Dagger (24 page)

"It can't hurt us," said Samlor.

Water curling around the hulls of the linked vessels gurgled like a drowning giant.

Sarnlor gave the lie to his own statement by lifting the crystal toward his forehead in case—

The invisible membrane separating the swamp from the tunnel shimmered across them like a curtain into night. The flames that had clawed the vessels when they first entered the tunnel now glowered like the eyes of a whipped dog. The oarsmen stroked forward, so shadowy that they could have been no more than the lumps of wax which Samlor had formed.

One bubble of fire spat toward them, but it was no more than a spark flung from a collapsing backlog. Even before it reached the barrier which should still protect the wax boat, the spot of blue fire disintegrated into a thousand scintillae and vanished.

The vessel lurched again and, straining the charred

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hawser behind, splashed thunderously into the current of the River Napata.

"We're safe," said Ahwere.

The tone of her voice reflected the fear which ruled Samlor's own feelings. Returning to the Realm of Men meant that the sun hammered them and that the gnats which buzzed from the marshy banks were used to preying on humans. There was a brightly-colored crowd waiting on the temple quay, folk whose questions would not cease even though they were directed at a man who had become a god. And for all Ah were's stated confidence, neither she nor her husband really felt safe.

Samlor looked back. The ancient wall was solid again, and the relief of the god's face was anonymous beneath its coating of silt.

The priests of Tatenen were a scarlet and gold bloc at the end of the quay, but Shay the bosun had elbowed his squat form into their midst. As the boat neared the quay, the crewmen backed water so fiercely that spray flew over Samlor and Ahwere in the bow—

and reminded them that they were still naked. Ahwere murmured in despair, reminding her husband that they remained human and members of society despite the powers he had gained.

Shay tossed a line, ignoring the shouts of greeting and benediction from the remainder of the crowd. Samlor snubbed the rope off one-handed on the wax bowsprit—

and found the bowsprit was only wax which pulled away in white fractures when it took the first strain.

The bosun swore, then bellowed to bring forward more of his sailors. The royal yacht drifted with the momentum of the sand still filling it. The wooden prow crushed the wax stern with no more sound than the gasp of air bubbling out through broken seams.

Ahwere glanced at her husband, then reached for the stone coping. She didn't have a chance to touch it because Shay's broad hand snatched her from the crumpling boat and then reached for her husband.

Samlor had a sudden vision of branching timelines as his bosun jerked him to safety. If he dropped the Book of Tatenen here, it would sink into the mud at the bottom of the

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river. He would never find it again, though he had all the resources of the temple—

and the kingdom—

with which to dredge and drain. . . .

He did not drop the silk-wrapped crystal.

The wax boat, crushed and already slumping with the sun's heat, began to drift downstream while Shay leaped aboard the yacht and called for more help. His curses at the charring and claw-marks which defaced the vessel were heartfelt. Tekhao and several other priests were babbling oratorical-ly while servitors offered clothing and refreshments, but Samlor had a mind only for his wife and their infant now nestling again at Ahwere's breast.

He put his arms around them both and said, "This is the beginning of a new age for mankind, and we three are its leaders."

But when the silken parcel in his left hand brushed Merib, the child began to wail.

THE FESTIVAL OF THANKSGIVING going on in the temple courtyard was an enthusiastic background, even in the royal suite facing the river. Rushlights on the roof made the reed tops shimmer and turned the stone causeway into something softly metallic.

A single lamp lighted the room where Samlor made his preparations and Ahwere crooned to Merib in a chair across from her husband.

Samlor brushed the final glyphs onto his parchment with a sure hand. He used sepia, cuttlefish ink, for his medium because its animal nature—

and that of the

parchment—

would add to the virtue of the spell he was creating.

The Book of Tatenen could not be committed to human memory. In use, the mind became a facet of the book instead of the reverse.

But portions of the book could be excerpted by a man of the proper skills and powers; and one portion was enough to safeguard him against attack by men or gods.

