Persian Rose (White Lotus Book 2) Page 11

  Rhodopis lay flat on her back in the stifling heat, doing her best to ignore the rhythmic tread of the camels—the slight sifting sound as the creatures’ thick, hoofless feet slid through the sand, and the swaying of the litter she rode in. Gods, that endless rocking—side to side, tilting and tipping this way and that until her neck and back were sore from the tension of resisting the slow, monotonous sway. Sitting upright only made the strain in her neck worse. She found it less painful to lie on her back amid the silk cushions, but the litter, perched high upon her camel’s back, was barely large enough for Rhodopis to lie flat. She was obliged to orient her body corner-to-corner across the platform, or risk her feet poking out of the litter’s shade curtains. Such a display would have been most undignified, though after twelve days of enduring the litter’s sway amid the fire of the desert sun, Rhodopis was well beyond caring for her dignity. She was, however, loath to burn her feet; the sun was so hot here, so eye-watering bright, that the whole of Egypt seemed, by comparison, plunged in the dampest and most frigid shade. Surely only a few moments beneath the brutal onslaught of the desert sun would be enough to scorch her red and raw, and she was likely to remain that way for the rest of her days.

  She concentrated on the hum of flies to distract herself from the rocking motion. Those damned clouds of black flies had followed the great caravan of the King’s Daughter over the sands from the city of Gebal. But she listened gratefully to their buzzing, just for the diversion—and to the huffing groans of the camels, which managed to sound both patient and grievously put-upon at the same time. Rhodopis had to focus on the sounds—camels’ feet through sand, the incessant droning of the flies—or all her thoughts would be consumed by the sway of the litter. The sway, the sway… the gods-be-damned, never-ending sway!

  Once her ship had left the lazy waters of the Nile’s northernmost delta, it had taken to the open sea. Never in her life had Rhodopis felt so ill; the ship had floundered and rolled, struggling to breast every wave—even the smallest. And the waves had been numberless, each one conjured up by a malicious Poseidon who seemed bent on tormenting Rhodopis to the fullest extent of his powers. The trip from Thrace to Egypt had never been so trying. But then, she and her family had traveled on a Greek boat. The Egyptian ships, Amtes had explained as she’d held a bowl for Rhodopis to vomit into, were designed to sail upon the river. They were not best suited for sea travel.

  When, after three days of suffering, the ship had landed at Gebal, Rhodopis had fallen to her knees and kissed the warm, unmoving stones of the quay. She’d had no care for the judgment of others, no concern for the decorum of the Pharaoh’s daughter. She had survived the sea—barely, she was certain—and she would give thanks to whatever merciful god had seen fit to preserved her.

  But the camels—the camels had proven themselves a fresh and novel sort of misery. They were frightening beasts, each twice the size of a horse, and some even larger than that, with long yellow shards of teeth exposed in their constantly moving jaws. Their eyes were peevish, their thin, upcurved necks all too quick to swing and strike. She had wanted nothing to do with them, but Amtes had assured her that there was no other way to cross the desert—not with the burden of Lady Nitetis’ rich dowry. And so she had climbed up into her litter, drawing the sun-dimming curtains tightly shut so no one could see her frightened tears, not even Amtes.

  As the days rolled slowly by—slow as a camel’s steps—Rhodopis’ fear of the beasts was replaced by annoyance. Despite their grumbling complaints and intimidating size, she learned that the camels were docile creatures. Yet Rhodopis felt certain the numbing monotony of their swaying gait would drive her to the brink of madness—if the unchanging flatness of the desert didn’t manage to rob her of her wits first.

  The caravan was led by a pair of Arabes, brothers from one of the many warring tribes that fought for supremacy over the vast, brown barrenness that was the desert. The brothers had been hired by Khedeb-Netjer-Bona to guide Lady Nitetis to her bridegroom in Babylon—they, and a full complement of Arabes guardsmen, who carried wickedly curved swords at their belts and daggers strapped to their wrists, well hidden beneath the sleeves of their light, flowing robes. At every sunset, the brothers called a halt in their rolling, strangely musical tongue, and the camels knelt in the sand.

