Page 81 of Queen Takes Checkmate
But I couldn’t. Not yet. So I had to deal with burned skin, dehydration, and sun poisoning, without my power to heal myself.
I allowed the slaves to bathe and tend my tender skin. They removed my torn and stained dress, slipping me into an Egyptian white sheath so thin and diaphanous that it hid nothing beneath it.
Especially the dark blood smearing on my thighs. My stomach cramped and ached, my period still flowing like one of my heaviest days. Maybe it was stress. Or maybe I really was trying to breed Aima style, rather than enduring a very normal human period.
I had to see Dr. Borcht again, and soon. Hopefully she’d be able to tell me something conclusive about my reproductive cycle. Assuming I lived to return to our world.
My hair was still damp from the bath when the high priest clapped his hands and shooed the slaves away. “This way… Your Majesty.” He said the last grudgingly, as if the very idea that he must show me any respect at all was salt in a wound.
We stepped back outside, and my hair instantly dried in the vicious sunlight. My burned skin throbbing with pain. I hurried after him, eager to get to the next pyramid, but a shriek made me pause and look back.
Toward the temple.
I kept my face smooth, though I willed my Blood to wait. To give me time. I wasn’t close enough yet. They couldn’t attack. Not until I was in sight of Ra.
A skeleton soldier went running past toward the larger pyramid, and the priest yelled after him. “What is it? What’s happening?”
“One of the obelisk portals has failed. His Imperial Majesty’s sunfires are crossing to the human plane at will.”
The priest moaned, shaking his head. “Great Lord above, he will not be pleased. Heads will surely roll.”
He scowled at me. “It was probably that Hummingbird idiot. I bet he didn’t use the portal correctly and now it’s failing. The vizier will be beside himself trying to explain this debacle to His Imperial Majesty.”
I gave him a tight, small smile. “But His Imperial Majesty will surely be pleased to know that Huitzilopochtli has brought him such a worthy gift. What are a few humans in the end? They’re merely cattle for gods and queens.”
He grunted sourly and dared to seize my arm, tugging me along after him to the larger pyramid in the middle. “Let’s hope you really are breeding. Then much will be forgiven. Who knows, His Imperial Majesty might even name you God’s Wife.”
Oh goody. I could hardly wait, though I had to admit that God’s Widow had a much better ring to it.
Xin
My wolf hated this place. Henceforth, the smell of gold would always remind me of decay.
I padded quietly along beside my queen, though even she couldn’t see me. Not without touching her bonds that lay hidden deep inside Nevarre’s gift of Shadow. The priest stank of fear as he hurried Shara to the next pyramid, craning his neck to look back over his shoulder worriedly.
Evidently even the High Priest was afraid of the sun demons. Hopefully the dragon had decimated their numbers, or we had no hope of fighting them off.
The skeleton soldier raced back to the temple, shouting orders ahead. “Soldiers of Light, deploy at once to the earthly plane! We must contain the sunfires at any cost!”
It was all I could do not to release a howl of glee. Surely my fellow brethren had a hand in releasing those demons, which had also served to draw the skeleton soldiers away from the temple. Hopefully that meant they were close.
Because as we entered the large pyramid, I had a feeling we would need every weapon at our queen’s disposal, no matter how small, just to keep her alive.
This pyramid was as lavish and orate as the other, but there was something wrong here. The gold was… melted. Soft. It still moved beneath my paws. I stuck to the carpeted areas to avoid leaving telltale wolf tracks in the malleable floors.
Brilliant light sparkled off the golden surfaces, compromising the wolf’s sharp vision. Shafts had been built into the pyramid, acting as giant sun lights to allow the punishing light to reach even inside a pyramid the size of a mountain. We seemed to walk forever, slowly making our way deeper into the bowels of the pyramid.
A tomb? That was all I could think of.
A molten gold river bubbled up from a crevice in the ground, making a liquid glittering lake. Streamers rose from the surface like solar flares. The air simmered with heat. Boulders rose up from the flowing gold, giving us places to hop and step. Otherwise it was like a lava fountain slowly flowing up from the heart of the pyramid.
Something moved beneath the surface of the lake. A head broke through streams of gold, then shoulders and torso as a giant rose up out of the molten lake. He waded through the golden river like it was a pleasant mountain spring, slinging droplets of liquid gold with every step. His massive erection jutted up like a golden log, and I feared greatly for my queen. I couldn’t see how any woman other than a goddess could take such a cock and live.
Beneath a large shaft of sunlight, he sat in a golden throne facing us. Rivulets of molten gold streamed down his face and body, spreading across the throne to drip on the ground. He wore a heavy, lumpy necklace around his throat, but coated in gold, it was impossible to tell what the objects were.
The High Priest began to chant in a sing-song voice. “Oh mighty Ra, Lord of Sun, Radiant Majesty of Heaven, Maker of—”
“Silence.” His rich voice oozed with dulcet tones that should have been pleasing to the ear. But there was something so… off about him. Like a beautiful poem marred by one misplaced rhyme, or a masterful rhapsody that crashed on a single discordant note.
