SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

BOOK ONE: THE BOOK OF PTOLEMY

ONE

The Lochias Palace, 58 B.C.

1.

The little girl was shivering in fear.

She stood naked in the waters that filled the great porphyry pool where it was her habit to bathe and swim twice a day, especially in this summertime heat that was the curse of Alexandria. Her eyes were constantly moving, though no other muscle in her body stirred except when she quivered to the inward terror that held her in its grip.

The Lochias palace was still, as silent as one of the great marble mausoleums that studded the Sema where her ancestors, the Ptolemies, lay buried beside the golden sarcophagus of Alexander the Great. At this hour, just before Ptolemy Auletes reclined to the usual banquet that was his evening meal where he regaled his guests with his expert fingers on the flute, the palace should be filled with the faint hum which told of slaves coming and going, of the changing of the guard, of the sound of the chariot wheels and the sandaled feet of slaves with gilded sedan chairs bearing guests.

There was only utter stillness.

And so Cleopatra was afraid.

She was eleven years old and a princess. She told herself there was nothing to fear. Her father was king in Egypt, Ptolemy XII Auletes, direct descendant of that first Ptolemy who was general to the fabled Alexander and founder of this magnificent city on the Inland Sea and the most powerful man in this corner of the world. Her royal parent would let no harm come to her. At his word, men lived or died, men laughed or wept. He was god, as the people of Egypt believed their Pharaohs were gods in the old days.

Surely, nothing can threaten a god!

The little girl had lost her taste for water. She ran up the steps between two rows of golden posts which suspended handrails between them and scampered for her fallen pelisse. The night was hot, sultry, but her ivory skin knew only an ominous chill.

Her hands wrapped the woolen robe about her nakedness. Bundled to the crown of her thick black hair in that fluffy stuff, she folded her arms about herself and went on shivering. Her nurse should be here, to rub her down with unguents and oils from Punt. Teenut was never away from her for so long a time. Auletes would be very angry if she were to tell him that Teenut had left her by herself this way. True, she was not as important a princess as her older sister Berenice, who had a husband already, but she was a member of the royal family, and whoever might harm her risked an agonizing death by torture.

Oh, why was she thinking such gloomy, morbid thoughts?

Usually she was a laughing, bouncing creature, running swiftly to play with the leather ball which the gatekeeper at the Paneum had made for her, or teasing the big black panthers safe in their golden manacles. She had her quiet moments too, for all her few years of life, her dark head bent above some scroll in the Museion, which was the great library where was stored the knowledge of her world. Yet even then, while her mouth pouted in the concentration of her thoughts, she was happy. Was she not learning all about the land in which she lived? True, she would never rule it; Berenice would be queen with her brother Ptolemy as king when their father died; but knowledge was power of a sort.

She desperately wanted to be powerful.

“Teenut,” she called. “Teenut?”

Her voice rang in the quiet air with a quaver unusual for little Cleopatra, who was always so sure of herself, so certain. Auletes said she was the one child of his loins who was most a Ptolemy. Perhaps because her skin was white as ivory is white, rather than the dusky reddish hue of Berenice who had her coloring from her mother.

Cleopatra wondered often about her own mother. She had never seen her, to her knowledge. It was whispered that she was a Greek from Athens, somebody important whose husband had been an ambassador to Alexandria a decade ago. The babe who had been born to her stayed on in Alexandria; she herself was hustled homeward by a husband who bore shipping contracts signed by Ptolemy Auletes that would make him a rich man in a few years.

This was only rumor, however, whispered into her ears by Teenut in a moment of unusual confidence when the old nurse had imbibed a little too freely of the wines of Meroe. Cleopatra scowled and stamped her bare foot. Teenut! By the horns of Merwer, she would have her flogged. What kept her? It was almost the dinner hour, and—

What was that?

The clank of a scabbard hitting against a metal lappet. She would know it anywhere, that sound. There was enough of the tomboy in Cleopatra to make war and warriors glamorous in her mind. For hours it was her habit to sit under a silken canopy in the court exercise yard and watch the Macedonian Household troops at their sword and shield play, casting their spears, or at just plain drill.

