Eye of the Moon (12 page)

I heard Tuthmosis's sharp intake of breath behind me. “It can't be!”

I sat like a snake charmed into stillness by its master. I knew there was something we should do. But the barge had appeared so silently and unexpectedly in such a deserted part of the river that my body was numb.

The hiss of water against the barge's prow and the beat of oars brought me back to my senses. “We can't fool them a second time. There's no protection
of darkness now. They'll easily recognize us. We must hide before we're spotted.”

“There's nowhere to hide, except under the water.”

“That's it! Take a hollow reed to breathe through.”

Tuthmosis frowned.

“It'll work. I've done it before. My brother and I used to play this game. We took turns to see how long we could stay under water.” I snapped a hollow reed and passed it to Tuthmosis. “Here! Hurry!”

“What about crocodiles?”

I glanced around quickly and shook my head. “None!” I didn't tell him one of us had always kept watch. Then I slipped over the side of the boat, ducked down, and prayed to Sobek to spare us from crocodiles in exchange for all the times Katep and I had fed his sacred beasts.

I thrust the end of my reed upward and sucked hard. No air came. For a moment, my heart raced. The reed was blocked. There was no time to surface and choose another. Panic was setting in. I blew hard and dislodged whatever had been stuck inside it. Under the murky water I saw Tuthmosis holding his reed tightly in his mouth, his eyes wide open and staring back at me like two silveryblue
fish. He gave me the thumbs-up sign.

There was a muffled swish of oars and a surge of water as the barge beat down on us. My heart was drumming in my head. Or was it the noise of the barge? I held my breath. Would they notice our boat lodged among the reeds? Its fibers were water-soaked and had bleached to a dull gray, and the woven strands were beginning to unravel. I prayed they'd mistake it for debris swept down by the floods.

Yet at any moment, I expected to hear the hiss of a flax rope and the splash and thump of a heavy anchor. Expected to see the dark hull at my side and to be yanked up by my arm.

I wasn't getting enough air. My lungs were bursting. I tried to even my breathing. Under the water Tuthmosis held his hand out with the palm toward me as if telling me not to be in too much of a hurry.

We waited for what seemed like forever. I strained my eyes for the shadow of the boat and my ears for the beat of oars. But this time it was truly only my heart I could hear thudding.

We burst through the surface and gasped for full, deep breaths. The barge was nothing more than a golden dragonfly hovering in the heat haze, far, far
in the distance—heading in the direction of Thebes at last.

I spit a piece of reed from my mouth and bellowed after it, “Murderer! Vile murderer! You act divine. As untouchable as a god! But you're
not
! You
killed
my father, Wosret!”

Tuthmosis was silent as he held out his hand to help me from the water.

I brushed my cheeks angrily with the back of my hand, hoping the tears would seem like river water, and stood shivering even though the sun was hot against my skin.

The prince picked a single blue lotus lily and pushed it into the collar of flowers that lay in wet, bedraggled strands around my shoulders. He gave a slight bow. His mouth curved up into a broad smile but his eyes were serious. “To Kara—most supreme waterfowl hunter and deviser of untold tricks!”

   
10
   
MIRAGES OF
THE DESERT

W
e came eventually to a lonely part of the river with nothing but high desert sand dunes to our western side and dry, barren, stony ground to the east. Both riverbanks were desolate and empty of palm trees, or villages, or children tending goats and playing in the mud. The landscape was harsh, arid, and unwelcoming.

The next morning I woke stiff and chilled next to huge dunes that rose up clear and cold, almost
blue in the early light. There was a smell of wood smoke. Tuthmosis was already crouching over some embers, stirring them back to life. I moved closer and spread my hands out to warm them. The dunes began to glow and take on the color of the rising sun. He handed me a gourd of water he'd scooped from the river. Then he fumbled in his girdle bag and held out some dry pieces of millet bread and a few dried olives.

“I saved them from the last village in case you might be hungry.”

I couldn't help smiling into the gourd. “You're suited to the life of a nomad.”

Suddenly I saw his face freeze. A movement high up along the ridge of the nearest dune caught my eye. I turned sharply.

Five men on camels were outlined in silhouette against the pale sky. For a moment they stood completely still and silent. I twisted my head from side to side to scan the landscape. There was no escape. They had seen us. It was too late for Tuthmosis to slip on his girl's tunic and wig.

“Bind your head at least!” I hissed.

Just as the sun tipped the horizon, the men began
riding slowly down the slope toward us. As the light caught them, they appeared to be dressed in brilliant metallic mesh, woven with gold brocade that shimmered with every slow, tantalizing step.

But as they drew closer, I saw the motley mix of clothes they wore—the layers of bleached and tattered linen with edges unraveling and cloth more patched than whole, the sleeves that hung in tatters around their wrists, and the head cloths that blew and unfurled in the breeze in teased-out strips. The men were bleached, weathered, and worn to nothing but rags, bone, and sinew. Their dark faces were scorched and lined from sun and wind.

