Queen of Ashes (10 page)

“Of course,” Riel says matter-of-factly. “I had to, since you didn't.”

“I've been...been living with the...guilt of her death for over...three hundred years,” Brehan sputters, his face purpling.

“Perhaps I should have told you sooner,” Riel says solemnly. “But I knew you would be angry with me.”

“How did you...do it?” Brehan's voice is low and raw.

“Very quickly, brother. There was no pain at all. I snapped her neck. One little twist and all was over. You were safe, and I was safe.”

Snapped her neck
. Just like little Sabu, Laila thinks. Could there be a connection? Did Riel break Sabu's neck? But that doesn't make any sense. Why would he?

Brehan is obviously beyond speech or movement, which Riel seems to take as agreement with his actions. He puts his arm around his brother. “It's a big weight off my shoulders to finally tell you this and see that you don't hate me for it,” he begins. “Now, about our travels north...”

Riel rattles off travel plans, pacing up and down. Through the holes, Laila sees that Brehan isn't listening. He stands as if in a trance, mouth open, eyes gazing far away.

“Those women,” he says, almost choking.

“What women?” Riel asks, raising an eyebrow.

“The women I had over the years, lovers. After we left Troy, a few times I returned to a city to find a lover again and each time I learned they had died. In their sleep.”

“Oh. Those.” Riel puffs air out of his cheeks and lips. “Well, yes, those, too. I killed all your lovers right before we left a place in case you had made them pregnant. I had to. You made it easy for me to identify them, as they all proudly wore that pendant you gave them.”

Laila remembers Brehan offering her a copy of the silver pendant he wears around his neck. So she was not the first woman to be offered this symbol of his love. But that doesn't matter, as long as she is the last.

“But who cares about them?” Riel continues. “They don't matter. Only you and I matter.”Brehan looks at Riel as if he is truly seeing him for the first time ever. Laila, too, stares at him, her eyes pressed hard against the holes in the column. The handsome features everyone admires—the strong aquiline nose, the chiseled chin—now seem the physical manifestation of cruelty and selfishness.

“And all those healers we encountered in our travels?” Brehan persists. “You knew they were my descendants. My children. And you killed them. Even the little boy, Sabu, in the quarries here. You were already here, weren't you? You were following me around in animal form and heard there was a healer.”

Riel shrugs. “It was either them or you. You must have sired many children before I heard Cassandra's prophecy. I took advantage of our travels to find your descendants and kill them. Some of them even wore the silver lotus pendants their mothers had given them.”

He grips Brehan's shoulders. “Don't you see? It was the only way to keep both you and me safe and alive. Which brings us back to the problem at hand. Because if you marry the princess, brother, chances are you will have children. More Earth Blood children, each of whom could be my murderer. Within a few generations there could be hundreds of potential murderers. So tell me, should I wait for your children to be born and then kill them? Or should I kill Laila now?”

“Is that why you put the butterfly in her hair?” Brehan asks, his voice icy. “You wanted me to think that you had taken her to bed. You wanted me to hate her and leave her forever.”

“Yes,” Riel replies casually. “I thought it would be a merciful way to keep her alive. Now tell me, regarding this impetuous decision to marry, have you bedded her yet?”

No, he cannot know,
Laila thinks. Brehan looks startled.

“Ah, I see that you have,” Riel says, tilting his head and making a sad face. “In that case, she might be pregnant already. She will have to be sacrificed, I fear.”

Inside the column, Laila trembles.

“You're my brother, and I've always loved you,” Brehan says, his voice controlled, though Laila can see his hands clenching and unclenching. “Until this day. No more, Riel. You've been shedding the blood of my own children. You are no longer my family. I will not help you regain your powers, because you do not deserve to be a god and use mortals in your twisted games. You took Cassandra away from me, but you won't take Laila from me. I am willing to die fighting you to save her.”

The earth shakes. Laila falls against one side of the column, scraping her shoulder. She peers out the holes again and sees the torch sconces on the temple walls glow red, snap and break off. She wonders if Brehan will let his fury loose in flame, destroying Sharuna as he did Troy, while she burns alive trapped inside this pillar of stone.

Riel, arms crossed, rolls his eyes. “Don't be boring. You know you're not going to kill me any more than I'm going to kill you. Do you want another little brotherly wrestling match? Is that it? Just remember I knocked you unconscious last time we fought here.”

Yes, just as Brehan said. He would have married her that night at the Temple of Ptah. She already believed him, but hearing confirmation from Riel's lips is as sweet as Theban honey. Then she feels sick for ever having doubted him.

Laila hears flapping wings and a bird's shriek. A large black crow hurls itself at Brehan. He fights it off, slapping away claws and feathers, struggling with twisting muscle and a sharp pointed beak until it flies away.