Ah, and now she heard the tramp of sandaled feet, many feet marching as one. Soldiers, trained soldiers armed and moving purposefully. In Lochias palace and at the Hour of the Discomfiture of the Enemies of Ra, which was the time of banqueting? The fear that had been in her and which had ebbed a little came back into her veins in full flow. Gathering the pelisse about her thighs, she ran lightly, easily beside the pool and to the far end of the chamber where a door led into a narrow backroom corridor.

A glowing torch cast yellow radiance on the paintings that decorated the corridor as she ran along it. How many times had she stood in admiration of these brilliantly colored walls which showed Alexander and his mother Olympia with the snake that had supposedly fathered him? Alexander burning the royal palace at Persepolis, Alexander cleaving the Gordian knot with his blade, Alexander defeating Darius, all were here. It was a part of her heritage as a Ptolemy, as a distant daughter of that Greek general who had named this city after him. She did not look at the paintings now. She could think only of her safety.

There was a blue door ahead of her.

The blue door gave entrance to her own apartments, where she could clap her hands and summon slave-girls Charmion, who was only a little older, or Mnefert, who was practically ancient, being close to twenty. And Teenut. Oh, Teenut, most of all!

She slid around the jamb and came to a sudden stop. Anger flushed her cheeks. She stamped her bare foot.

“Teenut! Teenut, wake up. I'm going to tell father about your neglect of me. I waited and waited and you never came.”

She ran across the room to the woman who lay so quietly on her side amid the cushions scattered before the gold and ebony bedstead, and went down on her knees. Her hand reached out, caught the woolen stuff of her palla and tugged. Languidly, the old nurse rolled over onto her back.

Cleopatra screamed.

A dagger had been driven to the hilt between her withered paps. The wool of her palla was red and wet with blood; her face was ashen in death. The girl whimpered, sitting back on her heels and staring at the braid hilt of the dagger. It was a curved klepesh of the type carried by the Royal Guards. Her numbed mind told her that no guardsman would dare kill Teenut, knowing how much she was beloved of Cleopatra. Not unless—not unless more than just an old nursemaid were dying this night.

Now she understood why she had been afraid. While she had been in the pool she had heard a voice cry out. Some instinct must have recognized the voice as that of Teenut, realized the terror in it. Whoever had come killing Teenut might be hunting for Cleopatra as well. First kill the maid, then the child. An eleven year old girl could not escape from a palace steeped with blood; an older woman might know people who could be bribed to look the other way.

The little girl mewled her terror, rocking back and forth.

“Father, father—help me,” she moaned.

Teenut had known this was coming. Had she not told her only the day before yesterday while they were walking in the garden that flanked the Eleusinian Sea, of the many marvels that were happening all across the world? The great statue of Diana at Ephesus, already covered with so many breasts, had been seen to sprout ten or more! The earth had shaken in Crete and a hidden vault had opened to the sky to reveal a golden statue of a massive bull. A woman had given birth to a monkey and a lion cub—Teenut admitted that she did not believe this last, it being against nature—and the great helmet that had been Alexander's own and was kept always in the royal museum had leaped from its shelf and fallen with a mighty clangor.

“Terrible days are ahead, little one,” Teenut had whispered. “Three Vestal Virgins in Rome were buried alive for consorting with men. The sword of Hannibal on exhibit in the Temple of Serapis began to sing in words no one could understand. It's bad, little one. Bad, bad.”

Isis forgive her, she had laughed at the old woman.

“These are happenstances with a natural explanation,” she'd hooted. “I learned about these things in the Museion. It was an earthquake in Crete that uncovered the golden bull, no more. Somebody whose duty it was to clean and polish Alexander's helmet didn't put it back firmly enough, or more probably, simply dropped it. As for the statue of Diana in Ephesus, maybe the priests did it themselves with painted bladders. Who knows?”

Ah, Teenut had been right, however. Terrible things were happening in Alexandria tonight. Her right hand clenched into a fist and beat up and down on her knee. She had to get away, somehow she must escape.