"There. . . ," Samlor breathed as he contemplated the page of writing. He felt soggy, weighted down as if he had eaten salty food and drunk heavily. It was merely his reaction to returning to the Realm of Men after another excursion in the dazzling acuity of the Book of Tatenen.

Merib was asleep. Ahwere got up, cradling the infant

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with an ease which belied the slenderness of her form. She took the jug of beer from the sideboard and carried it to her husband.

Samlor smiled wanly at her and set the jug on the table beside his brush and parchment. "Next you'll do this, too," he said, reaching up to take her hand. Ahwere shrugged, resigned and bitter, though she made an effort to pretend otherwise. "You're the scholar, my husband," she said. "I'll never learn—

" her

chin nodded toward the parchment. "Any more than you'll ever bear a child." Merib whimpered softly.

Salmor didn't let his face set in anger, but animation of a hard sort prodded through his weariness. "There's no reason you can't learn to read and write," he said. "Just as Merib will. It's very important now."

"Yes, in time," said Ahwere in what a different tone could have made agreement. She walked back to her chair and sat.

Samlor poured beer into the mug which served as the jug's cover. "When I've drunk this," he said, though he had tried to explain the process before, "the spell of protection will be a part of me. Nothing will be able to harm me again."

He rolled the parchment and set it on end in the mug. The pale beer began to darken as it dissolved the ink. Fluid climbed the parchment cylinder slowly by osmosis.

"Yes," said Ahwere. "That must be why everything is out of balance. Because of what we've done."

Samlor turned the rolled document carefully and set it back in the beer with the other end down. The remainder of the symbols added their substance in swirls of color that merged with earlier glyphs and lost definition. The fluid was now the color of the yacht's cedarwood rail after the tunnel had seared it.

"Don't be foolish," he said sharply. "We are part of the balance. Nothing's wrong. And you will learn the glyphs so that the book protects you as well." He dropped the soggy parchment on the table. It oozed a

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mixture of beer and ink and power. Without looking at his wife, Samlor lifted the mug and drank down its contents. "Yes, my husband," said Ahwere. "I will learn the glyphs. If there is time."

THERE WERE CLOUDS both on the western horizon and high in the east, but the sky directly above the yacht was clear and perfectly framed by the sunset. The west was a mass of boiling red with only one opening. The beam which escaped through that gap flared in a great keyhole across the opposite cloudbank.

"Unlocking the cosmos," said Samlor cheerfully. Ahwere looked down as if he had slapped her.

Pursing his lips, Samlor got up from his couch and walked to the rail, ducking beneath the deck awning. Merib scooted across the polished planks and caught him by the ankle, gurgling, while Ahwere and the nurse watched cautiously. Shay stumped toward him from the bow. "Sir," he said, "there'll be a moon t'night less it clouds over. The wind's fair, and anyhow there's no place t' tie up on this stretch as isn't open as a cabin boy's bum. I've said we'll go on s'

long as the sky holds, keepin' two men by the sweeps for safety's sake. Ah, with your permission."

Samlor played with Merib's thin hair while the boy pulled himself upright, using his father's leg as a brace. The women, shaded by the awning, were part of the dusk. Muted voices and the odor of leeks drifted back from the crewmen forward.

"All right," said Samlor. "Do as you think fit." 175

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The weight of the crystal wrapped against his bosom concentrated Samlor's awareness. He could use the Book of Tatenen to ensure fair weather; to jerk the sun back in the sky to light their way; to transport himself, those with him, and the very ship to the capital in an instant.

But there was no purpose in any of those things. Nothing, at least, to justify subverting the powers of the cosmos. Now that he had gained his end, Samlor's viewpoint was changing.

His left hand idly fitted and withdrew from the notches across the rail. Samlor was unaware of what he was doing, but Shay followed the action and grimaced.

"Sorry about that, sir," the bosun muttered. "Have t' replace the bloody section, there and farther forrard. Got the bloody sand out and burnished the bloody burn marks out, but them bloody gouges. ..."

