Kitabı oku: «Mistress of Pharaohs. Daughter of Dawn»

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Translator Natalia Lilienthal

ISBN 978-5-0056-7594-1

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

After the fall

Angels have fallen. What had been divine beauty a moment ago had become ashes and decay. The glow of heaven’s fire had long since faded, leaving only the dusky desert. On the sand, black with the blood of angels, creeping monsters crawled. And these are the warriors of her great army?!

White-winged, fair-faced, proud and stately, incredibly strong…

Now the picture was upside down, like a burnt fresco. There was no trace of the recent beauty. The relentless flames from the heavens had destroyed all whiteness, all beauty, all stature… All that was left was power-dark and roaring from deep within, from the very bowels of the earth, where the mightiest of her heavenly warriors had fallen. They cried out for vengeance!

She looked up. Heaven is far away! She had never imagined they would be so far away.

The sands lay everywhere, shaky and prickly. There was none of that in the sky. She frowned, running the sand through her fingers. The sand suddenly became a handful of gold. Well, she still had her strength. But enough to make the monsters beautiful again and send them off to battle in the heavens?

She watched indifferently as they crawled across the sands and tried to flap their burnt wings. And yet just a moment ago she was in pain at the sight of their former beauty being burned in the fire. The pain came from her heart. Now there was nothing but a sucking emptiness. Like a vortex!

“When you go past the edge of pain, it ceases to exist!” The voice was familiar, but she did not recognize the frightening black creature before her. It appeared in the wilderness, as if a flash of lightning had swept it away. Unlike the other fallen warriors, it did not crawl, but sat majestically on a rock. A moment more, and it approached her closely, like a ghost. Its eyes… sunken into the burned pits, but still so bright… She recognized it. Hardly! The shell had changed completely, only his eyes remained the same: defiant and rebellious.

“Remy!” she said his angelic name with difficulty. It seemed as if only a fraction of the name should remain. “Is it you?”

“Yes, I am, Mistress…”

“Is it Mistress?” Something didn’t add up. She frowned. It used to be addressed as “Mylord.” Something was wrong! She looked at her body. It was still beautiful. It couldn’t be… because her whole army was disfigured.

The body was different. She ran her hand over her skin. A density emerged beneath it.

“It’s called flesh,” a voice spoke from somewhere deep within her mind.

Is it flesh? She frowned. Their bodies used to be made of ether, and they felt no pain at all until they were first wounded in the war. Under their skin, something red seeped out of the ether – blood. No one knew of its existence either. One can only know about something by seeing it for the first time. Everything that was happening now was a first time. The fall had been painful. And after that, there was a new era, a mere exile to the sands.

“How many are we missing?” She asked Remy.

“Many. But better all! Look upon them all! Is that them?” He nodded at the monsters crawling out of the sand.

“Have you seen yourself?”

Remy was embarrassed.

“And yet they were better off dead than still living like that,” he muttered.

“To die is to lose forever, and we’re still alive, so we can fight again eventually.”

She ran handfuls of sand through her fingers, swirling them into golden dust. Her disfigured army would soon be able to fight again. Only the longing for those no longer there is unpleasant. Her most trusted angels have turned to nothing. Only from somewhere in the depths of the sands did their spirits cry out.

She still had her sword, a beautiful thing with a golden hilt and runes on the blade. Strangely, Michael didn’t break it in the fight. He tried to do it by grabbing the blade with his bare hands. Blood came out of his palms, too, thick and bright. What a pleasant sight – the blood of the enemy! The closest friend can become the worst enemy. He did not break the blade. He is only badly wounded. Serves him right!

Only those who have been faithful deserve respect. The most faithful servants were just what she was missing. All her standard – bearers were gone. Their voices echoed through the sand, drowning and fading into the hot desert air. They were only voices. The stately warriors themselves could not be raised from the abyss of non-existence, could not be saved, but she would remember them. The blade of her sword drew their names in the sand. For some reason, the inscriptions went in circles. And beneath each name there was a memorable symbol. The letters, taken from the lettering of heaven, burned through the sand. Such signs are not for the earth. The soil crumbles and burns from them.

Somehow the whole circle did not ignite. The first letters of each name remained. They crawled toward each other, like insects, and formed into one solid inscription. One name emerged:

“Alais!”

“Is that your new name now?” Remy was already looking at the vibrating letters in the sand.

“It’s not good to start a new fight under the same name you’ve already lost.”

The new name should serve as a talisman. Fused from the first letters of the names of the dead angels, it would take effect. Such a name was needed the first time she went into battle against the Archangel Michael, but then there were no dead warriors whose names could be pieced together.

