The Dragon Queens (The Mystique Trilogy)

by Traci Harding

  Do we? I thought at him, although outwardly I served him a supportive smile.

  ‘—Mr Taylor will just have to grin and bear it,’ Levi finished.

  Miss Koriche climbed back up the ladder, presumably to recruit a small work force. ‘Your presence here is proving far more fortuitous than I expected,’ she told Levi.

  ‘I am comforted to hear you say so,’ Levi called after her.

  Then, looking back to us and seeing the odd look on our faces, he said, ‘What?’

  ‘I am not here to fall in love.’ I repeated the claim he had made just before landing in Persia.

  ‘Let us not get ahead of ourselves,’ he said, but his smile confirmed his attraction to Miss Koriche, and he didn’t bother refuting my inference.

  ‘Well, we psychics have a tendency to do that,’ I bantered, knowing I did not have to impress upon him my distrust of the young woman.

  ‘I believe your instincts will prove wrong in this case,’ he challenged.

  ‘I hope they do.’

  I really did not wish to play devil’s advocate with my son’s relationship choices, but there was something about Miss Koriche that was not sitting right with me. I hoped it was just a mother’s jealousy of her son’s first real love interest.

  Nearly a week later and, twenty feet of earth beneath where we had started our private excavation, Levi’s dig team hit mud bricks akin to those found on the lower-level walls of the dwelling that were close to four thousand years old.

  ‘Now what?’ Levi consulted Mr Taylor, who had come to view the discovery.

  ‘Keep going, of course!’ Taylor encouraged, rubbing his hands together at the prospect of perhaps finding more ancient treasure than he could hope to exhume from the top of the ziggurat in the near future. ‘Picks will make light work of disposing of those bricks.’

  ‘You cannot use picks for such an operation,’ I protested. ‘These bricks are ancient and must be extracted and catalogued one by one. We could be desecrating a structure that is perfectly intact; I see no reason to destroy this site further.’

  ‘Well, Lady Devere, you might want to think again, as it seems that time may now be very much of the essence,’ Taylor retorted, obviously exasperated by my persistent conservation demands. ‘I have heard a whisper that the independent rulers of Herat are looking to the Shah to aid against their reabsorption into the Afghan kingdom.’

  ‘But Herat is a British protectorate. If Persian troops were to occupy the city, then the British would declare war on Persia,’ Lord Devere said, alarmed by the possibility.

  ‘The British have already issued a warning to the Shah against considering occupation,’ Taylor said.

  I wondered at Mr Taylor’s resources. ‘For a man stuck in the middle of nowhere, you seem very well informed,’ I said.

  Taylor sensed my curiosity and sidestepped it. ‘It is my job to keep informed—but I must confess that the information I have received could be weeks old, thus our need for haste.’

  ‘What will happen to us if war is declared?’ My husband was naturally more concerned about our safety than our quest.

  ‘The Shah will seize everything and we shall be sent packing,’ Taylor said. ‘Of course, that is the best-case scenario.’

  As my husband fell silent and began mentally weighing up the risks of us staying at Ur, Mr Taylor turned his sights my way.

  ‘So I put it to you, Lady Devere, shall we spend what time we have remaining cataloguing bricks, or shall we discover what is beneath them?’

  Selfish though it was, I allowed my concerns to be silenced, and it took no time at all for the workmen to smash to pieces a floor that had remained unscathed for most of recorded history. I could not watch, and climbed the ladder into the mid-afternoon heat to get some air.

  ‘The destruction disturbs you.’

  I finished drinking down my hourly ration of water before I responded to Miss Koriche’s observation.

  ‘I really cannot say who is worse: the Catholic Church or the millionaire boys’ club here.’

  This actually got a smile out of the linguist, who had warmed to Levi but had done her best to steer clear of the rest of us.

  ‘May I ask how it is that a woman comes to have so much influence within such a club?’ she said.

  It was a fair question, but I got the distinct feeling that I was being interrogated. ‘I am in insurance,’ I told her, knowing that she was still curious about my area of expertise.

  ‘You are an assessor?’

