Reflections in the Nile (6 page)

She'd heard rumors of kidnapping and white slavery. Despite government policy against it, it was still practiced in Egypt and the Middle East. Chloe had felt fairly safe, however, since she was the antithesis of what the Middle Eastern mind considered attractive. According to Cammy, the ancient Egyptians had always considered their Satan to be a redhead, and uneducated Egyptians still feared light-colored eyes and red hair. So she'd doubted they'd go for her.

Not to mention she was too tall and too lean for most Egyptian tastes.

Her musings were interrupted when the door curtain was pulled back and the same girl from the temple entered—at least Chloe
thought
she was the same.

Seeing Chloe awake, she crossed her breast with her forearm and knelt. When Chloe just stared at her, she rose and came toward the bed.

“My sister, are you faring better?” She glanced nervously away from Chloe's eyes and made a small gesture that some part of Chloe's mind identified as a sign against the Evil Eye. Chloe understood the girl, but the words didn't feel familiar. It was as if something were interpreting in her head before the words actually got to her brain, making her very dizzy. That smoke … an incense … where had she smelted it before?

The black-haired girl pulled back the sheet and Chloe saw that her body was clean and naked. Well, she
thought
it was her body … but the freckles that were the plague of redheads were gone, and her skin was a rich café latte. The girl reached out and felt the pulse at Chloe's throat and men touched the juncture of her thigh.

Chloe tried to jerk away from the familiarity of the touch, but her muscles did not respond. The girl watched Chloe carefully with her black-circled eyes. Pulling the sheet back up, she spoke in a gentle, singsong voice.

“The Sisterhood has been most concerned for you, my lady. To sleep for so many days is quite unhealthy. Even My Most Gracious Majesty has inquired after you. She is sending a foremost magus to heal you. The priestesses have offered special intercession to HatHor for you also. The goddess will not allow her favorite to be sick.” As she spoke she gathered a washbasin, assembled a tray of food, and emptied several jugs of water into the bath in the alcove.

Chloe raised her hands to her head. What was this girl talking about? What sisterhood? Which majesty? A magus? What the hell was that? What did they all have to do with her, and where in the
bloody universe
was she?

She who was no longer the same color.

Chloe decided she had endured this patiently and the time to speak was now. She would have answers. If this was a dream, some pointed questions should wake her up. If this wasn't … She ignored any possibilities and opened her mouth to speak. Only a strange gurgling came out, though, shocking Chloe and scaring the girl so badly that she yelped.

“Hush now, my lady,” she said in a wavery voice that belied her familiar words. “Please, rest now, and perhaps the
hemu neter
will drive this
kheft
from you. Please, eat now.” She placed a tray of breads, figs, and a flagon of milk in front of Chloe. Her stomach rumbled in response. The girl laughed, the first unguarded moment Chloe had seen since she'd opened her eyes.

“Perhaps a
kheft
has your tongue and so your stomach speaks for you, my lady,” the girl said teasingly. With a strength Chloe would not have thought the girl's body capable of, she eased Chloe into a sitting position. Basha handed her the milk.… Wait,
where
did that thought come from? Suddenly, in a drowning wave, rushed in thoughts of where and who and why she was, with little order or sense to them.

She knew Basha was her serving girl, and she,
Chloe,
was actually RaEmhetepet, one of the priestesses to HatHor; that they were in a small room beneath the Karnak Temple compound; that for the Great House to send a magus she must be extremely ill….

What was going on? Where was she getting this information? Was she being hypnotized? Brainwashed? What was this? Chloe punched the bed in frustration, and Basha bolted to the other side of the room. Something told Chloe she would not see Anton at breakfast.

The quaking Basha retrieved her tray and escaped out the curtained door, glancing warily behind her at RaEm … no, Chloe. I am Chloe.

No, the “other” said.

I am, Chloe told the “other.”

Agreed, said the voice, mildly. You are both.

Both?

Both.

How could she be RaEmhetepet and still be Chloe? What had happened to her in the sea of confusion between arriving here, in an altar room, and leaving mere, an old temple? She had not changed her physical location, yet somehow she had been sucked back into time.

