oken
down, and ere any magic could rebuild it one spoke a word before which
my power bowed down and was still. And the Amulet lay there, still
perfect, but enslaved. Then one coming with stones to rebuild the
shrine, dropped a hewn stone on the Amulet as it lay, and one half was
sundered from the other. I had no power to seek for that which was lost.
And there being none to speak the word of power, I could not rejoin it.
So the Amulet lay in the dust of the desert many thousand years, and at
last came a small man, a conqueror with an army, and after him a crowd
of men who sought to seem wise, and one of these found half the Amulet
and brought it to this land. But none could read the name. So I lay
still. And this man dying and his son after him, the Amulet was sold by
those who came after to a merchant, and from him you bought it, and it
is here, and now, the name of power having been spoken, I also am here.'

This is what the voice said. I think it must have meant Napoleon by the
small man, the conqueror. Because I know I have been told that he took
an army to Egypt, and that afterwards a lot of wise people went grubbing
in the sand, and fished up all sorts of wonderful things, older than
you would think possible. And of these I believe this charm to have been
one, and the most wonderful one of all.

Everyone listened: and everyone tried to think. It is not easy to do
this clearly when you have been listening to the kind of talk I have
told you about.

At last Robert said--

'Can you take us into the Past--to the shrine where you and the other
thing were together. If you could take us there, we might find the other
part still there after all these thousands of years.'

'Still there? silly!' said Cyril. 'Don't you see, if we go back into the
Past it won't be thousands of years ago. It will be NOW for us--won't
it?' He appealed to the Psammead, who said--

'You're not so far off the idea as you usually are!'

'Well,' said Anthea, 'will you take us back to when there was a shrine
and you were safe in it--all of you?'

'Yes,' said the voice. 'You must hold me up, and speak the word of
power, and one by one, beginning with the first-born, you shall pass
through me into the Past. But let the last that passes be the one that
holds me, and let him not lose his hold, lest you lose me, and so remain
in the Past for ever.'

'That's a nasty idea,' said Robert.

'When you desire to return,' the beautiful voice went on,