Kitabı oku: «Mistress of Pharaohs. Daughter of Dawn», sayfa 2
Sickle of Blood
Alais found a sickle in the sand. Apparently it was formed from a shard of sunbeam, curved in a strange shape. The sickle was still hot. And yet it was nighttime. The sand is not red-hot.
Black letters stretched across the golden blade, as if drawn in darkness.
“I’m still with you.”
What could that mean? Who was still with her? All around are her fallen legions, mutilated and burned. There is no one extra in them. Perhaps the inscription is a message from someone she counted among the dead? Hardly a message from God, but there is power in the words, as if someone stronger than the Almighty were present.
An aura of darkness enveloped the golden sickle, and suddenly the black letters on the blade were golden, too. You couldn’t read them now. The reliefs were barely visible.
Alais weighed the sickle in her hands. As long as it touched her skin, she had the magical feeling that there was someone she couldn’t do without.
“You’re just like a friend to me,” Alais whispered to the sickle, and the sickle glowed brighter. It resembled a month in the sky. And that was the month she held in her hands.
“We are like night and day. We are one! As day does not exist without night, so you do not exist without me.”
The mysterious voice sounded only in her head. It enveloped her consciousness in a black mist. Alais grew wary. There was definitely someone nearby, but she didn’t see him, and her armies didn’t see him either. Otherwise they would have panicked. There was as much danger from the invisible creature as there was magnetism. she wanted to see it.
Perhaps someone’s soul was hiding inside the sickle. Alais examined the sickle more closely. Wasn’t the face of one of the dead angels shining through on the blade? Only the writing was visible. The letters of the angelic hieroglyphs echoed the words of the invisible being: “We are night and day, merged together. Without each other we do not exist. We are the pillar of creation and the ruin of the universe.”
And where is her name? She puffed on the sickle, and the letters of her new name stuck out at the tip. That’s better. Only her name is here; the name of the invisible being is not nearby. She set her seal and hammered the sickle to herself. The voice of the invisible creature fell silent. In time, however, the sickle proved useful.
It was easier to kill with a sickle than even with a claw. In one fell swoop, you could cut the heads off a whole troop of men. Alais was harvesting bloody crops when she barely saw the travelers arriving in the wilderness.
Someone had spread rumors that there were gold mines hidden beneath the dunes. Greedy people rushed to check it out and fall into the claws of the fallen legion.
The sand was increasingly sprinkled with blood. Alais was chopping away. The sickle had become her favorite weapon. It was like part of her arm or wing. It was so comfortable and easy to use. The sickle is her faithful helper and protector. No sword or shield is needed with it. Too bad she didn’t have the sickle before, or she would have won.
The desert greedily absorbed the spilled blood. The dunes vibrated as if they were alive. They made the desert look like a humpbacked giant with an angelic legion treading on its back.
It didn’t need a legion at all, as long as it had a sickle. One sickle could easily harvest the blood of a whole army. One day an army of men marched past the deserts. Alais swooped in and mowed them all down like bloody ears in a field. She made the raid out of inertia. She didn’t like the people. They were trespassing on angelic territory and rushing to do things her way. Humanity is an anthill that should be destroyed. But the more time passed, the more civilized this anthill became.
And one day a man appeared, worthy of the angel’s respect. It was a pharaoh who had lost a battle.
The first pharaoh
This man was special. He was tired, exhausted. He was desperate. But there was a sense of greatness about him. Almost like her.
“He is a warlord!” Alais realized, watching him from the dunes.
The traveler was dragging across the sand, barely, leaving a trail of blood. He was wounded. The luxurious robes were tattered and stained with mud.
She could have jumped down gracefully, spread her wings, and block his path. The traveler was barely able to walk, stumbling and hunched over. Alais clawed at his chin and forced him to lift his face. There was something lurking in his eyes that hurt her. Alais recoiled. Looking at this man was like looking in a mirror.
Instantly the painful cries of her fallen army and the all-consuming pain of defeat came to mind.
“You’re like me!” Alais whispered in the ancient angelic language. The traveler, of course, did not understand. He was speaking in an entirely different dialect. Remy seemed to call it Egyptian, and the country beyond the desert was Egypt. This wretch had come from there. He was the local ruler, but now the corpses of his army were being eaten by vultures. Disfigured bodies were also lying in the sands. He had suffered a crushing defeat, and the enemy was advancing.