  While guides and guards and servants erected the tents, made from light but sturdy silk, Rhodopis and Amtes hid themselves behind the tawny bodies of the camels. Amtes would play upon her little bone flute—she was not a very good musician, but it made no difference—while Rhodopis danced. What a relief it was, to move and stretch and spin in the rapidly cooling air, to shake away all the pains and frustrations that had settled upon her throughout the day, heavy as an unwanted duty. The elemental joy of music and movement drove away the specters of her pain and fear—for a short time, at least. The desert, colorless and sere by day, blushed a thousand shades of violet and pink as the sun sank below the earth; under the stars the desert was like smooth, dark silk, or a platter of silver, luminous at every bend and fold of its terrain. It seemed to reveal its hidden beauty to Rhodopis alone, confiding in her the divine secret that things were not always as they seemed—that hope emerged, even from the bleakest of circumstances.

  But in the morning, she always faced the caravan again, and the wearying sway of the litter.

  Seven days into the trek, the caravan passed through the city of Palmyra, rising improbably from the barren sand like beautiful Aphrodite emerging from the featureless sea. Palmyra was a great, bustling spread of temples and glorious palaces carved from pale-golden stone—a wonder of high, intricate, square-topped arches, of horse-racing circuits and outdoor theaters, where women danced in long, billowing veils of every imaginable shade. The caravan paid a tax on its goods at the city’s main gate—even the Pharaoh’s daughter was not exempt from the fee. Palmyra’s great wealth and magnificence came from the collection of trading and transport fees—indeed, what else could make such a haven of art and beauty in the middle of the desert? There was no river there to silt the earth so that crops could grow; there were no mines for silver ore or precious stones. The passage through the thrilling noise and bright exuberance of Palmyra marked the only time when Rhodopis tied back the curtains of her litter, heedless of the sun, for she wanted to see it all as she passed—take in every fleeting detail of that fantastical place.

  All too soon, Palmyra was behind her. The caravan spent a pleasant day in the vast green oasis of Tadmor, luxuriating in the damp shade and allowing each camel to drink its fill from the turquoise-blue spring. But Tadmor vanished in the caravan’s wake as quickly as Palmyra had done, and the monotony of desert travel set in again.

  Had it been six days since Tadmor? No, seven. Rhodopis tried to count the days, but they had all blurred, one into the next, for each was as featureless and dull as the others. Eight… nine, she counted morosely. Could even be ten, for all I can tell. Oh, will this journey never end?

  Rhodopis heard the muffled drumming of a rider’s heels against a camel’s flanks, followed by the creature’s indignant grunt. A moment later, the shape of a camel’s head loomed above her, a violet shadow through the cloth of her curtains. The tassels of its bridle swayed; the whole image rippled, distorted by curtains and hot, merciless light.

  “My lady!” Amtes said. There was a distinct not of joy in her voice—and relief. “My lady, look! It’s Babylon. We’ve arrived!”

  Gasping, Rhodopis rolled onto her stomach, then clambered about on hands and knees, fighting the side-to-side roll of her camel’s gait. She seized the curtains of her litter and threw them aside. There, far beyond the camel’s twitching ears, tiny in the distance, she could make out the regular, blocky shapes of a city rising above a reddish haze. Below the haze, a white shimmer like some great lake stretched along the land, seeming to separate the city from the earth below it. By now Rhodopis knew that the water-like image was only a trick of the eyes, a common deception of the desert. But even accountin
g for the mirage, there could be no mistaking the city on the horizon. It truly was there. She had come to Babylon at last.

  Rhodopis dropped the curtain; Babylon vanished behind its weave. She crouched in the litter, every muscle and nerve of her body suddenly taut with a terrible, compelling energy. She pressed one of the silk cushions to her face and screamed into it, long and hard until her throat was burning. Her howl was one of pure emotion, composed of a hundred clamoring feelings in one great rising, bursting bubble of expression. She screamed her rage at Psamtik, her anxiety over the task that lay ahead of her—more inescapable now than ever before, with her destination looming to the fore. She screamed out her regret, her fear, her confusion—and her relief that she would soon leave this litter behind for good. All of it came pouring out at once, unstopped like a jug of sour wine.

  “Are you ready, my lady?” Amtes said.

  Rhodopis let the cushion fall. She steadied her breath, then, when the flush had faded from her cheeks, she pulled the curtain aside once more and smiled at her maid, hoping to reassure her. Had Amtes heard her muffled shriek? “I’m ready as I may be. Now let whatever will come to me, come.”