  ‘You could say that,’ I concurred. ‘And speaking of assessing, I need to take a look at the cylinder clay columns you’ve been deciphering. It would not do to come all the way here and not complete the one request that Lord Malory made of me.’

  I had been shown over the finds in the restoration rooms of the site house, along with the rest of my party, but had put off trying to probe any of the pieces for psychic imprints until a quieter, more appropriate time. I already knew from the bricks in the dig area, that had kept us all so engrossed this last week, that the text found on this mount predated all religious chronicles.

  ‘What the inscriptions have taught us already is priceless.’ Miss Koriche did not like the idea that a price might be placed on the ancient script she’d found so insightful.

  ‘I am sure that I agree with you. Still, I am unable to report as much until I can authenticate the said items.’

  Miss Koriche was intrigued. ‘How do you plan to do that, my lady?’

  ‘I have a well-trained eye,’ I said, and I wasn’t lying: my inner eye was very developed. ‘Hence my influence with men of power—I have a gift they respect and need.’

  ‘Of course.’ She realised that she was being overly protective and pulled out her set of keys. ‘Come and I shall let you in.’

  ‘I am much obliged.’

  On the way back to the site house we walked in silence; Miss Koriche was not one for idle chitchat—not with me in any case. I was so very tempted to psychically probe her thoughts. I wanted to know why she was wary of my party; was it just because we were foreigners? Miss Koriche was not a native of Persia herself, but was born into a wealthy Moroccan family and educated in Cairo. My other concern was her interest in my son. I could see Levi’s attraction, as not only did the linguist share his interests, but she was beautiful and astute as well. She was a good five years older than Levi and would have to have been deaf, dumb and blind not to notice the crush he had on her. They had been spending a good deal of time together this last week, and Levi maintained that he was learning a lot from Miss Koriche—a claim I was not entirely sure how to interpret. Miss Koriche was not your typical subservient Eastern woman, and even more unusual was the fact that she was a scholar who claimed to subscribe to no particular religion. The archaeological evidence that she had deciphered seemed to indicate that no doctrine was able to expose the entire truth behind the origin of life on Earth—on that point we were in total agreement.

  Despite my curiosity regarding the young woman, I resisted violating her mind. I had learned through experience that more harm than good came from spying on the private thoughts of others, as one seldom perceived any train of thought in its entirety and thus it was easy to draw the wrong conclusion.

  Inside the adjoining rooms in the site house that served as a storage area for the treasures recovered during the excavation—kept tightly locked by Miss Koriche—I cast my eyes over the relics laid out on tables and the large clay tablets and columns placed around the walls to see if anything in particular drew my attention. I bypassed the clay pottery and seals in favour of a woman’s hair comb made of ivory. It was engraved with the symbol of a gold serpent coiled in a circle and consuming its own tail. My fingers reached for the item, but Miss Koriche took up the piece instead.

  ‘You have a fine eye indeed,’ she conceded. ‘I believe this may be the oldest of the artefacts that we have found so far.’

  ‘May I?’ I held out my hand for the piece.

  Miss Korich
e knew that she had no authority to deny me, although I could clearly discern that given a choice she would have. Was she concerned about the artefact being damaged, or had she found out I was a psychometrist? I doubted very much that Levi would have disclosed as much to her, when I had drummed into him how important it was to keep his own talents hidden.

  Miss Koriche reluctantly placed the ancient hair accessory into the palm of my hand and observed me closely.

  ‘Do not let me keep you from your work, Miss Koriche. I will seek you out if I have any questions.’ I smiled and waited for her to depart.

  ‘I shall be in the next room,’ she said, leaving me to my business.

  I turned to face the opposite direction to the room where Miss Koriche had gone and held the comb up to the light to make a good show of assessing it—for I had a sneaking suspicion that I was still being observed. Then, holding the item in my left palm, I ran my right-hand fingers over the smooth ivory and within seconds of focusing my inner eye upon it, my sight, inner and outer, was engulfed by a vision.

