There is nothing eternal but the Gods, Kiya told herself, watching the trader disappear into the thick willow and tamarisk foliage surrounding the oasis pool. She pressed her bonds across the jagged ribs of the date palm. Everything else is temporary.
The twine was made of unusual green fibres—not papyrus, something finer. Hemp, perhaps. It was exceptionally strong, but Kiya knew that even the strongest bonds could be broken. She had seen captive crocodiles do it with ease. If they could do it, why not Kiya?
What she could not do was become a slave. She had seen them on the streets of Memphis. They followed their owners like dogs, their shoulders slumped, their eyes cloudy and lifeless. Nay—she would rather die and become lost in the corridors of the Underworld than serve someone else in this one.
Not that the trader cared a fig about what she thought or felt. He had not wavered, even when she had told him about her starving family, of the souls who stood to perish if she did not return.
It had been a lie, of course. She did not have a starving family. She did not have anyone at all, in fact. But it didn’t matter: he had failed the test. He, like most of his profession, was soulless, completely without a ka. And his certainty of the coming flood was beyond arrogance. Only a seer or High Priest could ever know such a thing. Certainly not a trader.
She rubbed the twine against the rough palm ribs and soon tiny ribbons of smoke began to weave into the air. She intensified her effort, remembering his stinging words. Foolish and decadent, he had called her. Spoiled and superior. Was that what the Libu thought of the Khemetians? Was that how they justified their raids?
The trader had denied being a Libu, though he bore the Libu scar—a brutish, crescent-shaped gash beside his eye. And he wore the long purple robes of a Libu, though they did not suit him. His broad, deeply contoured chest stretched against the thin fabric, threatening to break the seams. And his strange, liquid blue eyes suggested unusual origins. He was quite attractive, in truth.
For a fiend.
Her hands burst apart. She quickly untied her feet and leapt into a run. The soft sand gave beneath her, revealing her footprints, but soon she spied a patch of hardpan. She headed towards it, not stopping until her footprints were no longer visible upon the naked ground. Then she stopped. She had an idea. Carefully, she began to walk backwards in the very same footprints she had made.
This he would not expect. He would follow her footprints east, towards the Great River. Meanwhile, she would be in hiding back at the oasis, where he would eventually return, defeated and exhausted, and quickly fall asleep. He would not even hear the gentle hoofbeats of his strange beast as she rode it off into the night.
By the Gods, she wished it were night already, and not so impossibly hot. The Sun God bored into her skull, melting her thoughts and sapping all that was left of her strength. As her head began to swim a memory flooded in... ‘Stay awake, Mother,’ young Kiya whispered, crouching by her mother’s side in the shadowy chamber. ‘We must try to escape.’
Evil men had breached the walls of the harem and invaded the concubines’ chambers. The panicked women and children had been running barefoot past the doorway of her mother’s chamber, seeking their escape beyond the harem walls.
‘Come with me, little one,’ a voice had urged.
It had been one of the escaping concubines. She had stopped in her mother’s doorway and held her hand out to Kiya.
‘Come now, we have little time.’ The woman had glanced at the empty vials that littered the floor beneath the bedframe. ‘You must leave your mother here. Already she has begun her journey.’
‘My daughter will sssstay with me!’ Kiya’s mother had slurred, rousing herself from her stupor. ‘Leave us to our fate!’ Her eyes had rolled back in her head. ‘Beware the three serpents, my daughter,’ she’d told Kiya, gripping her small arm. ‘Each will try to take your life.’
‘She is not in her right mind, dear,’ the woman in the doorway had said. ‘Come quickly!’
‘The third will succeed,’ her mother had continued. ‘Unless you become like—’
Her mother’s grip had been too strong—Kiya hadn’t been able to pull away. ‘Mama, please. We must flee. The bad men are coming!’
‘All men are bad, Kiya. Remember, they only wish to possess you, to enslave you.’
By the time Kiya’s mother had finally released Kiya’s arm the woman in the doorway had gone.
‘Conceal yourself under the bed,’ Kiya’s mother had instructed. She’d reached for the largest of the vials, uncorked the bottle, and drunk down its cloudy contents. ‘Do not fear, my beautiful little daughter. They will not find you. And they will not take me alive.’
Kiya had felt hot tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Please do not go, Mama! Do not leave me alone.’
But Kiya’s mother had lain her head upon her wooden headrest for the last time and slipped soundlessly into her world of dreams.
‘Beware the three serpents,’ whispered her mother’s voice again now.
Startled, Kiya looked all around her. There was not a single soul in sight.
‘Each will try to take your life,’ the voice resounded.
Kiya looked up at the sky, half expecting to see her mother’s face staring down at her. There was nothing. She looked to the ground, as if at any moment a serpent might materialise upon her foot.
‘The third will succeed, unless you become like...’
Like what?
Kiya slapped herself on the cheek. The skin on her head had begun to boil and her mouth was dry, as if full of fibres. She knew that if she did not get out of the sun soon she would quickly lose her will to do it. Abandoning her plan, she broke into a run, heading as fast as she could back to the oasis, where the trader was nowhere to be seen. Heedless of anything but her own smouldering skin and desperate thirst, she dived into the oasis pool and let the cool water caress her. She drank her fill, then disappeared into the depths.
When she finally emerged for a breath she heard men’s voices, nearing the pool. They were speaking in a deep, guttural tongue that she recognised immediately. Libu.
Her heart hammered as she cowered into a shady stand of flute reeds growing in the water on the far bank. She found the longest of the reeds and snapped it in half, then sank down against the bank, breathing slowly through the natural straw.
In moments a group of men arrived at the pool’s edge. Their blurred figures were difficult to see through the water, but Kiya noticed their purple headdresses and the long copper blades that hung from their belts. The men spoke excitedly—joyfully, even. As their donkeys bent to drink, Kiya could see the animals’ saddlebags bulging with grain.
Khemetian grain.
Kiya felt her heart pinch with hatred. They were Libu raiders, for certain. Their joy was the Khemetians’ doom. All the workers—the thousands of peaceful farmers whom Kiya had joined in service to the King—would now return to their homes empty-handed because of these evil men. Many of the Khemetian farmers would not return home at all.
Kiya struggled to keep her breaths even and swore she would have her revenge. The Sun God would soon be on his nightly voyage to the Underworld and the murderous villains would be to bed. The Moon God would rise, and Kiya would execute her escape plan anew.
Curses on the trader, for she no longer needed him. She had a band of Libu to plunder from instead. Besides, if her captor were any kind of trader he would have quickly understood the threat they represented to his grain. He and his strange, oversized donkey were probably halfway across the Big Sandy by now.