Читать книгу Sun Thief - Jamie Buxton - Страница 7

So here I am, standing on top of a pyramid. I’m as high as the sky and king of the world.

In front of me, the Great River is a big, fat, dark, lazy snake, winding through a patchwork of fields: green grass, golden wheat, black earth.

Behind me, the desert is as dull as a dead lion’s hide.

On my left and far, far away, the setting sun has just turned the stones of the old city to gold.

On my right, our town is a muddle of narrow streets and four-square, flat-roofed houses built of brown mud brick. Fires blink like bright eyes as people cook their evening meal. On the back road that leads in from the north, I can just see a small dust cloud. It’s tearing along at a fair old lick and there’s a dark man-shape in the middle of it, like the grit in a ball of raw cotton.

When you’re up on a pyramid, you’re standing on an old king who’s buried somewhere in the pile of rocks beneath you. Soldiers used to march around its base to keep rabble like me away and the common people had to crawl up a long stone causeway to ask for blessings from the priests who prayed in his temple. But the new king in the south has banned the old gods and told us to worship the sun. The Aten, he’s called. I suppose the king has his reasons, but I can’t help feeling it’s a bit boring. I mean, what does this Aten do except shine? The old gods got up to all kinds of mischief, some of which is too shocking to talk about, but that makes me like them more.

Still, look on the bright side: no gods means no priests; no priests means no guards; no guards means I get to climb the Great Pyramid whenever I feel like it.

So I’m up in the sky and feeling great when I suddenly realise that the little cloud of dust I saw on the back road could be a guest coming to the inn. And if it is, I have to be back there to meet him or I’m in trouble – a muddy great heap of it.