  I was in a single-file procession of young women dressed in long, flowing red robes. The dark hair of the woman directly in front of me was wound in an intricate knot that was held in place with a serpent comb—all the scarlet women wore the same comb, including myself. But this was no ceremonial procession; it was an evacuation! I felt the sensation of panic and a great urgency to scale the stone stairs beneath my feet. When I reached the top of the stairway, I entered the shrine of the great Ibis via an opening in the floor where the huge stone altar should have been. The huge, heavy block was floating directly overhead. Four older women, also dressed in scarlet, were focused intently upon the boulder and it was they who held it aloft. The last woman in the procession was not far behind me and in our wake the great stone altar was lowered to the ground to conceal the temple entrance.

  Without the sacred food the altar cannot be moved…the Key to Amenti is safe. I was deeply comforted by this knowledge.

  No sooner was the great altar in place than a horde of warriors came screaming down the corridor of the Ennead towards us—to my great horror, they were not human! Their eyes glowed yellow and their skin was scaled and green, like demonlizards. Several of the invaders grabbed hold of me and forced me to the ground. The serpent comb was ripped from my hair by one of my attackers, to be kept as a memento of the day’s conquest.

  At the sound of ripping fabric, I swiftly placed the comb back on the table, to escape witnessing the rape and murder of the priestesses of Ur by the sub-human creatures. Was it a nightmare I had perceived from the comb, I wondered. I couldn’t comprehend how the woman’s account could have been real. Still, if it was a true account of events, then there was a temple passage beneath the corridor of statues. And Levi’s dig team had just broken through the bricks that had once lined the floor of that same corridor. The fact sent waves of excitement surging through my body.

  I pondered the last thoughts of the young priestess: The Key to Amenti is safe. She had referred to the ‘sacred food’ required to levitate the altar; this ‘food’ was the Highward Fire-Stone. What, then, was the ‘key’ she was so concerned about protecting? And was it still buried beneath the ruined ziggurat?

  I looked up and caught Miss Koriche observing me from the other room.

  ‘Forgive my curiosity,’ she said, venturing back into the room I was occupying, ‘but what is your opinion on the comb?’

  I suspected that she was testing my ability to assess the piece. ‘I think this find could predate even the Larsa period. Was that your assessment, Miss Koriche?’

  ‘The symbol of the serpent eating its own tail was synonymous with the Dragon Court,’ Miss Koriche said. ‘In Egypt, the Dragon Court was established as a Pharaonic institution by Queen Sobeknefru of the Twelfth Dynasty in about 1785 BC, which is roughly where I estimate the Larsa period would fall.’

  ‘The Dragon Court?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘The Dragon Courts were academies dedicated to the teachings of Thoth, which existed from the time of King Raneb of the Second Dynasty, who is estimated to have reigned about 2800 BC. So, in reality, this hairpiece could have been fashioned anywhere in between.’ Miss Koriche confirmed my assessment.

  ‘The Dragon Court being an institution of the Dragon Queens?’ I hazarded a guess, my heart thumping in my chest as I made the connection.

  ‘Of course.’ Miss Koriche seemed stunned by the query.

  ‘Are you surprised by my knowledge or my interest?’ I smiled, hoping to set her at ease, as she obviously knew more about the Dragon Queens than I did.

  ‘Both!’

  ‘So who were the Dragon Queens?’ I put her on the spot with the question.

  Her reluctance to answer seemed to confirm she was hiding something. ‘I do not know very much about them,’ she stalled. ‘There are various theories…’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, the most popular theory is that the Dragon Queens were the female descendants of Cain, and, according to my translation of the text you read, the first of the Dragon Queens was—’

  ‘Luluwa,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Miss Koriche corrected, ‘the royal line of Serpent Princes descended from Qayin, or Cain, and Luluwa, and the first of these princes was Enoch. However, the line of the Dragon Queens is said to have descended from Lilith, being the first woman who claimed to be a spiritual daughter of Sama-El. In fact, it is said that Sama-El fathered all of the Dragon Queens, of which ancient texts claim there are six plus one.’

