Free The Dragon Queens (The Mystique Trilogy) by Traci Harding Page A

Qayin, or Cain, and Luluwa, and the first of these princes was Enoch. However, the line of the Dragon Queens is said to have descended from Lilith, being the first woman who claimed to be a spiritual daughter of Sama-El. In fact, it is said that Sama-El fathered all of the Dragon Queens, of which ancient texts claim there are six plus one.’
    Through the ages, Sama-El had been reinvented as the devil that had shown humanity the way to the tree of knowledge. Fathered by the devil —I amused myself with the premise, as there were many people over the years who might have agreed. The idea would have worried me too, had I not known that Sama-El was also called Enki, the most ancient god of the waters. And recently I’d discovered that I may be his daughter. I was beginning to suspect that my mother as well as my father had been drugged on their wedding night.
    I changed the subject, as I was now as uncomfortable with it as Miss Koriche. ‘Which of these clay columns did the Genesis account come from?’
    ‘It is here.’ Miss Koriche motioned to the far wall of the room she had been working in, and so I followed her back inside. ‘This column obviously dates from the last rebuild of the ziggurat, perhaps 3400 years old. But this Genesis account may be older still, as the story itself could have been preserved from an earlier period.’
    I moved closer to the column and placed a hand upon it.
    I felt warmed immediately, for I found myself as a young man hard at work under the hot afternoon sun of ancient Sumer. Before me, protected by the shade of a wall, was a smooth and still-damp clay column that I had begun to inscribe with the aid of a sharpened reed. Beside me were pieces of a clay tablet that had been smashed and then reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle. I was relaying the contents of the ruined item onto the fresh column and, from all appearances, the text on the old clay tablet seemed complete.
    ‘We need to talk.’ The note of alarm in my husband’s voice catapulted me back to the present.
    I opened my eyes and looked in my lord’s direction to find Mr Taylor and Levi were with him. ‘What has happened?’
    ‘Talk some sense into Father,’ Levi pleaded, most out of sorts.
    ‘We have been given our marching orders,’ Taylor informed me. ‘Some of the Shah’s officials have just paid us a visit. We have a week to get out of Persia.’
    ‘But I have only been here a week!’ I protested. ‘And it took me months to get here.’
    ‘Regrettable,’ my husband agreed. ‘However, we are leaving.’
    ‘No! We can’t leave now—’ I cut myself short of confessing what I’d learned from the serpent comb and quickly covered my error. ‘We are right in the middle of something.’
    ‘That’s exactly what I said!’ Levi threw up his hands in exasperation. Still, I knew that the dig was not the only reason Levi was so keen to stay.
    ‘It doesn’t matter what you say ,’ Lord Devere spelled out the problem to our son, ‘because in this case, we are going to be arrested if we do not comply.’
    ‘We must be able to appeal the Shah’s decision?’ I looked to Mr Taylor hopefully.
    ‘You would appeal to the local kad-khuda, or headman, who is the administrator of the Common Law,’ Taylor advised me.
    I smiled, pleased to have a route to manifesting my will.
    ‘But it was his officials who served us our eviction notice,’ Taylor went on, dashing my hopes. ‘Andthere is no point appealing to him, as his orders came directly from the Shah. A kad-khuda will never overrule the word of his sovereign.’
    ‘Then I shall appeal directly to the Shah,’ I said.
    Levi gave a cheer of encouragement.
    ‘And say what?’ My husband appealed for me to be reasonable. ‘Understand that this man is the law here. He could have your head severed from your shoulders for one misconstrued word!’
    ‘Actually, the Persians haven’t beheaded women for thousands of years,’ Levi assured his father, who looked suspiciously