Chloe almost slapped herself for that stupid thought.
No bloody way.

That was something out of Cammy's
Star Trek,
not what happened to single tourists on their birthdays. She could understand the language—and it definitely was not English, French, Arabic, or Italian. She couldn't separate her mind long enough from itself to analyze the words. This was too exceedingly strange; there
must
be another explanation. Could she be going mad?

The insanity theory was looking better and better.

Chloe looked toward the door, if you could call a white sheet a door. No one was there. Grabbing the skin on the back of her hand, she pinched and twisted, digging her nails into her flesh. Her eyes watered and angry half-moon marks showed on her hands. She was awake.

Yanking back the sheet, she looked carefully at her body. There was the scar from Cammy's motorcycle accident on her knee, the countless faint discolorations on her feet from blisters, mosquito bites, and small cuts. She held out a hand. It was the same—long elegant fingers that were hopeless at any keyboard except a computer, short oval nails, and a faint scar on her palm from a long-ago dog bite.

Yet the skin was not fair, not freckled. Cautiously she reached up and tugged some hair away from the band at her nape. It felt the same: thick, coarse, and board straight It was the same length, but instead of copper, it was black, so black as to shine faintly blue. Chloe dropped her trembling hand.

Oh my God.

Before she had time to compose herself, Basha came back through the door with two dark-eyed men. Chloe searched the memories that flooded her mind, trying to place things in some semblance of order, sorting through the “other” mind that was also in her head.

No luck.

One man walked to her side.

“RaEm,” he said, his look taking in her body, “what is this illness that has befallen you?” He sat on the bed beside her and grasped her hand. His words were polite but distant He was young and handsome, a white kilt wrapped around his waist and his upper body impressively muscled. To one-half of her mind he was familiar, his presence comforting but surprising.

The other half of her mind was reeling from the heavy eye makeup and gorgeous jewelry he was wearing, not to mention his elaborate hairstyle. Was he wearing a wig? The other man was older but dressed in the same skirt, his wide shoulders covered in a gold-and-leather collar. He looked on, no expression readable on his fleshy bronze features.

Basha laid a gentle hand on the seated man's shoulder. “My Lord Makab, your sister will be healthy again. She will be singing and dancing before the goddess once more. Do not trouble yourself. She will be well.”

A bolt slid into place. This was her older brother, Makab, a young noble who lived in the country. In accordance with Egyptian custom, she had inherited all the property when their parents died years ago. Hesitantly she returned the pressure of his handclasp. He turned from Basha and focused on Chloe's hand. “You know me, then?” Her affirmative nod brought his glance to her face. Then, startled, he drew back, dropping her hand as though it were a scorpion as he traced ankhs into the air. “Holy Osiris! Your eyes!”

From the corridor came the sounds of many feet. A squat man walked in, torchlight shining onto his bald head. “Make way for the noble Hapuseneb! High Priest of the Great God Amun, who rules Upper and Lower Egypt! Father of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, living forever!” So saying, he banged his staff on the floor and stood back. A taller, older man, clad in a leopard skin and an ankle-length kilt, came into the room.

Everyone stood back and bowed: Chloe sat dumbfounded. She'd always known she had a lot of imagination, but the details in this particular flight of fantasy were incredible.

“My lady,” he said in a low, beautiful voice, “the
khefts
have left you. This is good.” He stepped closer to her and Chloe dropped her gaze, some instinct warning her that if her “brother” was frightened by her eyes, this priest of Amun might feel even more strongly. Provided he even existed outside her own mind, her left brain railed.

“The Great House is concerned about her defensive priestess. Please tell us what happened.”

Basha stepped forward and made a motion. “Your Eminence, the lady has not regained her voice.”

Hapuseneb gazed thoughtfully at her for a second and then away, back to Chloe. “When you are well, then, we will receive you.” He came closer and Chloe looked intently at his chest, hoping her eyes were lowered enough. Apparently they were. He inclined his head and left the room. An uncomfortable silence filled the chamber, and one by one the ornately dressed and made-up well-wishers bade Chloe a good rest and left.

