The Buried Pyramid (59 page)

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.”

“Can you tell us?” Lady Cheshire said, a trace impatiently.

“I suppose,” Mrs. Syms looked vague and puzzled. “I don’t know why you need to know, though. There aren’t any snakes here anymore. We left them all behind.”

“They might come back,” Lady Cheshire persisted. Glancing back, Jenny saw she was holding her fists very tightly clenched. Fresh blood stained her bandaged arm.

I bet she’d like to slap Mrs. Syms, but doesn’t dare. I always thought Audrey Cheshire was a slapper.

“That’s true,” Mrs. Syms agreed. “Snakes like water, and Egypt has lots of snakes, and there’s lots of water here.”

“We need to learn the spell that will make it possible for us to do magic,” Lady Cheshire said. “You said that came first.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Syms looked pleased now. Her hobby was being respected. “It helps to have an ankh. The gods always carried those and used them to direct their magic.”

“No problem,” Stephen said hastily. “Here.”

He grabbed a stiff piece of rope from the pile of supplies that had been heaped on the deck, doubled it over, leaving a loop at the top, then tied a second piece of rope over the first to secure the loop and form a cross.

“It isn’t very beautiful,” Mrs. Syms said dubiously, turning it over in her hand when Stephen handed it to her. “The one my teacher gave me—sold me, really—was carved from cedar and had little bits of gold leaf stuck on it.”

Ra spoke. “Rope will do.”

Stephen, who had been busily manufacturing an ankh for Lady Cheshire, looked at the god.

“Will it, sir?”

“It will.”

Stephen was obviously eager to ask more, but Lady Cheshire shushed him with a meaningful glance at the water. Stephen, reminded that this exercise was not wholly academic, fell silent.

“Now, Sarah,” Lady Cheshire said, her tone wheedling rather than commanding. “Tell me this spell.”

Extending her arm stiffly downward in an attitude familiar from numerous tomb paintings, Sarah Syms held her rope ankh at her side.