Read The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen for Free Online Page A
Authors: Tosca Lee
in nightmares for the first time in years as we entered the mountain passes of Qataban. I tossed in a sweat, shuddering beneath my woolen mantle in the late spring chill.
“Get out!” I said the night Maqar woke and tried to comfort me. I had followed him from the tent moments later, retching in the dirt.
Hagarlat haunted me through the high plateaus, and my father’s morose face down the descent to the great Baihan Valley. And though Maqar forgave me my outburst, neither did he touch me.
I was beside myself. Punt was a shadow land beyond the narrow sea and Saba had greeted me with demons. And so I plunged forward, the only direction available to me now: north, toward the capital.
Just as we reached the edge of camp, something sailed over the rim of the mountains against the brooding sky. I squinted at the languid flight of a vulture as clouds unfurled overhead.
In the camp, tribal accents punctuated the air, sharp and guttural as the thunder rolling beyond the horizon. Chieftains, in urgent conversation under the canopy of the command tent.
Lightning flashed, shocking the landscape. In the valley itself, the air was eerily still.
One by one, the nobles fell silent as I approached the tent. Among them, a new man perhaps a few years younger than my father, in rapid conversation with Khalkharib just an instant ago.
Twelve sets of kohl-rimmed eyes assessed me at once. Did I waver as I walked toward them, did my step falter? How did they perceive me, these men who knew nothing of me but my bloodline? Did any one of them see in me a queen—or only a means to their own power?
I looked at each of them in turn, the newcomer last of all.
“This is Wahabil,” Khalkharib said. “His tribe is kin-tribe to your own.” He had not needed to tell me; I recognized the old sunburst of the goddess Shams on his dagger’s scabbard immediately. I greeted him as kin, touching my veiled nose to his. He was stocky, no taller than I, with uncharacteristically light eyes and a wispy beard that did not disguise his jowls.
“My men wait in the next valley,” Wahabil said.
“Have you brought word of my kinsmen? I had thought to receive—”
“A rider has arrived from Marib,” Khalkharib interrupted.
I stared at him before slowly turning to Wahabil.
My heart became a cudgel.
“The king your father is dead,” Wahabil said. “Hagarlat has set her son on the alabaster throne. We refuse him allegiance. Your kinsmen gather at Sirwah even now.”
Silence.
Wahabil slowly leaned forward, hands on his knees. “Hail, Queen.”
Khalkharib perfunctorily followed suit, along with Nabat and the man from Aman. And then Yatha, and the chieftains of Urramarand Awsan, and another from eastern Hadramawt who had joined us on the coastal plain, and four others whose tribes I had suddenly forgotten. One by one, they fell forward, their murmurs filling the too still air.
Beyond the canopy, those near enough to see and hear shouted and came to fall forward in groups and then in waves, their murmurs rising to the ominous sky, seeding the clouds with my name.
Hail, Queen! Queen Bilqis.
I instinctively turned toward Maqar, but found him bent nearly to the dry wadi floor, the neck I had adored so many nights bowed low.
The gust came, sweeping through the valley, sending the canopy shuddering as the sky broke to the south.
“Gather the men,” Khalkharib said, over the oncoming storm. “We march on Marib.”
That night, the voice of my mother, lost so many years ago, returned. Just a croon at first, in my sleeping mind’s ear. A song like wind through the tent flap, the trill of rain against the rumble of a highland storm. It was the lullaby of Saba, of her mountains and ringed plateaus, the music of her terraces in the spring deluge trickling down to her fields and orchards.
It was my mother’s song. And it was mine.
I n the Baihan Valley we gained men from the tribes of Kahar and Awsan. We moved swiftly, skirting oases already
“Get out!” I said the night Maqar woke and tried to comfort me. I had followed him from the tent moments later, retching in the dirt.
Hagarlat haunted me through the high plateaus, and my father’s morose face down the descent to the great Baihan Valley. And though Maqar forgave me my outburst, neither did he touch me.
I was beside myself. Punt was a shadow land beyond the narrow sea and Saba had greeted me with demons. And so I plunged forward, the only direction available to me now: north, toward the capital.
Just as we reached the edge of camp, something sailed over the rim of the mountains against the brooding sky. I squinted at the languid flight of a vulture as clouds unfurled overhead.
In the camp, tribal accents punctuated the air, sharp and guttural as the thunder rolling beyond the horizon. Chieftains, in urgent conversation under the canopy of the command tent.
Lightning flashed, shocking the landscape. In the valley itself, the air was eerily still.
One by one, the nobles fell silent as I approached the tent. Among them, a new man perhaps a few years younger than my father, in rapid conversation with Khalkharib just an instant ago.
Twelve sets of kohl-rimmed eyes assessed me at once. Did I waver as I walked toward them, did my step falter? How did they perceive me, these men who knew nothing of me but my bloodline? Did any one of them see in me a queen—or only a means to their own power?
I looked at each of them in turn, the newcomer last of all.
“This is Wahabil,” Khalkharib said. “His tribe is kin-tribe to your own.” He had not needed to tell me; I recognized the old sunburst of the goddess Shams on his dagger’s scabbard immediately. I greeted him as kin, touching my veiled nose to his. He was stocky, no taller than I, with uncharacteristically light eyes and a wispy beard that did not disguise his jowls.
“My men wait in the next valley,” Wahabil said.
“Have you brought word of my kinsmen? I had thought to receive—”
“A rider has arrived from Marib,” Khalkharib interrupted.
I stared at him before slowly turning to Wahabil.
My heart became a cudgel.
“The king your father is dead,” Wahabil said. “Hagarlat has set her son on the alabaster throne. We refuse him allegiance. Your kinsmen gather at Sirwah even now.”
Silence.
Wahabil slowly leaned forward, hands on his knees. “Hail, Queen.”
Khalkharib perfunctorily followed suit, along with Nabat and the man from Aman. And then Yatha, and the chieftains of Urramarand Awsan, and another from eastern Hadramawt who had joined us on the coastal plain, and four others whose tribes I had suddenly forgotten. One by one, they fell forward, their murmurs filling the too still air.
Beyond the canopy, those near enough to see and hear shouted and came to fall forward in groups and then in waves, their murmurs rising to the ominous sky, seeding the clouds with my name.
Hail, Queen! Queen Bilqis.
I instinctively turned toward Maqar, but found him bent nearly to the dry wadi floor, the neck I had adored so many nights bowed low.
The gust came, sweeping through the valley, sending the canopy shuddering as the sky broke to the south.
“Gather the men,” Khalkharib said, over the oncoming storm. “We march on Marib.”
That night, the voice of my mother, lost so many years ago, returned. Just a croon at first, in my sleeping mind’s ear. A song like wind through the tent flap, the trill of rain against the rumble of a highland storm. It was the lullaby of Saba, of her mountains and ringed plateaus, the music of her terraces in the spring deluge trickling down to her fields and orchards.
It was my mother’s song. And it was mine.
I n the Baihan Valley we gained men from the tribes of Kahar and Awsan. We moved swiftly, skirting oases already