Then I noticed something more fearful—the glint and flash of sunlight on metal. An icy coldness swept over me. The girdles around their waists were stuffed with weapons—jeweled daggers and adzes and bronze sickle swords. And, slung across their backs, were enormous bows and dark-hide quivers bulging with arrows.

I'd never seen desert nomads, but instinctively I knew these were the Medjay—expert bowmen who roamed the deserts trading and slitting throats and impaling people for whatever price or prize.

“Stay silent! Let me speak,” Tuthmosis hissed as he straightened up to meet them.

Their leader stopped short of us. His face, half shadowed by his head cloth, was harsh and his eyes dark and unfathomable. Up close I saw the strong jawline and high tattoo-marked cheeks. His head cloth was worn to threads, but the boots sticking out from under his wind-torn cloak came as high as his calves and were made of strong leather and stitched in an intricate design.

The other men were silent. Their reins lay loose in their hands, but their eyes watched fiercely.

The leader's dark eyes flicked over us. “What do you want here?”

“We're sailing to beyond the First and Second Cataract.”

“The First Cataract is a long way off. The second even farther!”

“We know,” Tuthmosis answered, although I wasn't sure he
did
know.

The man stared back. “Where are you from?”

“A village downriver—”

“Tuthmosis is the king's son,” I interrupted. If this man was truly a Medjay, for our own protection,
it might be well to tell him we were powerful. Then I bit my lip as I caught Tuthmosis's scowl.

The man turned and looked me up and down with the dark eye of someone used to assessing goods to trade. Then he leaned back on his camel and laughed. But it was a laugh without any mirth. “A king's son in peasant dress. And now you'll tell me you're the king's daughter!”

Tuthmosis broke in. “My sister's confused. We've been traveling a long while. The heat of the sun has touched her. We're peasants.”

“What are peasants doing so far from their village? Have you broken the law? Are you fleeing?”

“We told you—we're going farther up the river,” Tuthmosis answered.

“To what purpose?”

Tuthmosis was silent.

The man narrowed his eyes as he looked at me and then turned to the men. “Perhaps the girl speaks the truth. Perhaps they're
not
peasants.” The other men looked on with hard, expressionless faces. “We'll take them. We could sell them. The pharaoh's son would fetch a good price. And the pharaoh's daughter—”

“No . . . no!” I interrupted. “My brother is
right. I'm confused. I'm certainly
not
the pharaoh's daughter.”

He turned back to me and spoke slowly as if explaining to a child. “I know that.” He held my eyes. “Because a new pharaoh, Amenhotep, has been elected. He's just a boy. He has no daughter!”

“The new pharaoh?” I stared back at the man. How could he know this already? How had he heard the news on the edge of the desert so far from Thebes? What
else
did he know?

He smiled as he saw my surprise. “We have spies. Perhaps there's more money to be made by selling both of you back to the authorities.” He looked between us with an eyebrow raised as if he expected an answer. “Perhaps to the high priests of Thebes? I hear they're keen to find a certain boy and girl who've escaped.”

Without warning he reached down swiftly and yanked me up onto his camel and swung me across the animal's back in front of him. And even though I squirmed and fought and tried to pull away, he clutched me and held me tightly against his chest to prevent me from slipping free. The camel protested at this extra burden and brayed like a donkey with a broken leg.

This spurred the group into action. One man beat his camel to make it kneel, then reached across and pulled Tuthmosis onto the front; another scooped up our skin blanket with the tip of his sickle sword and flung it across to Tuthmosis. Another reached down and with a few swift scything movements sliced our boat apart so that nothing was left but a heap of debris stranded on the sand.

Amid a hubbub of braying camels, the men dug their heels into their animals and urged them around. Before I could exchange more than a look with Tuthmosis, we were moving in single file up the dune, the leader in front with me held tightly against him and Tuthmosis riding somewhere behind.

As we topped the crest of the dune, I felt the roughness of the Medjay's rags against my arms and his torn head veil whipping against my face in the wind.

Ahead there was nothing but endless desert.

He pulled off a strip of roughly woven wool from his body and handed it to me. “You'll need this for protection against the sun and sandstorms.”

The strip felt greasy in my hands and smelled of goat. But I wrapped it around my head and face to
protect me from the glare. From a peephole in the swaddle, all I saw were his sinewy arms and his grimy hands with dirt-lined nails as he held the camel reins and at the same time clutched firmly on to me.

The heat drew a suffocating stench of camel, wood smoke, and sweat from his body. But as we rode into the blinding desert, I was conscious not just of the smell of him, but of the sickle sword that kept bumping against my thigh and the bulge of the dagger that pressed hard against the small of my back.