CHAPTER 17
THE WAX BOAT slid between edges of glass so close that had the oars been in mid-stroke, the oarblades on both sides would have been sliced away. Ah were's hand and arm were firm on Samlor's waist, but where their hips pressed together he could feel the rest of her body trembling.
So was his own.
The wax boat and its towed companion had entered a bowl the size of a great city. Its shallow surface was as smooth as warm grease.
The wax boat pulled down the slope at its regular speed. The yacht slid easily behind it.
Something waited at the bottom.
The other craters were broken and leveled by the frequency with which they had been battered by later fellows. Smooth floors shattered; crisp rims pulverized and recongealed into another crater's floor; and the same repeated a hundred times again so that the surfaces had the jumbled formlessness of an ash pit.
The crater which the wax vessel had entered under its own direction was greater than any other in the landscape around it, and no later impact had disturbed its perfection. The floor was marked with pressure waves, undetectable in themselves but marked by the multiple dazzling images of the sun which they reflected.
The thing in the center of the bowl moved restively. Samlor could not be sure of its shape until it raised its head and began slowly to uncoil.
"What…" whispered Ahwere, suppressing the rest of the question and almost the word itself so as not to show fear before her husband.
The mind of Samlor warmed for the first time to this woman who was neither his sister nor his wife. She knew that it was all right to be afraid-but that one must never admit it…
"Only a worm," said the body that was Samlor's for this lifetime. "We'll take the book from it very soon now."
Very soon now.
The distance from the rim to the center of the bowl was deceptive, for there was nothing to provide scale except the worm. Its apparent size increased while the crater rim slowly diminished over the stern of the vessel.
Ahwere took her arm away from her husband and tried to wipe off sweat against her own body. She was not successful, and the absence of her touch chilled Samlor more than did the perspiration evaporating from his suddenly-uncovered skin.
Both ends of the worm's body were briefly visible as coils flowed across one another like quicksilver. They were indistinguishable until the head rose ten feet and the end cocked over at a right angle aligned with the oncoming vessel.
A blue circle glowed where the worm's mouth should have been. Samlor expected to feel something, a blast or a tingling, but the glow only trembled up and down through indigo and colors beyond the spectrum.
"I think," said Ahwere in a voice as emotionless as that of a housewife measuring cloth, "that it must be a hundred feet long, my husband."
Very close, thought Samlor whose mind was jumping with the emotions of a prince who had not faced physical death on a regular basis. And about the diameter of a man's torso-the torso of Samlor hil Samt, and not that of the royal body he rode now.
He wondered what would happen to him when the worm killed Nanefer. "There is a price. .," Ahwere's ghost had warned them in the tomb.
The wax boat swung from its direct course when it was three lengths from the waiting guardian. The worm's head rotated on the column of its smooth, gray neck as it tracked them. Samlor looked back at the blue glow, but the woman kept her eyes straight forward as if she were unaware of the creature sharing this desolation with them. Aloud she said, "If this is the realm of the gods, then…"
The wax oarsmen paused in midstroke. Their backs straightened slowly, the way grass stems return to vertical after being trodden down by a bare foot. The boat drifted to a halt, settling until it rested on the crater floor as if it were no more than it had been-a toy of wax, crewed by waxen lumps.
Behind them, the royal yacht slid to its own resting place. Its greater inertia brought the wooden bowsprit almost into contact with the wax stern.
Samlor hugged his wife, then kissed her fiercely. "Not until I call you," he said. "Don't take any chances until I call you."
As he spoke, Samlor realized what Nanefer had hidden from his wife and suppressed so far below his mind's surface that only now was it clear: Nanefer knew what he needed to gain the book. But he didn't know why he was bringing the paraphernalia-and one companion-which were with him now.
The reason for the weapons was clear enough.
Samlor jumped to the ground, then steadied himself on the rail of the wax boat as his bare feet started to slip out from under him. The glass surface forgave no imbalance, and his body did not move as it ought to. He didn't weigh what he should, though he hadn't noticed the difference until he left the boat.
The worm watched, rotating its head to follow him as he walked carefully to the yacht and the equipment aboard it. Half the creature's length was in loose coils and the pillared neck, but the rest of the worm was a tight, shimmering mound in the center of the crater.
Samlor hopped aboard the yacht, aided by his lessened weight (though the change made him clumsy). He began to don his armor, a task made more difficult by the damage it had received in the tunnel of fire.
The helmet was now useless. It was a cap of bull's hide, and the leather had shrunk and warped under the kisses of the blue flame. Samlor tossed it aside, less regretful than was the prince whose eyes were for the moment his eyes. It hadn't been an impressive piece of battle armor to the caravan master anyway; though Heqt alone knew what would be useful against the worm.
The shield was a solid piece, though of unfamiliar construction. The back reinforcement of thin boards had cracked, but its metal rim continued to stretch the facing of thick crocodile hide firmly in place. The bony scutes weren't quite as effective as metal, but Samlor was glad to heft the shield by its bronze handgrip and measure the worm again over the rim.
Instead of a sword, he had an axe with a thick crescent blade, pinned to the shaft at both horns as well as in the center. The blade was a foot long across the horns, almost half the total length of the weapon. It didn't balance as well as a sword of the length and weight, nor did it have the penetration of a narrow-bladed axe which concentrated its impact on an edge a few fingers broad. It would have to do.
Or not, as the case might be.
The painted leather over the wooden daggersheath had emerged black and tattered from the tunnel, but it and the belt to which it was fastened would serve. Samlor slid the blade out to check it and be sure that the warped sheath wasn't binding.
The watered steel blade would have brought a curse to his lips-if the lips had not been for Nanefer to rule.
Well, it was a good dagger, thought Samlor as his body buckled the belt around its bare waist and felt its tender skin protest at the feel of seared leather. Tunics would never have survived the tunnel, though he would trade the shield now for a simple linen kirtle. The fact of being clothed might help him more than the shield's physical protection.
Armed and as prepared as he could be, Samlor turned to step from the yacht's bow and collided with his wife.
They had spoken normally on the vessel that brought them here, but nowhere else in this desolation was there sound. Ahwere's mouth worked, blurting a tearful apology for being in the way, but the words were only in her eyes and her husband's heart.
Samlor held Ahwere as she backed away, clasping her with his elbows because his hands were filled with weapons. "My love, my-" he murmured, but his voice did not ring even within the chambers of his skull. This hellish place!
But he had known it would not be a place for men.
He kissed Ahwere's hair, the lobe of her ear, and last her tear-wet lips.