Wraiths of Time Read online

  Frightened as she had never been before in her life, Tallahassee followed the floating, ghostly ankh one reluctant step at a time. They were in the outer hall now, she and the thing she could not see but well knew was with her, willing her to some task.

  Here there was no light, either, but that given off by the ankh. However, it seemed to glow the brighter, so she could see the stairwell. Holding to the banister she went down and down, always that compulsion pushing her.

  She found herself praying, not even in a whisper, because she could no longer voice even that much, but in her mind. This—this will that held her—it was a nightmare. This thing could not be happening—it could not! Yet it was.

  They reached the fourth floor, the ankh swung into the hall there. Dimly, through her fear, Tallahassee realized where they were going—toward the three rooms that held the Brooke Collection. She had somehow surrendered part of herself. This was happening and apparently there was nothing she could do to prevent it.

  “Tallahassee!”

  Her name echoed hollowly from the stairwell behind. Dr. Joe! But he was too late—too late.… Too late for what, a part of her mind asked dully?

  There was another roar of thunder but under it something else which pulsed even as the thunder died. Drums—the calling drums. Tallahassee forced her hands up over her ears, but she could not shut out that faint, demanding vibration of sound. And now there was added a tinkling, as if small bits of crystal were shaken one against another. That, too, she identified from a single moment of the past, the sistrum of the temple priestesses of old Egypt. They once had duplicated one in class and tried to use it as it must have been swung to summon the attention of the ancient gods.

  She was going mad!

  But she was not! Tallahassee’s strong mind and intelligence began to rally. There was some logical explanation for all this. There must be! Part of her—that part which controlled her own movements—was in bondage to the influence of the presence. Her mind was still free.

  They were at the door of the third and last room. Light greeted them. But not the normal light Tallahassee knew. This was a beam shooting from the depths of the main case in the room. She was not surprised at its source. The crystalline head of the rod of office held a fainter glow maybe, but one which matched, in part, that given off by the ankh floating ahead.

  Then the ankh stopped, held in the air as if the girl herself supported it at the level of her breast. The compulsion changed. A new order had been given her, one she was no more able to resist than she had the unvoiced command that had brought her here.

  Her hands moved out, willed by that other, to seek the lock of the case. But it resisted her efforts. Now the compulsion strengthened, beat down upon her as physical blows might have done. The other will demanded that she free the rod. But she could not, it was locked. There was no way, no way at all.… The part of her mind that was free argued silently with the unseen, even as her body actually swayed back and forth under that beating command.

  Out of the dark rang a voice. For one wild, hopeful moment Tallahassee thought either Dr. Joe or Hawes must have come to her rescue. Then she realized she could not understand a word of that impassioned speech. It was hot with anger, the emotion as strong as the will behind and about her. Yet it was not issuing from the presence that had brought her here.

  A part of the control over her failed. As it withdrew, she somehow understood the rage that had gripped it, in turn, at the sound of that voice. But if it could reply it did not.

  Now those words fell into the cadence of a strange chant, the rhythm of which was accented by a distant roll of drums. Tallahassee no longer wondered how she heard what she did, nor from whence it came. She only cowered before the display case in which the light-crowned rod lay, wanting to creep away from the site of battle. For the will that had brought her here was now facing another, and they were joined in struggle.

  Tallahassee was suddenly caught up and hurled viciously against the case. She screamed, throwing her arms up over her face, fearing that the glass would shatter and cut her flesh to ribbons. But though she struck with bruising force, it was not enough to smash the case and accomplish the purpose of that will.

  It withdrew, meshed again in a struggle with the invisible other.

  More than one voice chanted now. She was sure of that as she clung where the attack had left her, spread-eagled against the case. Her mind whirled. She felt sick with vertigo as forces beyond her knowledge or description stirred into a mad swirl about her. Then the ankh swung over her shoulder, hung directly above the case.