Now there were. Their power had not gone to nothing. It could be drawn together with the first letter of each name. There’s the amulet!

There is no more Dennitsa. There is Alais.

Along with a new name there is a new chance to win.

Alais looked around the deserts. This is her new kingdom now. It may not be heaven, but it reeks of freedom. The boundless sands go into the distance. You can turn them into gold if you want, or you can leave them as they are. The blood-red sun sets over the horizon and turns them golden all by itself. In heaven you could usually reach out and touch the sun, but now it was suddenly so far away! You couldn’t reach it with your hand! But its glow made the monsters in the desert suffer. They were already too badly burned. The light of the sun only added to the pain. The sun is liquid fire.

“Why did we rise up?” The question should have been asked by them, disfigured and suffering, but it was she who asked it. None of them dared open their burnt mouths.

“So that you could be the first,” Remy answered nonchalantly. He, too, had turned into a living bogeyman of ashes, but he did not show his suffering. His sly gaze showed that he had no regrets, but like hers, he thought it necessary to lay low for a moment to build up his strength.

She remembered that Alais, in the ancient celestial dialect, meant the beginning and the top at the same time. The name could be interpreted as first and best. The letters added up well. Because of them, the dead angels will continue to live in her. The name is the most important thing there is. It is empowering.

“Those shards of sunlight that fell with you…” Remy flew over the desert. “They were frozen on the ground by something solid. I even thought at first that you had dissolved into them, but then I spotted you from high above among your fallen armies.”

“It is gold,” she stated.

“But it’s solid! Not melting when you touch it! Not like heaven!”

“It’s not like heaven here. But I like it here.”

It’s freedom! Alais saw no enemies with swords in the deserts, and no heavenly spies. Has she been left alone? So be it, but she will leave no one alone now. The desire to defeat the enemy is the driving force behind her armies. But so far they have little strength.

From the sands the howling voices of the dead called out, and some new desire, hitherto unknown, awoke inside.

“Crawl over here!” She beckoned a black creature toward her. It hissed and crawled over. Alaïs leaned toward the scarlet wound in its forearm beneath the lacerated wing and clawed at it with her teeth. A red liquid filled her mouth. It had a peppery salty taste, but how sweet to take each sip. Alais broke away from the drink with difficulty and pushed her whimpering legionnaire away with her foot.

“I’m thirsty! There was no such desire before,” Remy confirmed her thoughts.

There used to be no desire at all. Except one! The desire for power! It has partially come true. The plains of sand have been given to her to rule there. It was her new kingdom! To have it was already a victory. Only with it came a lingering thirst that couldn’t be quenched.

“Look for anything alive besides our soldiers,” she commanded Remy.

“What do you mean, mistress?”

“It is anything at all.”

“I have flown over the sands and mountains beyond the deserts. There is nothing there.”

“Are we’re the only ones here? Look for an alternative.”

Remy bowed. His once beautiful head was now crowned with spiraling horns. The spikes, protruding from his spine and forehead, seemed sharp enough to cut through sheet iron.

“Remy!” she called out a moment before all that was left was a black vortex where he’d been hovering. “Do you regret following me now?”

The answer was no. Neither did the monsters slumbering in the sands. And you should be sorry. Until recently they had been so beautiful that it was painful to look at them. Now the sight of them made her sick. Creepy and stripped, they crawled on the dunes and hissed curses at the indifferent and already distant heavens. What had they lost, though? One beauty!

Alais looked around the desert. Everywhere she looked, yellow sand was everywhere. Where Angel’s blood had been spilled, there were brown patches.

Here was the spot where it had fallen, with the inscriptions scorched into the sand. Alais drew the tip of her sword over them. The handle twitched oddly, gripping her fingers. It was because the dragon on the hilt had come to life and moved. Before, there was no dragon on it. Now it hissed with a copper mouth. Where had it come from?

Where did they come from? Armies of monsters in the desert! With them, the matter was clear. The beautiful white-winged angels had burned, shrunken, and turned into vile creatures. And it’s all her fault!

Do they blame her? Alais looked around at the crawling rabble. They were expressing indignation toward the heavens, but they weren’t hissing at her, on the contrary, they were respectfully crawling away from her.

The whole point was that she remained beautiful and they did not. Does her appearance still command their respect?

It was pleasant to walk across the desert, not fly. You couldn’t do that in heaven, but here you could just tread, moving your feet. The wings rustled behind her, like unnecessary jewelry.

Somewhere deep inside, a wild hunger was awakening. There was nothing to satisfy it.

Remy returned disappointed. He found nothing alive.

