Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(26)

He was useless at human things, but if he had to guess, he would place this Carling at under ten years of age. Was this really what she had been like as a child, or was this a projection of her mind? Was this who she thought she had once been? Simple wonder made her intelligent eyes shine. She was so delicate, the sight of her caught at the back of his throat. She was the merest infant. She had the whole of a very long, strange, and what must have been an often difficult life ahead of her. This Carling couldn’t possibly understand any of that.

Moving slowly and easily, he crouched into a squat so he didn’t tower over her. She shivered when he moved but still she did not break and run. Such a brave baby. He cleared his throat. “What’s your name, darling?”

Darling. He used the English word. He knew of no direct equivalent in the ancient Egyptian language.

In a classic childish gesture of self-consciousness, she lifted one of her narrow shoulders toward her ear as she gave him a small smile. “Khepri,” she whispered.

Rune tumbled head over heels in love. He laughed a little breathlessly, feeling like a mule had just kicked him in the chest. “Khepri,” he repeated. If he remembered right, the word meant morning sun. “It’s a beautiful name.” He pointed in the direction of the cluster of small buildings near the river’s edge. “Does your family live there?”

She nodded. Curiosity overcame her wonder, and she dared to sidle a few steps closer. “What is your name?”

His breath caught. He willed her to trust him and come closer. “I am called Rune.”

He watched her mouth form the strange word as she tried it out silently. She would have been a quick child and would have rarely needed to be told something twice. He wondered when she would have taken on the more anglicized name of Carling, and what the reasons had been behind the change.

He gestured toward the bundle of grain and the knife. “You are harvesting.”

She looked at the bundle and heaved an aggrieved sigh. “It is hard work. I would rather fish.”

He grinned. “Where does your village take its grain?”

She pointed north, downriver. “Ineb Hedj,” she told him. She added, proudly, “It is a very great place.”

Ineb Hedj. The White Walls. The city had been named for the dam that surrounded it and successfully kept the Nile at bay, one of the first of its kind in human history. Established around 3,000 BCE and sitting twelve miles from the Mediterranean coast, the city had a long, illustrious history. Eventually it would be called Memphis. At one point it had been the largest city in the world. Khepri was right, it was a very great place.

He heard the rhythmic strike of hoofbeats in the distance, and remembered the men on horseback that he had glimpsed earlier when he was airborne. If Khepri’s village was able to get grain into Ineb Hedj, the city could not be more than a day’s walk away. Probably the riders came from the city.

He smiled. Everything about this child enchanted him, from the way she pulled at her lower lip with thumb and forefinger to how she stood with one dirty foot balanced on top of the other. How had she come from such a poor, obscure beginning to become one of the most Powerful rulers in the Elder Races?

He asked, “Have you been to Ineb Hedj?”

She shook her head. “I am not allowed.”

“That will change some day,” he said.

Khepri looked in the direction of the hoof beats. She asked, “Do you hear that?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Something is happening.” She looked excited and disturbed all over again.

The village must be far enough from the city for the men on horseback to be an event. He frowned and straightened to look north. Khepri moved closer to stand by his side.

Villagers emerged from the huts as the riders appeared. No one noticed Rune or looked in their direction. They were all staring at the approaching riders. Rune set his jaw. He did not like the look of how the riders held their spears, or their aggressive speed.

He put a hand on Khepri’s shoulder. She felt so fragile underneath his fingers, her bones as light and slender as a bird’s. She gave him a frowning look.

“Listen, darling,” he said. He kept his tone quiet and easy. “I think we should step into the field and hide in the grain, just until we know what those men want.”

Or at least that’s what he tried to say to her. Even as the words came out of his mouth, the solid feel of her shoulder melted from underneath his touch. He made an instinctive attempt to grab hold of her. His fingers clenched in an empty fist. Khepri stared at his fist and reached for it with small brown fingers that had gone transparent. Her hand passed through his. Her face tilted up. They stared at each other.

Rune sent a swift glance around. The outline of a room had appeared, sketched over the hot desert afternoon. A vertical line of curtain slashed through the riders who had lifted their spears. The rider in the lead took aim and threw his spear at the nearest villager, a slender middle-aged male. The spear’s copper head emerged from the man’s back in an explosion of liquid crimson.

Ah, hell no.

He glanced down at Khepri and saw her lips move on another word. He recognized it even though he couldn’t hear her. Papa. She opened her mouth wide to scream.

No, dammit. Whatever was really happening—memory, illusion or reality—he did not want to leave the child this way, not now, not yet. He tried to lunge in front of her so she couldn’t see anything else the riders did. He tried to scoop her up and run away with her, but she passed through his arms, as insubstantial as a ghost.