Читать книгу And His Name Is Dennitza. Daughter of Dawn - Natalie Yacobson - Страница 7

A strange chomping woke him up. These are two magnificent birds, which he noticed in the trees during the day, pecking pieces of fresh meat on the ground. They did it so aggressively and viciously that they no longer seemed so beautiful. Drops of blood sparkled on the plumage.

Interestingly, but human meat? Taor could not understand the reason for this thought.

He had just had a strange dream – that golden winged creature that he was looking for was sitting opposite him on the ground by the pond and performing some terrible ritual. It cut black birds and whispered something, and then buried winged corpses right in the ground. All around were symbols inscribed in blood and lighted torches. Taor saw neither one nor the other now. The ground was untouched, torches burning only in brackets on the walls behind the garden. The hymn to Aton sounded somewhere again. When he fell asleep, he heard him too. The singing hurt the ear unpleasantly.

«Glory! Your greatness is eternal, beautiful Aton. You shine over everyone, but all your secrets are known to only one Akhenaten. Nobody knows you the way he did».

A strange hymn. Taor raised himself on his elbows. In the darkness, the palace garden did not look as pretty as it did during the day. The gloom closed over the lotus ponds almost perceptibly. The heat was everywhere, not a breath of breeze. Who would have thought to line up torches stuck in the ground in a dense ring and cut birds in their circle? But that was exactly what he saw in half asleep. He probably just imagined it. Everything happened in an eerie silence, the birds did not scream, because their beaks were pulled together by something metallic. The ritual knife, which was commonly used to cut the mouth of mummies, dug into their plumage, slicing through the flesh. The golden winged creature did not raise its head from its occupation. It did everything mechanically and somehow obsessively, as if someone’s life, or more, many lives were veiled from this.

«Many lives of someone’s enemies», these were also the words of the hymn to Aton, or someone pronounced them right into the silence. «You can only slaughter black birds, and the warriors on the battlefield will die by themselves. Or, on the contrary, rise from the dead. What I wish. My choice is everything, and yours is nothing».

Taor looked around in bewilderment. The dream was eerie, and now it left a heavy impression. It seemed that graceful fingers, tearing apart the carcasses of birds, and then digging graves for them, would never leave his memory. A beautiful creature in a dream moved itself somehow like an animal. So predatory!

Somewhere in the distance the rhythmic beat of many drums was heard, after a while the sounds of lyres, flutes, flutes and zithers joined it. It looks like a holiday. At a time like this? It’s deep night now.

Taor got up with difficulty and walked in the direction from which the music was heard. It was now gloomy, now solemn. With such sounds, they were escorted to the tomb of the pharaohs. There was more of a funeral hymn here than of idle mirth. Maybe someone died? Taor was somehow all the same… One ruler, another ruler. The young man is used to not getting attached to anyone. He was a lonely person, not tied either by family or by any material values. His duty was to serve the one who is currently occupying the throne of Egypt. And who exactly, it doesn’t matter… But the thought that that beautiful golden creature, which he took for the princess of Egypt, could be buried with such celebrations, echoed with an unbearable blow in his mind. He clearly imagined how a winged body was lying on a luxurious stretcher, his hands with claws were folded on his chest, and a real live snake with a golden skin was twisting on his forehead instead of the royal ureus.

He hurried. The premises of the palace were empty, as well as in the dark gardens. Nobody! No servants, no guards, not a single person… But judging by the sounds that reached him, a large crowd had gathered in the throne room. Taor rushed there, and then an unpleasant surprise awaited him – two Nubians with halberds, who remained on guard at the entrance, blocked his way.

It was useless to argue with them. Behind the drawn curtains, Taor did not even manage to see what was happening there, beyond the passage that they so vigilantly guard. The guards in the palaces were silent, like statues, and very executive. You can’t slip past them. Taor was about to come to terms with this, but then he noticed a strange man in a Horus suit. Isn’t it now forbidden to worship this god or keep a reminder of him? Taor even doubted the new statutes. The stranger was so confident. He beckoned Taor to follow him, and the young man suddenly realized that he could not disobey.

He moved for the best copy of a god that, perhaps, only a mortal could recreate. Horus moved, dancing slightly, and incessantly beckoning Taor with him with slightly feathered hands.

Taor noticed on the wall a new modified image of Aton, vividly reminding that there is only one god now. And yet Horus was here. Either this is just a joker, if you pay attention to his cheeky postures, or today is the very night when traditions can be violated for some reason.

Some kind of incense smoked on the tripods in the corners with an unusual smell, intoxicating the mind. Maybe it only seems to him that the dancing Horus in front of him is the real god, and the shimmering costume on him is actually an integral part of his body.

Taor felt himself suffocate. He reached up to his neck to rip open the nonexistent collar, but instead tore open the necklace he had worn for a long time – the final reminder of his mother who died. Oddly, he didn’t even feel the slightest regret. The beads rolled across the floor. Taor stepped over them and followed Horus, now beckoning him away from the palace.