“You came here to die!” She stated. “Well, just like the ones I missed after the fall. Maybe it’s too soon to die. I, for one, cannot die at all.”
The man was stunned. For some reason, the sight of her always brought people to a standstill. Yes, in heaven she was considered the most beautiful creature, but here on earth she was considered a deity.
Well, it’s nice to fall where there is no other god. In a place like this, and without winning the war, there’s a chance to be the one and only. She’s lucky to have fallen here. Who would have thought it!
“Don’t be afraid of me!” Alais made an effort over herself and began to mimic the wayfarer’s speech. Speaking Egyptian was not difficult for an angel. The language was akin to that of an angel. Probably some of the wandering legionnaires of Alais had taught people to speak it. Not long ago, she remembered, humans had been voiceless creatures. And suddenly they spoke, imitating the speech of angels! Nothing could explain it but the intervention of demons. She wondered which of her warriors had taken it upon themselves to teach the human race languages and crafts. The light armor on the wayfarer was also modeled on that of the celestials.
“Trust me!” Alais demanded. “Tell me what happened!”
A flood of spontaneous images flooded into her head. There was a battle! Here on earth. People were fighting! But it was no less bloody than in heaven.
“The upper kingdom… The lower kingdom… You had to combine the two to be a full-fledged king… I wanted to be.”
“So you’re a king?” Alais didn’t understand what the stranger was saying, but the familiar title interested her. “A king defeated? Just like me…”
“Deja vu” caused a sharp pain. How many thousand years ago did the battle in the heavens take place? One thousand years ago? Was it two thousand years ago? How long did her warriors sit in the deserts, enduring hunger and deprivation?
“Are you a queen, too?” asked the defeated king.
“Yes, I am” Alais said without hesitation. In fact, she became queen of the wilderness as soon as she fell into it. “I’ve been ruling this world long before you people came along. So I’m the one who decides who among you is king, and who isn’t.”
It’s time to take control of the world she finds herself in. She has military power behind her. Michael is not here. The universe of sands and men belongs only to fallen angels.
“My chosen ones will rule, and the defeated kings will go to my servants for a feast,” Alais held the defeated king by the chin with her claws, forcing him to look into her eyes. “My servants prefer to eat human meat and drink human blood. Anyone who becomes king will be obligated to feed them. I will show mercy and choose as food only those who will be rejected by the kings. For example, if you win, all the warriors you defeated will be given to my servants to feed.”
“I have already lost.”
“Who wins and who loses is for me to decide on earth. But in heaven, it’s harder to decide…”
“So you’re from heaven? Are you a deity?”
“My name is Alais.”
The king took it as the name of a deity. And so it was now.
“Your name is Menes,” Alais read in his mind. “And it seems that the kings in your country are called Pharaohs.”
He nodded. It was so easy to read people’s minds, and later surprise them with information you drew from their own minds. Alais smiled victoriously. Darkness was descending over the deserts. It pained the defeated king to look at the angel’s glittering wings before him.
“You are fortunate. I can see a reflection of myself in you,” Alais leaned over and licked the blood from the man’s cheek. Pharaoh fell to his knees before her. This is the way it should be. Earthly kings should kneel before angels.
“Let’s make a pact: my help in exchange for everything you will ever possess,” Alais touched her hand to Pharaoh’s chest. Beneath the tattered white clothing his heart was beating. She had no such organ in angels. Angels don’t have an organ like that! Humans, on the other hand, do! Alaïs wanted to press her fingernails into the vulnerable flesh and rip out the heart, but then Pharaoh would die. People are fragile! If you tear out any organ from within them, they die. Here were her angels cut in pieces and burned with fire for centuries, and they still survived. The angelic race is stronger, but humans are so curious!
Alais ran her finger over Pharaoh’s face. He had swarthy skin, coal-black eyebrows and lashes, plump lips, and bottomless eyes. Is it true that the eyes of men reflect the soul? The eyes of the angels reflected only the coldness of heaven.
Pharaoh’s long hair had become filthy with sand and dust, but if she brushed it, it would be as black as pitch. She had a beautiful specimen. He would make an excellent puppet. All she had to do was subdue his mind. Or would a man’s love for an angel be enough to keep him faithful for centuries?
Alais decided not to take any chances.
“Let’s sign the sand like parchment!” She pierced Pharaoh’s little finger with her fingernail. Blood spurted out into the sand and formed into the inscription Menes.