She froze rigid. Feet were moving along the main corridor beyond the painted pillars of the foyer. A soldier was coming back to search the room. If he found her here, he would stick a klepesh between her ribs.

There was no place to hide.

Her knees shook so much, she could not stand up.

Achillas was commander of the Macedonian Household guards.

A big man, he walked with an arrogant swing to his wide shoulders that betrayed the ambition which beat so strongly behind the rib-case of his huge, hairy chest. Heavily muscled, he wore the metal and leather caligulae on his calves in the Roman fashion, and a cuirass of iron overlaid with silver from which were suspended silver lappets which clanged musically at his every stride. A baldric held the long spatha in its silver scabbard that had been a gift from Pompey himself when he visited Alexandria some years before.

In his way, Achillas was a handsome man. A short black beard was trimmed close to his heavy jaw. His lips were wide, full, betraying the animality of the man. His forehead was low, his black hair cropped to the skull. His eyes were wide apart and flecked with streaks of gold that gave them the appearance of a tawny tiger's yellow orbs. He was popular with the rich Alexandrines, with the men because of his power over a weak king, with their wives because of his bull strength.

He came to a halt in the doorway of the princess' apartment, studying it through narrowed eyes. Short minutes ago he had stood in this same spot while his men cut down the old nurse and searched the rooms for Cleopatra. The girl should have been dressing for dinner. Too late, he remembered the pool. She had not been there, either.

He moved forward lightly for all his great bulk, kicking the cushions in vexation. His eyes glared with the feral hunger of a wild beast. The girl had to be somewhere. Set send he find her, and quickly. Set was the god of the underworld; Achillas held to the old Egyptian gods, despite the fact that there was Grecian blood in his veins. He vowed a lamb to Set if that dark god would help him in his search.

He opened the blue door and stared down the corridor, seeing one of his men on guard, lance-butt grounded. The guard assured him no one had come through the blue door since he had moved through the royal bath to assume his post.

Achillas grunted and turned back into the room.

She had to be somewhere!

Growling in his teeth, he rummaged through the entire apartment. Once, in a paroxysm of rage, he lifted an ebony and gold stool and brought it down across a brass lamp. The resultant clangor drowned out his oaths. Where could she be? There was no place here to hide. He had searched the rooms thoroughly. And—the little one had to die; it was Berenice who ordered it and Berenice was now queen in Egypt.

His hand half drew his long sword, then thrust it back into its scabbard. Could the girl have fled the palace? But no, it was not to be thought of; the coup had been planned too well, had been executed too swiftly, too quietly.

He was wasting time here. Achillas swung about toward the open doorway, moved between the pillars. A last glance he flung about the room, angry, oddly disturbed at his failure.

Cleopatra was close to stifling, pressed against the dead body of old Teenut and shrouded by the folds of the woolen tunic. Blood was tickling onto her throat. She could feel it wet and still warm, and its touch almost made her faint. Trembling, she pressed closer to the dead body. Teenut had sheltered her in life, let her go on protecting her even in death.

Achillas was searching for her. She recognized his voice.

The Guard commander had always been friendly to her, ready with a smile or a comfit dipped in honey. Cleopatra wondered if she ought to make herself known to him but something about his voice, the angry movements he made, kept her frozen where she lay under old Teenut and her shawl.

In one sense, she was not afraid of Achillas.

He was a man, and Teenut had told her enough about men to let her understand that even the best of them were animals where a pretty woman was concerned. If only she were a little older, with more flesh on her hips and with real breasts instead of these nubbins she bore, maybe she could cajole Achillas into letting her go.

Men were made with a little fire in their loins, Teenut had said. The fire was always there but sometimes it was no more than a mere spark or perhaps a red coal smoldering in sullen waiting. It needed a woman to fan that spark to a blaze, to the burning fury which stirred manhood to quivering life. There were men to whom a pair of breasts was tinder to their lechery. Others found delight in plump buttocks or in long, slim legs, in the curve of a gently rounded belly. Right now, she had none of these attributes and so she must shiver and hide away from big, hairy Achillas.

