Eye of the Moon Read Online Free

highest of high priests come first. We must attend the embalming and ensure whoever has died has a safe passage to the Underworld.”
    â€œCan it be Queen Tiy?”
    â€œShh, Kara! Hold your tongue!”
    I slid a quick look at the barge with its gleaming embellishments. “But that’s
her
boat.”
    â€œWhat of it?”
    â€œWhy’s
he
using her boat?”
    â€œShh, now! You ask too many questions. Fetch my things. Change into a clean tunic and wash the mud from your feet. Hurry!”
    I tossed my head. “I can’t help the mud! I’ve been doing my work.”
    â€œI wish your mother were here. Collect my implements and remember—only speak when you’re spoken to. Be quiet otherwise. Stand up straight. Keep your head bowed. Don’t shrug your shoulders or toss your head if you don’t agree with what’s said. The highest of high priests, Wosret, is truly the Most Powerful One. Don’t be impulsive and say the first thing that comes into your head. Bite back your tongue. Be warned, Kara!”
    These words still draw a bitter sigh from me now as I write them. If only I had listened.

    3    
ANUBIS,
JACKAL OF
THE UNDERWORLD
    T he smell in the small antechamber next to the embalming chamber was vile—sickly sweet with undertones of rotting. Even the juniper oil burning in a chafing dish and the cones of perfumed wax could not mask it.
    It was a smell I knew well. A stench of rotting entrails, gut, and stomach gases.
    The room was small and hot. There was no opening for air save a slot no wider than a hand, quite highup and recessed deep into the thick stone. I felt my stomach heave. I fought the urge to vomit by tying the mask of linen tighter over my nose and mouth and leaned over the chafing dish to inhale the tang of the juniper smoke.
    Next to me, the slimy lumps of bloodied organs lay in bowls ready to be washed with palm oil and immersed in special herb solutions. Next to them, the canopic jars were waiting. In the dimness of the antechamber, eyes glowed like hungry creatures waiting to be fed—the four sons of Horus: Hapi, the baboon with yellow amber eyes, waiting for the lungs; Duamutef, the jackal with red carnelian eyes, waiting for the stomach; Qebehsenuef, the falcon with green verdite eyes, waiting for the intestines; and Imsety, the man with blue lapis lazuli eyes, waiting for the liver.
    All the organs lay there in the bowls, except for the heart. The heart, being the seat of wisdom, was left in the body. I knew the powerful spells that would be read to implore the heart not to be separated from the body in the afterlife.
    My father’s instruments lay on the stone ledge still bloody from their work—the hook he’d insertedthrough the nose to dislodge the brain tissue, the flint knife he’d used to slice open the abdomen, the wooden adze he had used to scrape out the lungs, stomach, intestines, and liver. He would have cleansed the cavity with palm wine and stuffed it with bruised myrrh, cassia, pounded cloves, and salt to dry the body out.
    I pressed my cheek against the cold stone wall and waited. Unexpectedly, I noticed a small gap between the stones. By its worn edges I knew someone had peered through this spy hole before. I could see right into the sacred
wabet
chamber, where the embalming was in process. I pressed my eye closer.
    The body of a woman lay on a stone slab, surrounded by shaved-headed priests in linen tunics. My father wasn’t among them.
    The slab was carved in the shape of a lion and sloped in such a way that the woman’s feet were higher than the rest of her body. She lay with her long neck hanging over the edge, completely naked, her limbs long and graceful even without fine linen and jewels. She seemed more like a sleeping princess who might wake and bid her guardians out of her way. Yet the bloody cut glowing like a red garnet necklace across her lower stomach showed she was