“Do you think that power is worth great sacrifice? I did. And here I am, in your land. If you, too, believe that everything is worth sacrificing for sole power over the world, then you are like a brother to me.”
Menes merely nodded. It pained him to watch Alais’ wings glow in the twilight, but her fleeting touches gave him pleasure. Who hadn’t dreamed of being in the arms of a beautiful angel after defeat and getting help, but the price would be exorbitant.
Alais picked up a handful of bloody sand and blew it from her palm. The deal is done! The grains of sand have turned to gold. You can buy anything with gold, even people’s souls. But in heaven, no one needed it. On earth they were killing for it.
The golden grains of sand settled on a pectoral on Pharaoh’s chest and sparkled like stars lifted from the sky.
“It is sand to sand, it is blood to blood! My name is mixed with yours,” Alais belatedly remembered that the first thing she had written in the sand was her current name. Her fate with Pharaoh seemed to be closely intermingled. Was it a higher design? Or was it just an oversight?
The sand suddenly turned scarlet. Something was stirring under the sand, as if all the dead angels were planning to break free from the realm of death and live again.
Pharaoh looked around, dazed, as if he were having a nightmare dream. And the winged legionnaires of Alais hissed at him like a victim. They were climbing out of the dunes, clawing at the dunes from within, digging mazes of tunnels beneath the sand. Demons nested everywhere in the desert. Of course, the defeated warrior who wandered in didn’t know that. Otherwise he wouldn’t have come. And there would have been no deal.
“Your army is crushed and dead! My army,” Alais cast an eloquent glance at the hissing black creatures, “is the same as dead! We have more in common than one might think. And I have an unexpected sympathy for you, human! We both rebelled for power, we both failed. But it is worth trying to turn it into a victory.”
Was it her charms that swirled the storm in the sands, or was it the heavens that protested? The sand became hot. It swirled in an orange cloud around her scorched army.
“I will raise your army from its graves,” Alais promised, “but in return you and all your descendants will obey me. Every new Pharaoh will obey my orders.”
What else could the defeated ruler do but agree with her? She is a deity and he is only human. Even a ruling king is only a man under the heel of an angel, not like a defeated one. Alais realized it was time to learn to speculate on her heavenly origins. Menes obeyed her unconditionally.
Alaïs gracefully threw her arm behind her back. Pharaoh marveled. Obviously, human hands were not as flexible as angelic hands, and such a movement might have seemed unnatural to humans. We must be careful not to pass for a mere trickster in his eyes. Somehow she cared about this man’s opinion of her and her subjects. Probably because he was the first in whom she saw an earthly reflection of herself. She had fallen, he had fallen, only in his own way, but it was time for them both to raise their armies, some from ashes, some from death and earth, and fight again.
Behind her back, between her wings, Alais carried a sword left over from the battle in the heavens. Its hilt might have seemed like a fanciful ornament placed between her shoulder blades. But behind that sun and wing-shaped ornament, lurked a deadly blade. It was no longer fiery. Alais didn’t like it. The steel hissed, but it did not glow in her hands. Still, it was enough to perform the ritual. She ran the blade across Menes’s palm, open for a friendly greeting. Menes clenched his teeth to keep from screaming in pain. The cut was so deep it nearly severed part of his arm. Blood spurted out and dripped into the sand. There was blood on the blade as well. The blood was just right.
Alais plunged the sword into the ground almost to the hilt. Now it burst into flames. It was time to read the spell. But she couldn’t remember the words. No problem! In angelic, any wish spoken aloud becomes magic. To the man her hissed speech tore at his ears. He clamped his ears shut, and the desert storm grew worse and worse. The sand rose. In the light of the flames it began to look as bright red as blood.
Pharaoh’s dead warriors rose from the earth and sand, shaking them off like dust. They were monstrous, but strong. The spirits of the dead angels entered into their bodies to make them rise. Pharaoh himself didn’t know about the spirits yet, though he probably didn’t care. The defeated do not choose with whom to ally or into which realm to fall. Alais knew this from her own experience.
A huge army marched through the desert and waited beyond the desert. The warriors who had risen from death were countless. Menes will surely win.
“You will not participate in this battle?” Remy hovered beside Alais. His black wings cast shadows over her radiant form.
“Let them fight. They will fill the country, and we will come later. It will be easy to follow them on the path they have cleared.”
“The path is clear enough for you,” Remy’s voice became hushed.