The room was silent. Cleopatra stirred, wanting to lift a fold of the tunic and look about her. She drew a deep breath and held it, the better to hear. Still there was no sound.

Her black head peeped from under the tunic which she lifted in a little hand. The room was empty. Quickly she wriggled out from under Teenut, trying to disturb her as little as possible, still clad in the woolen wraparound in which she had fled from the bath.

She was alive, but what good would life be to her unless she could find some way to flee from the palace which was so likely to prove her tomb? Breathing hurriedly, she clasped her temples with her palms and bent her head the better to think. She was staring with wide eyes at the tiled floor. For a moment she did not believe what she saw, there on that mosaic surface.

It was a shadow, the shadow of a man.

Cleopatra whirled, choking back a cry of fear.

Achillas stood grinning down at her, a floor lamp at his back. He had taken off his caligulae, his baldric, even his cuirass with its metal lappets which might clank and so betray his movements. In his right hand, so big and so hairy, he held a naked sword.

“Ho, little one. Tell me, where did you hide? My men and I looked everywhere.”

Her hand gestured at the dead body of Teenut. “Under her,” Cleopatra whispered, and read grudging admiration in his eyes.

“You're a sly thing, I give you that. Imagine hiding under a dead woman. Weren't you afraid?”

Her black hair swirled as she nodded. Achillas was talkative, which might be a good sign. Not yet had the sharp spatha been lifted to drive into her tender flesh. If she could use her wits, perhaps she might yet find a way out of this predicament.

“I was afraid,” she went on. “I'm not afraid any more.”

He chuckled. “You're not?” He lifted the long sword and let her see its glittering blade where the red flames of the oil boat made it shine as if with red fire. “Even when you know I've come to kill you?”

“You aren't a fool like the others,” she said calmly.

Achillas gaped at her, scowled, then lifted his left hand to rub it back and forth across his thick black beard. He was an Egyptian but there was Greek blood in his veins from a Thracian grandfather, an adventurer who had come to Alexandria to sell his sword to royalty and who had remained to open a wine-shop and marry a woman of Memphis. His skin was reddish, but his eyes were blue. He still owned the wine shop but because of his stature as Commander of the Royal Guard, he now owned two taverns which made him reasonably wealthy for a soldier and fostered ambition in his blood.

“Not a fool, you say?”

“Only a fool would fail to let me live because if anything should happen to Berenice, I would rule all Egypt.”

“That's just the reason I'm going to kill you, pretty one. Berenice herself gave me the order. She wants no younger sister threatening her queen-ship”

“And who will protect you, Achillas—when she gives the order for your death some day? She may well do so, you know. As commander of the guard you possess power here in Alexandria. Perhaps too much power—to please Berenice for very long.”

He frowned down at her. She was putting ideas in his head with her glib little tongue. He had no especial love for Berenice who was a haughty piece like all the Ptolemies, but she was his queen now that their palace revolt had succeeded and it was good policy for him to obey her. His grip tightened on his sword.

Cleopatra read his intention in his eyes.

“Wait,” she cried breathlessly. “My father. What about my father?”

“He got away from us to the harbor. Somebody must have blabbed. That's the trouble with these family intrigues. You never know who to trust.”

“He'll go to Rome. He's been in Rome before, paying out monies to the Senators to have himself confirmed as king of Egypt.”

“Stop talking, child. I've come to kill you.”

“Listen to me!” she snapped, and stamped her foot. Before her blazing eyes, he drew a deep breath. By the paps of Hathor, this one had royal blood in her veins. You'd think she was queen in Egypt the way she acted, instead of being marked for slaughter. Achillas had to grin at her admiringly.

“My father has escaped to Rome. If I know him, he'll have treasure hidden somewhere which he'll offer to Pompey or to Cicero for their favor. If they send a Roman legion to Alexandria, will Egypt stand against it?”

Achillas shook the sword before her eyes. “Little idiot, why do you keep talking?”