“I will never forgive you if you hurt Laila.” He raises his arm, and from a clear, starry sky, a jagged bolt of white lightning crashes a few paces from Riel.

Riel smiles. “All this? Over a girl? What a waste.” Now a bolt slams into the earth near Brehan, throwing up dirt and plants.

Brehan lifts his arm high when Riel steps closer, smiling, with his hand up in that ancient gesture of peace. “Don't worry,” he says softly. “I'll make it so you won't have to watch as I kill her.”

Lightning hits the roof of the colonnade behind Brehan. Tiles shards arc into the air and plummet into the ground like knives. Brehan surges toward Riel and punches him in the jaw just as Riel hits his brother hard in the gut. They grapple and fall, rolling and kicking and punching. Finally, Brehan straddles his brother, pins Riel's arms down with his legs and wraps his hands around Riel's throat.

In the blink of an eye, Laila sees that Brehan struggles not with Riel, but with a large green snake, mouth open, impossibly long fangs dripping venom. He squeezes hard even as it twists and turns, its tail curling around Brehan's neck. The snake's eyes bulge; its tongue hangs. Then Brehan throws it down. It doesn't move. He stands there looking at it a long time, wiping at his eyes. Then he looks over at the column and waves his hand. Laila hears the crunching sound as the stone parts. She nearly falls into the garden, but Brehan catches her.

She gulps in several breaths. The fresh air rejuvenates her. When she looks into Brehan's eyes she sees unfathomable pain.

“I killed...my brother,” he whispers. Then he straightens and says, “And I would do it again to save you, my love.”

He looks back to where the dead snake lay. But it is gone.

Chapter Ten

TWILIGHT SETTLES GRACEFULLY on Sharuna as Sarina lights the oil lamps in Laila's upstairs reception room, turning the air from silver to gold one wick at a time.

“So it seems I must find another wife,” Amosis says, smiling sadly. “Though I am happy for you, Princess, that you found such a love as this. Perhaps the gods will grant me the same.” His gaze falls on Sada, who flushes and looks down, but then looks right back up again and shoots him a wide grin. She darts forward to fill his wine cup.

Laila feels waves of relief roll through her. He is taking her rejection well. What had she expected? Anger? Tears? And what is this between him and Sada? “I am delighted we can remain friends, Lord Amosis,” she says. “It means a great deal to me.” She hopes he hears the sincerity in her voice.

“And when will this most fortunate of men join us?” he asks, reaching for a cheese-stuffed olive on the low ebony table. “I remember how impressed I was when I met him in the temple.”

“He should be here quite soon,” Laila says with forced cheerfulness. In fact, worry gnaws at her. As soon as Brehan delivered her home, he instructed Wazba to close the palace gates and post all available men on the ramparts. Then he took off, saying that Riel must still be alive and he needed to find him.

As Amosis talks about Brehan's irrigation system—news of its success is spreading across Egypt—Laila can hardly concentrate on a word he says. It takes all her effort to smile and nod politely. Brehan and Riel could really be dueling to death at this very moment as she sits here with a rejected suitor eating stuffed olives.

She hears something from the courtyard below... No, it's just some men talking loudly. She smiles again at Amosis. Now she hears cries and the thwack of metal against shields. She stands up abruptly and goes to the window. By the light of the torches on the porticoes, it looks as if quarry workers—small, wiry brown men with the strength of oxen—are wielding chisels, mallets and knives against the palace guards.

“Osiris, help us,” she says as Amosis and the twins stand around her.

It should be a grossly unequal battle; the quarrymen, though strong, are untrained in fighting skills and carry no shields. Yet Laila sees the attackers, with burning eyes and desperate ferocity, drive back the guards, several of whom have fallen. One guard hacks the right hand off a quarryman, who picks up his ax with his left and keeps on fighting. Another guard drives his sword right through an attacker's chest without slowing him down in the slightest.

“What is happening?” Amosis asks. “Is it a riot? A rebellion?”

But Laila knows it is nothing as simple as that. It's Riel. He has possessed the bodies of the quarry workers, giving them supernatural strength and military skill. What did Brehan say? That Riel can enter into living beings—people and animals—and command them to do his bidding if they don't have the strength to resist.

But where is Brehan? She squints at the tussling forms in the courtyard below, unable to find a tall blond fighter.

The double doors from the corridor burst open. Brehan stands there, breathing heavily, Wazba behind him. Both hold bloody swords.

“Riel is attacking the palace,” Brehan says. “He's manipulating the quarry workers. I must get you out of here. The workers are crazed, oblivious to pain.”

