Read Online Servant of the Gods by Valerie Douglas - Free Book Online Page B

called, “come awaken the Goddess…”
    Startled, Irisi turned.
    It was an honor she hadn’t yet achieved, a skill she was still learning. Soon she would know all the spells, all of the enchantments. Yet she couldn’t deny the summons or the honor.
    Taking her place by the Book, Irisi bent her head to the hieroglyphs and read. Her voice was steady as she called the Goddess to awaken even as the doors to the temple were opened and the first morning light touched Her face.
    Banafrit smiled fondly on her protégé.
    Once Irisi had learned to read it had been as if a fire had been ignited inside the girl. She couldn’t seem to get enough. She read every scroll, every papyrus and every clay tablet she could find. She’d devoured the spells of the Book of the Dead and the Book of Life. She pestered the scribe endlessly, demanding explanations of this hieroglyph or that script. Learning one language plus her native tongue was not enough. She wanted more, badgering foreign priests, priestesses and tradesmen to teach her more. It was as if she hungered for knowledge, a suitable trait for a Priestess of Isis.
    With the offerings made, accepted, and the Goddess awakened, they gathered the food that had been offered and took it into the common room. Some was set aside for themselves to break their fast. The rest fed the poor, the orphaned children, and those who came for healing.
    Irisi had taken her place there as she had everywhere, becoming truly one of them.
    Healing was not a new skill, every soldier learned how to bind his own wounds and those of others, but this was a new thing. Different. There were spells, arts, herbs and such, healing compounds and poultices such as she’d never known.
    How would she ever have guessed that moldy bread would kill infection?
    She liked playing with the children, too, but first, she had to go take care of her own – of a sort.
    First, she stopped in the kitchens to gather up their bowl.
    Those cooking set aside the remains of antelope haunches and the offal of the fowl and fish for the rapidly growing cubs. Three growled expectantly as she came around the corner. Emu, Kiwu, Alu awaited her impatiently. Out of long practice, Irisi danced away from Nebi’s pounce from the shadows, laughing as the cub tumbled over himself. She tossed him a gobbet of meat just for the effort he’d made and he growled happily at his prize as she set the bowl down for the others.
    Kiwu came to roll into her lap for a belly rub, rubbing her head around in Irisi’s lap as Irisi settled to the ground, cross-legged.
    She played with them for a time, let them roll and pounce on her, chew lightly on her arms, leaving welts. Not that she minded, as those marks would fade.
    Already she was teaching them to hunt, drawing a piece of hide around for them to stalk and pounce on or dangling it on a string in the air above for them to leap at.
    Then she took up her swords as she did each day for practice, using the cubs as challenge or check, pulling the blades, dodging and stepping around them. Some of the others called her Isis’s Warrior. The title made her smile. So far she’d had little need for those skills, but she remembered Banafrit’s words the day the Goddess had accepted her. So she practiced every day without fail, against future need.
    It was time, though, to judge by the sun, for her to go shopping for those few things the temple didn’t receive as gifts or offerings.
    Bundling her hair up, she went into her room to fetch her wig and settled it on her head, tugging it into proper place. It didn’t make her look more Egyptian, her skin was far too fair for that; it simply made her stand out less. After being the source of such looks too often, it was simpler to go out wearing the wig.
    She caught up a basket in the crook of her arm and went out into the city.
    While this wasn’t the first time she’d gone out on such errands, she’d only recently done so alone. Banafrit had sent another with her until