“You're afraid, Achillas,” she accused soberly. “I don't blame you. Can you imagine what my father will do to the man who killed his younger daughter? Can you, Achillas? He would take a month to kill you, slowly and in agony.”

“Shut up!” he cried

“He might reward the man who saved her life.”

“I dare not,” he breathed.

Cleopatra wondered about Achillas. She remembered the things Teenut had told her about men and their lusts. From all palace gossip, Achillas was a man. It was too bad she was not a little older and of marriageable age. She could offer her body to him with a promise to make him her consort if he would overthrow Berenice and seat her instead on the throne.

As it was, she was a child.

And yet, he had called her 'pretty one.'

Cleopatra let her wrapper slide from her shoulders. It fell slowly to pool about her bare feet. She stood proudly naked, letting him stare at her. As was the fashion with highborn Egyptian women, there was no hair on her body, only on her head where it tumbled in a thick black mass to cover her shoulders and halfway down her back.

Achillas licked his dry lips with a furtive tongue.

“Kill me, then,” she told him.

The man stood bemused before her body, Cleopatra saw. His eyes lifted and fell, almost caressingly. Truly, Teenut had spoken with a straight tongue. There was something about a man which could be turned as though to water by sight of female flesh. She was only a child, no woman yet, and still Achillas breathed faster and his eyes bulged.

“Have you a place to hide me, where you and only you can come to see me?” she whispered. “If you let me live I would be very grateful to you. I would do anything you wanted. My father would be grateful, too.”

She gave him no time to think, to remember Berenice and her commands. Still naked she came and pressed against him, felt him lift his hand and run it down her back to cup both buttocks. She was warm and fragrant from her bath, and her skin was soft and smooth as rich cream. The man quivered.

“Hide me, Achillas. Wrap me in a robe and carry me to one of your taverns. You must have private rooms there where I would be safe. Who would think of looking in a wine-shop for a princess of Egypt?”

He nodded, his face flushed red as any Aswan brick, his lungs laboring like a bellows before a forge-fire His hands fell away from her flesh but he continued to stare at her as if she were a krater of water and he a thirsty traveler. It seemed that his muscles refused to act so that it was the girl who must cross the room, snatch up a robe of white wool and wrap herself in its folds.

“I've left a hood so you can cover my face with it,” she told him, smiling strangely. The touch of his palms upon her skin had lighted a queer tingling in her loins. Teenut had not said that she might enjoy the caresses of a man. It was a pleasant feeling and one concerning which she must take thought.

Cleopatra was learning a lesson this night she knew she would never forget. A man and a woman held a mighty force within their bodies, a force that could turn the knees to water and the blood to molten metal. It was exciting, it took the breath away, it made a joy of living. She had only to steal a glance at Achillas' face to know that he had responded to the lure of her nakedness just as she had to the strokings of his palm.

Isis! If she could do this as a mere child, how marvelous this attraction would be when she was a grown woman! Her tiny red tongue-tip came out to touch her lips. She was tempted to let the general lift her, carry her off to some room above his stinking wine-shop, just to sample this new pleasure with him.

She was too clever for that, however. Alone with him in his tavern, she would be helpless to deny him whatever he might want. If he were brutal, cruel as some lovers were cruel, she would be helpless before his strength. No one among the common people who came to his inn would believe the girl who screamed for assistance was a princess of Egypt. They would think the shock of defilement had deranged her mind.

Berenice would not care. Dead or alive and being defiled, it was all the same to her older sister, as long as Cleopatra never returned to the palace to cause her embarrassment or to threaten her throne. No one would care about little Cleopatra Thea Philopater one way or the other except Achillas, and when he was done with her he would strangle her and throw her body on a dung-heap

She shivered. All this would happen to her unless she could prevent it. But how could a mere girl escape from a man used to fighting hardened warriors? And assuming she could escape, where in Alexandria could she hide from him? Or from Berenice? Cleopatra bit her lip.

