Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(25)

Then like discarding a suit of clothes, he let his human facade fall away as he shifted into his Wyr form. He stretched massive wings out and crouched, his lion’s tail lashing, and he leaped into the air to fly through the brutal heat toward the bluff. Usually when he flew in an urban area, he cloaked himself to avoid complications with air traffic control systems, but this scene looked rural enough that he didn’t bother.

His flight gave him a bird’s-eye view of the land. The watery shimmer became a great, winding river bordered on either side with lush green vegetation and gold fields of grain that came to an abrupt end at a bordering desert.

Realization battered him. Hells bells. Unless he was very badly mistaken, that had to be the Nile. He had flown the length of the Nile several times in years gone past. He had seen it in all three stages of its ancient flood cycle, before the Aswan Dam in 1970 brought all seasonal flooding to an end. With the fields ripe with rich barley and wheat, this looked like Shemu, the Season of the Harvest, which fell roughly between the months of what would be May and September on a modern calendar.

He banked and flew in a wide circle as he scoured the landscape. With his eagle-sharp eyes, he could see for miles.

He saw no power lines, no satellite dishes, no motored boats on the river, no vehicles, nor any paved or gravel roads. No modern irrigation techniques or machinery. No plumes of smoke from distant refineries. No airplanes.

Simple dwellings made of mud-baked bricks dotted the riverbanks. A plume of dust rose from a group of brownskinned men traveling on horseback along the western bank. They were over a mile away. From what Rune could see, they wore shentis, or loincloths, and were armed with copperheaded spears and wooden shields.

Okay, he was still looking for something to make sense here.

He inclined his eagle’s head to study the land below him.

He saw a tiny upright figure, staring directly up at him with eyes shaded, about five hundred yards away from a cluster of eight buildings. A bundle of grain and a knife lay on the ground at the figure’s feet.

And here he was with no Rand McNally atlas or GPS system. Not only did Rune like chick flicks and women’s fashions, but he also knew how to stop and ask for directions when he was lost. Plus he was secure in his masculinity. He might be one of the world’s only four gryphons, but he figured if you added those qualities up with all the rest, it made him unique as all shit.

Keeping the figure in sight, he slowed into a spiraling descent.

It was either a child or a small adult. Well okay, if he suspended all disbelief and just went on empirical evidence (which was patently impossible, but he was really trying to go with the flow here), any adults he might encounter would also be small, at least smaller than those in the twenty-first century.

The figure wore a shenti as well, and nothing else. The grubby scrap of cloth was wrapped around narrow hips. Child or adult, every line in the figure’s posture shouted amazement, but at least it wasn’t running away in a panic. So far, so good.

Rune shapeshifted as he landed about twenty yards away. He paused to give the other figure time to react. He was betting it was a female child. She appeared frozen in shock. Her skin was darkened from the sun into a rich nut brown. She had a light delicate bone structure, dirty feet, and a small rounded belly under a narrow rib cage.

The child’s tangled dark hair had rich auburn glints in the sun, as if she was lit with a deep, internal fire. Her hand fell to her side, and he saw that she had long, lustrous almond-shaped dark eyes that glittered with sharp intelligence.

Recognition kicked him in the teeth. Her immature features already showed the promise of a spectacular bone structure. Her mouth hung open, the childish curve of lips hinting at the sensual beauty that was to come.

Holy shit.

“Hello darling,” he whispered, staring.

She was a breathtaking impossibility. He couldn’t be looking at the child Carling had once been, but somehow he was. Was he caught in her memories? How could that be? It all felt so real, it couldn’t be an illusion. Could it?

The girl said something in a shaky, high voice, the liquidsounding words alien and unintelligible.

For a few moments his frozen brain refused to respond. Then, like flexing an unused muscle, his mind made sense of what she had said to him. She had spoken in a long-dead language.

“Are you Atum?”

Atum, to the ancient Egyptians, was the god of creation, the being from which all other deities came. Rune shook his head and fumbled to find the words and the concepts for a reply that this version of Carling might understand.

“No,” he said, trying with all his might to project comfort and reassurance into his voice. Whether this was reality or illusion could be discovered later. At this point it didn’t matter—gods, he just hoped the child Carling didn’t bolt and run from him. “I am something different.”

The girl pointed with a shaky hand. “But I saw you come out of the water.”

Rune turned to look where she pointed. The river wound out of sight. Atum, according to the myth, rose out of a primordial watery abyss that circled the world. When Rune had changed into his Wyr form and launched into the air, from a distance it must have appeared that he had come out of the water.

He repeated, gently, “I am not a god. I am something else.”

He did not expect her to believe him. She had just seen him fly in his gryphon form. To her, how could he be anything else? The early religions were filled with such things, as the Wyr shapeshifted and began to interact with humankind. Egypt’s pantheon of gods was especially filled with human/animal forms.