“People are building temples. I can feel it.”
“Are there temples to you?”
“They don’t know yet themselves. We must occupy these temples before the god we have fought against does. There must be no room for him here, fly and tell them to chase all his servants from the earthly temples before they wander there. Let the people worship only me and my warriors. The God on whom we raised our swords remains far away in the heavens, and the earth belongs only to us from now on.”
Remy understood her. A club of black tornado swirled in the place where he hovered. Its speed could only be envied. It would arrive in the country before the armies reached there.
“It is civilization!” Alais watched the red tornadoes in the desert, from which the dead armies rose. – Who had thought of building it on a land on which only animals had roamed before?
Men were but animals, and now, suddenly, they had become intelligent. Did the angels bring intelligence to earth and infect these creatures with it? Without intelligence, they were easier prey, and now you have to make deals with them. Wouldn’t it be easier to just squash them all at once?
Alais sprinkled the bloody sand on her palm, and it turned into a huge ruby that was shaped like a tear.
“Take it!” She called to the king, who still could not believe that his armies were rising from the dead. Even his horse, killed by enemy arrows, rose from the sand and run back to his master surrounded by a sandstorm. Once white, now black as night. The horse’s eyes shone an ominous red light. The snake he had crushed froze something like a bracelet on its leg just above the horseshoe.
“Urey!” The king couldn’t believe he was seeing his favorite again, but the ruby pleased him even more. The face of one of Alais’ lost standard-bearers was clearly visible in the stone. It began to resemble something of a woman’s face. Instead of many pairs of wings it was surrounded by many arms and legs. The former cherub had become like a monster within a stone. Souls change, and so do bodies. This standard-bearer’s name was once Kali. She recognized the face, no matter how monstrously it had changed. So lost spirits sleep in the sands, and somehow they could be brought back.
Alais placed the ruby in the king’s hand.
“When I come, it will bleed. Then you will know I am close.”
Menes bowed to her. Unlike Remy, he was not taken aback that she was not coming to fight with him. He expected her to come as soon as he established himself on the throne, and their separation would not be long. The sands in the desert are like time. They flow, folding into sandstorms. They breed demons. Alais was engrossed in looking at the swirling bloody grains of sand even before the armies rising from death rushed into the decisive battle.
Times of Sand
Remy flew over the battlefield and brought the news of Menes’s victory.
“Upper and Lower Kingdoms are united,” he announced with a bow.
“I wish we could have won as easily!” Alais smashed the miniature palace she had built of sand with her hand. It would have cost her nothing to enlarge it to a grandiose size and dwell in it. They would be surprised by a palace made of sand in the desert. It would be easy for an angel to fly into such a palace, but the crumbling arches and ceilings would most likely bury the man who walked in.
The sandy palaces were nothing compared to the heavenly palaces. Alais felt homesick. It was always bright in heaven, but evening and night often fell on earth. Before the angels had fallen to earth, it had always been night. The light brought into the deserts of Alais was only enough for part of the day.
“The sun has followed me fickle ever since we fell here. Do you think it has given up on me?”
“It’s more likely that its rays can’t reach you here,” Remy concluded. “You were too far away.”
Part of the sun has fallen on land that was once in perpetual darkness. Oh, my! Alais laughed, and her wings trembled. A chill ran through her body.
“The sun is where I am!”
Remy nodded in agreement. Alais’ body shone in the night in a way that dispelled the gloom.
Gemstones crunched in the sand beneath her feet. You could pick them up with your hands. Some people found out that the desert was full of jewels and came to get them. That’s when they fell into the claws of the monster armies.
Somehow it so happened that the blood and tears of the angels that fell in the sand turned into precious stones. The angels, having fallen to earth, became known as demons.
Were they demons? Alais frowned. The word was unfamiliar. It seemed to be what Mikhail had called them all when they were tortured after their defeat. Not long ago there had been a sea of stakes and red-hot blades, but now there was only sand.
The light of the sun was reaching the ground, overcoming the distance. The sun’s rays reached out to Alais. They touched her face, slid across her skin, and solidified something like a golden plate.
“It’s a mask!” Remy explained. “I heard Michael call our cut-off faces masks. He flew around the stakes on which your armies were crucified and cut off the faces of the defeated angels. He made masks of the cut-off faces for some reason.”
“I don’t remember that,” Alais peeled the gold plate from her skin. “So you’re called a mask!”
