Читать книгу The Power - Michael Grant - Страница 10

The Pale Queen had been feared and worshipped since human beings first learned to walk erect. In fact, the Pale Queen had helped that process along. Anytime she saw an early human—whether it was a Homo erectus, a Homo habilis, or even a Homo neanderthalensis—who was leaning too far forward or knuckle-walking, she would say, “Hey! Stand up straight!” And if they didn’t, she’d kill them with an energy bolt or by dropping rocks on their heads.

She was like a very strict teacher.

After many, many years of this, there weren’t all that many early humans knuckle-walking anymore. Standing fully upright turned out to make a lot of sense in terms of survival.

The Pale Queen needed early humans to walk upright because that would free their hands to do the important work of writing about the Pale Queen, building temples for the Pale Queen, and sacrificing sheep and maidens to the Pale Queen. It took her quite a while to get humans to that point, and her efforts earned her a lot of respect in the primitive ancient cities of Ur of the Chaldees, Nineveh of the Assyrians, Sumer of the Akkadians, and Indianapolis of the Pacers.

But when Babylon came along, the Babylonians chilled the Pale Queen. The Babylonians thought they were all that, and they saw the Pale Queen as being last year’s model when it came to godding. So there was no temple to the Pale Queen, and no cult of shaved-headed priests, and no sheep or maidens being sacrificed.

Which was totally unacceptable to the Pale Queen.

But you know how kids are supposed to help around the house? How they are supposed to have a list of chores and just do them without being nagged ten times? Well, same thing in the Pale Queen’s house. Her daughter expected to have everything handed to her: goddess robes, flying sandals, chariots drawn by unicorns, parties with her friends (she had no friends), and she didn’t want to have to do any of the work.

“Listen to me, young lady, I’m giving you a chore to do. You will make the Babylonians worship me. I want a main temple and two smaller—”

“Why are you picking on me?” Risky demanded.

“I’m not picking on you. I’m telling you what I want you to do.”

Heavy sigh. “Okay, what? Gah!”

“I want a main temple and two smaller ones. The main one has to be bigger than Astarte’s. I want a cult. I want sacrifices. And I want some kind of invocation.”

“What’s an invocation? Am I supposed to know that?”

The Pale Queen gritted her thirty-six teeth because Risky was grinding her last nerve. “An invocation is like when someone says, ‘Praise Astarte!’ or ‘Zeus, that hurt!’ or, ‘Where the Baal are my keys?’ That kind of thing.”

So Risky rolled her eyes and promised to do it next millennium. But the Pale Queen wasn’t having it and insisted her daughter get out right now, young lady, and get started.

So verily did Risky go forth into the land of Babylon. Babylon was watered by two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. In those very early days Babylon was still a bit scruffy. Some of the best buildings were made of stone, but a lot were just mud smeared over sticks.

Risky was walking through the ox-poop-strewn streets, threading her way past lepers and refusing offers of souvenirs from the many shopkeepers.

And then she saw him.

Yes, him.

He was the strongest, handsomest, most armored-up guy she had ever seen in her life.

To be honest, Risky hadn’t dated much during the first thousand years of her existence. What human males she had even seen had been in the process of being eaten by her mother. Or occasionally by Risky herself. And it’s hard to get a good impression of a guy who is crying and begging for his life, only to be gobbled up.

This, however, was different.

He was tall. His hair was lustrous black. His armor glittered silver and gold in the sunlight. He had almost all of his teeth and he did not smell like a goat, which was pretty rare in Babylon. The concept of hotness had not yet been invented, but if it had been, Risky would have said he was hot.

Risky stopped in the middle of the street and stared. She did not know how to play it cool. Like hotness, cool had also not yet been invented, so people just pretty much acted however they felt and expressed their emotions openly.

These were very primitive times.

“Why are you staring at me?” the young man asked.

“Because your hands are as gold rings set with beryl,” Risky said. “Your belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. Your legs are as pillars of marble set upon sockets of fine gold. Your countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars, and your mouth is most suh-weet.”

Somehow the sight of this boy was making Risky go weak in the knees but strong in the similes. She knew she was babbling. She knew it was crazy, but it was how she felt. She felt smitten. She felt gobsmacked. She felt … love.

“I like your hair,” the boy said. “You have the hair of a goddess.”

“I am a goddess,” Risky pointed out. “See?” To demonstrate, she transformed into a huge beast made up of the useful parts of a lion, a bear, a ram, and a bull. But she kept the hair through the whole thing.

The boy turned and ran, but Risky bounded on her powerful kangaroo legs (yeah, kangaroo, too) and smacked him down on his back. She landed atop him and once again became her usual amazingly attractive self.

“What’s your name, human boy?”

“G-G-G-G-Gil.”

“G-G-G-G-Gil?”

He swallowed hard and said, “Gil. Gil Gamesh.”

“Epic,” she said approvingly. She jumped up effortlessly and pulled him to his feet. “I need to build a temple for the Pale Queen.”

“The Pale Queen?” Gil echoed. He frowned. “But isn’t she evil?”

“Oh, she’s evil all right,” Risky said with airy dismissal.

“I heard she demanded a human sacrifice of a thousand Amalekites.”

Risky spread her hands and smiled. “They were out of goats.”

“Will she demand human sacrifices here in Babylon?”

“That depends. How fast do you think we can get a temple built?”

Oh, the days that followed were magical for Risky. She and Gil chose an architect for the temple. Then they picked out draperies and looked at paint samples and interviewed potential priests. There were so many details: whether to have pews or just make everyone stand, whether they would have music—possibly bleating horns—which knives to use to cut the throats of sacrifices, whether the blood would be caught in copper bowls or silver bowls. (Both were hard to keep polished, but this “bronze” everyone was talking about struck them both as too newfangled.)

Gil took one job for himself, keeping it coyly secret from Risky: finding a sculptor for the great statue of the Pale Queen that would dominate the altar.

The more they worked together, the more they liked each other. They held hands. They gazed into each other’s eyes. Gil even wrote her poetry.

Your neck is like a gazelle’s,

You’re good at magic and spells,

Your skin is fair,

I like your hair,

When I look at you my heart swells.

No one said it was great poetry. Gil was just starting out as a writer and poet. He was actually much better at sword fighting than writing. But he was also very organized and had a way of getting things done that sometimes surprised Risky. When it was time to form the bricks for the temple’s foundation, Risky suggested sending a conquering army to enslave the Canaanites and use their blood to mix with the mortar.

Gil came up with a totally different approach: he simply hired some professional bricklayers and used water to mix with the mortar.

“You’re so efficient,” Risky gushed.

The girl was smitten.

And so was Gil.

Their love burned hot for a while. But that which burns hottest often burns out quickest. Like a match that flares in the darkness only to be extinguished by the smallest breeze.

And when love dies …