  Wide-eyed, she watched the rod stir, rise until it stood vertical, without any support. It leaped upward, its glowing head thumped against the top of the case, while the ankh swooped downward to meet it at just the same point.

  The glass cracked, shattered and fell. And the liberated rod spun through the air. Shadows gathered around it in a hectic dance, as it tipped, fell to the floor.

  Above it, the ankh hovered as if trying to spur the staff to another effort. Was that the shadow of a hand—a hand so tenuous that it was only outlined in the glow of the ankh? It was something, of that Tallahassee was sure, and it was reaching for the rod. But before it settled close enough to grasp it, the rod itself shifted. Not upward again, but, snakelike for all its stiffness, across the floor.

  Again the will seized upon Tallahassee, whirled her about, and gave her what amounted to a vicious shove after the slithering rod. The ankh flew up at her, as if to dash itself into her face and was warded off by what she could not see, so that it hovered, making effectual darts as she was forced to obey the orders of her strange captor. She must get the rod into her hands—that was the imperative now filling her whole mind.

  Again a voice called out. And Tallahassee realized dimly that the chanting had ceased. The ankh swung away from her, skimmed through the air, to remain poised in one corner of the room toward which the rod was moving with Tallahassee stumbling after it. Since she moved puppetwise by the other will, she was clumsy, slow, trying always to break away from that hold.

  But the will was implacable and its hate hot. Not that that hate was turned wholly against her, as a very inept tool it must make use of, but rather more at the enemy it fronted. She saw now that the rod lay quiet.

  Once more, a ghostly outline moved across the glow at its head. Meanwhile the will hurled her forward. She tripped and fell as her outstretched hand closed on the other end of the rod just as it was plucked upward. Tallahassee held as she was commanded and forced to. Wraith-like that grasping hand might be—if hand it was—but there was strength in its hold upon the rod. The ankh dipped and touched the gleaming head of the staff.

  It was like being caught in an explosion. There followed light, heat, pain, and such a noise as deafened Tallahassee. The girl had a terrifying sensation of being swung out over a vast void of nothingness. That other presence was left behind. Her hands were no longer glued to the rod by its command. But she kept her grasp for her very life’s sake. In her welled the knowledge that, should she let go, the answer was death—a death that was unnatural enough to be worse than any her kind had feared since their first beginnings.

  She centered every bit of the force and strength left in her to retain her hold. There was nothing around her, a nothingness so negative as to tear at her sanity. Hold—ON!

  Then the nothingness closed about her in a vast and horrible wrapping of utter blackness. Despairing, she lost consciousness.

  It was hot, as if she lay on the hearth of some furnace breathing in the stifling heat of the blast. Tallahassee tried to edge away from that heat, unaware as yet of anything else. She opened her eyes.

  Sun—so blazing that it made an instant glare about her. With a little cry, Tallahassee shrank back, her hands over her eyes to shield them. It was hot, and she was lying under the sun—where? Her thoughts began to stir feebly, throwing off the torpor left from those last nightmare minutes.

  Still shielding her eyes, she dug h
er elbows painfully against a hard surface on which she lay, levering up the forepart of her body, making herself look around.

  Immediately before her was an outcrop of rock. And on its surface she could pick out a pattern deep-eroded by time into just faint lines. She crawled to that rock, lifting sand encrusted hands for its support in order to gain her feet. Then she turned, giddy and sick, feeling as if each labored movement might send her sailing out again into that dark void. Her dulled mind jibbed at even thinking of that—place.

  More rocks beyond. Or were those long-ago quarried stones built into a piece of tumbled wall? But at their foot.…

  Tallahassee stifled the scream in her throat, made herself blink, and blink again, to be sure she really saw that body stretched out on rock and sand.

  The stranger lay face down, arms flung out above the head. In one hand was grasped the ankh, in the other the rod. They no longer pulsed with light. Or perhaps, in this blinding sunlight, their auras of radiation could not be distinguished.

  Tallahassee inched along the rock which was her support. Was the stranger unconscious? And who—and what—and where?… She felt as if she were going mad, or had passed the border of sanity during the time that the rod had drawn her on.

