Sphinx's Queen (2 page)

The flakes of stone were falling faster. I gasped when I saw what lay beneath the Great Sphinx’s mask.

“Thutmose …” I spoke the name of Pharaoh’s heir in a whisper, but a whirlwind whipped through the grove of palm trees, turning my voice into a roar that rivaled the false Great Sphinx’s voice. My whisper became a clap of thunder that smashed what was left of Prince Thutmose’s disguise and tore away the illusion embracing him. While I watched, he shrank like a green leaf left to bake in the sun. In three heartbeats, he stood before me as a young man hardly older than I. All that was left of the looming presence of the Great Sphinx was the nemes crown he wore, the blue-striped cloth adorned with the protective image of Wadjet, the cobra-goddess.

“Now
see what you’ve done to me, Nefertiti!” His handsome face twisted with resentment. He knelt to scoop Ta-Miu into his arms, and his sullen expression softened for a moment when he glanced at the pretty little cat. “If you had been a normal girl, you would have
jumped
at the chance to marry me, not delay and delay and
delay
. You made me wait—
me
, the next pharaoh, the god-on-earth! Father would have named me coruler long ago if you’d married me when you were supposed to instead of wasting time with my brother, that ugly, stammering bundle of sticks and stupidity!”

“Don’t speak about Amenophis that way!” I snapped back. “He’s your closest kin.”

An ugly smile stole over Thutmose’s face. “And what is he to
you
?”

I pressed my lips together and gave him a hard look. “He’s my friend,” I said stiffly.

“Really?” The crown prince’s sneer grew more repulsive by the moment. “Nothing more? Nothing … closer than that?”

“My
friend,”
I maintained. “Maybe if you’d tried to be my friend—my true friend—no one would have had to force me to marry you.”

“Is that it?” Thutmose’s mean smile was gone. His face darkened with rage. “Is that your nasty little secret? You want to marry him—
him!
That gawky, ridiculous, worthless—!”

I covered the ground between us in two strides and slapped the words from Thutmose’s mouth. Ta-Miu gave a little squeak of surprise and leaped from his arms. “No more!” I shouted in his face. “I won’t let you speak like that about Amenophis ever again. You may be stronger and handsomer and your mother’s favorite, but his kindness and courage make him worth
ten
of you!”

He grabbed my wrists before the last words left my lips. “What do you know of courage, Nefertiti?” he snarled. “You’re only a girl.”

“Try me,” I shot back, and wrenched myself out of his grasp. My hands were fists. “I’ll show you how brave I can be.”

He laughed, and it echoed as if we were deep in the heart of a tomb. Something hissed. The cobra atop Thutmose’s crown rose and swayed back and forth, no longer a golden image of Wadjet but a living serpent. It spread its hood and gaped at me, its cruelly curved fangs heavy with venom. I gasped and jumped back.

“How brave are you now, Nefertiti?” Thutmose taunted.

My mouth went dry and my heart beat as fast as a quail’s whirring wings. The cobra slowly descended from Thutmose’s crown to circle his neck and slither down the length of his body. It poured itself across the sand, eyes flickering with unnatural scarlet fire. I backed away and it followed me until I felt something solid at my back. My fingertips brushed the rough shapes of stones. I glanced to either side, glimpsed the wall behind me, and knew I had run out of room for retreat.

“How brave are you now, Nefertiti?” Thutmose’s mocking words rang out a second time. “Brave enough to fight? Brave enough to die?” The cobra reared up and grew before my eyes until it was as tall as I. I met its merciless stare and trembled.

And then, in an instant, a small shape appeared on the ground between us. My former slave, Nava the Habiru child, sat hunched over a papyrus scroll, her eyes intent on the strands of words, the complicated symbols of our written tongue. Innocent, vulnerable, she was completely unaware of the deadly serpent towering over her.

Nava was blind to the cobra, but it saw her. It opened its mouth even wider, as if to swallow her whole, and its fangs glistened.

I whirled around and seized a stone from the top of the wall. It was the size of a loaf of bread, but Nava’s peril gave me unexpected strength. “Get away from her!” I shouted at the snake just before I flung the rock with all my might. I didn’t wait to see if it hit the target; I was too busy grabbing more stones, pelting the cobra, beating it back, away from the child. It gave a halfhearted hiss, then shrank away from me, bowing its head. I could hear Thutmose yowling with frustration, screaming at the snake, ordering it to stand firm, to turn and attack me.

“How brave am I, Thutmose?” I called out in triumph. “You tell me.
You tell me!”

And I hurled one last stone, which struck the snake right between its eyes. The stone shattered the snake like glass from snout to tail. The glimmering shards vanished before they hit the ground, and Thutmose vanished with them.

“Did you see that, Nava?” I laughed, glorying in my victory. But the laughter died on my lips: Nava was gone. “Nava?” Fresh terror seized me. “Nava, where are you? Nava!
Nava!”

Darkness fell around me as I cried her name. All that answered me was a voice on the wind that called out again and again:
Nefertiti … Nefertiti …

“Nefertiti, wake up! Wake up!” Nava shook my arm with her small, strong hands.

