Dagger

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 tu

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, pi

Or not, as the case might be.

The painted leather over the wooden daggersheath had emerged black and tattered from the tu

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 tu

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.

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 u

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.