at one of the winning

combinations, a bao equivalent of checkmate, on precisely the eighteenth

move. There will be no logical move after that, and we can assume we

have worked through it correctly."

"And what will we find if we ever reach that position?"

"I will tell you when we get there." She smiled at him sweetly. "Cheer

up, Nicky. It's only just starting to hurt."

Royan inverted the values of the second and third numbers of Taita's

notations, taking the first as the cup value and the second as the file

value. This time they completed only five moves before they were stymied

and could proceed no further.

"Perhaps out assumption about the third symbol being the change of level

is incorrect?" Nicholas suggested. "Let's start again and give that the

second value."

"Nicky, do you realize just how many possible combinations there are,

given the three variables?" She was at last starting to waver. "Taita

has assumed an intimate knowledge of the game. We have only the

sketchiest notions of how it was played. It's like a grand master trying

to explain to a novice the intricacies of the King's Indian Defence."

olas embroidered the simile. "At this

"In Russian!" Nich rate we are getting nowhere in a hurry. There must be

some other way of approaching it. Let's go over the epigrams Taita stuck

in between the notations again.

"All right. I'll read and you listen." She hunched over her notes. "The

trouble is that a subtle variation of the translation might change the

sense. Taita loved puns, and  effect. One wrong twist a pun can rely on

a single word fo or slant to a word and we have lost it."

"Try anyway," Nicholas encouraged her. "Remember that even Taita had

never played bao in three dimensions  be at the very before. if he left

a clue it would have le of beginning of the stele. Concentrate on the

first coup notations and the epigrams that separate them."

"We'll try it that way," Royan agreed. "The first notambers five and

seven and tion is the bee followed by the nu the sistrum."

I have heard that so often Nicholas grinned. "Okayt What follows?,

already that I will never forget it er over the ation." She ran her ring

"The first quot can be known hieroglyphics. "'What can be given a name

What is nanwiess can A be felt. i sail with the tide behind me and the

wind in my face. 0, my beloved, the taste of You is sweet uPon my UPs."'

"Is that all?" he asked.

"Yes, then the next notation. The scorpion and the number two and three

and the sistrum again."  make Slowly! Slowly! First things first. What

can  out of the 1sailing" and the "beloved'T

They riddled and wrestled with the text of the stele, So until their

eyes burned and they had lost track of day or night. They were

eventually recalled to reality by Sapperjs voice echoing up the

staircase. Nicholas stood up from the desk and stretched before he

looked at his watch.

"Eight. 'clock. But I' not sure if that is morning or evenin

Then he started as Sapper came up the staircase, and saw that his bald

head was shining with moisture and his shirt was soaked.

"What happened to you?" Nicholas demanded. "Did you fall into the

sinkholer Sapper wiped his face with the palm of his hand.

"Didn't anybody tell you? It's pissing with rain outside." They both

stared at him in horror.

"So soon?" Royan whispered. "It wasn't supposed to start for weeks yet."

Sapper shrugged. "Somebody forgot to tell the weatherman."

"Has it set in?" Nicholas asked. "What's the state of the river? Has the

level started to rise yet?"

"That's what I came to tell you. I am going up to the dam, taking the

Buffaloes with me. I want to keep an eye on it. As soon as it gets

unsafe I will send a runner down to you. When I do that, don't stop to

argue. Get out of here fast. It will mean that I expect the dam to burst

at any moment."

"Don't take Hansith with you," Nicholas ordered. "I need him here."

When Sapper had gone, taking most of the workers from the tunnel with

him, Royan and Nicholas looked at each other seriously.

"We are running out of time fast, and Taita still has us in a tangle,'

Nicholas said. "One thing I must warn you.

When the river starts to rise "

She did not let him finish. "The river!" she cried. "Not the sea! I was

mistaken in the translation. I read it as "tide".

the sea, but it should have I assumed Taita was referring to been

"curyene,.The Egyptians made no distinction between rds."

the two wo They both rushed back to the desk and her notebooks.

C4The current behind me and the wind in my face Nicholas changed the

quotation.

on the Nile," Royan exulted, "the prevailing wind is lways from the

always from the north, and the current a south. Taita was facing north.

The north castle."

"We assumed the symbol for the north was the baboon,'

he reminded her.

"No! I was wrong." Her face was alight with the fires of inspirations

"', my beloved, the taste of you is sweet upon my lips." Honey! The bee!

I had the symbols for the north and south inverted." we find there?"

"What about east and west? What can with fresh enthusiasm. "'MY

He turned back to the texts  of bronze sins are red as carnelians. They

bind me like cUns the They prick my heart with fire, and I turn my eyes

towards evening star."'

"I don't see ation," he stuttered eagerly. -Prick" is the wrong transi

ing towards the qt should be "sting". The scorpion look the west. The

evening star. "Me evening star is always in rn castle, not the eastern

castle." scorpion is the wester

"We had the board inverted." She jumped up excitedly.

"Let's play it that way!'

"We still have not determined the levels," he objected.

"Is the sistrum the upper level, or is it the three swords?"

"Now that we have made this breakthrough, that is the only variable. We

are either right or Wrong. We will play work upper level, and if that

doesn' the sistrurn first as the lay it the other way round."

we can  tricacies of the maze It was so much easier now. The in had

become less forbidding with familiarity. There were the large white

chalk signs in Nicholas's handwriting on each corner and at each fork

and T-junction of the tunnels.

They moved swiftly through the complex twists and turns, their

excitement rising sharply as they followed each notation and "i6und the

way still clear before them.

"The eighteenth move." Royan's voice trembled. "Hold both thumbs. If it

takes us into one of the open files that threaten the opponent's south

castle, then that will be the check coup." She drew a deep breath and

read it aloud to him. "The bird The numbers three and five. With the

lower level symbol of the three swords."