The Dragon, the Thief, and the Princess - Gillian Bradshaw

Award-winning novelist Gillian Bradshaw's classic fantasy-history tale of Egypt and Nubia, now in one volume. Teen fisherman Prahotep is nicknamed "bad-luck" because everything he touches turns to disaster. When his father dies, he sets off to Thebes to improve his fate, but soon winds up on a dangerous work crew, cutting stone for an evil magician. There he befriends a dying tomb-robber who tells him of unimaginable riches-and how to find them. Prahotep escapes the work crew but instead of finding the riches, he finds Lady Hathor, a proud, irritable dragon. Meanwhile, to the south, in Nubia, the princess Kandaki's family is murdered by a usurper. Kandaki refuses the usurper's offer of marriage, and is sent north to be offered as a sacrifice to a "swamp dragon."