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.
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,