  For the remainder of the journey, Rhodopis sat upright in her litter with the curtains drawn aside, watching Babylon creep ever closer. Amtes—who, like the rest of the Egyptian servants, had adopted the flowing robes of an Arabes trader for the duration of their travels—drilled Rhodopis in the Persian language. They had practiced Persian often over the course of the trek, but now even the simplest words felt foreign on Rhodopis’ tongue. With every rocking stride, the camels bore her closer to her fate. It was all she could do to keep breathing, let alone master a new language.

  Rhodopis and Amtes both fell silent when the caravan made its final approach to Babylon. A broad avenue stretched from the fringe of outer villages toward the city’s massive walls. The road ran straight as a new-made arrow between high brick fortifications. Great blocky ramparts stood at regular intervals, each crowned by a row of bright-blue points, like the fangs of some huge earth-demon tearing and rending the sky. As the camels strode between the walls and those strangely made ramparts, a shadow fell across Rhodopis’ litter, cooling her body—but the shade did not feel like a kindness. She was going straight into the mouth of the beast, deep into its devouring maw.

  At the end of the avenue, two high, flat-topped buttresses flanked the road; to either side, Rhodopis could just make out the gray-blue flash and gleam of water. She recalled Ninsina’s description of the city—it was encircled by the river Purattu, and bisected by the river, too, thanks to a system of man-made canals. So the great buttresses must be the two sides of a bridge, Rhodopis realized—a thing seldom seen in Egypt, except for simple planks of wood that crossed irrigation ditches in farmers’ fields. No construction of brick or stone could ever span the Nile. Yet she had seen bridges of stone in Thrace; the memory of their moss-covered arches returned to her with such sudden and vivid force that for a moment she thought she could smell the moss, the rich clinging carpet of green holding tight to dampened stone. How strange, to find any kinship between her cool, shaded homeland and this blistering waste.

  Beyond the bridge rose the northern gate—the Ishtar Gate, Ninsina had named it. Its two broad, straight towers rose impossibly high, stretching great clawed arms into the sky, as if offering a scouring flood of worship up to Ishtar herself. Layers of ramparts stacked one upon the other, towering eight or nine times the height of a man, so soaring that the archway at the gate’s heart—at least double the height of the tallest camel—seemed no larger a mouse-hole by comparison.

  And the gate was blue. Ardently, wildly blue, its every surface covered with glossy tiles, each one fired in a different shade. A dozen expressions of absolute blueness clamored along those lofty towers and spike-topped walls—lapis and sapphire, indigo and deepest turquoise, the blood-dark blue of falling night and the blue of the Nile on a summer afternoon.

  The only features that relieved the great wash of blue were the animals—rows of roaring lions, bulls with proud heads raised high… and some other creature Rhodopis could not identify, long of neck and tail, with a curling snout and a wild eye. The animals repeated in golden yellow and fiery orange, each looking as fierce as the last. It seemed as if those tile creatures strode out to do battle with one another, fighting all across the great surface of a blue, blue sea.

  “By all the gods,” Amtes muttered in appreciation.

  Rhodopis could only shake her head, muted by awe.

  She cringed in her litter as the caravan passed beneath the Ishtar Gate, ducking her head and peering shyly up at the black underbelly of the arch. So vast was the gate, she half expected to see stars twinkling in that darkness, but a moment later the dark arch gave way to clear sky—it seemed a wan, unsatisfactory blue after the miracle of the gate’s many tiles—and Rhodopis found herself within Babylon proper.

  The avenue opened out, with no walls to either side—only one startlingly tall brick building after another, lining the wide road up a slight incline toward a massive palace in the distance. Tumbles of green fell from every rooftop, every terrace, every long, black slit of window. The air was rich with the scent of greenery, of water and growing things. How improbable it all was: such beauty and lush life in the middle of the desert! The glories of Babylon made Palmyra seem dull and rustic by comparison; great stone statues adorned every crossroads, lions or eagles or tall, proud gods, and all around was the splash and bright, sweet perfume of fountains.

  Word had spread of the Pharaoh’s daughter; crowds lined the street, shouting in excitement, gazing toward the caravan with anticipation. Some of the people tossed flower petals into the avenue; others called and sang from rooftops, throwing yet more petals, which drifted on the desert breeze in great clouds of motion and color.

