Captain Brentworth stared at him.
“You’re mad. We can just turn around and head back the way we came. We missed a turning or a secret door. The Arabs probably fed us hashish or something. It’ll wear off.”
Neville’s lips twisted in an expression that wasn’t quite a grin.
“Have you looked back the way we came?” he said.
Captain Brentworth did. They all did, and Jenny didn’t know whether to be surprised or terrified at this latest revelation.
The corridor was gone. What stretched behind them was more of the verdant Nile countryside. Gazelle frolicked in the distance. A lion coughed, and the gazelle scattered. Heron, ibis, ducks, cranes, and countless other water birds foraged. Frogs peeped from damp hollows. Dragonflies caught Ra’s light and shattered it into rainbows in the prism of their wings.
“We’re here,” Neville said, “and I’m no philosopher to say whether this is real or not. I do know my foot is wet where I stepped in a puddle, and that these flowers have scent. That makes it real enough for me.”
“So,” Jenny interjected, “we can either sit here and hope that we’ve all been drugged and that it will wear off, or we can go with Ra.”
“Ra,” Stephen said, his eyes shining in a delicate balance between terror and excitement. “I don’t think we’ll get a second chance. If Ra fails in his voyage, darkness falls forever.”
“You sound like you believe this,” Lady Audrey said, not mockingly, more as one who collects information.
“It’s odd,” Stephen said, “but it’s the only game in town.”
“I’ll go,” Brentworth said, “but I must have a rifle. I’ve read the myths. I know that monsters come after this boat. If the boat’s real, well, the monsters might be, too.”
Jenny knew the others were waiting on her decision. “All right,” she said. “We have a spare or two. Lady Cheshire, do you want your muff pistol or a bigger gun?”
“I’ll take the pistol,” the lady replied. “But the monsters were kept away by spells, not weapons.”
“If you know any spells,” Jenny said, realizing that what she had meant as a joke was coming out far too sincerely, “then brush up on them fast.”
“And Mrs. Syms?”
Lady Cheshire started to reply, but Sarah Syms turned and gave a beatific smile.
“I think sailing on the river would be lovely, dear. We can talk to that nice man, Ray. He seems to know so much.”
Rashid tugged on Captain Brentworth’s sleeve, gesturing frantically toward the boat. When they turned to look, Ra was bending to untie the line from the shore.
“I can wait no longer,” Ra said almost apologetically. “Already Apophis will have had time to ready his minions. Do you sail with me or remain?”
Jenny looked at her uncle.
“I’ll go,” she said.
The others nodded. Jenny bent and scooped up Mozelle, who was busily stalking another butterfly. The kitten never seemed to get disheartened at her failure to catch one, and Jenny grinned.
“Come along, little Persistence. We’re going for a ride.”
21
Magic
Ra let them put their gear aboard, and Neville was grateful. However real or unreal this was, it seemed wise to keep the water, weapons, and food near at hand.
Once they were aboard, the boat seemed quite a bit larger than it had from the shore. Its slenderness was deceptive. Toward the middle it was wide enough for two ranks of rowers, one on either side, with ample room for someone to walk between the rower’s seats and the central cabin.
A steering platform dominated the stern. The rudder was attached to a long pole that angled out of the water to rest on a high frame. The entire structure made a triangle whose base was the platform itself. The steersman stood within that triangle to operate the rudder by means of a pole that extended in front of him. A second platform, this one with high sides, dominated the front of the vessel.
Ra said, “My place is in the center. If I am pulled over the side and so destroyed by my enemies, there is no cause for the voyage to continue, for in that moment all will be lost. Do any of you know how to steer such a vessel?”
Captain Brentworth surprised Neville by promptly volunteering.
“I do. I’ve sailed the Nile and the Thames both. Will we be using the sail or the oars?”
“The sail,” Ra replied, “unless Apophis’s magic steals the wind.”
“Right,” Captain Brentworth said. “I’ll just go back and have a look at that rudder.”
