And very likely a much worse administrator of the temple and the land which it governed on behalf of the king.
Sailors splashed in the water to keep the boat from slamming into the quay. The wax vessel rode higher than a boat of wood, so the breeze was a greater danger than the current near the shore.
By contrast, the royal yacht sagged very low and the men who were swinging its bow to the stern of the wax vessel had to struggle hard. The mast, oars, and all moveable tackle had been stripped from the yacht, but it was now loaded with loose sand carried from beyond the edge of the river's annual flooding.
Samlor's armor and weapons lay atop the sand near the bow along with a bronze shovel. There was no other cargo.
Samlor unlatched the gold pin which bound the ends of his sash, then handed the garment to a waiting temple servitor. He pulled his richly-embroidered tunic over his head and tossed that to the man also before stepping out of his sandals.
The stone was warm and a welcome reminder of the cosmos as he walked to the edge of the quay. Ahwere, nude also and regally beyond self-consciousness, was beside him.
Shay had pulled himself aboard the royal yacht and was waiting in the bow with a coiled line. One end of the line was tied to the support of the forward steering oar. The bosun was eyeing the sternpost of the other craft doubtfully, since it too was made of wax.
Samlor stepped down into the wax boat, supporting his weight on his arms as long as possible so that his feet touched rather than slammed the planking. The wax slipped beneath the pressure of his toes. The men treading water to keep boat and dock from smashing together cursed as the hull wobbled and thrust them beneath the surface.
Ahwere followed with the natural grace of a gull banking through the air. Samlor reached a hand out to her, but he found the best help he could provide was to lean toward the other side of the high-floating vessel so that it did not tilt so much.
"Nanefer, are you sure. .?" called Shay from the bow of the other vessel. The bosun's concern for the situation had driven normal honorifics from his vocabulary.
"Yes, yes," Samlor agreed, making his way cautiously to the stern between the lumpish pairs of wax «crewmen» with fragile oars in their ill-formed hands. The steering sweep in the stern was becoming increasingly transparent as full sunlight raked through it, evidence that the wax was softening and would soon begin to sag.
"Throw me the rope!" Samlor ordered as the bosun hesitated.
"Sir!" Shay muttered and tossed the hawser expertly to his superior. The coil opened as it flicked across the water, so that Samlor caught only the final loop; just enough to take a turn around the wax sternpost and bind the vessels together.
Ahwere hugged herself, not in modesty but as if she stood naked in a cold rain. The sunstruck hull shifted greasily beneath Samlor's toes. He bound off the hawser with a face as emotionless as the clear sky above them.
"Jump out now, Shay," Samlor called to the man in the other vessel.
"Nanefer, I-"
"Jump out!" Samlor cried in a voice thin with fear. "On your life!"
Shay nodded and obeyed by leaping like a baboon to the quay where sailors fended the vessel from the stone with poles.
The wax boat wobbled. Its sternposts started to give as the current put strain on the hawser. The six wax oarsmen bent forward, then leaned back against the drag of their oars. Ahwere cried out as the vessel surged away from the quay despite the inertia of the sand-laden boat it towed.
The sternpost held. There were real planks beneath Samlor's feet as he took the steering oar.
The oarsmen were no longer crude parodies but humans in all but color and their stony lack of expression. They stroked at a measured rate, plunging their blades so deep in the water that real oars would have fractured under the strain. The wax shafts held, and the waxen torsos bent and lifted, driving the linked vessels against the current.
The oarsmen's faces were turned toward Samlor by necessity of their position, but the blank eyes paid him no attention.
Ahwere stood near the bow, facing her husband. She was afraid but no longer crying. He had thought when he asked her to join him that she would prove steadfast where no one else could be trusted. Now, looking into the love in her eyes, he knew he was right.
The crowd on the quay were watching the vessels, but the few who tried to walk along the bank beside them were stopped at once by the swamp. Reed bracts waved sluggishly in a breeze that did not touch the sun-hammered surface of the water.
They had reached midstream. The Wall of Tatenen was a black stroke between the river and the vegetation beyond it on the starboard side.
Samlor leaned against the steering oar. The starboard oarsmen feathered their blades for the space of three mechanically-powerful strokes by the wax figures on the port side.
The vessel's bow came around while the towed yacht eased closer, slackening the hawser between them.
All oars striking together, the wax boat drove for the bank. The hawser thrummed taut and the yacht unwillingly obeyed its pull.
Samlor let go of the steering oar, needless now that they were committed whether he would or no. He walked forward, between the wax men who cared nothing for him or for anything, and put his arms around his wife.
The face in the middle of the stone wall was beginning to blaze. It was already brighter than the sun, and its color was the blue of lightning crashing in the heart of a storm. The linked vessels were stroking toward it as fast as a man could walk on level ground.
Ahwere put her arm around Samlor's waist so that they stood side by side, watching the visage of Tatenen grow into a glaring tunnel that pierced the stone and the swamp and all the universe beyond.
They plunged into the tunnel. Hell roared around them.
Where the wax prow should have flattened on stone, the vessel bucked. Samlor heard Ahwere murmur, "Nanefer-" and her arm tightened around his bare waist, but they needed one another for physical support for the moment. It was no more than that, support, without a hint of panic.
The blue flames licking from every side were as real as the angry light they cast, but they spread and dodged away from an invisible barrier. Neither the wax boat, its crew, nor the two naked humans clutching one another in the bow were touched by the snarling blaze.
Samlor glanced behind them. The royal yacht pitched and yawed like a living thing which the flames were tormenting. The railings were beginning to scorch, while the towline blackened except for orange sparks where tufts of rope flashed into miniature fires themselves.
"How long-" Ahwere said, forming great syllables so that they would be heard over the echoing furnace-roar of the flames.
Before she could complete the sentence, the wax vessel lurched again and surged from the tunnel into surroundings which resembled the fire only in that both were hellish.
It was a swamp, but the sky above was so overcast that the noon sun was a red disk. It was nothing like the landscape anywhere along the River Napata.
Ahwere's mouth was open with the words she did not need to speak. The mouth of a beast standing belly-deep in ten feet of muck opened and blatted at them in surprise.
Samlor felt his wife's arm clamp around his waist, but her fear was only reflexive. She thrust her jaw out as she faced the monstrous head that swung closer. Samlor's mind was reminding itself that they could not be harmed-not here, not yet-so long as they remained in the wax boat.
It would have been very easy to hurl himself over the side in a mad attempt to escape. Ahwere's warm presence kept him calm where intellect could only have controlled him.