Daughter of Isis, Lilian Nirupa [books to get back into reading .txt] 📗

touching her left shoulder. Lizla shouted with terror and fell to the floor, fainting.
“Lizla, Lizla are you all right?" Mikos’s alarmed voice woke her up as she felt him shaking her arms. Slowly she opened her eyes. They pyramid had disappeared. “What happened?” she asked with a mixture of confusion and anxiety that made Mikos even more worried.
“What happened?” Mikos exclaimed. “You tell me; you disappeared inside the blue... whatever it was... and then there was a big flash of light that almost blinded me! And now here you are, we are ! Inside this old tomb or something?" he concluded, looking around with apprehension.
“Tomb? No, it was, it is the pyramid, underground. Don't you remember?” Lizla fumbled with her words to answer.
“Remember? What? I don't know anything except that we came down here; I don't know how... how do you know it is not a tomb anyhow?”
“I have a feeling," she replied absentmindedly, looking around herself for orientation.
“Your feelings have gotten us into mighty trouble. Here we are trapped alive in this tomb... I don’t know how we came in, so how are we going to get out?” Mikos retorted with exasperation.
But Lizla could hardly concentrate on his tirade. She was still under the glow of her incredible experience, when the blue light had turned red. Like a short-lived fire. “Relax!” she replied. “Our stars have not decreed for us to be in trapped in a tomb at this age, remember?”
“Remember...,” the Greek boy answered. “Yes I do! That we are late for the astrology class and the breakfast. I am sure, we missed both already.” Mikos could hardly contain his fear and frustration.
“Astrology! Yes! Oh I know, I will find a way,” she mused absentmindedly as she got up and headed for the quiet platform that had brought them down.
“Come here!” she called.
“Oh! Not again.” Mikos grumbled, but for want of a better solution he followed her to the platform, which soon afterwards ascended slowly like a floating magic carpet. When it seemed that their heads were going to crash against the ceiling, it opened up against the brightness of the desert sun, which created a flood of light over the small platform. In a few seconds they stepped outside.
Mikos cried with relief, as he saw in the distance the small line forming out of the dining area. Breakfast was still going on! Waving a quick goodbye, Mikos ran to join the food line. Lizla, feeling still puzzled and awed, followed him, walking dreamingly at a very slow pace. She needed to wash up before breakfast. Besides, she could order it to her room. She needed a few minutes alone.
Mikos sat alone at the breakfast table. He did feel his honey cakes had a very strange taste this morning. Suddenly he felt very lonely. He remember how far and distant... far away in his Greek native homeland, ripe figs and grapes would have accompanied the warm goat’s milk that his mother always had ready for him. It was not common for him to feel homesick.
But Lizla puzzled him beyond measure. She was obviously not an ordinary girl, but in addition, somehow Mikos felt a curious mixture of feelings about her. She was beautiful, dignified like a princess, and perhaps too much like a princess. But besides that, she seemed to embody that annoying Egyptian character. So much on the mystical side! Not that he was not interested in mysticism himself; he was so, very much. But for him, it was more a subject of experiment or study. But these Orientals, he thought to himself, particularly Lizla, they seemed altogether at home in this strange world of mysteries!
Like she disappeared inside his vision or was it a common vision? And what does it mean? And why was he withheld from entering into it? And she seemed lost in thought, but not in feeling! And which kind of lightning underground had shocked her like that? It had taken him a long time to wake her up. If it had been up to him, he would have run for dear life. But no, she fell asleep so peacefully or so it seemed! What did she see? How come a terrifying experience like that still seemed to have filled her with such a strange composure?
“I will never understand these people!” he mumbled to himself. He did not realize he had voiced his last comment aloud. Soon he heard a familiar voice echo his sentiment.
"I’ll say.” Annouk-Aimee was sadly smiling.
"What you doing here?” He recognized his sister, whom he thought stationed in the royal court as one of the Queen's attendants.
“I came for study and healing,” his sister answered.
“Healing from what? Are you in trouble or ill? Please, by Jove please tell me all about it!”
“Princess Lillie and Diogenes... well, they had a fight. And I barely escaped from her anger,” Annouk-Aimee started timidly. Diogenes was their older brother.
”She took it out on you? How come, I say...now these people!” Mikos was getting seriously upset now.
“No, they were not at fault.” Annouk-Aimee could hardly raise her eyes from her rabbit skin sandals, with which she was creating a small mound of sand around her brother's chair.
Mikos smiled. Annouk-Aimee was the younger sister in the family. Always self-willed and impulsive; it wasn't a new experience for Mikos to have to come to her rescue. “Tell me what happened; what did you do? I promise I won't tell mother. I’ll try to help you out, but you have to follow my advice. Not like the last time.”
“Mikos, oh Mikos,” she cried anxiously, burying her head in his brother’s arms.
“Oh no, let’s get out of here.” Mikos took her by the hand and led her into the long corridor lined with tall and wide palm trees that led to the main fountain that divided the temple of Isis’s main gardens from the entrance to the Temple of Love.