  Through the ages, Sama-El had been reinvented as the devil that had shown humanity the way to the tree of knowledge. Fathered by the devil—I amused myself with the premise, as there were many people over the years who might have agreed. The idea would have worried me too, had I not known that Sama-El was also called Enki, the most ancient god of the waters. And recently I’d discovered that I may be his daughter. I was beginning to suspect that my mother as well as my father had been drugged on their wedding night.

  I changed the subject, as I was now as uncomfortable with it as Miss Koriche. ‘Which of these clay columns did the Genesis account come from?’

  ‘It is here.’ Miss Koriche motioned to the far wall of the room she had been working in, and so I followed her back inside. ‘This column obviously dates from the last rebuild of the ziggurat, perhaps 3400 years old. But this Genesis account may be older still, as the story itself could have been preserved from an earlier period.’

  I moved closer to the column and placed a hand upon it.

  I felt warmed immediately, for I found myself as a young man hard at work under the hot afternoon sun of ancient Sumer. Before me, protected by the shade of a wall, was a smooth and still-damp clay column that I had begun to inscribe with the aid of a sharpened reed. Beside me were pieces of a clay tablet that had been smashed and then reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle. I was relaying the contents of the ruined item onto the fresh column and, from all appearances, the text on the old clay tablet seemed complete.

  ‘We need to talk.’ The note of alarm in my husband’s voice catapulted me back to the present.

  I opened my eyes and looked in my lord’s direction to find Mr Taylor and Levi were with him. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘Talk some sense into Father,’ Levi pleaded, most out of sorts.

  ‘We have been given our marching orders,’ Taylor informed me. ‘Some of the Shah’s officials have just paid us a visit. We have a week to get out of Persia.’

  ‘But I have only been here a week!’ I protested. ‘And it took me months to get here.’

  ‘Regrettable,’ my husband agreed. ‘However, we are leaving.’

  ‘No! We can’t leave now—’ I cut myself short of confessing what I’d learned from the serpent comb and quickly covered my error. ‘We are right in the middle of something.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I said!’ Levi threw up his hands in exasperation. Still, I knew that the dig was not the only reason Levi was so keen to stay.


  ‘It doesn’t matter what you say,’ Lord Devere spelled out the problem to our son, ‘because in this case, we are going to be arrested if we do not comply.’

  ‘We must be able to appeal the Shah’s decision?’ I looked to Mr Taylor hopefully.

  ‘You would appeal to the local kad-khuda, or headman, who is the administrator of the Common Law,’ Taylor advised me.

  I smiled, pleased to have a route to manifesting my will.

  ‘But it was his officials who served us our eviction notice,’ Taylor went on, dashing my hopes. ‘And there is no point appealing to him, as his orders came directly from the Shah. A kad-khuda will never overrule the word of his sovereign.’

  ‘Then I shall appeal directly to the Shah,’ I said.

  Levi gave a cheer of encouragement.

  ‘And say what?’ My husband appealed for me to be reasonable. ‘Understand that this man is the law here. He could have your head severed from your shoulders for one misconstrued word!’

  ‘Actually, the Persians haven’t beheaded women for thousands of years,’ Levi assured his father, who looked suspiciously at him, sure that he wasn’t getting the whole story. ‘I do believe they hang them these days,’ our son confessed at last.

  ‘And much worse,’ Miss Koriche added. ‘In recent times, condemned criminals have been crucified, blown from guns, buried alive, impaled, converted into human torches, and torn asunder by being bound to the tops of two trees which are bent together and then allowed to spring back into position.’

  Lord Devere glared at me. ‘I do my best to support you in most things, Mrs Devere, but I draw the line at a suicide mission.’

  ‘I shall present the Shah with a gift,’ I said, avoiding my husband’s protest and looking at Mr Taylor. ‘Then it would be considered rude to have me executed, would it not?’

  ‘It would have to be a rare gift indeed,’ Taylor cautioned. ‘And I would certainly find a dress to wear in the Shah’s presence.’ He gestured to the male attire I donned for excavation work.

  ‘What gift could we possibly come up with that would be considered rare to the King of Persia?’ Lord Devere was exasperated. ‘And even if we could think of such a gift, we don’t have it.’