Kitabı oku: «Mistress of Pharaohs. Daughter of Dawn», sayfa 4

“It’s a good thing! Handy! Pity there weren’t more of those in Heaven,” she whipped her horses. The chariot started moving. The ride was like flying. Swirls of sand surged beneath the powerful wheels.

A grim shadow flew behind the chariot. Alais could no longer remember the last time she had seen that shadow. The shadow’s enormous wings covered the sun.

“Do you like human toys?” The shadow asked softly.

“Yes, I do!”

“Human things are practical, but not perfect. They lack heavenly brilliance.”

“So it’s well worth giving humans something new to invent. I want a chariot of pure gold like that!”

“It will be unusual if you want to appear to mortals.”

“And if it is beautiful, I want to dazzle them like the sun, but our sun is frozen in gold metal. And human inventions are very comfortable.”

“Your demons teach people what to do. You sent them to them yourself. Don’t you remember?”

“They seem to have overstepped their authority, things like that are only worth doing for us.”

Alais rode slowly, then faster. The ride felt like flying. The wind whistled in her ears.

“They weren’t angels now. It was time to change their names, as you had. It’s unfortunate, the new name makes it hard to get close to you, it contains magic.”

“It has to be,” Alais agreed, but something wasn’t right. She could feel it in her skin.

A trail of blood ran from the chariot’s wheels. She seemed to have driven over a corpse that her servants had finished eating.

Some sort of procession was approaching. It was time to call her warriors to the feast. She had already prepared to call out to them, but suddenly she felt something…

People are coming to worship her. So it is not honorable to attack them. She is a deity after all, not a desert robber. Bandits were the most common thing they caught to be eaten.

There were no bandits in the procession. Alais could not understand whether these people had been sent by Pharaoh Menes to worship her, or whether they themselves had heard about the miracles that were going on in the desert and had come to look for a deity here.

She did not ask them, but rode in her chariot past the fallen crowd. The people were enthralled by the sight of the winged creature driving the chariot.

“Are you flattered by the worship of men? Don’t you long to slaughter them all?” The shadow behind her was nervous.

Alais herself didn’t know what she wanted today. Feeling like a deity turned out to be nice. Alais had power: she could do something good for people, show them some nice magic, but her monstrous servants swooped in behind her, and the procession of worshippers was gone in a matter of moments. The monsters wanted blood. Alais watched their revelry indifferently. Then she drove over the corpses.

The chariot left a trail of blood in the sand. The wheels were stained with the blood of the wayfarers. Red lines in the sand joined together in a bizarre pattern. It made the sandy plain look like a carpet.

Suddenly Alais felt something grim on her soul. She was used to treating people as people treat livestock. Humans are food for her legionnaires. If you compare humans to angels, humans are irrational. The heavenly race and the earthly race are too different. So why did it seem to Alais today that there were those in the crowd of wayfarers who were worth paying attention to?

Alaïs shook her golden curls stubbornly and grabbed the reins tighter. This was no time for melancholy. Morale is what counts. She had yet to fight another war. The more nourishing her warriors are, the stronger they will become. And the food for them is people. For some reason, cattle and birds did not attract the fallen angels. But animals, like people, are made up of meat and blood. So why are they not suitable food for the fallen angels? Something is not right. There’s something special about humans. But why is it? Of all the humans, Alaïs only liked Menes. Maybe we should go to him now. Or is it too soon? How long had it been since he’d won? Alais frowned. Time was measured differently on earth than it was in heaven. Every moment here was equal to a year. Remy, who often flew over territories inhabited by humans, reported that while she had been resting in the desert, the humans had already had many generations and civilizations replaced.

Alais didn’t even know if Egypt was the first human civilization. All she knew was that she wanted to see Menes again.

As she made laps around the desert, the sand turned brown with traces of blood.

Before the fall

Alais remembered the war. She loved to perform ahead of the angelic legion. She was a born leader. To rule was her destiny. She was supposed to be in charge in heaven.

