"Ramses!" she whispered.
The warm sun fell silently over her face, her knotted brows and her closed eyelids. She felt it on her breasts and on her outstretched arm.
Tingling; warmth; a sudden great breath of well-being.
She rose from the bed, and moved on swift feet across the deep green carpet. Softer than grass, it ate the sound of her steps completely.
She stood in the window looking out over the square, looking out again to the great silver glare of the river. With the back of her hand, she touched her own warm cheek.
A deep ripple of sensation passed through her. It was as if a wind had caught her hair and lifted it lightly off her neck; a hot desert wind, stealing over the sands, slipping into the palace halls, and creeping over her, and somehow into her, an
d through her.
Her hair made a soft zinging sound as if being stroked by a hairbrush.
In the catacombs it had begun! The old priest had told the tale, and they all laughed at supper. An immortal slumbering in a deep rock tomb, Ramses the Damned, counsel to dynasties past, who had gone to sleep in the dark in the time of her great-great-grandfathers.
And when she'd awakened, she'd called for him.
"It is an old legend. My father's father told it to him, though he did not believe it. But I have seen him with my own eyes, the sleeping King. Yet you must be aware of the danger."
Thirteen years old. She did not believe in such a thing as danger; not in the ordinary sense; there had always been danger.
They walked together through the rough-cut stone passage. Dust fell from the loose ceiling above. The priest carried the torch before them.
"What danger? These catacombs are the danger. They may cave in on us!"
Several rocks had fallen at her feet.
"I tell you I don't like this, old man."
The priest had pushed on. A thin baldheaded man with stooped shoulders.
"The legend says that once awakened, he cannot easily be dispatched. He is no mindless thing, but an immortal man with a will of his own. He will counsel the King or Queen of Egypt, as he has done in the past, but he will do as he pleases as well."
"My father knew of this?"
"He was told. He did not believe. Neither did your father's father, or his father. Ah, but King Ptolemy, in the time of Alexander, he knew, and he called Ramses forth saying the words: 'Rise, Ramses the Great, a King of Egypt needs your counsel.' "
"And he returned, this Ramses, to his darkened chamber? Leaving only the priests with the secret?"
"So I have been told, as my father was told, and that I should come to the sovereign of my time and tell the story."
It was hot, suffocating, in this place. No coolness of the deep earth here. She did not like to go any further. She did not like the flickering of the torch; the evil light on the rounded ceiling. Here and there were marks on the walls, scribbles in the ancient picture language. She could not read them; who could? It made her afraid, and she loathed being afraid.
And they had taken so many twists and turns that she could never find her own way out now.
"Yes, tell the Queen of your time the tale," she said, "while she is young enough and fool enough to listen."
"Young enough to have faith. That is what you have; faith and dreams. Wisdom is not always the gift of old age, Majesty. Rather, it is sometimes the curse."
"And so we go to this ancient one?" She had laughed.
"Courage, Majesty. He lies there, beyond those doors."
She'd peered ahead. There were a pair of doors--enormous doors! Layered over with dust, and covered beneath the dust with inscriptions. Her heart had quickened.
"Take me into this chamber."