“It felt as if everything died here as soon as it touched this surface,” Alais kicked the sand with her foot, and it suddenly seemed like one huge living breathing creature that they were treading on. It was definitely breathing. The desert was breathing! How had she not noticed it before?

“But somehow we survived,” Remy’s sigh was still fiery. His black mouth resembled the mouth of a furnace. The former angel still hadn’t noticed that the desert was alive.

Alais did not enlighten him. Let him see for himself.

“God couldn’t destroy us, or didn’t dare. Or maybe he decided that staying here would be the worst punishment for us. It was worse than destruction. For that is total destruction. To fall! To be left without your own face,” she looked dejectedly at the armies of freaks that swarmed the desert.

“But your face is still there,” Remy nodded at her reflection in the puddle in the sand. It was still there, beautiful and golden. It glowed. Was it an illusion? But her hands were smooth, too, not burnt. Alais stared at them in amazement. The golden lace of the webbing between her fingers was gone. There were only five fingers themselves, which used to be seven. Seven fingers made it easier to grip a sword than five. But she still had her wings.

“We’ll build up our strength, and then we’ll go to Heaven again,” she promised.

That promise was the only thing worth living for. And surviving in this place would be difficult. Every moment of being here is maddening. And most likely centuries would pass before another battle would be fought. How quickly can you build up your strength again if there’s nothing left of you but burnt remains?

Her recent majestic comrades-in-arms looked as if they had just been taken out of the furnace. They are black relics, not warriors! They are embittered in a way that makes you afraid to look at them, but will their embitterment be enough to start a new war.

Most likely they will be crushed again if they rush into battle again. Spontaneous rebellion is not the answer. We need to be smarter from now on. Alais pondered. She needs a different strategy and complete indifference to Michael’s shining appearance.

“Can we deal with them all in the meantime, Mistress?” Remy asked as if she had already managed to appoint him as her new commander to replace all the dead. He pointed his frayed wing at the monsters crawling in the desert.

“Let them settle in for now.”

Unlike Remy, it pained her to look at them. She saw the blackened bodies, but thought of the statuesque angels. But she couldn’t turn away. Everywhere she saw, there was a sandy plain, where the remains of her great army crawled.

“Does it hurt that you’re burned?” Alaïs asked Remy. She herself no longer felt the burns. Her body remained white, though she remembered that she too had burned with the others. Maybe they too, despite all their burns, would recover. Time passed, but there was no regeneration.

“I felt as if I were still burning in the fire, and the flames hurt more and more, almost biting. The pain is unbearable, and it cuts through all my dicks. Isn’t it like that with you?”

Alais shook her head negatively.

“I feel free! For the first time since the moment of my creation,” she breathed in the desert air full of smoke. The sand smelled like the wings of her fallen angels.

“This is my new kingdom. And it is mine alone! There is no god here! There is no one else’s rules and regulations. No one tells us anything else. We have fallen, but we are free. This kingdom may be ugly, but it’s ours. At last we have something of our own. Let’s celebrate!”

Instead of cheering, the monstrous Remy knelt before her. The other monsters in the desert howled with anguish and hunger.

In the beginning there was lizard blood.

Then, centuries later, the first humans wandered into the desert. Creatures without wings! Weak creatures! But the smell of their blood stirred the memory of war. Her army satiated for the first time since the fall. They felt better. The feast had begun. Who would have thought the desert could be a feast?

Demons were eating people alive, and Alais flew aimlessly between the revelers. She’d taken a few mouthfuls to quench a thirst that had been building up over the centuries. The monsters, on the other hand, were more voracious. Just now they had devoured an entire human army. Alien coats of arms and banners lay under the clutches of fallen angels. Alais crushed bones and filigree jewelry indifferently. Everything the humans had made with their hands she didn’t like for some reason.

Suddenly one dying man caught her attention. He was white, dark-haired, and blue-eyed. His appearance reminded her of the archangel Gabriel. Several of the feasting monsters were sucked into his veins at once. Alais flew closer to get a closer look at him. He marveled at the sight of her. And she drank his blood herself. It was an honor for him. But he was waiting for something else. One last loving embrace before he died? Her love died with the first burns of heavenly fire. All that was left was vengeance.

The living desert

The battle sword remained. Alais drew symbols in the sand with its tip. But the bracelet of omnipotence had disappeared somewhere. Without it, she felt powerless. After all, all the power of the sunlight was contained within it.