She would have won if the fight had not been with those with whom, before the fight, they were bound by love. During the war argument, everyone forgot about love. The three best angels were named Dennitsa, Michael, and Gabriel. All three loved each other. So why, as soon as war broke out, did they end up in different enemy camps?

The heavens were ablaze. Mirrored shields reflected the way the angels turned into monsters. Michael was very handsome. Winged, blond, blue-eyed – he resembled a dawn, too. He behaved too aggressively, and that made him vulnerable. Alais could cut his head off with a single sword blow, but she preferred to play him long in battle. She was giving him a chance. What if he still came to his senses and took her side? By waiting, she lost. An angel named Gabriel came between her and Michael. He wanted to separate them. Gabriel was so confident in his peacemaker charm that he flew out onto the battlefield unarmed. His appearance disoriented everyone. When a beautiful creature with dark curls and snow-white wings flies toward you in the heat of battle, you don’t want to strike at him at all. But Alais’s sword was already drawn to strike. The point was aimed at Michael’s shoulder, and wounded Gabriel. A deep wound split just below his left shoulder, where the men’s heart is. Blood spurted out. Until that moment, no one knew that angels had blood. Gabriel’s blood resembled scarlet rubies. It seemed to solidify the rubies on Alais’s sword.

Alais no longer remembered all the details. She didn’t even remember if Gabriel had been a brunette before the Celestial War. Or had his hair turned darker after the battle? Barely had he been wounded, a lily had sprouted in his cut chest. The flower resembled a parasite. The petals chewed the angelic flesh in which they grew.

Gabriel looked at Alais with a discouraged look. He couldn’t believe that she could have hurt him. His astonished eyes still haunted Alais. He was in great pain. The azure billow around his pupils, had turned purple. The heavens, too, turned purple. The angels of Alais began to lose, and then they turned into monsters.

Heavenly fire poured down on them like flames from a dragon’s mouth, but for a while it didn’t burn them.

Dragons! It is a strange comparison. They did not yet know what they were in the sky. The first dragons appeared among her fallen army. They were angels, in the sky capable of breathing fire. On earth they became monsters, but the ability to breathe pure heavenly flame remained. It is a correction. Not heavenly! It has now become poisonous and all-destroying.

Well, the comparison came to mind depending on current knowledge. And cognition has changed because the reality around us has changed. The skies have been replaced by deserts. The sunlight froze them in gold. The sand, too, has become gold. Beauty has become ugliness. Unselfishness became mercantilism. It’s time to pass all these vices on to someone else. Animals remained immune to angelic vices, probably because they had no cunning of mind. So that leaves only humans. It’s time to deal with them.

Alais lifted her head above the sand on which she had dozed. Her angels were crawling in the desert, but you couldn’t call them angels anymore. They were demons now.

They had been through the fall and torture. Michael had come down to earth to become an executioner, but Gabriel had not. His luminous shadow flashed far beyond the earth, staked with glowing stakes on which the winged bodies of the Legion of Alais wriggled. Gabriel seemed to be crying.

Would she ever see him again? Alais wrote his secret name in the sand with the tip of her sword. It was a kind of magical call to the one who remained in heaven.

Gabriel did not appear. So someone had held him back. He himself had flown in and forgiven all. In contrast to Michael, he was more benign and never behaved aggressively. Michael in the fight was aggressive and became like a wild lion. It would be good to put that lion in a cage. Alais scolded herself for not taking her chance and decapitating him right away. Had he lost his head early in the battle, the enemy legion, left without a commander, would have gone to her side. She would have been in charge in heaven. And that would be fair. The most beautiful creature in heaven should be in heaven first. The second battle, while the defeated armies gather strength, is still a long way off. But she is first in the sands. She is mistress of these deserts. This is her kingdom!

