Amun Sa and the Girl from the Desert

By Christopher Buecheler

The elder vampire Ashayt was once a simple peasant girl living in Egypt, on the outskirts of the great city of Memphis. Her life changes first when she meets a man -- Amun Sa -- with whom she falls in love, and second when she meets a deadly creature in the reeds, who bestows upon her both the gift and curse of immortality.

This two-chapter story is a spoiler-free excerpt from The Children of the Sun, the upcoming conclusion to the II AM Trilogy by Christopher Buecheler.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Buecheler
• Release date: Feb 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465986863

Christopher Buecheler

Christopher Buecheler is a web designer and developer, an author of both fiction and non-fiction, a student of mixology and brewing, a player of guitars and drums, a follower of professional sports, and a fan of of video games, genre and mainstream fiction, and horror movies. He lives a semi-nomadic existence with his amazing wife Charlotte, and their two cats: Carbomb and Baron Salvatore H. Lynx II. You can visit him at http://www.cwbuecheler.com

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Amun Sa and the Girl from the Desert

by Christopher Buecheler

This document is a spoiler-free excerpt containing two chapters from the upcoming novel The Children of the Sun by Christopher Buecheler. Learn more about The Children of the Sun and the II AM Trilogy at http://iiamtrilogy.com

Amun Sa and the Girl from the Desert

By Christopher Buecheler

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 Christopher Buecheler.

All rights reserved.

http://www.iiamtrilogy.com/

http://writing.cwbuecheler.com/

Amun Sa and the Girl from the Desert is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

First Edition: September 1, 2011

Amun Sa and the Girl from the Desert by Christopher Buecheler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial - No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available: please visit http://iiamtrilogy.com for contact information.

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Cover Art by Karla Ortiz

Cover Design by Christopher Buecheler

Part I

The girl knelt over the grinding wheel, preparing the flour that would become the morning’s bread, and stared out over the vast floodplain that lay between her and the great river to the east. Her hands moved unconsciously, trained by years of repetition, and this allowed her mind to wander free. She contemplated the ecstasies of the previous evening and those that might come tonight. The sun had not yet come up over the hills beyond the river and already she was anxious for it to set.

She was not from this place, though she had lived here now for more than ten years, ever since Nubian warriors from the south had come to her tribe to loot and rape and murder. If there had been any other survivors, they had been scattered to the winds, and so she had begun the journey north alone. A girl of only nine years, she had by guile and luck and effort survived where most others would have perished, avoiding the teeth and claws of beasts, the swords of man, and the shackles of the slave caravans. She had left her home in the desert and traveled along the great river until she came to the outskirts of the capital city Ineb-Hedg, the seat of power where Kings had dwelt for centuries.

She arrived there with only the name her mother had given her, Ashayt, and the skills needed to make the firm, brown bread that everyone ate with every meal and fermented to make their beer. She was of a proud people, and the hardships she had so far borne had not stripped her of this pride, and so she refused to join the legions of beggars that could be found throughout the city. She instead went door to door, first inside the city’s walls and then out of them, until at last she found a family who could make use of her skills and would agree to take her in.

A childless couple with a meager few acres of land and only a handful of slaves, her benefactors would never be wealthy, but they were free and owed nothing to any man. They traded their grain and, soon, her bread at the markets, and while Ashayt knew they would never be able to provide her with a suitable dowry for marriage, she was nonetheless happy to become something like their daughter. She was from the desert, marked by her dark skin and many tattoos, and no man from this civilized world would want her anyway. Or so, at least, she had thought.

The flour milled, Ashayt set out to mix it with water in several large clay bowls. After this, she would leave the mixture in the fresh air for a time, so that the spirits would bless it and allow it to finish its transformation into dough. She would build up the fire under their stone oven and, when it was good and hot, she would take the dough, and kneed it, and form it into loaves. This she did every morning, and when the bread had cooked and cooled, she would put aside loaves