Page 101

What do you want?

A wrenching temptation—and a choice.

A different fear gripped her, and Ellie surged to her feet, facing the three revolutionaries. “The Staff of Moses—would you use it?”

Jemmahor cast a wide-eyed look at her teacher. Umm Waseem comfortably folded her hands over her belly.

Zeinab’s green eyes were unreadable.

“You say you are fighting to free Egypt from tyranny,” Ellie pressed, her voice breaking with urgency. “The staff would put untold power in your hands to accomplish those aims. You could darken the skies. Turn the waters of England to blood. Curse us all with pestilence. Kill.” Her hands shook. Ellie clenched them into fists. “Would you use it?”

Adam’s face flashed with comprehension. His hand came around her back in a silent gesture of comfort as he rose.

Ellie needed it. She let herself lean against him.

Zeinab paced to the altar. She gripped the rail and bowed her head, her frame tight with a quiet agitation. “You have seen something like this before.”

Ellie remembered the smell of blood and smoke. The fierce gaze of a woman with a scar on her cheek. The war that had raged inside her heart, pitting her dreams against the things that she had known in her deepest heart were right.

“Yes,” she replied hoarsely, watching Zeinab from the steady circle of Adam’s arms.

Zeinab raised her head. “They have bound us in debt. Strangled our livelihoods to turn us into cogs for their own industry.” She looked at the stricken face of her husband, and her eyes flashed with both sympathy and a quiet rage. “They close our schools and force our people into ignorance. Rape our history and carry it off to their museums. We are Egypt. We were the greatest empire on the earth. And we suffocate under the rule of an unelected foreign dictator who holds ultimate power over every aspect of our lives.”

The words were taut with pain and anger. Then her eyes fell closed, a different emotion sweeping over her expression. “But even Musa had to learn of the inscrutability of the will of Allah from His messenger in the desert. Wa kaifa tasbiru ‘alaa maa lam tuhit bihee khubraa—How can you patiently bear with that which you do not understand?He failed three times. And I am not a prophet.”

Sayyid’s expression shifted as he gazed at his wife. An aching compassion and complicated admiration broke through the shock and dismay that he had been feeling since Zeinab’s revelation, though Ellie could still see the hurt in the tight lines around his eyes.

Zeinab pushed back from the altar, her figure straightening as she turned to face them.

“No.” She lifted her chin and met Ellie’s eyes. “I would not use it.” A tear slipped down her cheek, and her hands remained clenched into fists. “I am too angry to trust myself with the power of God.”

At Zeinab’s declaration, the tension twisting inside of Ellie broke like a weight slipping softly from her shoulders.

“The tablet was in Akkadian,” she said quietly, stepping from the shelter of Adam’s arm to drop back down in the pew. “I was only able to decipher a few words before we were interrupted. It spoke of the location of the tomb of a king—one with a name phonetically similar to Neferneferuaten. But…” She cast an uncomfortable glance at Sayyid, knowing he was the only other person in the room likely to recognize the significance of what she was about to reveal. “The verb forms were feminine.”

Sayyid frowned thoughtfully as his attention sharpened. “Which verb?”

“Beloved,” Ellie replied significantly. “The description wasbeloved of the divine king.”

“The female form?Beloved?” Sayyid rose to his feet, pacing in the aisle as his mind whirled. “Of course, there could be cultural differences, as Akkadian was used by everyone from Egyptian royal administrators to Mitanni princes…”

“But it seems to imply that Neferneferuaten was awoman,” Ellie filled in. “A woman beloved by a king.”

“Presumably the king that she succeeded,” Sayyid added with wide-eyed reverence. “And the king who died before Neferneferuaten’s reign wasAkhenaten.”

“And his beloved was hisqueen. That’s what it’s saying, isn’t it?” Ellie pressed, anxious for someone with a true Egyptological mind to confirm the wild theory that had burst into her brain back in the sun chapel. “It’s saying that the pharaoh Neferneferuaten, who took the throne after Akhenaten’s death, was none other than the woman he had married—Nefertiti!”

“A lady pharaoh?” Jemmahor perked with interest.

“It makes perfect sense,” Ellie continued excitedly. “It would have been of the utmost importance to Akhenaten to pass his crown to someone who would uphold the faith of the Aten, and Nefertiti was his partner in that from the beginning.”

“It would not be entirely unheard of,” Sayyid replied thoughtfully. “During the Twelfth Dynasty, Sobekneferu took the throne after the death of her husband, Amenemhat IV. She is included on several of the king lists. And of course, we were at Hatshepsut’s temple today. She claimed the throne for herself after her husband died, instead of ruling as a regent for her stepson.”

“But what about the staff?” Zeinab pressed.

Ellie cast an uneasy glance at Sayyid. “The tablet mentioned a tomb at the Horizon of the Sun.”

“Akhetaten!” Sayyid exclaimed. “The new capital city Akhenaten and Nefertiti built at Tell al-Amarna. That’s what the name means—Horizon of the Aten, the god of the sun. Of course, the cliffs behind Tell al-Amarna are peppered with tombs—those of Akhenaten himself as well as many of his leading courtiers. The necropolis was abandoned along with his capital sometime around the beginning of the reign of Tutankhamun.”