“There is some witchcraft afoot, Princess,” Wazba adds, closing and bolting the doors. “I have never seen any battle like this one. My guards have barricaded this building, but they can only hold them off for so long. Let us go to the hidden passages.”

“What passages?” Brehan asks, looking around hopefully.

Laila inhales deeply and says, “Centuries ago, my ancestors constructed the palace with hidden passageways for just such an attack. We can hide there—”

“When he comes to the palace he will sense you here,” Brehan interrupts, his voice humming with urgency. “Even if you get out of the palace, I am sure he has birds and insects watching the entire city. He will see you through their eyes.”

“The palace's hidden passageways connect to stone tunnels,” she says slowly, squaring her shoulders as if for battle. “The city was built over an ancient quarry.”

“Yes!” Sarina interjects. “We used to play down there when we were children.”

“Perfect. No bird or dog can see us underground, alerting Riel. But will these tunnels take us outside the walls?” Brehan asks eagerly.

“Yes,” Laila replies. “There is a path that leads to our present quarry, near the mortuary. But how can I leave my courtiers, my advisers, the palace servants? We must warn them of the attack.”

“They should all be hiding in the cellars by now,” Brehan says. “Wazba and I told the servants and courtiers we encountered to spread the word. But I think Riel is only after you. Everyone else should be all right if they stay out of his way. Now, how do we get into the secret passage?”

“There's an entrance in here,” Laila says, turning to the wall covered with brightly painted reliefs of gods and pharaohs. She pushes on the orange sun disk between the horns of the cow-headed goddess, Hathor, and a door, hidden in the intricate decoration, pops open.

Laila grabs a flint and tinder set on the olive wood table by the window and slips it into her pouch. Then she removes a resin-soaked torch from the ornate bronze sconce by the door and lights it on an oil lamp. She hears running feet and the clash of weapons in the hallway outside. Amosis and Brehan each take a sword and shield off the wall.

“Inside. Now,” Brehan says, standing beside the open door. They quickly file in. Just as Brehan closes the door behind them, in that final sliver of light, Laila glimpses the doors to the reception room blast open as blood-covered quarry workers tumble in. Brehan silently closes the door.

The little group pads through the narrow passage as Laila, leading the way, holds the torch aloft. They turn right and then left, and descend two coiling staircases to reach the old quarry below the palace. Down here the cool air smells mildewed, and Laila is aware of thousands of tons of rock cocooning her from the horrors above like a mother's strong embrace.

“We turn right here,” Laila says when they come to a fork. Or do they? It has been almost a decade since they played down here. She looks to the twins for confirmation. Their sleek dark heads nod. They continue, the single torch creating a warm ball of light around them. Ahead and behind, the blackness is absolute. The sound of their footsteps echoes off the damp stone walls.

They are in a place without time. Laila has no idea if they have been in these tunnels ten minutes or an hour. Finally, Amosis asks, “Do you know how much farther we have to go?”

“Not far now,” Sada says. “Around the bend there's a little doorway that will take us to the edge of the quarry.”

Brehan considers. “Outside, we would be exposed,” he says. “Riel, or his creatures, could spot us. I think we should stay in the passage for now... What's that?” A muffled clomping echoes down the tunnel behind them.

“Laila, douse the torch,” he says softly. She bends down and rolls it quickly from side to side in the dirt, snuffing out the flames as Brehan kneels and puts his ear against the passage floor. “People are coming, lots of them,” he says, rising. “They must have torn the reception room apart looking for us and found the passageway. All right. Amosis, Wazba, swords out. We're going to make a run for the mortuary.”

Laila sees a lighter darkness through the narrow opening and steps out. Fresh air hits her, invigorating her after the mustiness of the tunnels. A million stars dazzle in an endless sky, casting the rocky ledges and stone paths of the quarry in a translucent milky glow.

Brehan pulls Laila up a ledge where she sees, perhaps a couple hundred paces away, the mortuary complex. Beyond that is the large, strangely shaped rock outcrop called Perek-thet that the people of Sharuna used to worship before the Egyptian gods visited them. And beyond that stretches the desert, sand dunes rising like tall ocean waves frozen in midswell.

Brehan grabs Laila's hand and sprints toward the mortuary, the others following. Laila notices that he constantly looks right and left at the ground, probably for snakes or scorpions doing Riel's will. The ground looks clear to Laila, but Brehan's face is tight with worry. “What is it?” she whispers.

“Danger nearby. My skin crawls with it. I just don't know...”

Something drops next to his feet with a hard thump. A large rock. Laila picks it up and looks around. Who could have thrown it? Then Amosis cries out in pain. Something has hit his shoulder. Another rock. Laila looks up and see dozens of large dark shapes, wings outspread, blocking out the dazzling array of stars.