WASET

T
HE GOLDEN CHARIOT RACED
through the eastern desert, eating up the
henti
under the benevolent winter sun. Pharaoh held the reins tightly in her red-gloved hands, the ends wrapped around her gold-belted waist. Senmut, her grand vizier, held on to the side, watching not the sands before them but the slender body of the woman who had given him the world. He glanced behind them; two chariots were following, slowly enough to give Pharaoh the illusion of privacy, just as they had camped out of sight last night in the desert He looked over Pharaoh's head as they left the trail and raced across a series of rising dunes. A ridge of mountainous desert framed the horizon. Hatshepsut slowed her speed; her newest toy might lose a wheel in the depths of the warm sand.

A rock face rose rapidly before them, its shade carving a bluish shadow in the sand. Hat secured the horses and jumped down, wiping dust from her face with the back of her gloved hand. Senmut stepped down beside her, his architect's eye taking in the sandstone block that jutted out of the ground, reaching toward the sun. A gods-made obelisk. Hat watched him as he mentally measured.

“Beloved architect,” she said after they had walked around its large base twice, “you have built for me the most splendid of all mortuary temples in the western crescent.”

“It is a minute tribute to your own beauty, Pharaoh,” he replied as they stood in the shadows. She flashed a brief smile.

“However, I fear it would be unwise for me to make it my resting place for all eternity.” Senmut opened his mouth to protest, but she held up a hand in silence. “My nephew Thutmosis hates me. I will not speak ill of him, for he is born of the god and of the royal bed and has my father's sacred blood in his veins. I should just feel safer if I knew my tomb would be undisturbed because it would be unround.”

Senmut looked at the rocks around him. “You would wish to be buried on the east bank of the Nile?” His tone was dubious. Death was synonymous with the west bank, as life was with the east bank. “What if, in future dynasties, they build cities out here? Egypt is growing, and if the irrigation systems are improved, who is to say this could not be arable?”

“I am to say!” she commanded. “I am Egypt!” She turned from him, running her hand across the gritty stone. “Please, precious brother, build a chamber deep under the earth, covered by this rock, so that our rest will be undisturbed.”

Senmut halted a few cubits away, staring at her in shock. Her wide lips, lips he knew so well, spread into a smile.

“We shall be together for all eternity,” she said.

“We?
” his staggered thoughts questioned:
“We?
” He ran to her and fell to his knees, grasping her around the waist, his body trembling with emotion. To be buried with the god-goddess he loved; for all eternity to look at her golden perfection, to serve her … Senmut looked up into her face, her lips parted now in sensual anticipation.

He stood up and pulled off her red leather
henhet
crown, freeing her long ebony hair to fall about her face. After wrestling with his belt, he left both it and his kilt in the sand and advanced on Hat. She took a step farther back, so she was standing against the stone, her eyes large and dark in her wrenchingly beautiful face. He kissed her face, savoring their mutual hunger, taunting and twisting her gold-dusted breasts until they jutted into his chest. He ran a hand underneath her boy's kilt and found the warm welcome that still shook him with desire.

She moaned and leaned back against the stone, her breath hot pockets in the cool shade. He raised her off her feet as she wrapped her legs tightly around his waist. They began the give-and-take of any man and woman, forgetting for a while the pressures and intrigues of her royal status. She pulled him deeper, and Senmut braced his legs as they began to shudder with release. Her body shook with her suppressed cries, his in delighted surrender. They fell to the ground slowly, still intimately entwined.

When Hat could speak again, she said, “You will build for us, my amazing architect.” It was a statement.

“Aye, My Pharaoh,” he said, and held her close.

They spent another few hours in the sun, the royal architect and his Majesty, pacing around, analyzing how to tunnel far beneath the earth. Hat did not want any outward marker, any temple. She wanted everything underground. The rock itself would be enough of an indicator to any future worshiper. No one would know. It would be their secret.

They coupled again in the sand, slowly and completely, then slept until their tent of shade was broken by the traveling of Ra's barque. Hat gave Senmut the reins, and he headed them back to the Nile, the sand streaked with red and gold as Ra lost his strength at the hour of
atmu.