Sands of Destiny by Becky Lee Weyrich

Author:Becky Lee Weyrich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION/Romance/General
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2014-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

The trip back to ancient Egypt was rough. Darius got the words to his incantation mixed up. He missed his mark and landed too soon. After the clouds and ancient dust cleared he found himself plastered to the side of the capstone at the very top of the great pyramid of Khufu at Giza. He held on for dear life, gasping for breath. One slip now and he’d be a goner.

Far below he spotted a group of men in uniform scurrying about like ants. He yelled down at them for help. It was no use. They all appeared to be busy at some important task that involved a large black object. He squinted in the bright sunlight trying to make it out. A cannon? But how could that be?

A moment later, he realized who they were and what was going on. He watched in horror as Napoleon’s drunken French troops fired their big gun and blew the nose off the Sphinx.

“You dumb bastards!” he yelled, shaking his fist at the soldiers. “Don’t you have any respect for history?”

That move nearly cost Darius his life. His other hand slipped and he found himself sliding down the rocky face of the pyramid, caroming off sharp edges and bouncing off hard surfaces. Quickly, in mid fall, he revised his incantation, screaming the words aloud as he hurtled toward certain doom. An instant before he would have met his death on the desert floor four hundred and eighty feet below, he found himself once more soaring through time and space. His whole body ached with bruises and abrasions, but what a relief to be airborne again!

By the activity Darius spied in the Great Harbor as he flew into Cleopatra’s Egypt, he could pinpoint the year exactly. Shipbuilders and laborers far more numerous than Napoleon’s bunch of vandals swarmed like bees along the shore. He spotted a great, golden barge and knew immediately that the year was 48 B.C. and that Cleo was getting ready to take Caesar on the cruise of a lifetime up the Nile.

Without further mishap, Darius made a smooth landing inside the palace, in the very chamber that had been his quarters before the Romans arrived. His room was high in one of the towers, from which he could see out over Pharos and both harbors. All of his things were undisturbed. Even the ewer of his favorite wine from Lesbos had been filled by Cleopatra’s servants. He went straight for it.

The looking glass over his carved onyx basin showed clearly the damage done by flight, fall, and pyramid. He winced at the sight of himself. He had a black eye with a deep gash over it. His arms and hands were crisscrossed with scrapes. His chest, bare when he’d left St. Simons, looked like so much raw meat. Carefully, he washed the desert dust from his wounds, sipping wine all the while to dull the pain.

Having bathed, he donned his old costume—white linen kilt and leopard-skin cape. If he did run into Cleo, his pride dictated that he look presentable.

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