"Wilbur Smith - Egyptian 01 - Warlock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

Taita led Nefer through the narrow lanes, past temples and palaces now inhabited only by the lizard and
the scorpion, until they reached the deserted central square. In its centre stood the monument to Lord
Tanus and his triumph over the armies of bandits who had almost choked the life out of the richest and
most powerful nation on earth. The monument was a bizarre pyramid of human skulls, cemented together
and protected by a shrine made of red rock slabs. A thousand and more skulls grinned down upon the
boy as he read aloud the inscription on the stone portico: 'Our severed heads bear witness to the battle at
this place in which we died beneath the sword of Tanus Lord Harrab. May all the generations that follow
learn from that mighty lord's deeds the glory of the gods and the power of righteous men. Thus decreed
in the fourteenth year of the reign of the God Pharaoh Mamose.'



Squatting in the monument's shadow Taita watched the Prince as he walked around the monument,
pausing every few paces with hands on hips to study it from every angle. Although Taita's expression was
remote his eyes were fond. His love for the lad had its origins in two other lives. The first of these was
Lostris, Queen of Egypt. Taita was a eunuch, but he had been gelded after puberty and had once loved a
woman. Because of his physical mutilation Taita's love was pure, and he had lavished it all on Queen
Lostris, Nefer's grandmother. It was a love so encompassing that even now, twenty years after her death,
it stood at the centre of his existence.



The other person from whom his love for Nefer sprang was Tanus, Lord Harrab, to whom this
monument had been erected. He had been dearer than a brother to Taita. They were both gone now,
Lostris and Tanus, but their blood mingled strongly in this child's veins. From their illicit union so long ago
had sprung the child who had grown up to become the Pharaoh Tamose, who now led the squadron of
chariot that had brought them here; the father of Prince Nefer.



'Tata, show me where it was that you captured the leader of the robber barons.' Nefer's voice cracked
with excitement and the onset of puberty. 'Was it here?' He ran to the broken-down wall at the south
side of the square. 'Tell me the story again.'



'No, it was here. This side,' Taita told him, stood up and strode on those long, stork-thin legs to the
eastern wall. He looked up to the crumbling summit. The ruffian's name was Shufti, and he was one-eyed
and ugly as the god Seth. He was trying to escape from the battle by climbing over the wall up there.'
Taita stooped and picked up half of a baked-mud brick from the rubble and suddenly hurled it upwards.
It sailed over the top of the high wall. 'I cracked his skull and brought him down with a single throw.'
 Even though Nefer knew, at first hand, the old man's strength, and that his powers of endurance were
legend, he was astonished by that throw. He is old as the mountains, older than my grandmother, for he
nursed her as he has done me, Nefer marvelled. Men say he has witnessed two hundred inundations of
the Nile and that he built the pyramids with his own hands. Then aloud he asked, 'Did you hack off his
head, Tata, and place it on that pile there?' He pointed at the grisly monument.