Читать книгу Mistress of Pharaohs. Daughter of Dawn - Natalie Yacobson - Страница 5

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.