  There was a thin, almost gossamer cotton robe on the body, so finely woven that one could see the gleam of darker flesh through it. It was simply made, reaching from armpit to ankle, with two broad straps of the same material holding it over the shoulders, a belt which gave off glints of gemlike color against the dead white of the garment. The stranger’s shoulder-length hair had been woven into many tiny braids, each tipped with a bead of gold, and there was another band of the same precious metal forming a narrow diadem to hold those braids in confinement.

  Tallahassee was reminded of something. She moved a fraction closer, fearing to stoop lest her present vertigo send her toppling against the stranger. Instead she dropped carefully to her knees and put out a hand to the shoulder where the brown skin was a shade or so darker than her own.

  With an effort she rolled the stranger over, the body limply slack in her hold. She was sure somehow that this was death. But, as the other’s face came into view, Tallahassee screamed and flinched away.

  Sand was matted on the generous lips, caught in eyebrows that had been darkened and extended by the use of a heavy cosmetic. But the face itself—NO!

  Save for the slight difference in the color of their skins, she was looking down at the same features she saw every time she stood before a mirror! Oh there were differences—the brows artificially lengthened toward the temples and darkened, thick lines drawn under the now-closed eyes, while the headband rose in front to the likeness of a striking serpent.

  “Egypt—” Tallahassee whispered. “Egypt and royal …” For that serpent diadem could be worn only by a woman of the Blood, and one placed very close to the throne itself.

  She scuttled back on her hands and knees. The girl was dead, she was certain of that. Now she looked around wildly.…

  They were in a place where sand had been scoured away, perhaps by the wind of some dune-lashing storm, perhaps by human effort. There were ruins all about, stones pitted and defaced by those same grit-filled winds. And she was nowhere on the earth she knew! Shaking with a growing fear, she crouched against the rock that had earlier supported her and tried to understand what had happened. There was no sane explanation for this, none at all!

  She was still locked in rising panic when she caught sounds, first faint and then growing louder. It was such chanting as she had heard just before this unbelievable thing had happened to her. Only now it rang far more clear and distinct. It—they—were coming! She tried to force herself once more to her feet, but she literally did not have the strength to move. She could only huddle where she was as the nightmare went on and on.

  There was no word in that rise of sound which she could understand. But she began to believe she could detect more than a single voice. Once more Tallahassee made a desperate effort. She must hide! Only, under this blistering sun, in this waste of stone and sand, there was no place of concealment she could see.

  The voices ceased suddenly. Now came the ringing of a sistrum. Tallahassee gave a weak laugh. Egypt! But why was her unconscious (which certainly must be directing this weird dream) so set on reproducing Egypt?

  And she was so hot, thirsty. Perhaps back in her own world she was burning with a fever. Or—a scrap of memory flipped through her thoughts—did radiation, an overdose of the strange radiation from the ankh, lie at the bottom of this?

  She heard a sharp cry and turned her head. The figure coming between the broken bits of walls was all of a piece with the rest A woman, who from Tallahassee’s present squatting position, looked supernaturally tall, was running toward them. Her figure, covered by the same kind of white dress as the dead girl wore, was human and female.

  Only, on her shoulders instead of a human head, rested the golden head of a lioness wearing a diadem of two metal feathers, spine to spine, standing tall and straight from the top of the lioness’s rounded skull.

  The creature sped toward the sprawled body of the girl. Then she caught sight of Tallahassee for the first time and stopped almost in mid-stride. There was no change of expression on the set features of the golden beast-face. But, though the lips did not move, there came a series of words which held the inflection of a question.

  Tallahassee slowly shook her head. As the lioness head faced her more closely she could see now that it was a mask, for the eyes were holes through which the wearer must look. Swiftly, the other turned from Tallahassee to the dead girl. She knelt by the body, her masked head moving slowly back and forth, looking first at the painted face against the sand and then to Tallahassee. Almost reluctantly she put out her hand and picked up the ankh. But the rod she left lying where the dead had dropped it.

