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Once the people of Egypt forgot her insignificant existence, she would marry Shai in the common way—simply by living with him and sharing their properties and possessions.
Perhaps they would have more children. She wouldn’t mind a dozen or so little Shais and Hebas running around the manor.
All of this Heba daydreamed as King Parahu held court and celebrated the arrival of his visitors with a fete that night.
They stayed in Punt for five days, loaded up their ships on the sixth, and set sail for Egypt that very afternoon.
Heba smiled into the breeze and bathed in the warm glow of the setting sun sinking slowly beneath the horizon as Shai embraced her from behind, his chin resting lightly on the top of her head.
There was so much to look forward to. Nothing could stand in their way.
She was so confident in their future and so secure in his love that neither of them noticed the ominous advance of black clouds from behind the ships—
Until it was too late.
~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~
Modern Day. Luxor, Egypt.
“I have never seen a wall mural like this,” Ben murmured, his fingertips lightly tracing the colorful images and hieroglyphs.
“It’s as if three thousand five hundred years had not passed. The richness of these paints has not faded at all. No tomb robbers discovered this secret tunnel. No one came before us. The gold, bronze, copper and silver embossing is still intact.”
“Let’s see,” Ere said, illuminating the images with the undying bright light of his dragonfire torch.
“This must be Hatshepsut as a girl, sitting on her father, Thutmose I’s knee. It shows a progression of how she grew up, her life at court.”
“There is nothing unusual about these scenes until this particular image and the inscription beneath,” Ben continued.
“‘The Fated One,’ the engraving says,” he translated, looking closely at the image of the young princess and a tall boy-man with a noose around his neck and his wrists bound together behind him.
“Strange,” Ere noted.
“Nothing we know of Hatshepsut indicates that she had anything to do with slavery, as this image clearly depicts. There was still quite a bit of slave trading during her father’s time, however. She must have been just a girl then. It’s too early in the timeline for this to be a scene of her conquering foreign foes. In fact, later in her reign, she abolished slavery in the capital cities. All of the workers who built her monuments and temples were paid a fair wage.”
They continued down the long, intricately carved secret tunnel. The images portrayed the young princess maturing into a woman and becoming a queen.
“Where is the husband?” Sorin put in.
“Where is the Pharoah who made her Queen?”
Indeed, the mention of Thutmose II was extremely rare in all of Hatshepsut’s public buildings and remaining artifacts. But he was totally nonexistent in this tunnel. The images portrayed a princess becoming queen as if entirely on her own, without anyone to make her so.
“And look at this,” Ere noted.
“I don’t recall ever seeing shadows portrayed in Egyptian murals. Is this simply a trick of the light or different shades of stone?”
Ben shook his head.
“I don’t think so. You’re right that there are no shadows in Egyptian paintings. This particular shade that follows Hatshepsut doesn’t appear on the wall untilafterthe scene with the slave.”
The Fated One.
Who was he?
They all went back to reexamine the slave scene more carefully, for they knew at once that it was central to the story that unfolded before them.
The young princess was standing before the slave, looking up at him from a great difference in heights. The slave, whose hair and features were clearly different from the usual Egyptian style, noting him as foreign, looked down at her with head bowed, eyes intent.
