"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."
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 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.
"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
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."
The eyes closed.
Samlor did not catch his wife when she slumped to the floor, because his own limbs were trembling too badly.
CHAPTER 21
"THERE'S SOMETHING BIG going past on the surface," thought the carp as they snuffled the mud near the bank, "but it doesn't matter to us."
Lesser fish formed lesser thoughts, while birds bouncing among the reedtops chirped of food and the day's ending. Lizards stalked insects while a snake moved with glacial slowness toward a frog.
There were no crocodiles anywhere near the royal yacht.
Samlor lowered the Book of Tatenen with a sigh.
Ah were had been watching him from her couch. She touched her husband's hand and smiled, though her expression was almost lost in the dusk. Samlor squeezed her hand fiercely and kissed her, but he did not put away the crystal.
"I need to talk to Shay," he murmured as he stood and ducked from beneath the awning. The mast creaked as the fitful breeze strengthened. Tonight the sky was cloudless and the wind would stay fair all the way to the capital.