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“Have mercy, Heba.”
She considered his plea for a few moments, staring intently into his well-fucked, unfocused gaze.
Then, just because she could, because she knew he’d deny her nothing, she started all over again and didn’t let him sleep at all.
Who knew she had such a diabolical streak?
But when it came to Shai, she surprised herself and him with her possessiveness and fixation.
She was downright obsessed with him.
For now, she let wantonness and greed run amuck.
For now, he let her have whatever she wanted of him.
For now.
Chapter Eleven
“Some day Love shall claim his own, Some day Right ascend his throne, Some day hidden Truth be known; Some day - some sweet day.”
—John L. Bates
Modern Day. Luxor, Egypt.
“How much longer?” Ere whined.
“You asked that five minutes ago,” came Ben’s reminder, oft repeated.
“But this dark, creepy tunnel seems never-ending!” the black dragon complained—
As Ben’s considerable patience started fraying at the edges.
He didn’t comment this time, walking faster to put some distance between him and his persnickety sire. Ere’s mutterings and Sorin’s occasional low murmurs receded the farther Ben walked, an old-fashioned torch lit by ever-lasting dragonfire lighting his way.
By his estimates, they were walking deep underground toward the Valley of the Kings from when they’d descended into a hidden pit beneath the Memorial Temple of Hatshepsut that led directly into the mountain divide.
Once they determined that there was an outlet for the tunnel, for the air seemed to circulate, and Ere and Sorin’s hyper hearing could pick up on water dripping and flowing, Ere insisted upon demonstrating his dragon strength by putting back the several-ton slab of stone to seal the ground from which they dropped. Just in case any early-bird archeologists might wander by and find a huge hole in Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple that hadn’t been there before.
The tunnel they now followed was quite wide, and the ceiling high enough to fit three very tall men.
In the beginning, the walls had been rough, relatively uncut, just excavated enough to allow passage. But gradually, the sides, floor and ceiling became more sculpted and refined, the limestone shaped and polished to a glistening smoothness in the torchlight.
Somehow, despite being at least three to four hundred feet beneath ground, the air was not stifling. It even seemed fresh. And perhaps it was Ben’s imagination, but he thought there might have been a ghostly breeze that blew through the tunnel, like spirits sighing.
How many slaves and servants must it have taken to create these secret passages, tombs and majestic public monuments? Hundreds of thousands, even millions when one considered the accumulated timeline of ancient Egypt.
It boggled the mind.
Ben knew that nearby, the laborers used to live in a village called Deir el-Medina. They were predominantly free men and women, who earned their living working construction for the Pharoahs.
They worked in a strict, heavily regimented ancient production line of sorts, with precise schedules and meticulously tracked productivity. Water and food rations were brought to them from the ancient capital city of Thebes, now Luxor, and they dwelled in the ancient Egyptian version of an apartment complex. Except, instead of high-rises, the various chambers spread out horizontally in sectioned-off rectangles and squares.
There was no such thing as privacy in these times. One neighbor could easily look into another neighbor’s window if it was uncovered, for the mud brick and stone houses were simply one room next to another. There were seldom any locked doors.
People took pride in what they did, though the work might be considered back-breaking by today’s standards. They were doing the gods’ work. For Pharoahs were next to the gods, and the Afterlife was even more important than living on earth. They were architecting Utopia in a sense, and if they did it well, the most loyal and accomplished of these builders might get to enjoy the bounty they created with their own lavish tombs nearby.
Finally, Ben came to a curve in the path.