Where the crocodile had clambered aboard the yacht, Samlor realized. Four parallel scratches in the cedar, each of them so broad and deep that his index finger fit loosely within the slot.

"That doesn't matter, bosun," Samlor said sharply. "The boat served its purpose, so the damage is of no account."

He would not be chided by a commoner for harming—

trivial harm!—

a vessel he

owned. Just because Shay was responsible for the vessel, that didn't mean the prince its owner could not use it any way he pleased! Why—

The flood of unspoken anger halted. Samlor blinked at himself in amazement. He was as a god in his power, in immortality and in knowledge. But still he thought as the man he had been since birth. Not a bad man, but human, despite the Book of Tatenen carried beneath his girdle.

The yacht rolled so steeply that the rail against which Samlor leaned slapped the water.

Shay was gripping the awning's framework with a sailor's instinct that never left him without a handhold when aboard a vessel. He bellowed, "Stand to\" forward to his men, most of whose cries indicated they were as shocked as Samlor was.

When the yacht tilted sideways, Samlor hugged the rail with both arms. His torso hung over what should have been

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water. Instead, he was looking into the open jaws of a crocodile whose head was longer than Samlor was tall.

The eye turned to him did not wink with pale reflection, it burned blue like the tunnel of flame or the snout of the worm.

Samlor screamed, but his desperate grasp was too late to save Merib. The infant catapulted past his father and wailed as the jaws closed over him. The crocodile sank as suddenly as it had appeared. When its black claws released the rail, the yacht rolled sharply to the other side, bouncing Ahwere into the covered deckhouse again.

"My son!" she cried. "Save my son!"

Samlor had the crystal out of its wrappings even before the vessel had ceased to bob violently back and forth. He spoke the word that found Merib and brought him back to the arms of his mother while the woman cried and sailors shouted in terrified confusion.

But not even the Book of Tatenen could bring the dead to life.

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"OH, THIS is so terrible," muttered Tekhao lugubriously. "He had royal eyes, your highness, royal eyes. He would have been a great king." Then he sneezed echoingly in the tomb chamber.

"My wife and I appreciate your sacrifice, Tekhao," said Samlor, bitterly amused to find that grief had reduced his mind to banalities. "If you would leave us with our—

with our. . . . For a mom—

"

"But of course, your highness," the chief priest blurted. "Your highness," he added with another bow to be sure that he had not slighted Princess Ahwere. Tekhao had made a sacrifice: his tomb, excavated and lined with red granite brought from desert cliffs south of the capital. It was an exceptionally fine burial place for anyone below royal rank.

And even for a royal infant, if he drowned five hundred miles north of the family tombs across from the capital. The weather was hot and the air at the river's surface almost as humid as the water itself. No type or degree of embalming would permit the tiny corpse to be transported to the capital—

except

as a mass so putrescent that the bones would slosh within it. Samlor could not hear Ahwere weeping, but the tear streaks on her face swelled regularly as yet another drop

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slipped toward her chin. He put his arm around her waist and, with an urging that was barely short of force, he moved her with him to the edge of the bier. The only lights within the tomb were the blotches of red from the perforated incense burners at each corner. In this enclosure the fumes had a sharpness that would have passed unnoticed in the open air.

Samlor did not need that to remind him of the bitterness of death.

"Farewell, my son," Ahwere whispered.

The lid of the inner wooden casket waited beside the bier. It was painted with a lifelike representation of Merib, a hasty job which spoke well of the skill of the temple craftsmen. The stone sarcophagus was unfinished and far too large for its burden, but there had been no time to carve one to the size of an infant. Merib's eyelids flickered.

Samlor was sure the motion was a trick of the bad light, but his free hand snatched at the book in his girdle.

The lids opened. Instead of the painted shells which covered the eyeballs and would retain their roundness when protoplasm slumped, Merib stared at the world through blue fire shivering down into the violet. "Do not grieve, my mother," said the lips which were already withering. "Rejoice, for the cosmos is returning to balance."