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 girls 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.
Alaiss 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 birds 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».
Horuss 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 Taors 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 Alaiss eyes found him alone in the crowd, and a smile like a snake ran across her lips.
He felt bad.
«Lets 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 someones 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 todays 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.
Demon pact
Nobody has visited this place for a long time. No one was allowed, because everything here remained as before.
Hall of the Gods. He called it the hall of sculptures. Round as a sanctuary, it always seemed half empty. The oppressive size accompanied the feeling that people here are insects. Along the perimeter of the circle between the columns, majestic bronze figures occupied their niches. Seth, Anubis, Hathor, Isis, Basted are deadly deities around a single living thing that appeared as if out of nowhere.
Alais could enter through one of the aisles between the columns, which looked more like empty niches, but he knew for sure that she did not. She seemed to be born out of nothing right here. In a room full of sculptures of gods that seem to be gone. Anyway, not a single person on earth has ever seen the statues move. Unlike them, Alais was alive and mobile, but even more powerful than if the heavy statue came to life and came down from the pedestal. He was afraid of her.
He is the high priest of Amon-Ra. At the sight of the statue of his god in the niche, he guiltily averted his eyes. He, like many priests, long ago realized for himself one truth. The gods are more a symbol of strength than strength itself. Alais completely turned this performance upside down. The sun god seemed to come to life in her. Here, in the dim hall, he was real, alive. He had a slender female body, held on too self-confident, wings behind his back, glowing golden skin and even more golden hair. It was as if it was entirely sculpted from liquid molten gold, which for some reason, having taken shape, did not solidify, but continued to burn, continued to move, and inside this amazing creation some kind of evil all-crushing force suddenly awakened by itself.
Before her, the pharaohs were considered gods only symbolically. But many in the palace were not from the common people, for example, the priests, realized that the pharaohs are mortal, like ordinary people, they can be killed, you can arrange a conspiracy, no god will come down from the pedestal to protect them. With the advent of Alais, the concept of divinity suddenly became literal. She was not flesh and blood like all Pharaohs. She could not be injured or killed. But she herself can do arbitrariness with everyone. Absolute deity! Not a human! Without feelings. Emotionless. No weakness. Invincible. Merciless. Not knowing pain and compassion. She will never grow old. Will never die. What will happen then with Egypt.
Essentially nothing. One immortal ruler will replace the mortal dynasty. Thats all. But darkness will come with her. Rivers of blood. Dark wonders.
«Whoever dares to kill her will commit suicide, the one who dares to raise his hand against her will immediately lose his hand,» said the winged creature in the sands. Why did he dare to check these words.
Essentially nothing. One immortal ruler will replace the mortal dynasty. Thats all. But darkness will come with her. Rivers of blood. Dark wonders.
«Whoever dares to kill her will commit suicide, the one who dares to raise his hand against her will immediately lose his hand,» said the winged creature in the sands. Why did he dare to check these words.
«The man who shouted my name in the crowd at night in the square, you sent him in vain,» Alaiss voice also burned his ears like molten mercury. It was painful to listen to her, but it was also impossible to leave. If he tries, she will bring him back in one small effort. She will just squeeze her beautiful hand into a fist, and at the same time he seems to bump his forehead against the wall and fall right at her feet. This is how the gods behave. Real gods. Only insects are mortal for them. Once in his youth, he longed for the appearance of a real deity, even sought him in all parts of the world and did not find it anywhere, but now, in old age, when it appeared in the palace by itself, he felt a chilling fear. Such a creature was not worth looking for, because for all its beauty it was terrifying.
For a while he did not dare to answer her.
«Its so easy to send your own person to execution», Alais ran her nails in the air as if they were still sparkling with blood. «People so easily sacrifice their own kind for the sake of some invented goals and at the same time consider themselves fair. Who are you after that, since the earth still tolerates you, in spite of all your minor and major sins?»
«Who are you?» he himself did not know how he dared to stubbornly raise his eyes to her.
«Its not enough to say my name, neither on the holiday of the new moon, nor during the sacrifices, to destroy me,» she said. «I am not one of your Egyptian miracles, and even less a man born of the fruits of the earth, the name has no power over me».
«You are evil!»