  A contingent of Babylonian guards stepped out from a roadside toll-house; one of the Arabes brothers drew a token from beneath his robes and passed it down to the guards. Rhodopis watched the men keenly as they examined the token, talking together in hushed tones. They wore a version of the straight robes and one-shoulder shawls she had seen on Ninsina and Shamiram, though the soldiers’ versions were plainer and shorter, so as not to interfere with their weapons. Every man—the soldiers and the men looking on from the alleys and rooftops—sported a long, thick beard. At length, the leader of the guards nodded and returned the token to the caravan guide. He called out his command, and the camels proceeded along the route toward the palace.

  The cheering of the crowds intensified, rising to a roar as the caravan delved into the heart of Babylon. The camels jigged nervously at the sound of the crowd; Rhodopis clung to the poles of her litter, doing her best to look serene, no matter how her heart raced. But Amtes remained steady and unconcerned on her own mount, even when it threw its head, sending the tassels of its bridle flying. If her handmaid was unconcerned, then Rhodopis was determined to remain just as fearless. She watched the people of the city as her litter swayed through their midst. The men and women dressed so much alike that she stared at them in open wonder: both sexes wore the long robes and shawls—although of course the common people’s garb was of drabber colors than Shamiram and Ninsina had worn. The women wore their hair long and unbraided, whether they were still children, too young for marriage, or grandmothers with wrinkled faces and bent backs. It was a simple, entirely natural style, the only adornment a colorful band tied across the forehead. The men’s beards fascinated Rhodopis, for every male who was old enough to sprout one sported it as proudly as a forest-fowl sported his tail. The eldest Babylonian men seemed to place great emphasis on their beards; cascades of neat ringlets spilled down their chests. Some had even woven flowers into their beards and mustaches. Rhodopis couldn’t stop herself from staring. In Egypt, native men and Greeks alike preferred a shaven face. She had rarely seen a bearded man since her childhood in Thrace, and even then, she’d never witnessed such intricate grooming of a man’s face.
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br />   Elevated as she was above the crowd, Rhodopis could see a lone rider approaching from the direction of the palace. The man was mounted on a lively gray horse, trotting confidently down the center of the avenue. The rider’s garb rippled about him, and a fresh cloud of golden dust rose with each fall of the gray horse’s hooves. The man’s robe and shawl were brightly dyed—red and blue—and the shawl swung with the weight of a thick golden fringe. If his clothing stood as any indication, he was a man of means and importance. Rhodopis never took her eyes from the man as he rode boldly toward the lead camels of her caravan. The gray horse did not waver; it seemed determined to collide with the camels until, at the last possible moment, the rider reined the horse aside and continued down the column. When he reached Rhodopis’ litter, he wheeled the horse about and fell in beside her. She stared down at him; the man pressed one hand to his chest, bowing in the saddle. He smiled up at her through his black beard, a stiff array of perfectly like-sized, well-oiled curls.

  “Lady Nitetis of Egypt,” he said, “I welcome you on behalf of King Cambyses, Lord of the Empire of the Sun, Ruler of Haxamanishiya. Er—do you speak our language, my lady?”

  To her great relief, the Persian she had studied with Amtes on the long journey returned easily to her tongue. “Yes, my lord—a little. I thank you.”

  “No doubt Egyptian suits you better.” He shifted languages as easily as a man changes his sandals. His Egyptian was flawless, as far as Rhodopis could discern. That surprised her, for he was the perfect image of a Babylonian noble, from his striped, conical hat to the long red shawl slung over one shoulder. “The king is eager to see you, my lady. He has anticipated receiving an Egyptian bride for some time; his heart rejoices that you have come at last.”

  “My lord and king Cambyses honors me with this marriage—and honors my father, the king of Egypt.”

  The man’s smile froze on his face—only for a heartbeat, but Rhodopis did not fail to note it. Nor did she miss the quick dulling of the man’s eyes, as if his mind had turned suddenly inward, regrouping—startled by something. But what could have robbed such a man of his composure? In the next moment, his smile seemed genuine once more; those dark eyes brightened and sharpened again. But Rhodopis’ pulse quickened. She had been in Babylon less than half an hour, and already she had raised suspicion. She must do better, and she would, if only she knew what had exposed her. She resisted the urge to touch her hair, wondering if the natural red-gold color was already showing through the dye.