Ra nodded. “I will direct the sail from the center of the boat, but I could use an assistant. We will also need someone on the front platform to watch for obstacles and probe for the best channels.”
Neville wanted to volunteer, but he knew his bad ankle would make his balance chancy. Eddie’s arm disqualified him as well, and Rashid could not call out warning. Neville glanced over at Jenny, who looked as if she had reached the same conclusion he had.
“I’ll do it,” she said, “though I may need a bit of coaching.”
“It shall be yours,” Ra promised.
Mozelle seemed to approve of this, for she gave a chirping meow and leapt into the god’s lap, ignoring the threat implied in the curved beak.
Trust a cat to find the warmest seat in the house, Neville thought.
Rashid grinned at the kitten, and mimed to Ra his own willingness to help with the sails. Mischief leapt from his perch around the youth’s neck and climbed the mast.
“The rest of you,” Ra said, “must stand ready and alert to repel Apophis and his minions. There will be danger. They are determined, and losing this battle night after night has not made them less assured, only more certain that this time the victory will be theirs.”
“I’m willing,” Neville said with more confidence than he felt, “and I’m sure the others are, too. Stephen and Eddie, how about you taking the starboard? Lady Cheshire and I shall man port.”
“Starboard,” Ra commented with a slight, thoughtful smile. “What a lovely word. Now, Rashid, be ready to loose that line and angle the sail to catch the wind. Eddie, Stephen, push us away from the bank.”
The wind caught the sails almost instantly, and with unimaginable smoothness, the Boat of Millions of Years was gliding up the sparkling waters of this impossible Nile.
Jenny stood up on the bow platform, holding the long, slender pole with which she was supposed to fend them off obstacles and probe for the channel. What she wanted to be holding was her rifle, but Ra had so thoroughly disapproved of her failure to follow custom that she’d had to settle for propping her weapon against the ornately painted and carved rails that bounded the platform.
After bending over them a couple of times to check the water level, Jenny began to understand that these railings were as functional as her boots. They braced her neatly, keeping her from pitching over the side when the wind-driven boat made one of the many unexpected jerks that left her splashed with spray.
Jenny suspected she was going to be black and blue from bumping into the rails before she got a feel for the boat’s motion. She quickly learned to listen for Ra’s commands to loosen or tighten the sail, and guess what they would mean to her.
The beautiful shore where they had boarded the boat quickly gave way to a less inviting landscape. Towering cliffs loomed over the boat, making Jenny shrink into herself at the thought that someone up there might drop rocks on them. However, they passed through the cliffs without incident, and found themselves in the midst of a broad, wide stretch of desert. This changed without warning to a swampy canyon.
Jenny had to cry out warnings about a few shoals, shove the boat off a clump of reeds, but so far she had seen nothing sinister or malicious—unless you counted the random and erratic shifts in the surrounding terrain. She was beginning to wonder if Apophis and his minions had gone wherever Ra’s usual crew had vanished off to—and was wondering where that might be—when she was jerked back to full attention by a strange si
ght.
The blue of the Nile’s water was suddenly interrupted by scores, then hundreds of tiny v-shaped ripples that caught Ra’s light in a truly beautiful fashion. Jenny, however, had ridden white water before, enough to feel instinctive fear alarm at anything interrupting the river’s smooth surface.
“Rocks or something ahead,” she cried out.
“Reduce sail,” Ra commanded instantly.
Jenny had hardly sensed the decrease in their forward motion before the boat was in among the first of the v-shaped ripples. Now she saw what they truly were, and her voice rose, despite her best efforts not to scream.
“Snakes! It’s not rocks, it’s snakes! Hundreds and hundreds of them. They’re trying to slither up the sides… Ra, make the boat go faster!”
Ra had already done what he could to increase their speed, but now the Boat of Millions of Years was proving curiously sluggish in its response.
Eddie said, his voice tight with confusion, “They look like horned vipers—but horned vipers don’t swim, do they?”
Ra answered, “This place is like and unlike the places you have known. Both differences and similarities may be your doom.”