«People are evil,» how naturally she said it, if he were a little weaker in reason and could not help but believe her. «People and any gods who vote to populate this land with people. Look at yourself: you send your friends to death, betray your chosen ones, go to any tricks and meanness in order to take a comfortable place, without even thinking that it will be temporary, like life, and out of envy you are ready to destroy a person in the most insidious ways God created you evil, gave you the ability to lie, to pretend. I, for example, do not know how».
God! She always talked about some one god, even when the cult of Aton was not even discussed. He remembered well the years when Amenhotep the Fourth, the current Akhenaten, was co-ruler of his suddenly ill father, and then she appeared, at first like a spirit woven from a light shadow. At first, she was secretive and did not interfere in anything. Who would have known where her appearance would eventually lead?
In her mouth, God was always the one and only. And it was not clear whether she loved him or hated him fiercely. It was impossible to guess her feelings and thoughts at all. Alais did not deny the presence of a wide variety of higher powers hovering over the universe, did not mind the fact that other gods of Egypt also existed, but someone alone, in her opinion, stood above them all, someone whom she never named, and it was not Aton at all. Aton was a part of herself.
Is she divine? Or is there another name. The stranger in the sands called her differently, and for some reason this word seemed incredibly frightening to him. Angel! Unfamiliar sound. If you do not explain what this means, then you will not understand. For him, it was consonant with the words: murderer, seducer, altering the world in front of you, as Alais did. An angel is an evil with a cold essence and searing beauty.
It was not a name, just a name, because the stranger told him that there are still many such creatures and not all of them are evil, but one is the main thing over all. And this dominant creature was Alais. This explained her arrogance and a sense of absolute power over everyone: both people and even gods. She was sure that both physical and ethereal creatures would submit to her. She has more strength in her little finger than an entire army. And she doesnt want to use this power for good. How not to be afraid of her?
«Merira is the former high priest of Amon-Ra, the current high priest of Aton, tell me, is there something that does not suit you with your current position? Does it have any extra privileges that you consider yourself not quite worthy?»
How easily she pronounced his name, as if she really had some secret power over him. It is worth calling an object or person by name, and you gain invisible power over it. Merira still didnt believe it. But next to Alais everything changed. All the usual reality scattered to dust. A being called an angel overshadowed all the gods he was used to.
«Tell me if it was worth mixing them all.» He scanned the circle of statues. «Hathor, Isis, Osiris, Amon and Mut, all of them, this pile of dead stones and the living meaning inherent in them, which makes the crowds prostrate before them, and helps the pharaohs to keep their power. And all this for the sake of the appearance of a single living angel».
The creature with golden claws, an article of a deity and wings arched its eyebrows in disbelief.
«Angel!» She repeated it as if for the first time she had heard the word itself. «Do you know what this name means?»
«He that is, a stranger in the sands. He said that it means a messenger, a messenger with a message»
«For our family, yes,» the golden head nodded condescendingly in agreement. «But for you this word means something else» an instant throw of the hand, like a snake that caught his throat, squeezed. Alaiss lips, breathing fire, tilted to his ear to hiss just one word. «Evil!»
Absolute evil! He felt it rather than heard it. The auricle was burned. How hot her breath is! She could have set the whole city on fire if she had just died. But for now, she kept herself in a cold, regal manner. How long will this last yet?
He rubbed his neck excitedly after she finally released him. Even before that, Merira suspected that a being called an angel carries in itself an indescribable evil. One had only to look at Alais to feel this evil. Something malicious, oppressive, all-crushing emanated from her beauty Those who looked at her felt like crushed insects at her feet. Perhaps this is how it should be, if the creature in front of you is from the angelic race. But who are these angels after all? If they are higher than the gods, and people, and earthly rulers, then where did they come from?
All the questions led nowhere, and Alaiss beautiful lips grinned coldly. When she smiled, it seemed that not a smile, but a snake ran over her lips. And at the same time, something in her inexpressibly attracted.
«Then what does your name mean? The name that you carry now?» he did not give up, trying to get at least something from her. There is something that has power over her. In any case, there is always hope to find at least one weak point.
«But this does not concern you any more».
Merira watched as she imperceptibly circled the hall, her movements were deliberately slow and at the same time seemed impetuous. The wings fluttering behind them reminded of a storm in the sands. Alais was more self-confident than any kings. She, too, looked into the motionless faces of the statues, but felt only triumph. No remorse. But it was she who drove them all out of here.
«You probably want a war to break out because of you».