So they went out into the street. The crowd was buzzing here. The pleasant nighttime freshness was dispelled by smoking torches. Taor looked around in amazement. How many people gathered in the square in front of the palace. The whole city did not sleep at night? He did not remember anything like that. Those gathered were noisy. Someone expressed delight, someone fear. Taor alone did not understand what was the matter. He followed Horus, before whom the people parted without hesitation. No one recognized him as yesterday’s hero. Or people were just overly involved with something else. He looked in the same direction as everyone else – at the dais in front of the royal palace. It was possible to get there only from the balcony of the throne room, nevertheless, the guards in atypical red robes gathered below. Torches blazed high in the brackets, snatching from the darkness a magnificent image of Aton. Next to him, everyone seemed insects, even the pharaoh, but not the golden creature with luxurious wings, proudly occupying the center of the dais. Everyone came to look at him – a living deity. It looked just like that.

It was performing some kind of ritual. Golden claws took blood from several priests directly from their wrists and mixed with something in a precious goblet. From here, a column of sparkling sparks could be seen, separated from the mixture, and also, like the urey on the head of a winged deity, turned into a real golden snake. She slid down the girl’s body and wrapped around her slender wrist like a bracelet.

Do others see her too? Taor tried to look into the eyes of those next to him to determine. Maybe yes. Otherwise than they are all so intoxicated.

«Alais!» it shouted someone from the crowd. That must be her name. He had never heard such a name before, but if this is the name of a deity, then there is nothing surprising.

Alais’s hand with long golden claws immediately pointed to the one who had called her.

«She points to the victim».

It was said by someone disguised as Horus. He stood next to Taor, as if he had grown out of the ground. The eyes under the bird’s mask sparkled like sapphires.

«But he called her himself.» Taor looked at the man who had already been seized and dragged to the dais. It seems that it was one of the priests who refused to remove the marks of the old gods.

«It always seems that way, because the victims themselves call her some careless word or deed».

Horus’s hand fell confidentially on his shoulder, but Taor threw it off. The touch was very unpleasant, as if a dead bird had touched you.

The seized one had already been brought to the dais and brought to his knees before a new deity with two magnificent wings and a living snake on his wrist. Alais refused to accept the ritual knife, bent down slightly and tore at his throat with her nails. They turned out to be sharper than a knife. Ten knives. Five on each hand. Or did she have more fingers? From this distance, he could not accurately see and count. And she substituted the bowl under the stream of blood, which poured in many streams from the numerous wounds on the neck. The man under her feet was dying in agony, and the golden snake from her wrist smoothly crawled into the glass and wrapped around the bow with some kind of bizarre symbol.

The hymn sounded again, but not only to Aton. Her name was there too. Taor could not understand some of the words and expressions, and the crowd watched in fascination. It seems they have seen this not for the first time and wanted to see it again. Alais clenched her hand into a fist, as if collecting the remains of blood, and then opened her palm, showing the audience some symbols traced in scarlet on the skin. They flashed before Taor’s eyes, instantly reviving the memory of a circle of torches and slaughtered birds, hiss and burial. It seems that there were such symbols too.

For a second, it seemed to him that Alais’s eyes found him alone in the crowd, and a smile like a snake ran across her lips.

He felt bad.

«Let’s go!» someone in a suit of Horus supported him and helped him to leave. Taor did not want to touch this man. The feeling that the suit was part of his body was all too real. Perhaps it was so. After seeing, he began to believe that sometimes gods descend from heaven to walk on earth.

«Then I will go alone», Taor moved away from the obsessive companion. He did not show his resentment in any way.

The sky above the square lit up with golden flashes of sparks, just like in her glass of blood. The guards in red snatched out some people from the crowd, at which Alais at times pointed with her hand, first at one, then at another. And no one objected, no one resisted, although they all faced the same fate as the priest who had just been sacrificed. Someone was robbed of children, someone of wives… but there was not a word of objection. The creature at the top seemed to have hypnotized people, forcing them to give their lives for granted.

Life and blood. Alais took both. And it seemed that over the square, along with sparks, many winged snakes, created by someone’s creepy imagination, were flying. Taor was not even afraid that they might seize him. For Alais, there seemed to be no titles or ranks during the sacrifices. She just told people to give her life, and people gave her. With humility.

Taor felt a burning sensation and nausea.

«Glory to the daughter of the sun», so they called her. The anthem became more and more gloomy. The terrible holiday continued, and he ran away, and yet he wanted to suddenly turn around and once again look at today’s deity. There, on the dais. Alais was no longer alone, someone dark and gloomy, huge, like a black cloud, bent over her, as she herself had recently over the throne of Akhenaten. He behaved just like her, predatory and arrogant, to match the king himself. If the whole world had a king, it would be him. Only from afar it seemed immaterial, more like a dense shadow. And this shadow also had black wings.