Born of Shadow - Book 1 (complete)

Prologue

Sahara Desert, south of Alexandria, Egypt

She shouldn't be here.

Zaynah reached for a new grip and cut her hand on a rock. She nearly cried out, but caught herself just in time. She bit her lip. If anyone heard her, it would all be over. Zaynah clicked on a small flashlight and noted the blood pooling in her palm. It didn't appear too serious, but the dirt would get into the wound unless she took care of it. She ripped a strip of cloth from the hem of her shirt and wound it around her hand, pressing a thumb against the injury to test it. It still stung a bit, but it would have to do.

Keep going, she ordered herself. Zaynah secured her pack, grabbed another rock and eased her body up. Her stomach growled. She thought of the crust of bread wrapped in linen in her pack. Better save it for later.

Zaynah climbed. Hunger knotted her stomach, whining for relief. She gritted her teeth against the familiar pains that drove her forward and upward. Her thoughts turned towards her father.

He had left their village with a promise to find new work and later send for Zaynah and her family. Six months after her father left, she'd dropped out of school to help her exhausted mother run her business. Where was the time for school when there were rugs to weave? The brightly colored rugs that her mother designed wouldn't make themselves.

She knew the man her mother sold the rugs to was taking advantage of her. He peddled them to tourists in Cairo for more than ten times the price he paid her mother. Zaynah had tried to convince her mother to let her sell them on the streets, but her mother refused. She said it wasn't safe. But every month they got farther and farther into debt. Was that any safer?

For three long years her father couldn't find work. At least that's what she'd thought until she sought him out and discovered the truth.

Hot spasms of anger caught her heart. It wasn't fair to be forced into this place, forced to do this. It wasn't supposed to be like this. She wasn't a criminal. But her family couldn't afford the rent anymore. The landlord had threatened to force them out. Her mother was so sick, they needed a new doctor, new medicine. Things were desperate.

Zaynah's stomach grumbled again. She ignored it.

If only she could go back to school and finish her education. She would have graduated by now if she hadn't left to help her mother. She had heard stories of girls in other countries who earned college degrees and brought home the same amount of money as men. There was no future in rugs, not at the prices her mother sold them for anyway. She was tired of working her fingers bloody for no future. Her little brother Sayed had mentioned dropping out of school to help them, but she refused to let him throw his life away too.

Zaynah missed school, but not the students, of course, since most of them were boring and only concerned with their own shallow lives. She didn't really miss the teachers either. What she really missed were the books and what they represented—knowledge.

She had immersed herself in the histories, learning about the days of her land back before Egypt became the first African country to embrace Islam, back before Christians populated it, before Julius Caesar and Augustus invaded it, back to a time of mysticism and a time of wonder, back to the days of the pharaohs where men and women believed they had a direct connection to the gods, and when men and women believed they could become gods.

How fascinating it was to study the ancients! To Zaynah, they didn't feel like flat characters on the page; instead they felt real to her, like flesh and blood, hot for adventure. Like Alexander the Great, the Macedonian who conquered the known world by the age of 30, or Cleopatra, the seductive empress who cut out her two brother husbands to rule Egypt as pharaoh with her infant son Caesarion as co-regent so she could gain complete control. It was almost as if they came out of the womb knowing what they wanted and never doubted their confidence in attaining it.