The Amulet of Power - Mike Resnick [10]
“The Amulet of Mareish?” asked Lara.
“Right,” said Mason. “One day he was just an obscure peasant. Then he somehow stumbled onto Mareish’s tomb and appropriated the Amulet—he may not even have known what it was at the time. But two years later he controlled half of North Africa, with millions of men from Morocco to Abyssinia believing that he was truly the Expected One. His men swore that as long as he wore the Amulet, swords broke when they hit him and bullets bounced off him, just like a comic-book superhero.”
“It’s still a fairy tale,” said Lara.
“Why do you think so?”
“You just told me Gordon beat him at Omdurman, and I know that Gordon held him off for almost half a year during the Siege of Khartoum. How could he do either of those things if the Amulet was as powerful as you say?”
“Because Gordon or one of his lieutenants found out about the powers inherent in the Amulet and stole it just before the battle of Omdurman!” said Mason with an air of triumph.
“I’m not buying it,” responded Lara. “Why would a modern, educated, sophisticated Englishman believe in the Amulet of Mareish?”
“The answer is that Gordon was as much of a religious fanatic as the Mahdi.”
“They were different religions,” noted Lara.
“True,” he agreed. “But they had the same devout belief in the supernatural.”
She stared at him thoughtfully. “Go on,” she said after a moment.
“All right,” said Mason. “After Omdurman, the Mahdi called a sixty-day halt to his war on the unbelievers while he went into the desert alone to commune with Allah and plan his next move—and Gordon used that time to hide the Amulet.”
“I don’t remember hearing or reading that Gordon ever returned to Egypt after he was sent to stop the Mahdi,” protested Lara.
“He didn’t,” answered Mason. “But he sent his most trusted aide, Colonel J. D. H. Stewart, to Egypt. Stewart spent only a single day there before returning to Khartoum.”
“How do you know that?”
“He was seen out of uniform in Edfu, entering the Temple of Horus, by a local journalist.”
“If you know it, why didn’t the Mahdi know it—and if he knew it, why didn’t he come after the Amulet?”
“The newsman never published what he saw,” explained Mason. “He was British, and since he didn’t know why Stewart was there, he didn’t want to endanger his mission by publicizing it—but his diary turned up a few months ago, and he described the incident in some detail.”
“So that’s the real reason you were there,” said Lara.
“Yes,” said Mason. “And that’s what I assumed you were hunting for, too.”
“You were mistaken. I had bigger fish to fry.” And an evil god to capture.
“There are no bigger fish.” He frowned. “The problem is that we’ll never convince them of it.”
“Who are they?”
“Fanatical fundamentalists.”
“There seem to be a lot of them around these days,” commented Lara with a grimace.
“Not like these,” said Mason. “These are Mahdists—absolute believers in the power of the Mahdi. The Mahdi died only five months after Gordon, and they’ve been waiting for more than a century for someone to pick up his mantle and lead them in a jihad against the infidels.”
“I should think they’ve had their choice of leaders over the years,” said Lara.
Mason shook his head. “They know that the true successor to the Mahdi will possess the Amulet of Mareish—and the Mahdists believe in the power of the Amulet. ‘Belief’ is almost too weak a word. They worship it like a god. They think that if they can just gain possession of it, it will somehow call forth a new Mahdi, an indestructible man who can purify the world by slaughtering every last infidel.”
“And they’re what’s been chasing us?”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“Well, then they should know I don’t have it! I mean, I’m