"Smith, Wilbur - Egyptian 01 - River God" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

ISBN: 0-312-95446-8

Printed in the United States of America St. Martin's Press hardcover
edition March 1994

St. Martin's Paperbacks edition February 1995

Jv MEDITERRANEAN SEA

airo)

in

(Kama xor

UPPER KIND CT

SECOND

CATARACT

TN CA TA RAC,

Qebui (Khartoum) CUSH D SEGE THE RIVER LAY HEAVILY UPON THE desert,
bright as a spill of molten metal from a furnace. The sky smoked with
heat-haze and the sun beat down upon it all with the strokes of a
coppersmith's hammer. In the mirage the gaunt hills flanking the Nile
seemed to tremble to the blows.

Our boat sped close in beside the papyrus beds; near enough for the
creaking of the water buckets of the shadoof, on their long,
counter-balanced arms, to carry from the fields across the water. The
sound harmonized with the singing of the girl in the bows.

Lostris was fourteen years of age. The Nile had begun its latest flood
on the very day that her red woman's moon had flowered for the first
time, a coincidence that the priests of Hopi had viewed as highly
propitious. Lostris, the woman's name that they had then chosen to
replace her discarded baby-name, meant "Daughter of the Waters'.

I remember her so vividly on that day. She would grow more beautiful
as the years passed, become more poised and regal, but never again
would that glow of virgin womanhood radiate from her so overpoweringly.
Every man aboard, even the warriors at the rowing-benches, were aware
of it. Neither I nor any one of them could keep our gaze off her. She
filled me with a sense of my own inadequacy and a deep and poignant
longing; for although I am a eunuch I was gelded only after I had known
the joy of a woman's body.

"Taita, " she called to me, "sing with me!" And when I obeyed she