Jenny didn’t need to be told this. The vipers looked far too purposeful to be natural. She beat her pole against the sides of the bow, crushing and dislodging the snakes that slithered up the sides in defiance of gravity and nature. She heard Mrs. Syms shriek as a snake flopped onto the deck near her.
Uncle Neville called out, “The rudder’s fouled with the blasted things. That’s what’s slowing us down. There must be hundreds of them. Brentworth, can you haul the rudder out of the water? I’ll try to knock them off. The rest of you, grab an oar or something and scrape.”
The steering mechanism groaned audibly as Captain Brentworth heaved the rudder—actually dual blades resembling paired long oars—from the water. Jenny glanced back and saw that the rudder blades were lost beneath a writhing mass of shining gray-green serpents. She gagged in horror and revulsion, then went back to pushing the vipers back off the prow.
“Don’t anyone get bitten!” Eddie shouted, his unnecessary warning showing how unnerved he was.
Stephen and Lady Cheshire were too busy fending off snakes to respond. Mrs. Syms was reciting what sounded like a panicked prayer. Mischief chattered indignantly from so high up on the mast that he looked like a peculiar pennant.
Prayers won’t do much good, Jenny thought in increasing panic. I wish there were something I could shoot!
The dull thudding of a stick hitting something soft but solid told her that Uncle Neville was still at work freeing the rudder. Captain Brentworth cursed a few times, doubtless when a snake dropped too close.
Gradually, the boat began picking up speed, leaving the vipers behind. Jenny saw with relief that the snakes clinging to the bow were dropping off as the bow sliced through the waters.
“We’re getting clear of them!” she sang out in relief.
“Those were only Apophis’s littlest grandchildren,” Ra warned. “There will be more and worse.”
More and worse came in the form of a flotilla of crocodiles that blocked the river with a fanged, tail-lashing log jam. The boat ran over the first few, but began to bog down as the mass of reptilian bodies grew more and more dense.
Jenny raised her rifle to fire, but lowered it almost immediately. Killing one crocodile would do nothing except add an inert form to the mass. Jarring vibrations came up through the hull, as if the boat were being battered by hundreds of fists. Jenny had a horrid vision of thousands of drowned sailors beating against the boat, pulling themselves arm over rotting, water-logged arm onto the deck. She stifled a cry of dismay.
Ra, as if reading her thoughts, said “The crocodiles batter the hull with the power of their tails. They will break through if we let them. The hours of the night are yet young, but Apophis has power here.”
Stephen called out, “Ra, can you heat the water enough that the crocodiles will have to get away or die? I mean, they’re reptiles, and reptiles can’t regulate their own body heat.”
Ra considered. “I would be in danger if I went near the side of the boat.”
“You’ll be in more danger if they sink us!” Stephen retorted, sounding more upset and angry than Jenny had ever heard him before.
And toward a god, too, she thought, a trace hysterically. How fear makes heroes of us all.
“You are correct, Stephen,” Ra said, setting Mozelle aside as he rose. “Guard me well, and I will do what I can.”
“I’ll take a turn on the sheets so we can get away as soon as the crocodiles back off,” Neville said. “Lady Cheshire, keep a careful eye on our side of the boat.”
“I assure you,” the lady replied, shifting her grip on the heavy oar she’d been using as a club. “I shall.”
Jenny had already decided that beating at the crocodiles with her steering pole would only break the pole. She equipped herself with an oar and watched Ra, ready in case the crocodiles went after him.
“Sobek’s children,” the god called, leaning dangerously close to the thrashing fanged mass. “I am Ra who strokes you with his arms when you sleep upon the sun-heated river banks. I am Ra who warms the mud in which you bury your eggs. Bite me not, for I will make the waters warm for you, and give you my caress.”
The crocodiles seemed to understand—or maybe they were just intimidated by a man who glowed. Certainly, none touched the hand Ra slipped into the waters, though a few came close and sniffed.
Jenny felt her heart flutter with sympathetic fear.