Achillas was advancing upon her. His big, hairy hands came out, swung her up and across his shoulder. She hung like a dead thing, head and arms down his back, her legs along his chest. He patted her rear.

“Good girl. Just lie like that, bonelessly, so no one can tell I have anything alive in this robe. I'll get my cloak, throw it around you. That way you'll be hidden even more.”

Cleopatra had seen Achillas walk like that, with his red mantle thrown over his left shoulder. She'd always thought that habit of his with his military cloak an affectation. She wondered now if he had ever carried anyone—or perhaps some priceless treasure—out of the Lochias palace before.

He went into the hall, put her down while he donned his cuirass and baldric, slipped the caligulae up his calves. His cloak he threw over her carelessly so that she and her robe would be hidden from anyone who might come walking along these corridors.

The halls were empty. The slaves would be cowering in their quarters, wanting neither to see nor be seen on this night of deposed kings and young queens newly come to power. Only soldiers were about and they were too used to the sight of Achillas and his red cloak to pay him any heed.

Under the robe and shrouding mantle she tried to follow his movements. She could see nothing of the corridors along which he strode, for the cloth folds were so tight about her head she had all she could do to keep from smothering. She had a vague idea where his Head of Horus tavern was located, along an off-street of the Street of Canopus. Cleopatra tried to remember what she knew of the city as glimpsed from a sedan chair or a chariot-floor on those rare times when she traveled through it. The Street of Canopus bisected the city proper from the Canopic Gate in the east to the west, where it entered the Necropolis. South of it was the Rhakotis, which was the Egyptian quarter, and the wide shoreline of Lake Mareotis. This street was one hundred feet wide and lined with great marble columns. It touched the Jewish section of the city, it fronted the Temple of Pan and the Gymnasium with its shadowed porticoes, it gave entrance to the Hippodrome outside the city and the Grove of Nemesis.

None of this was any help to her. She knew no one who would dare shelter the younger sister of queen Berenice. Her lower lip trembled. She might have wept had not she felt the heavily muscled body of Achillas suddenly tense.

“What news, Habu?” he called out.

“None, general. The Flute-player got away like a greased pig from children. We couldn't find his ship in the dark. As luck would have it, he slipped past the shoals at the harbor mouth while we were searching the Diabratha.”

“It won't do him any good.”

“To make sure it won't, Berenice is sending some of her counselors to Rome, too—either to bribe the Senators or get rid of the Piper. I hope they do one or the other. If Ptolemy Auletes comes back with a Roman legion, we'll all of us pay for tonight.”

“You worry too much, Habu,” grumbled Achillas.

The other man grunted. Achillas moved on and now Cleopatra detected an urgency in his stride that showed he was perturbed. Cleopatra could understand that. If he were found with the princess under his cloak Berenice might not believe he was carrying her off to enjoy her for a while before he tightened a rope around her little neck. Berenice would suspect him of treachery, of planning a counterrevolution and setting Cleopatra up in her place.

Berenice would have Achillas flayed alive.

There was fresh air around her and a sound of voices. The barracks would be to her left here, the gardens off to the right where they overlooked the great breakwater. And still no one challenged Achillas.

Cleopatra realized she was holding her breath in excitement. She let it out slowly. She must make her move now. Soon it would be too late. They were out of the palace grounds, entering that section of the city between the Regia and the Rhakotis quarter, a labyrinth of narrow alleys and cobbled streets where the stone houses leaned into one another with an air of drunken gaiety.

She wriggled. Instantly his hand lifted to hold her motionless. He growled, “Be still, girl!”

“I want to breathe. I'm suffocating,” she protested.

“All right, let me take a look about. Street's empty. By the rays of Ra, all Alexandria must've heard about the trouble at the palace. Nobody's showing their face. Go ahead, then.”

Her hands came up to disarrange the folds. Gratefully she breathed in the fresh, sultry air of summertime Alexandria even as her eyes ranged down the street and across a distant square.

“Where are we?” she wondered.

“Close to the Canopian Way, near the Temple of Isis.”

“All right. I'll lie quietly.”