  Twice she stretched out her hand tentatively as if to grasp it but did not complete the motion. Then—Tallahassee started—there came a gust of wind so cold that in this sun-soaked place it was like a blow. The woman arose, faced in the direction from which that wind blew. Tallahassee saw a strange movement in the air, as if some shadowy thing whirled about and about.

  The lioness-masked woman swung up the ankh. From behind her mask came a series of explosive words carrying with them the force of a curse. With the ankh she swiftly drew a series of crosses back and forth in the air as if so erecting a wall of defense against whatever struggled there to come to them.

  A feeble thrust of the will that had held Tallahassee and made her obey strove again to enter her mind. However, this time she could stand firm. Far off—very faintly—did she then hear an angry cry? She was not sure.

  But the movement of the air grew less, vanished. The woman waited for a long moment, the eyes of the mask turned to the place where the disturbance had been. Then Tallahassee saw the rigid tenseness of her body relax. Whatever had striven to reach them had failed.

  Now the mask swung once more in Tallahassee’s direction and she who wore it made a sharp, commanding gesture.

  Though she did not want to, Tallahassee crawled away from her rock and reached for the rod, obeying that deftly signed order. Once more her fingers clutched at its smooth surface and she raised it upright. The masked one stood as still as might the image of some goddess in an ancient temple.

  Then once more her voice broke the heated air. At her peremptory call, two more women came running lightly into view. Both were dressed in the same plain white garments, their hair braided into the same design favored by the dead girl, squared off at the shoulders, their eyes rimmed and lengthened by strokes of black. But the headdresses they wore were bands of material, each centered over the forehead by a medallion of gold worked into the likeness of a lioness, matching the mask of their superior.

  They showed signs of shock and excitement at what they found. But at the sharp-voiced command of their leader they gathered up the body of the dead. Tallahassee was beckoned to follow them.r />
  In the heat, her long skirt and blouse clung stickily to her skin as she tottered along with the women, mainly because she could see nothing else to do. Where was she? How she had come here? She felt that she must force all save the immediate present to the back of her mind or she would become insane.

  The bleak ruins were, she discovered as she rounded the largest rock where she had taken refuge, on the edge of a slope. There were outcrops of parts of walls, a series of small, sharp-pointed pyramids, the caps of many of them missing, a dry dead land going down to a single large and pillared building which appeared to be in some state of repair.

  But it was the sight of those small pyramids that drew a gasp from Tallahassee. She could close her eyes and mind-picture a series of photographs she knew very well, indeed.

  Not Egypt, but its darker, lesser sister—Meroë of the Nubians. Meroë where had gathered the last, faded remnants of the glory of old Egypt, which had indeed provided, at a later time, three Pharaohs to conquer northward, to rule the whole of the near-extinguished land of ancient Khem and become wearers of the proud double crown. Meroë about which so little was known, so many guesses made. Was it Meroë that lay now before her? But how—how had she come here?

  The two women she followed carried their burden toward that single great building. Tallahassee did not turn her head to see, but she was well aware that behind her stalked the lioness-priestess—for priestess she must be.

  Meroë had worshipped a lion god—Apedemek. There had been no lioness, unless one remembered Shekmet, the war goddess, of the more northern lands.

  Again she moved under a measure of compulsion, though it was not as great as that which had sent her through the museum corridors. She might even challenge it if she wished, Tallahassee believed. But to what purpose? It was far better to keep with these until she could somehow discover what had happened. The rod of office slipped in her sweaty hand, she took a firmer grip upon it. Why had the priestess given it to her? It must be highly important to these people, whoever they might be, yet she had been ordered to carry it. Tallahassee could only believe that they were afraid of it in some manner. If it was what had brought her here—then she could understand that. On the other hand, if that was the truth, then it might just be a way of breaking this strange dream and returning to her own time and world. Thus the closer she kept to it now the better.