Eye of the Moon Read Online Free PDF

the lamplight. His silence held complete power in the chamber. But he knew my father was right. He bowed his head and sighed as if with great generosity.
    â€œVery well. The favor is granted. But you’re not to leave the embalming complex for the entire seventy days. The other high priests will fetch the necessary liquids and ointments and oils from the temple. And when the ritual is complete . . .”
    My father knelt and touched his jackal head three times to the floor so that I heard the hollow sound of the terra-cotta ears knocking against the stone. “So be it.”
    What? So be it! Why didn’t he fight for his life? Ipulled away from the spy hole and threw myself back against the wall. A bowl of entrails tipped from the shelf. The terra-cotta shattered. Queen Tiy’s intestines lay at my feet on the floor among the shards.
    There was a moment of complete silence. I held my breath. Then a voice hissed, “What was that?”
    Suddenly the door from the wabet chamber was flung open. Two priests rushed in, grabbed me by the shoulders, and pushed me forward into the presence of Wosret. “She’s been spying. And the queen’s entrails have been defiled.”
    I couldn’t see my father’s eyes through the peepholes in his mask. I spun around to face the highest of high priests. “I heard everything. I know your plot. You’re asking my father to be a
murderer
. And because he won’t agree, you want to kill him as well.”
    â€œIsikara . . . keep silent! I beg you.”
    Wosret turned to my father. “A feisty girl, this daughter of yours.”
    He walked slowly around me, looking me up and down with his dreadful jackal face. I clenched my jaw and stood up straighter with my arms at my sides, defying him to attempt to scare me with his yellow jackal eyes and sharp jackal grin. I wouldn’t flinch.
    â€œYes . . . a fine girl. It seems a waste to make her drink the poison cup as well.” He nodded his head toward my father. “Not so, Henuka?”
    My father kept silent. I could feel him willing me to be silent as well.
    â€œYou do not scare me, sir!” I spit the words at him.
    â€œAh, polite, too!” Wosret bowed his jackal head at me. “Yes. It’d be a waste for someone so polite and pretty to die so young.”
    My father made no reply.
    â€œBut there are other options.” The highest of high priests grabbed my arms and pulled them behind me while his dark obsidian lizard eyes flicked over me.
    I tried to twist free. I wanted to bite his hands but could not reach them. Instead I spit. The glob lay glistening at his feet.
    He pulled me around to face him. “What? You’ve already defiled Queen Tiy’s entrails and now you defile the floor of the wabet chamber. Holy ground, already ritually washed. Ground that we brush our footsteps from when we leave. Defiled by a slip of a girl!”
    â€œShe’s young and thoughtless.” I could hear the note of begging in my father’s voice.
    Wosret stared at me from beneath his jackal snout. “The poison cup is too kind. Perhaps she’s better suited to being a slave. Slavery will soon pacify her reckless spirit. Slavery will teach her how to behave. It will soon
whip
her into shape.”
    The way he said the word “whip” sent a shiver down my back. And already he spoke of me in the third person—as if I were an object and not a person.
    I narrowed my eyes. There was no stopping me. “I’ll be no one’s slave. Least of all
yours
! I would rather kill myself first.”
    â€œ
That
you may have to do,” his voice rasped back at me.

    4    
THE OPENING OF
THE MOUTH
    T he sound of footsteps echoed down the stone passageway as the priests left the wabet chamber. Then a clang of metal shuddered through the walls as the door that led to the temple was bolted shut.
    I spun around to face my father. “You knew,