“There will be no life here, no grass and moisture. Only golden sand and strength,” were her first words in her new habitat. At sunrise they did not seem terrible, but suddenly there was an eclipse, shadows came, the desert took her words as a curse, and began to turn into a huge-sized living and irrational monster. One day it would consume everything. But now the sands are full of magic. Gold dust swirls, creating magical whirlwinds. The fiery figures are whirling across the desert. Some of the servants of Alais’s army suddenly began to transform, restoring some of the beauty that had been partially taken away. She loved it. She watched their dances of sand and fire.

She was reminded of the destitute wayfarer, covered in wounds, after his defeat. And she had helped him. Is it for good or for evil? What is Upper and Lower Egypt? Was it worth bringing them together? Alais did not know that. She only remembered that when she looked into Menos’s eyes, she saw a reflection of all her sorrows.

The desert lived! The desert was breathing! Alais could feel its breath. The desert beneath her had become a living, all-encompassing creature, with its downcast armies crawling on its sandy back. For now this creature slumbered, but one day it would awaken, and devour the world like a hungry leviathan. Not only were those of her servants who fell into the ocean capable of becoming giants, the desert, too, was a living and monstrous giant, completely under her control.

On the back of this giant just rushed an outlaw who was searching in the desert for untold treasure. Apparently, someone had told him about the gold in the sands.

The bandit was unlucky. Alais’ servants spotted him before he found the gold. The sand floor stretched beneath his feet like a blanket. The man lost his balance and fell and stretched out on the sand. Alais flew up to him and looked up at him. Unlike Menes, this man did not impress her. He was not to be pitied. Let the desert consume him.

“This is desert. The word came from another word-empty!” Alais rounded her lips, repeating the human language. Ridiculous language, but one could get used to it. “How can you call a place with so much sand empty?” She ran the sand through her fingers, turning it into gold. “And where there is sand, there is gold. It’s everywhere the sunlight has fallen after me.”

The outlaw’s eyes lit up with greed. A whole desert of golden sand was beyond his wildest dreams. Only he rejoiced too soon. Alais was playing hardball with him. Not a minute later, the sand began to enmesh the unhappy man’s hands and feet. His whole body was sinking in the sand like a quagmire. The heads and figures of the angels who had fallen into oblivion were forming in the sand. The robber, who had noticed them, wanted to shout, but the sand clogged his nostrils and mouth.

“The desert lives!” stated Alais. “The desert breathes! The desert produces gold and belongs to me! She is a monster like them! It is an earthly monster. He did not fall from heaven. It was my power that turned it.”

“Have mercy!” The outlaw wheezed.

He saw her as a deity. It was the right thing to do. After all, she had wings, she had heavenly beauty. She had power that somehow the god could not take away. So she must be the one to rule the world she found herself in.

“You wanted my gold,” Alais replied dryly. “Then drown yourself in it!”

The outlaw’s body sank into the sand and disappeared beneath it. Alais stepped her foot on the spot where he had recently floundered. Her sandal did not fall through the sand. The desert was no longer a swamp. But if a caravan or a rider drove through it, the sand would once again suck in living people like a swamp.

“The desert is hungry,” Alais concluded.

After the outlaw’s death, one of the sand figures floated to the surface and formed into a winged body.

“Are you Saail?” Alais frowned. The sandy face was hard to recognize. It seemed to be one of her dead angels. “Is it you?”

The sandy figure bowed. Apparently, Saail had taken the life of an outlaw in order to recover himself. One sacrifice was enough for one angel, but not enough for the others. Alais glanced at the outline of the heads in the sand.

“Take anyone who passes or passes through here,” she allowed.

Saail flew to lure new victims into the desert. His wings crumbled with sand. His whole body would probably crumble before he reached the desert’s edge, but he had a chance to be resurrected. Now he knows whose source of life he can take for his own benefit. Angels need people’s lives to rise from the dust. Let them take it.

Alais had no pity for people. The image of Menos arose before her eyes. Pharaoh had gained his kingdom on the defeat and bones of his own army. How he was like her! It turned out to be not at all difficult to give the dead bodies of Menes’s warriors to the dead angels. Disembodied substances took possession of the corpses, raised them from death, and sent them into battle.

