Mistress of Pharaohs. Daughter of Dawn. Natalie Yacobson

stretched along the edges of the glass. The gems in the ornament flashed like watching eyes. Eyes they were. There was a special power and a special mystery in the mirror.

      “There is not even ash left on you,” Remy murmured beside him. “Truly, God loves you, because even when you have fallen, you are as beautiful as you were. Or is he powerless to harm you? Then you are truly our commander, for there is no one stronger than you.”

      “What is about the darkness?” Alais sensed something stronger in the wilderness, but separated from herself. “It is my shadow!”

      “It is yours! Then it’s yours to lead,” Remy hovered around her, bloody meat blotches and blackened gold ornaments on his ash-burned elbows. It was as if he had pulled them out of the earth, where they had been forged by fiery dwarves. Alais didn’t recognize them at first as soldiers in her army. Too stunted, but then she recognized their voices coming from the depths of the earth. How had they shrunk so much?

      “Only you can control your own shadow,” Remy insisted, though he, too, had sensed the darkening power thickening over the desert like a black cloud.

      “There’s something wrong here!”

      They couldn’t see the source of the power yet, but it was felt as something shattering, ready to sweep away the world they were in with a single blow. Her desire to do this, too, could be felt. So why wasn’t the job done yet? What is holding back the darkness?

      “It is your unwillingness to reunite with it!”

      “Is that what you said?” Alais turned around, but Remy was no longer there.

      “It is your unwillingness to share its burns and its pain,” the voice murmured again over her ear, dark as night. “It is your fear of getting burned by what people call passion and what you don’t know at all. It is your fear of going back to heaven and finding the all-consuming fire there again. Your reluctance to lose your independence, but together we would be better off. After all, we are still one.”

      So says the genie of the lamp in people’s tales. That’s how her spirits work when they see mortal travelers. And in the lamp they may well come to live. One such lamp, made of gold by an underground dwarf, Alais took for her. Many spirits had taken up residence in it, gushing out in a silvery mist. They were twelve or thirteen. All of them served her faithfully. Even while in the lamp, they could easily observe events around the world and could find out about everything to report to her. But from where and more importantly from whom the dark voice emanates, even they did not know.

      “We are made one, like sun and shadow. Like fire and the ash it creates. Like beauty and ugliness united in your army. Our army! We must be together again.”

      The voice began to drive her mad. It must be God’s attacks. He wants her back, leaving her burnt servants on the ground.

      “Don’t compare me to them and to him. To overthrow him would make me a better man. We simply lacked strength and unity. Only together are we strong.”

      The banner of hell is fire. Alais sensed those who had descended into hell, the abyss that opened beneath the earth. A voice spoke from there. And it didn’t belong to any of her warriors. It was as if it spoke to her from her own mind. It was the darkest part of her. Angels don’t have a shadow like humans, but after the fall, it seemed to appear.

      “We walked through the fire to be together,” the voice continued to exhort. “God cannot divide us.”

      “But He did!”

      Why did she say that? The darkness let out a shriek of rage that shook the desert.

      “You are my reflection, and I am yours, and we will be together again.”

      “Angels don’t have reflections, but she did. First in a puddle spit out by a water creature that crawled into the desert, then in a mirror.”

      “You’re not an angel anymore, and neither are anyone else with you,” the grim voice continued to whisper.

      Alais glanced over her shoulder at her wings. Yes, they had turned black. It probably seems that way because of the darkness. They were golden in the daytime. But they’re supposed to be white for angels. Gold is the color of vice brought to earth by fallen angels. Gold is the solidified substance of the sun. A dead sun! And it is supposed to be alive. Gold as a metal is contrary to its original divine nature, which may be why people so often kill each other over it. Just as often they killed each other because of Alais herself, who became the source of birth, both light and gold. The desert was filled with the blood of travelers and their corpses, which were devoured by her ever-hungry servants. They ate the flesh, drank the blood, but their wounds hardly ever healed. What could be done for them?

      “Abandon them!” It was the voice of the shadow that spoke again. “And go back to heaven. Apologize! God will immediately forgive you, and you will begin to prepare his angels for battle again. Many will follow you again. You are so good. If you fall again, God will forgive you again. He has always adored you, my bright shadow. Seduce him at last and destroy him. And then summon me.”

      She recognized the voice of her own mind, though she thought differently now. The fall had changed her.

      “I can’t leave them all behind,” she nodded at the monsters crawling in the sand. “All those who followed me are my responsibility now.”

      “They are defeated and crippled, and you are wasting your time with them.”

      “I love them!” She knew how wild that sounded right now. She did not love them when their beauty delighted the heavens, even when they followed her into battle, they were only an army. Every warlord needs an army. It is a tribute to custom. Feelings were restrained. But now love broke through. Because of her they were brought down, because of her they were tortured, because of her they were mutilated and burned, and yet they were still willing to serve her.

      “Would they love you if you were as ugly as they are now? You’re lucky your ugliness lives apart from you.”

      “What do you mean?” Alais asked, but secretly she was already aware of it and shuddered inwardly. The memory of something burning and mutilated being separated from her by the fall pierced her brain with pain. It had happened! And it had not been a dream! And even if it had been, her dreams had never lied to her. In heaven in general, it was difficult to separate dream from reality. There, eternity passed like a dream. Grim reality began on earth. And dreams of magic invaded it with golden spells.

      “We must show mortals what magic is!”

      “Why?” A voice grows wary.

      “Their lives are empty without it.”

      “Mortals will not appreciate you, nor understand you.”

      “But I’ll take my chances anyway.”

      “And you will run into their knives.”

      “I don’t think so, I’m still immortal. They are.”

      “They will put you in a cage for your skill.”

      “They are weak, I am strong. Only I have the power to rule them.”

      “You’d better stay here with me.”

      “I can’t even see you.”

      “But I can see you, and I like your beauty, detached from me, even more than when it shone on my own face. It is only when we lose something that we know how valuable it is. Such is God’s curse.”

      “He chose to teach us a lesson, but instead he gave us freedom. The world is our kingdom. We no longer share it with any god. Here we can become gods ourselves, we and our army.”

      “You’ve already begun to talk about us as one. I like that.”

      “You’re a good persuader. I am beginning to trust you,” or my dream. It doesn’t matter! She always trusted herself more. But the darkness was indeed half of herself.

      It