"It's a dhow, I guess," David said, frowning at the craft. "Lateen-rigged. Primitive. Look at the rigging. Look at the mast. Or like a cross between a dhow and a galley with all those oar ports. Wouldn't last five minutes on the open sea."

The mast was actually three poles leaned together and lashed at the top. A long cross beam carried a furled sail. There was no wind.

Instead fourteen shirtless, sunburned men rowed, seven to a side. A fifteenth man stood on a platform at the stern, working a long steering oar.

A swooping, curved shelter made of reeds covered the back third of the boat providing shade. Within that shade were piled pillows and barrels around a small, low table. Sobek was gone. He had taken his mutilated crocodiles with him. But the water around the dhow was not still. It rippled with barely-concealed crocodiles. There might be a hundred of them, just below the surface, out of sight but not out of mind. The man at the tiller watched us, nervously. Presumably he understood that he had been placed at our disposal by the god of crocodiles.

"We're going to lose the Coo-Hatch," David fretted. "No way they'll be able to keep up. I wonder if I should ask them to join us."

"No, so much the better if they stay back," Jalil said... "Look, I'm grateful to them and all, believe me. I was crying back in that tree with the demons and the fire. But look, they're not in control. They could have gotten us killed just now. There's no way the Coo-Hatch knew for sure that Sobek wouldn't just unload on us. Not saying they didn't try to do right. But they're unpredictable."

"Who isn't unpredictable around here?" April interjected.

"We could have made this same deal with Sobek without slicing and dicing his 'children,'" Jalil pressed. "If you think Gator Head back there is just going to forget all about that — no matter what we do — I think you're crazy. He'll let us knock down this dam, then he'll kill us and enjoy doing it."

"What makes you so sure?" David demanded.

"He's a god of crocodiles. Crocodiles eat their own children. We've messed with a god who has the attributes of a crocodile."

David looked at me for an answer. I stared straight ahead. What was I going to do? Say, "Yes, Jalil is right"?

"Okay, we take the dhow. Maybe the Coo-Hatch keep up, maybe not." He led the way aboard and marched straight back to the man at the tiller. The Egyptian stiffened. "How far to this dam?"

"One day's journey, lord. Unless the breeze blows and we are able to raise sail."

"So we get there, what, tomorrow afternoon? Assuming we have to row the whole way?"

The man nodded cautiously.

"Fair enough. You have food on board?"

"Yes, lord. Only poor fare, but good bread, and honey, and dates and cream and wine and —"

"Okay, that's enough. What's your name?"

"Sechnaf, lord."

"Okay, Sechnaf, let's get going. But one thing, don't bring us into view of the dam during daylight. You understand me? They can't see us coming."

"If they see us may you cut out my eyes and feed them to the eagles."

David resisted a grin. "Yeah, well, let's just be careful."

I found a place beneath the awning. The pillows were a bit damp and musty, but paradise compared to our usual lodgings. The others crowded too near but always keeping a space between me and them.

The boat glided out into the river, leaving the shore behind. I saw an adult Coo-Hatch watching us. He didn't wave, neither did we. Jalil was right, of course, the Coo-Hatch had saved me, but I was glad enough to see them gone. They would never allow any deviation from our mission. They might interfere in ways I could not control.

The food and wine were broken out. David of course never drinks alcohol. But the other three did, and they were soon at it, complaining all the while about the muddy flavor.

I drank a glass as well. I needed it. Sobek had cut me off from the power without even exerting himself. How did he do it? How did they all do it? What was so special about the gods that they could manipulate the power so much more easily than I?

What were the gods? That was one of the questions I hoped Jalil would answer for me. What were they? A distinct race? Some off-shoot of homo sapiens? Some species of aliens? What exactly were they?

They interbred with humans, did that mean they were human? That was supposed to be one of the basic definitions of a species, that it can only reproduce with others of its own type.

I was not used to feeling so powerless, I hated it! Hated it. I was in the middle, neither human nor god. I had powers but not enough, not enough when some supercilious minor river deity could shut me off from the glow as easy as a person slamming a door.

I could feel Christopher eyeing me. The wheels were turning in his head, looking for a way to annoy me. He felt he had an advantage over me now. He had seen me naked and helpless and afraid. It made him bold.