Alais grabbed the snake that was slithering across the sand. It hissed, exuding venom. The tiny mouth opened dangerously. The snake wanted to bite, even if it was an angel, whose blood would immediately burn. It was an ugly creature, but brave! It was a matter of one minute to crush the snake. Alais didn’t even feel sorry for it. The desert, greedily accepting the shards of sunlight that fell to the ground at the same time it did, and became gold, knew what the angel expected of it. The snake’s body began to slowly turn gold. It was from tail to head. And now it was a new bracelet that came to life and wrapped in rings around Alais’s forearm. The dead snake became flexible and docile. She had made an excellent copy of the bracelet. It was just a copy. Alais frowned. That would do for now, but how and where would she find the real bracelet? She was wearing it when she fell. So where had it gone now?

The desert had lived and breathed since the angels had fallen into it. Out of the light that fell with them something was born… Touching the sand, it suddenly turned to gold. And the sands in front of her, which a day ago had been black, now glowed like a bottomless and boundless treasury reaching far beyond the horizon. Even in the heavens it was not so rich. Gold meant nothing there. But here on earth, it took on a special meaning.

People fought over it if they found it somewhere. To them it was most often the object of strife and murder. To them it was rare, to her it was commonplace. Alais often amused herself by passing the sand between her fingers, and her touch would turn it golden. How can you fight over gold when you can turn everything around you into it? Fighting over freedom is another thing. Alais cast a grim glance at the heavens. They seemed to have turned purple, and the sand in the desert had all turned to gold for miles around. She had walked on it for too long. Her feet always left a trail of gold. And there was no longer a trace of the ash that had strewn the desert after the angels had fallen.

A golden swirl of grains of sand swirled around Alais. A whole desert of gold would have been a fairy tale for mortals, but not for her. But she had already noticed that once a man found a single bar of gold, he was willing to kill for it. The glitter of heavenly metal makes people lose their minds.

“Gold is like you,” Remy once remarked. “It brings them as much evil as you have brought us. But we don’t blame you, and they don’t blame it.”

Nor did Alais tear out his burnt tongue for being blunt, though the sword itself vibrated in her hands. It’s a good thing Remy stayed sensible. But it was better that he had remained handsome. Now he was a mountain of black muscle and leathery wings. All her supporters looked no better than him now. Some angels slept in the barchans, and when they emerged from them by nightfall, they looked like stuffed animals made of sand. As they shook themselves off, the sand stirred with ash.

How much ash could be left by burnt wings! The ashes seemed to begin to replace her army blood. In heaven they had been exposed to a wound that would not stop bleeding.

“It makes me want to stab one man, and see his blood gush out of the wound to no end, until it floods the whole desert.”

“There isn’t that much blood in those things, I’m afraid,” Remy said, still judiciously, showing his forked black tongue.

“I know! But they did it to us. And we have to do it to someone else to be comforted. It’s as if the heavens are still drinking our blood, though they seem to have drunk it all. But they will never stop drinking.

“Let us go at them with another war!”

“Not yet!” Alais looked around at the monsters in the sands. They had already gained their strength from the blood of men. Their angry hum alone would make the heavens tremble. The beautiful creatures had gone through torture, turned into monsters, and the monsters had hardened. Now they are capable of anything. So what is she waiting for? Why not give them the order to advance? Or does she fear another defeat? Alais threw back the golden strands from her forehead. The rumble of the first angelic battle was in her ears. It was too soon to repeat all that. She needed to recover from her first defeat. The moral wound was stronger than the physical.

The tip of her sword resisted as she began involuntarily drawing a familiar name in the sand: Mikhail.

Michael betrayed her. He sided with the enemy, even led his armies. How quickly those who loved can betray!

You cannot draw his name to the end, or he will show up here and call her back. One must not trust him! He must not even be remembered!

Alais stirred the sand. The writing disappeared beneath the grains of sand in an instant.

Michael certainly remained handsome, unlike Remy. She imagined his radiant face would one day blaze with fire, blacken and shrink like burnt parchment.

“Look what we have got! Do you like these deserts?”

“I don’t see the difference between the deserts and the clouds,” Remy was an optimist. Or was he only pretending not to care?

“The deserts are better, because they are ours. There’s no one here but us.”

“There are people and lizards.”

“Let them be food.”

The blood of the humans tasted good. Alais often drank it with pleasure. She only disliked that humans were beginning to show an intelligence that wasn’t there before. Existing on the same earth as the angels, it was as if they had begun to adopt a piece of their intelligence. It would be better to destroy people, but then there would be no more of their blood, which is so pleasant to drink. Somehow it tastes better than lizard blood.

But why is it? All living creatures on earth are the same. They came here a long time after her angels had fallen in the wilderness. Why should there be any difference between all these creatures? Why does the blood of any of them taste sweeter?