When he turned again to battle the worm for its hoard, a part of his mind kept remembering that he and his wife could return now with no cost or further danger.
Samlor's own mind and emotions jarred often against those of the royal prince whom he now was, but in one respect their personalities were stamped from the same die: they had not come this far in order to turn back.
The worm let him approach, angling its head as he drew nearer. The height of its neck did not change, so that it became a tower threatening him more at every step.
The crater floor felt dry but neither hot nor cold. It was adequate footing so long as he remembered to watch his balance-which not even the gods themselves could do in the midst of battle.
Was the worm a god?
It struck when he was ten feet away from it, so close that Samlor would have begun his rush when his foot next left the ground.
Nanefer's reflexes were not what they should have been, but this place permitted him to interpose his unnaturally-light shield to the creature's hammerblow. The blue glow of the worm's snout struck just below the upper rim and clung there like a lodestone to steel. Samlor's legs flew out from under him, but he used the torque of the creature's impact to help swing his own counterblow.
The axe cut helve deep. Samlor felt the crunch of a hard surface, though the worm's body rippled like free-flowing water. When he dragged the blade free, the edges of the long cut sprang away from the wound and made it gape still wider. The interior glistened without color or definite features.
The worm lifted. Samlor had been thrown onto his hips and shoulders, bruised but not seriously injured. His left hand held the shield in a deathgrip so that the creature picked him up as it recovered itself.
A loop of the worm's body wrapped itself about his legs and began to flow upward. The creature was glass-smooth and as powerful as a boulder rolling downhill.
Samlor cut at the worm's neck. His grip on the shield anchored him, but the blow was awkward and crossed the previous wound at a slant. Again the flesh gaped when the axe crushed its way through the surface.
The coil was around his thighs. He felt the flesh tear over the points of his hips. Only the thickness of the worm's body prevented it from crushing his bones. The ring of pressure slipped higher, and a second loop wound itself over Samlor's ankles.
He chopped at the creature's neck with hysterical fury which made up for lack of strength or skill in the physical arts of war. His vision blurred as the upper coil squeezed against his diaphragm, but he did not need to aim the blows. He was swinging at the full length of his arm, and the worm's hold froze it and the man into the same relationship for every stroke.
A jerk of the worm's head snatched the shield away and flung it upward as paired images which merged and spread and merged again while Samlor tried to follow their tumbling arc.
He didn't realize how high he was until the coils dropped him. He was as limp as a sack of millet when he fell, so exhaustion saved him from serious injury when he hit the ground. The worm had lifted him thirty feet in the air-if air was the word-and he would surely have broken bones on the glass surface if he had been tense.
Ahwere's touch more than her strength helpe'd Samlor rise. Her right hand still held the bronze shovel with which she had vainly battered the worm's flank. Her face held no emotion, but that coldness and the fierceness with which she tugged at her husband's shoulders showed that she feared she was trying to lift a corpse.
The worm's body wobbled in curves like those of surf on a low shoreline. Samlor hugged his wife with his free hand as he staggered to his feet. The burning sensation on his left hand meant either blisters or skin stripped when the worm's convulsions tore loose the shield for anything human strength could do.
The creature's head-the first two or three feet of a body which was the same diameter throughout-hung by a thread of glittering skin. It did not move when the body thrashed, and the glow that had licked across the end was gone.
Motioning Ahwere to stay back, Samlor stepped to the worm. He was having trouble breathing because of the way his ribs were bruised, but that was only one more pain in a body which hurt all over. He had open skin on his right elbow and left knee, from friction with the worm's coils or the way he sprawled to the ground.
He heard his blood pounding but not the rasp of air being dragged into his lungs. Everything else about the way he breathed in this place was normal-including the way his chest hurt when he did it-but there was no air.
The only thing in this place which mattered was the Book of Tatenen-and the fact that the book's guardian was dead. Samlor stepped close to the worm; paused as he measured the distance; and brought the axe' down on the skin which still joined the two sections of the creature.
He used both hands for the blow. Powdered glass and shards of the axeblade sparked away from the impact, numbing Samlor's hands and leaving a white scar on the crater's floor while the worm's motion settled into a gelatinous trembling in both parts of its body.
Ahwere touched his arm from behind. Samlor threw down the useless axe helve before he turned to embrace his wife again.
All he had to do now was to retrieve the book.
When the worm died, its body uncoiled into a sprawl dwarfed by the size of the crater. The rim, jagged as the fangs of a wolf-fish, gleamed beneath the rays of a sun which had remained precisely overhead throughout the battle.
The gray iron box which the worm had encircled until it died was now visible.
Ahwere grabbed Samlor by the arm and turned him with a strength which surprised him as much as what she was doing. There was a scream on her face. His eyes were already looking beyond her.
The two pieces of the worm had shivered into contact. A blue glare that hurt Samlor's eyes was spluttering between the ragged edges of the creature's skin. Where the arcs touched, they welded the portions together as if Samlor had not shattered his axe in making sure the separation was complete.
The worm's tail moved in a series of water-smooth curves, covering the box again. The head lifted, its tip glowing lambently as it searched, then focused on the pair of humans.
Samlor drew his dagger with fingers made clumsy by despair, but the instinct with which the prince stabbed hilt deep into the nearest loop of the body was one which the caravan master could applaud. Cutting the head off had done nothing permanent, but perhaps there were vital organs somewhere else in the creature's length.
Not that there was so much as a hope of finding a vital spot in a squirming hundred feet of body.
A loop of the worm knocked Samlor down and slithered across him. The coils couldn't encircle a victim until the head had a grip to anchor them.
Samlor let the creature's own motion draw the blade clear in a long gash. He stabbed again. The steel gleamed with clear ichor. There was no resistance to its passage after the point dimpled the metallic skin.
Samlor pulled himself from beneath the slick weight of the worm's coils and the creature's head slammed onto the ground again. The blue/violet flicker of its snout burned like the heart of a glacier.
The shock left him with no other feeling in the arm he had thrown out to meet the impact. The worm's body cast itself around his ankles with the accuracy of a cattleman's rope.
Blue sparks played dazzlingly across the worm as the long gash began to arc itself closed.
Samlor screamed soundlessly. His weapon tore along the creature's flesh, so deeply the hilt bobbed against the skin like a shearwater's beak scoring the sea.
The blade parted the worm as easily as it would the pulp of a ripe melon-and the top of the cut began to regrow in blue arcs that made the hair stand upon Samlor's head. A loop was crushing his knees together. The touch of the worm's snout drove icy needles through his left arm and into his face and chest.