Initially, the crocodiles clustered around the warmth emanating from Ra, but they soon swam back. The water around Ra’s hand began to bubble, then boil. Neville set the sail and the vessel picked up speed, the Boat of Millions of Years cutting through a seething cauldron.
Sweat dripped off Jenny’s face and soaked her shirt.
What was it that Madame always said? “Women don’t sweat, they glow”? Well then, I’m glowing almost as intensely as Ra right now.
Jenny mounted the forward watch platform again. A channel had opened through the mass of crocodiles. She called directions back to Captain Brentworth. Apparently, the crocodiles hadn’t damaged the steering oars, for the boat responded smoothly. Behind her she could hear Uncle Neville turning his post back over to Ra. The god thanked him, then said in his penetrating, level tones:
“Very nice work, Robert. If you hadn’t kept the rudder blades out of the reach of the crocodiles’ teeth and tails, everything I did would not have altered our situation a whit.”
It took Jenny a moment to remember that “Robert” was Captain Brentworth’s Christian name, and hearing him so addressed by someone other than Lady Cheshire made the man suddenly more human.
She only says his name like it’s some sort of caress, a reminder that they’re intimate. Ra says it like he’s talking to a friend. I guess in his eyes we’re all equally worthy.
The thought made Jenny uneasy. It dissolved the remaining barriers between Uncle Neville’s companions and Lady Cheshire’s party, merging them more deeply into that uncomfortable alliance that had begun on the banks of this impossible Nile.
We’re not going to be able to go back to what we were, she thought, but I don’t know if I can trust them. After all, we made up to them, not them to us.
Aware that she was being unforgiving, Jenny concentrated on watching the waters. She heard Stephen say, happiness and relief evident in his voice: “Well, that solves our problems, doesn’t it? Nothing will be able to get near to us with the river so hot.”
“The heat will dissipate,” Ra said, “nor can I renew it, for if I did, I would be too drained to resist Apophis when he comes.”
“Oh,” Stephen said, his tone flat with dismay. “Then maybe we shouldn’t have tired you out.”
“If you had not implored my assistance,” Ra said, “we would not have escaped that coil. Yet the next coil is yours to untangle.”
“Forgive me, Ra
,” Jenny asked, her gaze alert for the least ripple on the surface of the river, “but how do your usual guardians manage? I mean, Apophis loses every night, so there must be a way to stop him.”
Do I really believe this? she thought, fighting down her fear. Am I going crazy like Mrs. Syms? I must be if I can talk like this, but I saw those crocodiles. They left teeth marks on my pole. I can still see them. I bashed the snakes when they were trying to come aboard. Should I deny the evidence of my senses, or my sanity?
Unaware of—or ignoring—her internal struggle, Ra answered Jenny’s question.
“My companions count among their number Thoth, Isis, and Hathor, all of whom are knowledgeable in the ways of magic. They use spells to placate, deceive, and drive away those who would stop my voyaging through the night river. Sometimes they summon assistance from our friends.”
Mrs. Syms spoke dreamily, “I remember some of those spells. I tried to learn the ones for driving away snakes. I can’t stand snakes. I tried it just now, but I can’t say for sure it worked. Still, it was amusing to try. My teacher told me that the first thing you had to do was learn the spell that enables you to do magic. Heka. That’s the Egyptian word, right, Mr. Ray?”
“ Heka too sails with me,” Ra responded, “and he is not least among my protectors.”
Lady Cheshire turned to Mrs. Syms. “Sarah, do you remember that spell—the one that enables a person to do magic?”
Jenny recognized the tight urgency in the other woman’s voice. Lady Cheshire was also fighting the sense that all of this was unreal, fighting it with the fear that it was—at least somehow—real, and that if this journey were not made on the terms Ra had set forth, they all would die.
Sarah Syms answered happily, “Pretty well. I recited it over and over again, because I wanted to make the magic come to me. Not just for snakes, you understand, but snakes seemed like a good place to start.”
The Buried Pyramid Page 40