She lulled his suspicions with the limpness of her body but her mind was alive with nervousness. It was now or not at all that she had to make her run for it. Just a few steps more. There. She could see the marble blocks of the Street of Canopus below them.

Her body writhed, twisted. Like an eel she slipped down from the robe and the military cloak. Naked, she landed on her feet even as she heard him grunt in surprise and turn to her, a big hand reaching out.

“Are you mad?” he breathed.

She ran, lightly, easily, a silver nymphet in the moonlight. Achillas grated a curse, spun about and came after her. She fled on bare feet, he pounded along with armor clanking, scabbard in his hand for easier running.

The Temple of Isis rose before her, all white marble and gold statuary in the Alexandrine night. Towering columns shadowed a portico in which were set twin bronze doors. Behind those massive doors was the open sanctuary of the temple where worshipers gathered to give gifts and make sacrifice to the goddess. Ah, if they were bolted as they often were at night, she would be lost! Achillas was right on her heels, almost ready to reach out and seize the flying black hair which bobbed on her white shoulders.

She ran into the door, hit it with her body.

For one frightened instant she thought it was locked against her. Then slowly it opened inward and she realized, as she slipped inside, that its weight was so heavy her tiny body had had difficulty in moving it on its hinges. She was inside now and racing across the tile floor.

Achillas was right behind her. She could hear him close the door, hear also the snick of the bolt as he drew it between its flanges.

Her heart was slamming in her ribs in mingled fright and excitement. Isis, mother goddess! Save me, save me! I am a woman like yourself. This man behind us is an enemy, being male. Her bare toes barely touched the floor as she raced forward.

The great statue of the goddess rose upward toward the groined ceiling. Of ivory and solid gold, she sat a throne of silver and ebony, holding her son Horus on her knee. One hand was under her left breast, lifting it toward the child. A fixed smile touched her full mouth above which her eyes—strangely lifelike in the light of the torches below—glistened as if alive. A giant headdress rested on her plaited black hair. Naked to the waist, she wore a linen tunic below it and a jeweled pectoral just above the jutting ivory bosom that was tipped with giant rubies.

Cleopatra slid to the floor between the rows of flickering floor oil lamps resting on golden tripods. On her face she fell, her arms stretched out.

“Mother Isis,” she cried. “Help me—”

Subdued laughter grated at her ears. Achillas had come up behind her, stood on straddled legs grinning at her helplessness. Cleopatra turned, resting on a thigh and a propped arm as she looked up at him.

“Foolish child,” he grinned, his eyes moving along her bared legs and belly. “Isis is only a name, a statue if you will. She has no reality so how can she protect you?”

“Isis is our mother,” she whispered.

“Come. Enough of this nonsense,” he growled.

She could see the lust in his eyes and thick, smiling lips. He would become her lover this night above his tavern. Brutally he would take her, ravish her virginity, probably even relish her screams of agony. Not every Egyptian soldier got a chance to enjoy the body of a royal princess. Safe from harm, from retaliation.

He might keep her for a day or a week or even months, if she proved exciting enough. Sooner or later she would pall on him as women seemed always to pall on their lovers after a time.

“No,” she whimpered, sliding along the floor, “no, no.”

His hand went out to clasp her ankle.

She was staring at him in horror when she saw the change come over him. His eyes that had been on her body lifted toward the goddess. Emotion—fear, excitement, disbelief—leaped into his eyes at what he saw. He was opening his lips to cry out when something flew past her and took him in the middle of his forehead.

He fell face-down and lay unmoving.

Gasping in relief, she whirled toward the statue. It was unchanged, motionless. Isis held the same maternal pose with Horus. Her ivory flesh gleamed in the torchlight, her full mouth smiled.

Movement in the shadows near the headdress of the gigantic statue took her eye. A man with a striped claft half hiding his features came along the ledge formed by the uplifted suti feathers and disc of her headdress. About his middle he wore a cotton kilt. His hands were folding over a thin length of supple leather. Cleopatra recognized it as a sling.

