Читать книгу Mistress of Pharaohs. Daughter of Dawn - Natalie Yacobson - Страница 9

There was more and more gold in the desert. You’d think it was the sunlight that was breeding it. In fact, Alais was playing a game. She picked up handfuls full of sand and let it slip through her fingers. Eventually everything around her turned golden.

“Where do you go with so much sand and so much gold?” Alais looked around at the vast expanse, gleaming with magical gilding.

Remy understood her question in his own way. He immediately dispatched a company of builders from her demons. Soon a huge palace was erected in the desert. It was made entirely of golden blocks. There was so much gold in the desert that it could be used as building material.

Alais glanced indifferently at the golden piles, columns, and arches. This palace was a faint parody of heavenly mansions. But since heaven was far away, that should be enough.

One could wander the golden halls for days, but eventually Alais grew bored with such a pastime. Sitting under a desert starry sky was far more pleasant than living in a golden palace, as if in a crypt. Black-winged demons nested among the golden pillars. Alais told them to draw signs in the sand around the building to keep travelers from seeing the palace. Gold was too much of a temptation for humans.

Remy’s gift went unappreciated, but his diligence awakened the builder in Alais. She ordered a cohort of demons to build a huge palace out of sand. The entire structure was supported only by spells. The ceiling and walls crumbled as soon as the magic wore off.

A traveler stopped by the sand palace one day. Alais watched him, lying on the flat roof. The wayfarer couldn’t see her, but she saw him. It’s so convenient to watch people from above, as if they were insects. It’s a good thing people can’t fly, or they would know that angels live in the heights.

“This is the king’s messenger,” Remy determined at a glance.

“So what is of it? You think I give a damn about people’s ranks and titles?”

“He comes from the United Realm,” Remy said, his eyes tensing. For a moment there was the thought that he was going to run down and tear the ambassador apart.

“Yes, I remember, the Upper Kingdom and the Lower Kingdom united,” Alais broke off an ornament from the sand pediment, crumbled it into the sand, and sprinkled the grains of sand down. The sand fell beneath the messenger’s feet, but he didn’t even realize it was a joke of the celestials. He boldly walked into the sand palace.

“The country is now called Egypt,” Remy reported. He flew everywhere and learned about everything.

“What business is it of ours?”

“If it had not been for your efforts, the Upper Kingdom and the Lower Kingdom would not have joined together, and Egypt simply would not exist.”

“If it hadn’t been for the efforts of Menes,“Alais corrected.

“But it was you, Madam, who gave him the power.”

“It was Menes who fell at the deity’s feet and began begging for mercy for his state. The merit of uniting the Upper and Lower Kingdoms rests with him. If he had not succeeded in invoking my leniency, I would not have let him win. By the way, how are his lively troops doing?”

“They have the bodies of men and the minds of your former legionnaires. The combination turned out to be a bad one. Human flesh rots, and the higher mind planted in it is forced to live in decaying remains. The warriors of Menes draw angelic symbols with their blood. These symbols became known as hieroglyphs. They made them into an entire alphabet for humans.”

“So, even we’ve taught the humans something,” Alais said with a chuckle. “Seti, on the other hand, told me about some unknowing angel who harms us by teaching crafts and speech to mankind. Have you seen one?”

“No, ma’am,” Remy scratched the back of his head with his claw. “There is none in Egypt, that’s for sure. But the warriors of Pharaoh Menes, in whose dead heads you breathed the minds of your dead legionaries, are trying to recreate all the comforts of angelic life on earth. They do it for themselves, but Menes thinks it is your gift to him and his people.”

“Let him count it!” Alais graciously allowed it. “I liked him. I do want to give him a gift.”

“Perhaps you should go and see him.”

“Not now!”

“The Pharaoh has become dependent on his dead armies, but that has not broken him. Menes thinks like you now and waits for you. But his people, on the other hand, live in terror of the warriors rotting alive.”

“The people must be kept in fear,” Alaïs leaned over the parapet of the roof and looked down. “Get me the head of the king’s messenger. I don’t want him wandering around here.”

Remy wanted to dive down, but it wasn’t necessary. The sand walls crumbled, burying beneath them the man who dared to enter a palace made of sand. It was meant to be. This palace was built for the angelic race. Man is not welcome inside.

Alais flew down, shoveled the sand, and looked over the corpse. The king’s messenger had already managed to suffocate. Sand had clogged his nose, mouth, and ears. A strange bundle was found on the envoy’s chest. Alais turned it in her hands and unfolded it, the royal seal glittering underneath.

“This is called papyrus. Or is it parchment?” Remy scratched the back of his head with a black claw. “I think people call it something like that.”

“Don’t give a damn about people! Do you even know a subject other than them?”

