Читать книгу Mistress of Pharaohs. Daughter of Dawn - Natalie Yacobson - Страница 13

She was wrong. Menes had many problems that only a god could solve.

“I have long been planning to build you a temple in the middle of the desert, but I cannot find the place where we first met,” Pharaoh said. “The temple must stand there, and the pilgrims must come to it in droves with gifts and petitions.”

Such pomp was not part of Alaïs plans. Why would she want a temple in the middle of the wilderness and crowds of worshippers?

“Let’s leave it for later.”

“It would be too late for me.”

Alais glanced at Menes’ wrinkled hand touching her shoulder. Indeed, he’s running out of time. His body is deteriorating. Old age is taking its toll. It’s a good thing angels don’t age. Though can’t the way they are burned be compared to old age?

At the thought of those mutilated wingless angels still crawling in the deserts and eating lizards, Alais felt sick. How is it that she feels the pain of her legion as if it were her own? Why had her all-encompassing love for the angels only awakened in her when they found themselves defeated and mutilated? Is this nonsense? Or is it punishment for rebellion? Love is like a knife in the heart.

Her feelings for Menes also began to awaken gradually. He proved to be clever. Alais began to respect him. Would he be gone in a couple of decades?

Menes didn’t think of himself as old. He was still out hunting. He seemed to love hunting hippos. She guessed it’s not hard to hunt with an entourage. The aged Pharaoh’s body was still mighty, but it was no longer beautiful.

As a member of the angelic race, Alais valued beauty above all else. The strong feelings awakened to the mutilated creatures struck her herself. She now knew that old age disfigured humans no less than heavenly fire had disfigured her angels.

Could Menes be made young again? And why would she need to? Just to have a servant who is pleasant to look at? In fact, Pharaoh had become her servant. Menes was well aware that if he disobeyed the deity in any way, the deity would crush all of Memphis.

Alais clearly showed that she could breathe fire and crush an entire fortress in a fraction of a second. The demonstration of power was unnecessary. Pharaoh remembered that she could raise a whole army from death. He was far more impressed by the resurrection of the dead than by her ability to spew fire and destruction from her lips.

“I can destroy an entire nation of your enemies in one hour,” she boasted. That wasn’t an exaggeration of her abilities. She could fly over a city and destroy it, and it would be reduced to mere rubble. Angels can do anything!

“Can you raise me from my deathbed?”

“Do you die?”

The question took Pharaoh by surprise.

“Everyone dies sometime.”

“None of my servants has ever died permanently.”

“Then I would like to be your servant!”

Menes almost fell over when the tip of Alais’ wing grazed his shoulder. The wings of angels are powerful, but humans are too weak. We must behave more carefully in the presence of Pharaoh. Alais folded her wings behind her back.

“Could you bring me back to life the way you brought my warriors back to life?”

What a tricky question! Alais turned away. Should she confess the truth to him?

“So what is it?” Menes worriedly waited for an answer. “Have your powers not waned since you raised my troops from the ashes? Or is it harder to bring a Pharaoh back to life than it is to raise the warriors?”

“No, it’s easy, but…” Alaïs hesitated for a moment, then she decided to come clean. “I can raise your body from its deathbed. It would move and speak, even make intrigues and amaze others with its wisdom, but it would no longer be you. Inside your body will dwell another… one of my spirits.”

For a minute Pharaoh didn’t want to believe her.

“Look at your warriors!” Alais led Menes to the window. “Do you recognize them? They have become incredibly strong and bloodthirsty. They no longer need food, they write hieroglyphics on the ground and walls with their blood, and they know secrets people don’t normally know. Were your warriors like this before? It’s still their bodies, but the mind inside is different. Their flesh rots and stinks, which is why so much incense is smoked around them, to ward off the stench of decay. Your warriors live, but they decompose. Once their bodies are rotted away, the alien spirit will fly away, and you will be without an army. But I can make you a new one if you give me new human bodies. My spirits need somewhere to live.”

“Apparently, the bodies of ordinary soldiers are not a valuable enough vessel for spirits to inhabit. Maybe a pharaoh’s body would suit them better.”

“I don’t know, I haven’t checked.”

Alais doubted that her spirits would treat soldiers and kings differently, but she decided not to disappoint Menes. Pharaoh wanted to nurture hope.

“Would you like to go hunting with me in Shedet?” He suddenly suggested.

“What’s so special about Shedet that you would offer a glimpse of it to a deity?” All Alais knew was that the Libyan desert stretches around the oasis where Shedet is located. She herself rarely flew there, but her servants lived near the city.

“The best waterfalls and Lake Mer-ur are there.”

“Are there plenty of crocodiles there?” Alais remembered that one of her demons, who loved to subdue reptiles, had settled there.

“There are also hippos there. Do you know how much fun it is to hunt them?”

“I prefer to hunt humans,” Alais said. Menes might have thought it an insult, but he didn’t.

“Hunting humans is called war,” he said from his own experience.

“It is not always.”

Alais had a different experience. After the war in the sky, there was a long hunt on earth to survive. One demon, whose name was Sokar, caught travelers in the desert and skinned them alive so he could wrap it around his burns like bandages. It made him look like a living mummy. As far as Alaïs had learned from Menes, it was in honor of Sokar that the Egyptians began to make mummies out of the dead. The demon had taught them something. And Sokar was now revered as the god of the dead and of necropolises. It was quite his path. Alais herself would have called him the god of death, but strangely enough, in addition to his grim merits, he was also revered as a god of fertility. Apparently, the corpses he left behind served as excellent fertilizer for the land. Alais had noticed that the earth, on which her angels had fallen, greedily fed on all the remains of life.