The man stood a moment staring down at her. He was white of skin and his feet were bare, the better to give him a grip on the smooth gold and ebony of the hawk diadem. He made a little movement of his hand and Cleopatra turned her head.

A priest of Isis stood facing her, his face grave.

“We heard you cry for help, Cleopatra. As you can see, your goddess answered your call.” His hand directed her eyes to the motionless figure of Achillas.

“Is he—is he dead?”

“Merely unconscious, though I've no doubt that when he wakes he'll wish for death. His head will ache as if filled with stinging bees.” The priest permitted himself a tiny smile that moved only the corner of his lips. “Satheles is from the Balearic islands which are noted for the uncanny marksmanship of their slingers. I bought him years ago in the slave market. He comes in handy every once in a while. Now then, what are you doing here?”

She gasped out her story before the impassive face and motionless body of the priest. He stood as though carved from red sandstone like the titanic figures of the gods at Karnak, his pleated linen tunic belted by an apron of gold beads. Only his eyes were alive, and his ears.

He nodded slowly. “You shall have sanctuary here. We shall send a message to our sister temple in Rome, and from it get word to your father the Pharaoh that you are safe.”

The priests of Isis held to the old ways, she realized, and the old terms. There had been no Pharaoh in Egypt for centuries, except among the Temple hierarchy. King or Pharaoh, Ptolemy Auletes would learn that his younger daughter was alive. It was enough.

Cleopatra came to her feet. The priest bowed.

His obeisance restored some of her lost confidence. Here at least she was royalty. Her little chin lifted and she moved forward as if garbed in the long linen kalasiris and regal khat, rather than just her own skin. The priest bowed lower as she moved past him.

His hand indicated a small doorway in the throne of the statued goddess. Its joining with the decorations of the throne was so perfect that she suspected it would remain undetected even in strong sunlight, which never reached this corner of the temple.

Satheles was waiting with a lighted torch in a hand. His eyes were lowered so that he would not look upon her body. Cleopatra smiled faintly, wondering if he had been made into a eunuch. The priest came after her, touched a stud in the corridor wall; the door swung shut behind them.

“Achillas will recover his senses in a little while. We do not want him to find us here.”

“He saw something before—before Satheles hit him with a sling-stone I saw his eyes widen.”

The slave chuckled. “A shadow, highness—no more.”

“We were working in the temple when we heard him running across the square,” said the priest. “We hid in the statue as we often do on feast days to observe the worshipers When you ran in and we recognized you, we prepared for trouble.”

“What will he do now?”

The priest smiled. “Stagger out into the night and wonder if Isis is really as mighty a goddess as she appeared to be this night. Oh, he'll keep a still tongue in his head, if that's what's worrying you. He wouldn't dare admit that he smuggled Cleopatra out of the palace—then let her escape.”

“I was so frightened,” she murmured, shuddering.

“Naturally. You're still a little girl.”

She wondered about that, as she walked in the priest's footsteps along the secret passageway which led from the statue to a section of stone wall which opened to a touch of the priest's hand. She would never be the same after this night of fear and horror. A man had stroked her, awakened strange instincts in her flesh. She told herself that when the opportunity came, she must learn more about this attraction between a man and a woman.

As the stone wall swung back, Cleopatra saw that she was in the chamber below the main altar. Only a few lamps burned here, casting grotesque black shadows that hid and then revealed, as they danced to the flickering flames, the painted form of her own grandmother, Cleopatra IV, being led into the Underworld by Isis, then a golden boat of the dead where Cleopatra Berenice lay in state, and still another representation of her as she had been when alive, enthroned beside her husband, Ptolemy Lathyros.

She supposed she would be a painted image some day, too, after she had died, and wondered if she would be that important to the world. Her little fists clenched as she walked and her chin lifted stubbornly. If she had anything to do with it, she'd be important.

Power! That was the key to greatness.

She must learn how to achieve power, in one way or the other. If she were powerful enough, the world would notice her. She wanted very desperately to be noticed. It was a backhanded compliment, she guessed, that Berenice thought her important enough to be killed this night. At least, it was a beginning.

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