Menes got his victory. But what did he do with the demon army? No sooner had the bodies of the warriors decomposed than the demons had to fly away. But before that, they feasted. Surely Menes let them devour all his enemies.

How is he? Did the union of the two kingdoms bring him happiness? Alais wandered through the desert and heard echoes of their recent collusion:

“Do you want me to raise them from death?”

“Can you do that?” There was an echo over the desert of Menes’s words.

“Look! I have raised them from the ashes,” she said, pointing to the monsters. “Then I can raise the dead. But you will owe me.”

“Anything you want!” How easily a man in a stalemate could make promises! Had he known he was pledging his soul to the devil. The echo of his oath stood over the wilderness.

“There is your kingdom and the whole world! I desire them! I will come to you after you have recovered all that is lost and enthroned on your throne, and on the thrones of your children, and their children. The whole world will be mine, but you will have luxury and prosperity for centuries. Then I decide what to do with this world.”

She didn’t say everything, but that was enough for him. He knelt before her and thought everything was a dream.

“I consecrate you to my service, the first angel of the universe,” she slashed a claw across his forehead, sealing the contract with a living seal. You put such a mark on a man, and the man is in her power. The seal of the angel on the flesh will not let him disobey.

“Here is your new kingdom!” She remembered throwing a peri tear and creating a small lake in the sand, making Menes lean over it and at the bottom he saw a magnificent white stone city.

It is only a reflection!”

“Everything in the world is just a divine dream. Whether it is real or not depends only on me. I will give you the kingdom, but remember, all that is yours is mine from now on, too.”

And she began to lift her dead warriors from the already devastated battlefield. She didn’t do it for nothing. Menes had become the first ruler of Egypt, and there would be others after him, and she must rule them all.

Alais awoke from her memories. Why had she wished for this? Strangely, she didn’t understand it herself.

“I told you to!”

A black shadow clung to Alais’s wings, enveloping her entire figure in darkness. A black mist enveloped her golden body. Alais wanted to pull away from it and couldn’t.

“Why do I feel like the darkness is a part of me?” She asked aloud.

“Yes, it is.”

The voice that responded to her was disembodied, but it made her flee from the desert.

The ruined temple

It was time to go to Menes. To do so, she would have to leave the deserts. The king mentally called out to her. His call was filled with despair. Alais could not understand why, for Menes was now the ruler. He was no longer in danger of losing the war.

“Go and see what’s going on with Menes,” she commanded Remy.

“He wants to see you, ma’am,” Remy, hovering over the desert, knew all too well.

“Is he waging a new war?”

“With the help of a dead army, he has won many wars already.”

Alais didn’t like that Remy called the corpses, filled with demon energy, a dead army. But they were.

“I gave Menes a gift – gave him an invincible backbone. What more could he want?”

“When the bodies of the warriors you brought back to life have rotted away, the demons will be gone. Menes will be without an army,” Remy reasonably reminded him.

“Does he know that already?”

“He has not studied magic, nor is he suspicious, but he is desperate for you to come to Egypt.”

“We are in Egypt. These deserts are officially the domain of Menes, ever since he led his invincible armies out of here.”

“But he wants to see you in the king’s palace. It’s not that far from here. It’s a midnight flight. Menes erected a magnificent residence in a white-stone fortress. This fortress is called the white walls – Inehu hedge.

“How the Egyptian language is like the angelic language!” Alais wondered. “It’s all your and my other servants’ fault! You flew too close to people and even communicated with them. The Egyptians have adopted the sounds of angelic speech from you.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“I don’t like humans,” Alais drew protective signs in the sand. Now no man shall cross this boundary of the wilderness. No human must see the golden palace the demons have built in the sands for their mistress. The structure mimicked the heavenly mansions, but it stood on earth.