“Humans breed faster than fleas. But angels don’t know how to breed.”

“I’ll think of a way,” Alais thought of the dead armies of Meneses, who had managed to inhabit the bodies of the dead warriors of her angelic legion. Using human flesh could give the dead angels temporary shelter. Even though a dead human body decays, it can be lived in.”

On the messenger’s scroll was written, “For the desert deity.”

“It must be for you,” Remy suggested.

The Egyptian hieroglyphics were indeed like angelic secret writing. Alais read it without difficulty:

“I have won! Thanks to you! Let me offer you praises and build a temple for you. Appear to my kingdom. Gardens and lotus ponds are spread out for you alone. My palace is prepared for you.”

Alais pulled the ends of the message too hard and accidentally tore the scroll.

“Pharaoh must have thought my interest in him too personal.”

“And it wasn’t?” Remy looked at the scraps puzzled. “You helped him, after all. And other people you just killed. Kings and peasants alike – all are equal to angels.”

“How can I tell you?” Alais didn’t know whether to speak or whether admitting it would undermine her reputation in the eyes of her subordinates. “Menes was like me the day I rebelled in heaven. Of the two of us, at least he made it to the final destination. Thanks to me! It felt so good to meet my twin in the desert and help him. It was as if I had helped myself. But I didn’t need Menes’s gratitude.”

The desert was full of gold, jewels, and magic. Why did she need gardens and lotus ponds? All it took was a pinch of magic to turn the desert into an oasis. Alais could plant such flowers here that the king himself would envy her gardens. But she didn’t need to. The golden desert is more beautiful than all the gardens of the universe.

The palace of sand was crumbling, burying a whole troop of new messengers beneath it. Apparently Menes had sent them again to seek out and summon the desert deity to his palace. Alaïs watched the death of the party from the air. The messengers were suffocating under piles of sand. They were too weak to climb out of the rubble.

“Let them sleep! They would never wake up!” Alais had long ago noticed that, unlike dead angels, humans didn’t come back to life. But their dead bodies can be used as a shell.

Not a moment after the death of the messengers, black spirits emerged from beneath the sands and seeped into the nostrils and eye sockets of the corpses. The dead bodies hissed. They rose to serve Alais. And yet she couldn’t even remember the names of her dead legionnaires. Nevertheless, barely had they had a chance to come back to life from the darkness of non-existence, they were coming back to her. Human bodies were a ridiculously rotten shell for disembodied demons. It’s a shame that once the bodies are fully rotted, the spirits will have no place to dwell. They’d have to find new shells.

“What if you put the souls of dead angels back into people’s bodies, and they’re still dwelling?” Alais pondered.

“That would be difficult,” Remy said. “Dead angels are attracted only to dead flesh. As long as there isn’t a human corpse nearby, they cannot be summoned out of the darkness of non-existence.”

“You could try a rite of summoning,” Alais said tensely. “You catch a living man, and I’ll use my sword to mark his body with angelic signs.”

Remy immediately obeyed the order. Another of the king’s messengers was beating in his claws, while Alais tore his clothes off and drew the signs of the rebellious angels on his skin with her blade. At first it seemed that the experiment was about to fail. The unfortunate man lost his mind as soon as the angelic signs appeared on his body. The messenger convulsed for a long time, and then he gave up the spirit.

“It is a weak flesh!” Alais kicked the body with the tip of her golden sandal, and the corpse suddenly twitched, convulsed. Something was tearing at it from the inside. The rib cage burst. Black claws ripped from the gutted flesh. In less than a minute, the monstrous creature stood before Alais, hatching out of the messenger’s body like a shell.

“Are you Zeno?” Alais recoiled, recognizing in the black freak the former golden-haired angel. It became unpleasant to look at. She turned away. The Angel Legion had become an army of monsters. But now she knows a way to bring back to life those who died in the fall. It doesn’t matter that they come back as monsters. What matters is that her army will become stronger. They need to prepare for the next war. In the deserts they got only a temporary respite.

The next traveler who appeared in the desert was not a rider. He ruled a foursome of horses, while he himself stood in a strange contraption with wheels.

“A chariot,” Remy called the vehicle. “Noble men ride in one of these. Your ward, Pharaoh Menes, likes to ride in one.”

“Do you think it’s another message from him?” Alaïs soared into the air and intercepted the chariot at a gallop. The reins were in her hands. The horses bucked. The bewildered charioteer fell into the sand and stared into the face of the angel. He must have mistaken her for a deity, too, for he was stunned. Good thing he didn’t yet know how dangerous and cruel angels could be. Otherwise he would have run without a second thought.

Alais grabbed the wretched man and ripped his throat open with her claws. Only then did she take over his chariot as the new owner.

“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.