“Oh, Nava! Thank Isis, you’re
here!”
The child squawked with surprise when I bolted awake on the ground beside the sacred river and hugged her as if I’d never let her go.

1
S
UNRISE

Sunlight touched the western shore of the sacred river. I sat hugging Nava as we watched the beautiful return of light to the world. The nightmare that had disturbed my sleep on that first night of our escape from Thebes was gone. In my heart, I praised Ra, who had triumphed once more over the monsters of the underworld to steer his sun-ship safely back across the open sky.

“Are you all right?” Nava asked, gazing at me with a worried look that was much too old for such a little girl. “You were making a lot of noise. You must have had a very scary dream.”

“It was scary,” I replied, brushing a few stands of hair out of her eyes. “But it wasn’t all bad.”

“I heard you yell the
evil
prince’s name.” Nava pursed her lips, her small body radiating anger. She knew what Thutmose had done to me—condemned me for blasphemy, imprisoned me, tried to have me killed—and that he was the reason we’d fled Thebes the night before. “A dream he’s in
has
to be all bad!”

“Not if I fought him”—I smiled—“and won.”

She tilted her head. “Did you?”

“I certainly did. First he tried to fool me; then he tried to harm me, but I defeated him. And do you know why I could do that?” Nava shook her head. “Because I wasn’t just fighting to save myself. You were in my dream as well, Nava, and I fought for you.”

“Oh, I know I was there,” she said, lifting her chin. “I heard you call my name, too. Did I help you?”

“In a way.”

“Hmph. That means I didn’t do
anything
, really.”

“Maybe next time I’ll have a dream where we fight together,” I said. “And isn’t it better to know that I can depend on your help when I’m
awake?”

Nava wasn’t satisfied. “I want to help you
always
. At least you dreamed that you won. I’m glad. That means we’ll be safe, no matter what. Dreams don’t lie, not the really important ones.”

“So now you’re a dream-reader as well as a musician, Nava?” I teased her gently, the way I sometimes teased my little sister, Bit-Bit. How I missed her!

Nava shook her head. “I wish I were. Dream-readers—even those who are slaves—can become very rich and important. Before she died, my mama used to tell us about one of our people, a Habiru slave who was a great dream-reader, long ago. He read Pharaoh’s dreams so well that he was given his freedom, and gold, and a big house, and a princess!”

“Those must have been
very
important dreams,” I said lightly.

“Oh, they were!” I was treating Nava’s tale as no more than a child’s fancy, but she was completely sincere. She believed every word she told me. “Mama told us that those dreams saved the Black Land from a famine that lasted
seven
years.”

A wistful look came into her eyes. It was the first time I’d heard Nava talk about her mother.

I patted her shoulder. “Your mother knew very good stories, Nava. I hope you’ll tell me more of them someday.”

“It’s
not
a story,” she said, giving me a determined look. “It’s the
truth.”

“What’s the truth?” a sleepy voice called out weakly from the far side of our dead campfire. With groans and moans, Prince Amenophis pushed himself up to sit cross-legged on the harsh ground. “Horus spare me, but my arms and legs feel ready to break before they bend normally again,” he muttered. “Ugh, what a night. Amun grant we don’t have to spend too many more like it before we reach Dendera.”

“How far is it from here?” I asked.

Amenophis shrugged his bony shoulders. “A few days.”

“How many?” I pressed. I was concerned, for his sake. After only one night away from the comforts of Thebes, he was starting to look haggard. The fewer days we’d have to travel, the better for him.

It was an innocent question, but it seemed to make Amenophis surprisingly uncomfortable. “I—I’m not sure. I’ve always been brought there in one of the royal ships. It was very pleasant, sailing down the sacred river, so I never paid much attention to how long the journey took.”

“Royal ships with oars and sails,” I remarked. “They’d go much faster than our little papyrus boat, but it’ll get us there all the same.”

“Is Dendera the
only
city we’ll pass?” Nava asked.

“Y-yes. I mean, I’m not sure about that, either. The last time I traveled there, I was much younger. Even though I wasn’t a child anymore, Mother kept sending me into the cabin for most of the trip. I think she was afraid I’d fall into the river if I wandered around the deck. Thutmose made fun of me, called me a little lotus petal.”

“He’s
the lotus petal,” Nava decreed. “Not brave like us. He’d never leave the palace to help his friends.” She hugged me.

“Maybe not,” I said. “But he will leave the palace to come after me. If we don’t know how many days’ sail we’ve got ahead of us, we’d better start as soon as possible, to put plenty of distance between us and him.”

“Do we have to go right now?” Nava asked plaintively. “I’m hungry.”

I tousled her thick hair fondly. “Of course we’ll have breakfast first. We’ll just have it as quickly as possible.” I stood up and shook dust from my dress. The cloth was already much the worse for a night spent sleeping on the ground. I hoped it would hold together until Dendera. Clapping my hands, I turned to Amenophis and said, “Which bag shall I open for us? Where’s the bread packed?”