Dagger

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 u

Samlor did not need that to remind him of the bitterness of death.

"Farewell, my son," Ahwere whispered.

The lid of the i

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.

The Book of Tatenen would see to that.

The bosun had been waiting for Samlor. "Ah, didn't want t' bother you while you was thinkin', sir," he said. "But 1 figured we'd tie up along the bank about now." He would not meet his master's eyes.

"We'll go on," Samlor retorted sharply. "I want to reach the capital before-" He broke off, unwilling to say,

180

"Before my father hears of his grandson's death from someone else."

"Yessir, yessir," agreed Shay, bobbing his head. "It was only-the wind what made us heel the other, the other bloody dusk. Didn't know for sure what you'd want."

No one but Samlor had seen the crocodile, not even Ahwere. But his fingers now touched gouges which had not been in the railing when the yacht first sailed back from the Temple of Tatenen. It had not been wind that flung Merib to his death-nor had it been chance.

Shay strode forward, bawling his orders. Still standing, Samlor raised the crystal to his forehead again and became all life in the cosmos as color drained from the sky above the River Napata. There was nothing more dangerous near the yacht than the gnats which twilight drew from the reed beds anywhere. He would continue checking all the way to the capital.

If the gods sent another messenger, Samlor would blast it with enough violence to pay in a small way for what had happened to Merib.

"We'll sail through the night," Samlor said as he seated himself again beside Ahwere. "It'll be safe, and we'll-"

The worm came over the starboard rail behind Ahwere and snatched her into the water before she had time to scream. Samlor screamed instead.

"Oh, she's jumped, "she's jumped!" he heard the nursemaid crying as he commanded the cosmos through the book. "Oh, the grief of her poor darling son!"

All the forces in the cosmos balanced on a point, the Book of Tatenen and the mind of Samlor hil Samt. The currents that rolled Ahwere's body, the gurgle of air still trapped in her lungs-the minuscule scrape of sediment across her sightless eyes-all were his to know and to change.

The worm that seized her with its blue-glowing snout did not exist in the present cosmos.

Ahwere flashed back onto her couch with a slap of sodden garments. Only the dim light and confusion kept her reappearance from throwing the excited crewmen into blind panic.

She stirred, and for a moment Samlor thought he had been mistaken. He embraced Ah were while the nurse babbled and Shay gave orders to bring the vessel around to where he thought someone was still in the water.

Ahwere's eyes blazed blue when she opened them. Samlor's mouth drew back in a rictus of horror-and hope that still denied reality.

"Rejoice, my husband, my only love," said Ahwere's body. "Soon the cosmos will be in balance again."

"Who's overboard?" Shay demanded. "What's happened?"

A late-returning marsh hawk began to screech in dismal satisfaction.

CHAPTER 22

"SHE DIDN'T KILL herself," Samlor muttered. He had washed his hands a score of times since Ahwere's interment, but his mind told him his skin still was scented with the camphor and incense of her embalming. "They sent the worm to take her. The gods."

"Well," said Shay uncomfortably, "We'll be back soon. The palace should be in sight any time now."

Samlor looked down at the sun-bronzed water curling past their hull. "But I'd killed it. Though I suppose it was never alive."

"So it couldn't be killed," said the bosun, making conversation because his master demanded conversation to take his mind off the past-and the future. "Well, the gods set all our terms of life, sir. Yourselves as well as the like of-" he nodded forward " – me 'n the boys."