"We're going to enter the realm of the gods, aren't we?" she said, looking up at him. Her eyes, her jewels, and the tears on her cheeks were all that was visible in the screened moonlight.
"Yes," said Samlor simply. "I am. There's no need for you to go with me, though. Shay will do as I order, and-"
"Would you leave me behind then?" Ahwere demanded fiercely. "Watch you go off to die and never return? Is that what you want?" Fresh tears were welling up even though she was so angry that Samlor thought she might strike him.
"I'm not going to die, my darling," he said, trying to ease her close to him again. She resisted only for a moment. "I'm going to come back with the Book of Tatenen. I just don't want to force you to help me in this if you'd rather not."
"Rather leave you?" Ahwere said, but this time wijhra lilt of joyous remembrance in her voice. "The way I left you when our father would have married you to a governor's daughter and me to a general?"
Samlor smiled and quoted King Merneb, " 'Shall I marry my son to my daughter and risk all my happiness at once? No, I don't dare risk the gods' envy that way."
"And it was 1 who made him change his mind," said Ahwere, "so that you and I could find happiness with the only souls on earth who could make us happy. I will not leave you now."
They kissed. Lips still joined, they moved toward the bed, shedding their clothes with increasing urgency.
CHAPTER 15
SAMLOR WAS so engrossed that he did not notice when Ahwere entered his work area, the flat roof of one of the temple buildings-now screened so that direct sun would not melt the hard yellow wax. He had shaped a section of the bow and was reaching for another block of material when he realized that his wife was watching him with a slight smile.
He started, dropping the baton with which he formed the wax into a perfect simulacrum of a wood surface.
Ahwere's face clouded. "I'm sorry," she blurted, turning toward the stairs again. "I didn't mean-"
Samlor caught her in his arms. "No," he said, "don't go. You should see this, if you want to. 1 was just- concentrating on what I was doing."
The smile that returned was shaky, but Ahwere allowed herself to be drawn close to what Samlor was constructing.
It was a boat, small but otherwise similar to the vessel which was docked at the temple quay-except that this one was built of wax. Samlor had fitted the flat bottom, shaping the pyramidal cakes of wax into a perfect duplicate of irregular, pegged-together planks of sycamore wood. Now he was raising the slanting wales, starting from the bow.
Ahwere stretched out her finger but did not touch the «planks» until her husband had nodded approval. The
material had the grain of wood, but it retained the feel of wax as well as its yellow translucence.
"Watch," he said, anticipating the question she might not have been willing to ask. He picked up his baton, a section of hollow reed the length of his forearm, and took a fresh block of wax which he held against the end of one of the blanks.
When Samlor drew the baton across it, the wax flowed like paint before a brushstroke. Instead of taking the texture of the baton, it formed another "plank" – perfect in its irregularities, even to the trenails pinning it to the pieces it abutted.
Samlor smiled to Ahwere, but he could feel the sweat of concentration on his brow.
"Shay came to tell you that the fittings have been removed from our ship," she said, nodding toward the edge of the roof. The vessel on which the royal party arrived was just visible past the line of the dock, riding on its cables. "He says they'll begin loading the sand after midday. But-"
Ahwere frowned. "But why, my husband? Why don't we just use the real ship instead of-" she gestured. "Though it's very wonderful, what you're doing."
Samlor smiled so that the implication of danger wouldn't be the first answer his wife received. "The real boat might be able to-enter the realm where we'll find the book," he explained, "But nothing alive could travel with it for the entire distance. We'll be perfectly safe in this vessel-" he patted the waxen side, without quite touching it " – and the other will carry the equipment we need."
Ahwere hugged him but would not meet his eyes as she said, "Well, I shouldn't have disturbed yotl'll go now."
"You don't disturb me," Samlor said.
Ahwere started to turn away. Samlor seized h^r and said fiercely, "My love, I need you! You don't disturb\me. And you mustn't worry."
She nodded, her face against his chest, but Samlor was sure he heard her sobbing as she climbed back down the stairs.
He took another block of wax, set it in place, and began to shape it. His princely face was as calm as the wax itself, but his mind was filled with images of fire and terror.
After he finished the boat, he would form the six oarsmen to drive it. …
CHAPTER 16
SHAY CARRIED A rope knout as he oversaw the transport of the wax boat to the water, but he repeatedly slapped his own thigh with it instead of the workmen.
The wax vessel was a light burden for so many hands, temple servants as well as Nanefer's sailors, but it was also fragile. The bosun had no intention of making someone stumble with a flick of the rope-end-and Samlor would have flayed Shay if he had taken that risk.
"Easy, then," the bosun ordered, stepping backward ahead of the procession.
Rather than use the stone quay, Samlor had ordered the priests to build a temporary ramp of bundled reeds across the swampy stretch and down into the river. At first the end of the new ramp floated. The reeds undulated down into the muck as they took Shay's weight. The team of men and the boat they carried would submerge the ramp, permitting the vessel to bob in the water without the risk of damage that any other launch would entail.
Beside Samlor stood Ahwere. Her bright smile could have been sculpted in stone for any movement it had shown. He touched her hand and realized the grin he flashed her was almost as false.
"Come on, come on, ye buggers!" roared Shay. "Are ye afraid the fishies'll eat yer bollocks?" The bosun was in knee-high water, but the loaded men behind him were driving the ramp deeper even though they were nearer the bank.
"Your highness," said Tekhao, rubbing his sweaty hands together. "And you, your highness," he added with a nervous nod to Ah were. "I trust the arrangements are to your satisfaction?"
Samlor was keyed up to the point that the question, intruding into his imagined future, had the impact of a blow. His face went pale and he opened his mouth to rip out a curse at the fat priest.
Before the words came awareness and contrition. He gripped Tekhao, forearm to forearm as if they were brothers taking leave, and said truthfully, "More than satisfactory, Tekhao, from beginning-" he nodded toward the temple enclosure. Another ramp of reed fascines led down from the roof where Samlor had constructed the wax boat.
"- to now."
"Now hold it, ye buggers!" roared Shay, dog-paddling against the sluggish current. "Don't let it float to bugger-all down the bloody river!"
"But now you'll have to excuse me," Samlor continued, "because it's time for my wife and I to-proceed."
"Oh, Prince Nanefer," mumbled the chief priest in a voice thick with emotion. "Oh, your highness. You don't know what that means to me. .»
As Samlor and Ahwere strode quickly down to the stone quay, he wondered what sort of man Tekhao would have been if he could give his god the sort of devotion he reserved for human superiors. A saint, very likely.