"You know, I've heard you can eat alligator meat," he said. "They say it tastes like chicken. Of course, that's probably just what alligators say about people, huh Senna?"

I ate a date. Christopher drank his third big cup of wine. Drank it down in a single long swallow.

"You know, I wonder though," Christopher continued. "I mean, we know you have strange blood, right? I mean your blood kills plants. Grass. It poisons living things. That's right, isn't it? I mean that was the whole point of that thing back in Africa when Jalil had you all helpless and ready to bleed you out on that tree and kill it."

He lingered over the word 'helpless.' Toyed with it. Despite myself I could not douse the fire that was now lit and burning inside me. The memory of what Jalil had done . . . The fact that twice in just a few days, I had been helpless. Powerless.

I could picture myself carried by Jalil and Thorolf, unconscious, dragged up the tree. I could see myself helpless in the crocodile's mouths, cut off from the glow, as blind and pathetic as any normal person.

Christopher had seen both of those images, as had April, and of course Jalil. David, too, but David I could count on. Mostly.

Christopher swallowed noisily and belched deliberately. "So maybe you would have just killed those poor crocs. Maybe they'd get your blood and curl up and die."

I bent my knees up, wrapped my arms around them, looking like a vulnerable child. But as I did so I put one hand under the hem of my dress and squeezed one of the many scabbed over tooth marks. Squeezed hard till I felt the sticky wetness. I smiled at Christopher and moved suddenly. I stood over him and showed him my hand. Blood, my blood, covered two fingers of my hand. I let him stare, let them all stare, uncomprehending, then I plunged both fingers into the wine. I flicked the wine from my fingers and laughed.

"Why not drink it and find out for yourself?" I challenged him.

"That's enough," David snapped.

"Go on, Christopher. Drink," I said. And I did more than speak. I gathered the power to me. I called the power up from the Nile beneath us. No god to stop me now, I drew the power into me, focused it, made myself a lens, sharpened the focus, aimed it at Christopher. Aimed it at his own desire, that was the way. Impossible to force a person to do what he did not want to do. But I could take a desire that already existed and magnify it. That I could do.

"Drink, Christopher," I whispered.

And the cup rose slowly toward his lips. His face was pained, hurt. Like a child who has been punished without cause.

He wanted the wine. He wanted all the wine. He wanted to drink till his mind was reeling, till he staggered and vomited. I could feel it him, I could feel the drunk in him, the alcoholic just waiting to blossom fully.

And with that desire for the alcohol, a second desire went hand in hand. The desire for me. He and I had been close once. Before I traded him for David. Christopher told himself he didn't care, but he had never gotten over the rejection. He wanted me, some part of me, any part of me. He wanted me to choose him over David.

"Drink," I mouthed silently.

But now I was feeling the weariness, the exhaustion of magic. Using the power drains me. Drawing it into myself that way from the magic river drained me. But I couldn't show that.

Press, Senna, press harder.

All at once Christopher was gulping the wine and David, surprised, jerked toward him, trying to knock it away, but too late.

Christopher, shaking, lowered the cup. He laughed a faint, scared laugh. He was breathing hard. His fingertips were white from the pressure of gripping the cup.

I smiled, magnanimous, as if to say, See? Nothing to worry about.

I had to use every last bit of strength to keep from collapsing in a heap. I had pushed too hard. Tried too much. And now my consciousness was swirling, a swoon circled my brain, air all gone, eyes swimming . . .

No, no, don't pass out. No. Eyes open. Eyes open.

I fought off the exhaustion collapse, kept my feet, kept my face composed. I stumbled on resuming my seat, but that was nothing, no one would even notice.

No one but Jalil. He watched me with his lizard eyes. He knew what I had done to Christopher and he feared me for it. But he had also seen my weakness, and that fact he added to the other facts stored away in his brain.

Stupid, I realized. I had shown Jalil that I could push Christopher. And I'd shown him that doing it left me drained.

I looked away, refusing to acknowledge his attention. I looked away and felt my eyes blear, lose focus. Tired. I was tired. And my leg hurt where I'd made it bleed. For some reason I couldn't reach Jalil here. Couldn't touch the exposed nerve of his brain sickness the way I'd just done to Christopher.

Was Jalil protected? No. Absurd. It was fluke. Some weird fluke. His physical brain here was not a perfect duplicate of his brain in the real world. That had to be it.