“Look!” she says, pointing up. “Falcons! Carrying rocks!”

“Run!” Brehan says, lifting his shield to cover Laila as Amosis covers Sarina and Wazba protects Sada. “Run as fast as you can.”

They race through a hailstorm of rocks, crying out when an elbow or leg or back is struck. Laila hears a gasp and turns to see Sarina stumble and fall, losing the protection of the shield Amosis was holding over her. Just then a rock hurtles from the sky and bounces off her head with the sharp crack of shattering bone.

Sarina falls forward, eyes open in surprise.

“Sarina!” Sada gasps, running to her twin.

“We can't stop!” Brehan cries, scanning the dark forms wheeling in the sky. With a loud thunk, a rock bounces off the shield he holds over himself and Laila. Amosis hoists the injured girl over his shoulder and holds his shield over them with both hands.

“We're almost there,” Wazba says, pulling Sada under his shield. They clamber up to the gate, securely locked with a chain wrapped around it several times. Brehan touches the iron hinges and squeezes his eyes shut in concentration as the chain glows red, smokes and pops off, falling to the ground with a clatter as a strong metallic smell fills the air.

As rocks thud against shields, the little group races across the small courtyard to the mortuary's front door, which is also locked. Brehan touches the lock, focusing on it until Laila hears a metal snap and the mechanism fall to the floor. They are in. But they can't lock it behind them.

“Laila,” Brehan says, “strike some sparks. There has to be a lamp here somewhere.”

Laila's first strike of flint against iron catches the tinder. Brehan hands her a lamp, full and sloshing with oil, which she lights, and then others he brings her. She hears gentle crying, and when she looks to her left she sees that Amosis has placed Sarina on the floor, where Sada rubs her hands and strokes her face.

Brehan and Amosis hold lamps high, illuminating their surroundings. Laila knows the room well; she arranged her father's burial here and those of favored palace servants. They are in the mortuary reception room, furnished like any well-to-do parlor with elegant tables and chairs. This is where grieving family members meet with staff to discuss the details and prices of embalming and funeral arrangements.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves display bright turquoise
ushabtis
, which the mortuary owners sell to grieving relatives so the deceased will have servants in the afterlife. Bound to each one with a ribbon is a copy of the
Egyptian Book of the Dead
so the spirit of the deceased can read the words to raise the
ushabti
. Against one wall stand six gilded coffins, brightly painted with animal-headed gods, in different sizes and price ranges.

Brehan pushes a sofa in front of the door, its gilded legs scraping the stone floor tiles. “Amosis, Wazba, help me.” Within moments, every stick of furniture in the sales area has been piled up as a barricade. “That will do for a while,” he says. “At least Riel and the quarry workers will have to give us a loud warning.”

He strides around the room, tugging on the solid iron bars of the windows. “Lucky we have these,” he says.

“It's because of the gold,” Laila explains. “The mummies are buried with gold amulets to protect the spirits of the dead.”

Sada keens softly, rocking over her sister and begging her to open her eyes. Laila races over and drops to her knees. By the flickering light of her lamp, Sarina's face looks chillingly empty. Laila puts her hand against her neck and feels a dull warmth, rapidly cooling.
No, it can't be.

“Brehan, help her!” Laila cries. Brehan can heal any injury. He will save Sarina.

He kneels beside her and removes the girl's wig. Laila gasps and Sada cries out. Beneath Sarina's shorn hair, the skin is torn open and clotted with blood.

“Is her skull cracked?” Laila asks, tears sliding down her cheeks. “But you can heal that, can't you?”

Brehan puts his hand on the girl's head and closes his eyes. He tilts his head left and right, his eyelids fluttering. He moves his hands down to her neck and chest as if searching for something. He grunts in dismay and shakes his head, then starts all over again, feeling, searching.

Finally, he opens his eyes and folds Sarina's hands on her abdomen. “Laila,” he says softly. “She is gone.”

Sada's scream pierces the silence. She throws herself on her sister, howling like a wounded animal.

“Hush,” Laila says. Tears flow freely now as she looks over her shoulder at the door. “They will hear you.”

Amosis picks up Sada, who twists and fights to go back to her twin, but he holds her tightly. “Cry into my shoulder,” he says. “Cry as hard as you want but into my shoulder so no one outside can hear.”

But someone outside has heard. Laila hears the pounding of feet outside. They're here.

Someone tries the door handle and, when that doesn't work, pounds on the door. Everyone in the reception room freezes. There's more banging and the sound of bodies throwing themselves against the door. The furniture moves slightly. Footsteps echo around the back of the building. The attackers have them surrounded.