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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
and so full of dark wrathful secrets that I could not even glimpse. He
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had a mind as educated as mine, this one, but he knew things about
our powers that I didn't guess. I had never slain a man when I was
mortal. I did not know how to kill any living thing, save in the tender
and remorseless need for blood.
"He knew how to use his supernatural strength. He closed his eyes to
slits, and his body hardened. Danger radiated from him.
"He approached me and his intentions went before him, and in an
instant I had risen off my couch, and I was trying to ward off his
blows. He had me by the throat and he threw me against the stone
wall so that the bones of my shoulder and right arm were crushed. In
a moment of exquisite pain, I knew he would bash my head against the
stone and crush all my limbs, and then he would pour the oil of the
lamp over me and burn me, and I would be gone out of his private
eternity as if I had never known these secrets or dared to intrude.
"I fought as I never could have before. But my battered arm was a
riot of pain, and his strength was to me what mine would be to you.
But instead of clawing at his hands as they locked round my throat,
instead of trying to free my throat as was instinctive, I shot my thumbs
into his eyes. Though my arm blazed with pain, I used all my strength
to push his eyes backwards into his head.
"He let go of me and he wailed. Blood was pouring down his face. I
ran clear of him and towards the garden door. I still could not breathe
from the damage he'd done to my throat, and as I clutched at my
dangling arm, I saw things out of the comer of my eye that confused
me, a great spray of earth flying up from the garden, the air dense as if
with smoke. I bumped the door frame, losing my balance, as if a wind
had moved me, and glancing back I saw him coming on, eyes still
glittering, though from deep inside his head. He was cursing me in
Egyptian. He was saying that I should go into the netherworld with
the demons, unmourned.
"And then his face froze in a mask of fear. He stopped in his tracks
and looked almost comical in his alarm.
"Then I saw what he saw-the figure of Akasha, who moved past me
to my right. The linen wrapping had been ripped from around her
head, and her arms were torn free, and she was covered with the sandy
earth. Her eyes had the same expressionless stare they always had, and
she bore down on him slowly, drawing ever closer because he could
not move to save himself.
"He went down on his knees, babbling to her in Egyptian, first with a
tone of astonishment and then with incoherent fright. Still she came
on, tracking the sand after her, the linen falling off her as each slow
sliding step ruptured the wrappings more violently. He turned away
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and fell forward on his hands and started to crawl as if, by some
unseen force, she prevented him from rising to his feet. Surely that
was what she was doing, because he lay prone finally, his elbows
jutting up, unable to move himself.
"Quietly and slowly, she stepped on the back of his right knee,
crushing it flat beneath her foot, the blood squirting from under her
heel. And with the next step she crushed his pelvis just as flat while he
roared like a dumb beast, the blood gushing from his mangled parts.
Then came her next step down upon his shoulder and the next upon
his head, which exploded beneath her weight as if it had been an
acorn. The roaring ceased. The blood spurted from all his remains as
they twitched.
"Turning, she revealed to me no change in expression, signifying
nothing of what had happened to him, indifferent even to the lone and
horrified witness who shrank back against the wall. She walked back
and forth over his remains with the same slow and effortless gait, and
crushed the last of him utterly.
"What was left was not even the outline of a man, but mere blood-
soaked pulp upon the floor, and yet it glittered, bubbled, seemed to
swell and contract as if there were still life in it.
"I was petrified, knowing that there was life in it, that this was what
immortality could mean.
"But she had come to a stop, and she turned to her left so slowly it
seemed the revolution of a statue on a chain, and her hand rose and
the lamp beside the couch rose in the air and fell down upon the
bloody mass, the flame quickly igniting the oil as it spilled.
"Like grease he went up, flames dancing from one end of the dark
mass to the other, the blood seeming to feed the fire, the smoke acrid
but only with the stench of the oil. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