The soft rustling palm leaves above their heads were the only sound that accompanied Annouk-Aimee’s sobbing. Mikos kept on wondering what the stars had in store for him that morning, when women’s troubles kept on pouring on him.
Annouk-Aimee had to gather all her strength to break the news to her brother. “I think I'm pregnant.”
“What!” Mikos cry startled her even more. “How on earth did this happen? All these soft-spoken Egyptians, with their courteous manners, I told you they are only trouble. Liars and traitors; all of them. How could you have trusted any one of them? You know what mother would have thought about this? She would have called you a...”
Mikos stopped himself, seeing that his sister came to pieces on the floor, her long blonde hair mixing with the leaves that lay on the sandy ground. Looking at his sister, fragile, scared and desolate, his heart softened.
“Who was he? Tell me. I'll kill him! And Diogenes, does he know about this? What did he say, how come he did not contact me? Does mother know about this?”
Annouk-Aimee sat on the floor. Her eyes were full of tears. An infinite sadness covered her face at the mention of so many loved ones names that would be affected by her problem.
“It was an Assyrian, he tricked me. That is why I was sent to the Temple of Love. To be healed, and to learn, I guess,” she added softly. “He is no longer alive; Diogenes had him killed. Or rather she did, Princess Lillie. Diogenes wanted to face him, to kill him himself, but Lillie got him quietly poisoned. I think that’s why they were fighting: over something about royal court politics. Later I remember Diogenes saying something about feeling overpowered, or how did he put it, manipulated by her. Anyhow, she did not want a scandal.”
Mikos was concerned about something else. Forgetting for a moment about his sister’s plea, he asked her, “Which kind of political problems? Why did he feel manipulated by her? Is Diogenes in danger too? Do you know?”
Annouk-Aimee sighed with relief at the opportunity of changing the subject. “I don't know, but Diogenes had made friends with a few Assyrians, and a very mysterious Persian. Lillie was very impatient with those friendships. She felt they were not reliable. It also seems that she knew something else that made her very uneasy about her lover’s association with these people.”
Mikos embraced his sister and gave her a soft kiss on the forehead. “I think you’ve had enough for now, go to your room, and keep quiet. If you need anything, you know where to find me. Please make sure mother doesn’t know anything about this.”

Chapter 6 – The Astrology Lesson
Lizla was feeling uncomfortable sitting on her exalted cushion in the upper balcony. Being a Princess had some privileges. Coming late to class without being scolded was one of them, because she could come in quietly through the backstage stairs into the balcony. There she found her seat in the dark, opened her perfumed book chest and unwrapped the silver cords that protected her papyrus notebook.
The old Indian sage did not seem to notice her late arrival. That made her feel relieved, but somehow frustrated at the same time. She liked to be noticed. Also, she worried: had she missed something important? She noticed that already, in the lower levels, the other students seemed rapt in attention. Swami Suryananda was pointing to a chart hanging on the wall on the back of the stage. On it he had painted the planetary setup for the day and was explaining the current events.
Lizla noticed with regret that probably she had missed the introductory mantras, those mysterious Indian prayers that always fascinated her when she arrived on time. She pondered that with a mixture of admiration and apprehension. What would the Egyptian Gods think about those foreign prayers? On the other hand, she had been told that Suryananda meant the “bliss of the Sun.” The sun was RA, the chief God among the Egyptians. She also had been told, and she had even seen, the Indian master beautifully performing his morning ablutions by the large pool in the Temple of RA; then humbly prostrate to him as the Sun God arose in the eastern horizon.
As if catching up with her thoughts, Suryananda raised his eyes towards the upper balcony. His face lit up with a fleeting smile, as he perceived in the dark his exalted disciple. Then promptly he went back to the chart’s explanation.
“An eclipse will occur today at noontime, as the planet Ketu crosses over the Sun.”
He paused, as he knew the effect that even a moment of obscuration of the Divine protector of Egypt would have over his students.
“But the sun will triumph over Ketu, and come out of the shadows about three hours later.” Ignoring the anxious looks from the auditorium, he continued, “Now, let us look at the significance that has been pointed to by these events. In the national scene, the eclipse could indicate a temporary time of defeat for your forces in Aswan. The life of the Pharaoh may be endangered....”
A muffled cry of terror was suffocated in the throats of his polished and attentive listeners. “But he will survive, and so will his forces...” Suryananda concluded reassuringly.
Lizla could not help admiring again the majestic presence of the Indian master with his his long matted hair flying over the stage as he displayed a sign of triumph when he described Ra’s triumphal passage over the disturbing Ketu.
“The messages of the heavens are not meant only to predict events outside, but also to enlighten the roads of knowledge into our own souls,” the sage continued. “Ketu, the dervish, represents wisdom, mystery and occult knowledge, the kind of knowledge you are acquiring today. The sun also