PROLOGUE
In the glorious summer of 1828, a brilliant young Frenchman by the name of Jean-Francois Champollion undertook an expedition to a country whose ancient, mysterious language he had at last deciphered for the world just six years prior -- to the glowing land of Egypt.
One can imagine the brazen young gentleman, swelling with pride on the long sail up the Nile, feeling as though he owns every stone and clay remnant bearing those mystical characters he has triumphantly broken and tamed.
One sweltering afternoon, he and his companion, Tuscan scholar Ippolito Rosellini, disembark at the crumbling sacred city of Thebes, with its collection of temples called Karnak, the greatest religious compound ever constructed by man. There in the southwest corner of the sprawling precinct of Amun, a smaller shrine dedicated to the god’s son, the moon Khonsu, has lain abandoned since the time of the Roman emperors, and its once bold ramparts cower under drifts of sand.
Inside this fallen temple, we are told, Champollion discovers a stele -- a solid tablet of quarried limestone -- covered in hieroglyphic script. As he reads, the stele relates the passionate story of a foreign princess whose life becomes entangled in the will of the pharaoh Ramesses the Great -- and that of his god Khonsu.
The stele, it will later be discovered, was written some 600 years after the events it describes. Although the author faithfully presents this legendary tale with all the fervor of a participant, the passing centuries had clouded the details of sequence, and the order of events became confused, disguising an even greater romance lingering behind the words. To learn the true story of this young princess whose fame carried her name to the hallowed halls of Egypt, one must travel back in time over 3,000 years and meet the girl herself…
CHAPTER I
Before dawn in the precinct of Amun…
"My mother was a foreigner. It feels like a betrayal to call her that, since I myself have no blood-claim to Egypt. I am Egyptian not by birth, but by faith.
"Once, before Egypt came to me, before I came to know the ways of the Divine Ones, I too was a wild stranger outside of the gods' grasp. Like Hathor, raging in the desert like a demon, it took a moon god to lure me back and calm me. That life before Egypt seems to me now like a horrible dream, but, like my mother, I have forever believed in the power of dreams.
"Some say dreams are journeys through the realm of the gods. I come from a long line of dreamers, and my history is traced through travel and restlessness. I have never before felt so rooted as I do here at Karnak, this golden Egyptian city of gods and god-servants. Before, I was always wandering - wandering in the memories of my mother, wandering in the rooms of my father's palace, wandering between sleep and wakefulness, life and death, health and madness."
The darkness muffled her last words, and Bentreshy drifted into silent reflection.
"Tell me again the story of your mother," whispered Naia from her cot nearby, ruffling the stillness of the pteron hall, the sleeping quarters for priests and priestesses within the temple complex.
After a pause, Bentreshy turned a wistful face toward her friend. "Tell it," continued the younger girl, "the way she told it to you. In her words."
Bentreshy smiled tremulously in the dark, the memory of her mother’s voice sending a fleeting tremor through her heart. She gently cleared her throat, then, and summoned the words so often repeated in her past.
"As soon as I was old enough to listen, Asra, my mother, told me this story...
"Hear me, little Ru’ya. Your soul is of my soul, your body of my body. My past, then, is yours too. You must remember this past of ours, embrace it, so that you may learn from it. It is a history of woe, but also of triumph, and I trust in your ability to understand.
“My mother, your grandmother, was called ‘Queen.’ She belonged to a desert people known by your grandfather’s tribe for having hearts as shifting and suspicious as the serpentine dunes they called cities. I remember her as she always looked -- crouched near our cooking flame, tense, rocking her weight onto her gnarled toes as though preparing to strike or flee, her furtive gestures blurred by the blowing smoke and billowing dust. I remember her face, shrouded in scarves of bruise-colored indigo, accusation in her eyes as she surveyed the unyielding sand-scape, her skin the color of dirt and malice. This woman, whose heart was shriveled by time’s cruelty, guarded me – her only offspring – like the last muddy puddle in a forsaken oasis; a bitter prize whose only value is due to the desperation that surrounds it. I believe she cherished me as her first, but resented me as her last child.
"Your grandmother’s failure to bear heirs brought shame to her husband, my father; so he cast her out. He did not honor the female line in the way of her ancestors. I was but four years of age at the time, but my stomach still roils when I recall the too-sweet smile on the wide mouth of my father’s second wife, already fat with child for the third time since she came to Amir’s house. “Another boy!” the doctor had prophesied with glee when he observed how her belly swelled low with her latest victory. That afternoon I watched my mother put ashes in her hair. She knew already that this portent of joy for her husband would bring only grief and suffering upon us.
“By the following morning, we were sent out. Our donkey made it as far as the edge of the village before it lay down and refused to breathe. I hadn’t yet lived five years when we left the land of my people, but I was weak and tired like an old woman. My heart knew nothing if not defeat. I blame that vulnerability for your illness, Ru’ya. It took all the youth I had left to bear your sister, my firstborn. I could not give you the strength you needed. You were born, in many ways, daughter, older than me. But I pray that this will make you wise beyond your years as well, and your wisdom will give you power that your body cannot."
At this memory, Bentreshy stopped, her eyes closed. She took a deep breath and continued, this time in her own words.
"My grandmother brought her only daughter a great distance and called her Asra, “travel by night.” Together they reached a land by the sea rich in silver, among the Hittites, or Kheta as you call them in Egypt. Her daughter, my mother, grew up among their customs, learning the art of music. Her talent, beauty, and her noble lineage brought her to the attention of a Hittite prince, my father. He took her as a wife, which pleased my grandmother, as did the birth of their perfect long-lashed daughter, my sister Sibal. A few years later I was born, a sickly, tiny thing, lighter skinned even than my Hittite father. Before she died, my grandmother said I reflected so much light I was like a moon-child and named me Badra. She wished I were a boy. My mother still called me Ru’ya – dream or vision. This name seemed to foretell the way that, once I started speaking, I spoke of things that others could not see."
A yawn interrupted her next thought, and Naia giggled when she could not suppress a yawn herself.
Bentreshy smiled sleepily. "I’m surprised you remained awake this long, Naia. All this talk of dreams and wandering would pacify Montu himself into a sleeping babe. The moon has long since set, and the high priest says we have much to do in the coming day. Let us rest."
The young priestesses of Khonsu slept soundly, barely aware of the troubled excitement even now robbing their superiors of sleep that would color the coming months and demand much of them in staggering, unexpected ways.
