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be, brothers who loved one another and forgave one another.
    David tried to anoint himself from his phial but his hands were weak; his fingers couldn't grip the top to unscrew it. He gave up, thinking that simply saying the Prayer would suffice. But he couldn't manage that either. His lips were rigid, too cracked and flaked for speech, his throat too dry.
    An unceremonised death, then. His ka would still make its way to Iaru, but perhaps not as swiftly as he'd have liked. There would be a time in limbo, before he at last found his way to the land of the dead.
    He checked the ba meter on the lance. After Gibbs had used it, there was now just enough charge left for a single shot.
    It would do.
    The lance seemed to weigh as much as a bar of solid iron. David braced it beneath his chin and groped for the trigger.
    There was light, golden light, and a spray of blood.
    David lay on his back, feeling the blood cooling and congealing on his skin.
    He could hear a babble of voices and knew they belonged to the souls of the dead in the Field of Reeds. The sound grew louder as his ka leapt free of his body.
    Leapt free into the purpling sky.
    Into the fading sun.

5. Ra
    D awn, as always, brings new hope.
    As Ra steps from Mandet, the night-time Barque, to Mesektet, the Solar Barque, he feels a surge of reinvigoration. He stretches out his aching spine and works his stiff joints, and the cold of the night just gone by eases from his muscles, and the pains and woes of age recede. He does not feel young again - he never will - but neither does he feel so old any more.
    Aker, at the helm of Mandet, bids him farewell. ''Till this evening, my lord,'' he says with a toss of his leonine mane of hair.
    Ra smiles. ''Till then.''
    The Solar Barque sets sail. The voyage of day begins again.
    Aboard the gleaming golden boat are Ra's regular diurnal companions. Maat, at the helm, gives her father a curt nod. Her expression is seldom anything less than grave, although Ra knows his daughter to have a wry sense of humour, which she reveals in unguarded moments. Her doglike companion Ammut squats at her heels, tongue lolling.
    Meanwhile sly-eyed Bast is seated amidships on a divan, her upper body vertical, her legs stretched out sideways. Her shape is a languorous L. She purrs softly as Ra approaches and her eyelids close and open in greeting. He loves this daughter too. He loves her most of any of his family, for Bast is beautiful and untalkative and has never caused him any grief. He strokes her head and the cat-goddess preens pleasurably.
    Proceeding to the bows, Ra finds Set, who is limbering up for the trials ahead. Set flexes his powerful physique, muscles snaking beneath his startlingly pale skin. He glances round at his great-great-uncle. He puffs a lock of red hair out of his eyes. He returns to his warm-up exercises.
    The Solar Barque, the Boat of a Million Years, leaves the eastern gate of heaven, passing between the twin sycamores of turquoise. The river of day runs calm and smooth. The god of the primeval waters, Nun, can be felt beneath the keel, wafting the barque gently on its way.
    Then, ahead, a disturbance on the surface. A patch of boiling turbidity from which, all at once, arises the terrible serpent Apophis. It rears from the water, towering above the barque, seething with evil. Its coils thrash and churn. It would swallow the boat. It would destroy the sun and snuff out all life.
    But Set is here. Set is ready. His punishment, his penance, is to battle Apophis twice a day, every day. He launches himself at the creature, springing high to grapple with it. Arms around its neck, he strains every sinew to throttle it. Apophis hisses like a whirlwind and snaps its head from side to side in the hope of dislodging its assailant. Set clings on, digging his fingers into its sinuously glittering scales. He claws the serpent's throat open with his bare hands. Blood gushes out in cataracts. Apophis howls and plunges into the river,