The mask completely copied her facial features. Looking at it was the same as looking in a mirror. The only difference was the color. The white changed to gold.
“Michael wants to talk to you,” the mask sang, its lips rounded.
“It’s the first living mask I’ve ever seen,” Remy marveled and touched the golden face with the tip of his claw. “The masks Michael had taken off all of us and carried to heaven were dead.”
The golden mask wriggled and squirmed in Alais’s hands.
“Tell him I don’t want to see him, and I don’t want to talk to him.”
“I can’t tell him anything,” the mask hissed, moving its ears like wings. “My function is only to relay reports to you. He wants you back. Everyone wants you back.”
Alais tosses the mask back into the sand. Let it lie there. The mask tried to crawl after her for a while, but then fell behind.
Soon the discarded masks became numerous. The sunlight that reached the deserts was as if it were trying to create a replica of the lost angel. Its rays froze Alais’ face and turned into talking masks. One day the sun’s rays created something like a golden statue that was trying to come alive. The statue copied Alais’ winged figure and her curly head.
Alais looked at it as if in a mirror. Golden curls snaked down her shoulders and folded into a halo-like shape at the back of her head, her facial features strikingly beautiful. The wings were the largest organ of her body, towering over her head and casting a shadow over her shoulders.
“I should fight again!” Alais lovingly stroked the hilt of her sword. “But it is not yet the time. We are too exhausted.”
“Shall I gather the masks?” Remy asked.
“No, let them crawl wherever they want.”
“But they can take some of your power.”
“They’re useless,” Alais said, tossing the last of the masks into the dune. The mask moved as if it were a lizard.
The masks could crawl and even fly, moving notches in the form of wing-like ears, spikes, or horns. But Alais didn’t care about them. They’re just masks. They have no personality. They’re just a mold of her.
“I wish I could take away the masks Michael had cut off the faces of my legionnaires,” Alaïs closed her eyelids. She was reminded of the heartbreaking screams. The armies that had followed her into battle were doomed. They had been tortured, they had been destroyed. They were worse than dead.
Alais lifted one golden mask and scrutinized the flawless features.
“I was the most beautiful angel in heaven, and I still am. Who would have thought my entourage would be monsters!”
The abandoned mask flew into the sand, managing to sing something. These masks were too talkative. Her head ached with their suggestions and prophecies.
How was Menes? Was he happy that he got his kingdom with the help of demons? Of this the masks did not know. It was useless to even ask them.
They could have paid Menes a visit on their own, but it wasn’t time yet. He had only recently won. He would have to settle into his role as ruler before an angel from the deserts would appear to him. There is no hurry. Alais had grown accustomed to the fact that time flowed incredibly slowly.
A slight envy of Menes tormented her. He’d achieved victory all too quickly. She, on the other hand, had to wait and save her strength.
Alaïs sat on the white horse that had come from the darkness with the rays of dawn. It was her former friend and comrade-in-arms! She recognized him by his eyes and his posture. Strange that he had become a horse. But the horse, as it turned out, could turn into a burnt creature with black sagging wings. He’d just been with mortals and noticed that it was in fashion for their chiefs to have horses, so he became a horse for his mistress. Mistress, not lord! It still sounded unfamiliar. Alais clenched her incredibly strong hands into fists and unclenched them again. The strength was not gone, but her appearance had changed slightly. She was even more beautiful than she had been. But it was the sex… It felt like something was missing. Masculinity, darkness… Her stronger part seemed to be slumbering somewhere, turned into animated darkness. And to live without it was somehow a misery. Alais was ready to run through the desert all day to find what was missing, but how to find something that you only assume exists and it might not really exist? But she could feel it. It was there. The golden desert breathed darkness. A part of her, drained entirely of darkness, rested here somewhere. It must be found. Only by uniting with her can the war in heaven be fought again.
The shield behind her back retained, like a picture, the image of the head of an angel who died in battle. Her standard – bearer became the shield that protected her to this day. Orvelyn! His reflection in the shield seemed to see her. He had serpentine curls, a cold, beautiful face, and golden spikes on his wings and claws. It was a pity he was only a shield now. His company had always pleased her.
The desert had become a living creature, like a monster. And that monster now served her. Alais looked around the expanse of her new kingdom in the sands. She could lay here for centuries, accumulate strength, and rush off to war with the heavens again. But Remy had said it was time to conquer the human realm, so she decided to give it a try.