“I wish I could get my hands on that angel who taught the people how to make crafts and wield weapons. I would skin him! He instilled intelligence into a savage tribe that, without his angelic intervention, would have remained mere animals. Men are not angels! They breed and eat and drink like ordinary cattle. What apostate would think of teaching them the sciences of angels? Where is this apostate hiding?”

“I sent helpers to look for him, but they didn’t find anyone. This angel doesn’t seem to be one of your cohorts. Maybe Michael sent him. By the way, you know that Michael has built a huge temple on the border of the Sahara to keep you out of the deserts. For some reason he is very reluctant for you to visit King Menes. Is he jealous, perhaps?”

Remy’s voice became ingratiating. He flew around Alaïs, whispering:

“Imagine: this temple is modeled on the heavenly structures. It is as if it was made of clouds, but the material is strong. It is white stone. My centurions saw Michael hauling the blocks himself. He is sure that this temple will keep you out of Memphis.

“Is it a temple of heaven on earth?” Alais wondered. “It happens! Let’s go see it, and pay King Menes a visit too.”

The Temple of Heaven stood on the border between the desert and the lands beyond. Alais looked upon it as a stronghold of the enemy. It had been built here by her brethren left above. That was why the structure looked so ethereal, even though it consisted of heavy blocks. The white stone was stacked with openwork turrets that jutted into the clouds. Only angels could have built such a structure. To men it would have appeared as a fairy tale. That’s why people didn’t see this temple.

Alais looked up at the heavens. Empty! She heard no more angelic calls to return. Then it was time to conquer the land.

The temple stood as the watchtower of heaven on earth. If it was gone, there would be no control of heaven. Destroy it with fire? The creature sitting on the minaret was in her way. Alais took a closer look at it. It seemed to be limping and dragging a broken wing behind it. The white creature with the broken wings is a cripple! It was put here as atonement for sympathizing with the rebels. Does it still feel such sympathy for her as to yield? It had moved with incredible speed, bypassing the domes and bell towers, it was now hiding behind the lancet window opening, but it still wanted to watch her.

“Fly to me?” Alais beckoned with the tip of her forefinger.

The white creature shook its horned head negatively. It couldn’t fly.

“Then crawl!”

The creature crawled obediently down the wall, scratching the white stone with its long, crooked claws.

“Who left you here to keep watch?” Alais wanted to go toward the crawling creature, but Remy stopped her.

“It’s contagious.”

“Is it even to me?” Alais looked into the creature’s rotten eyes. It really did seem better to stay away from it. It could be bait.

“How many creatures like it are there in this temple?”

“Countless,” Remy counted. He could see through the walls easily.

“It’s not a temple.”

“Then destroy it, mistress. It is within your power.”

“But it is the temple of heaven, and to heaven we have lost.”

“Everything that stands on earth is yours.”

Alais frowned. The temple irritated her greatly. It reeked of Michael’s aura. Surely he had a hand in the construction. The structure combined the features of all the religious buildings in the world. So Remy whispered. He flew over the world, watching people who noticed the higher beings begin to build temples. Such temples were only monuments to incredible encounters between humans and demons or angels, but this one was special. It was not built by humans, but by angels themselves. The unburned angels who remained in heaven were hated by Alais. How dare they build anything on earth!

Alaïs walked forward, treading bare feet on the scorching sand. The fiery sand itself was turning to ash beneath her feet. She couldn’t do that in sandals. A chain of scorched footprints stretched across the sand like a living black snake. Alais didn’t fly, but walked forward, not knowing why. The temple was calling to her as one living organism. This temple was the seal of heaven on earth. With it, the heavens claimed the desert and the earth. It should not be so. This land is hers! And this temple is superfluous.

A voice in the wind that blew suddenly from the minarets warned, but Alais stepped forward.

And the temple collapsed. It was without fire. It was without the use of force. No trickery. It was simply from the fact that she had come close.

Debris fell at her feet. The crushed white creature groaned. Would it die? What difference does it make! The temple is gone. That is, there is no seal of heaven either. Alais clenched the stone wreckage in her fist and crushed it into ashes. The world is at her mercy.