with bandages and rocked gently, like a child. He himself seemed to be hiding from everyone and still talked with someone in the void. It seemed that he was absolutely sure that he saw some interlocutor in front of him, although the palace corridor was empty. He must have lost his mind from the injury.
It would be most reasonable to pass by, but Taor decided to show his concern and squatted down in front of the victim.
«Can I help you with something?»
Ujai looked at him like an enemy and even bared his teeth like a beast. Taor was not offended. It was already a sad sight before him. The man is alive, and his hand is already mummified, although not torn from the body. Something was stirring under the bandages. How strange! A withered hand cannot move like a living creature. Or something other than dry flesh is buried under the bandages. Taor remembered the birds that had been slaughtered. Suddenly, crazy with grief, Ujai has bandaged a live bird there, and it is now swarming in its death throes? Or is something bursting out of his body? An absurd idea, but so persistent.
The young man did not know what to say, how to entertain or console the person who seemed to need nothing, but Ujai suddenly spoke himself.
«Did you encounter something similar there, on the battlefield, where you were sent?»
What a meaningful phrase for a madman. Taor was alert. So the man in front of him still has not lost his mind?
«What unusual could I encounter there?» There really was a lot of indescribable happening, but let Ujai touch on this topic himself.
«With creatures that maim or burn people with just one touch, and at the same time look incomparable, although they are still creatures,» his tongue twisted, but his thought was sober. Taor remembered the dead who were resurrected and those who seemed impossible to kill.
«I’ve seen a lot,» he said carefully.
«You’ll see more here», Ujai drawled derisively. «Because here, in the palace, she settled».
«Who is she?» Taor did not dare to ask anyone about it. For some reason, it became scary to just ask a question about what worried him. «Pharaoh’s daughter? The daughter of some priest who taught her to conduct the mysteries? A child of one of the gods themselves?»
Ujai just shook his head. He did not know, only speculated.
«Pharaoh called her daughter. At first. But she appeared suddenly, already being an adult and… winged. No matter how hard it is to believe it, the wings are alive, they grow from her back».
«Did you check?»
«Yes».
«How?»
«By chance. I touched her as she walked by».
«Has your hand started to dry out since then?» Taor guessed.
«No,» Ujai shook his head sadly. «Here the point is different. The first time I just got a little burned. It was necessary to be more prudent, but what can be done here when she walks nearby, right through the palace… Now no one calls her just a princess anymore. She seemed to have become a ruler herself. As if God came down from heaven to rule alongside the Pharaoh».
«What about Queen Nefertiti? News reached me that not so long ago Akhenaten made her his co-ruler».
«Where do you see her here?» Ujai expressively looked around the empty space.
In some ways, he was right. Taor himself noticed numerous changes in the order of life in the palace. All representatives of the royal family, who had at least some kind of power, disappeared, as if they were deliberately kept under lock and key. The Pharaoh himself, sitting on the throne, seemed just a puppet.
Otherwise Taor would not have thought of interfering in the natural course of someone’s power struggle, much less making inquiries. It’s none of his business. Asking about something like that, he brazenly climbs into other people’s secrets. But Alais… Her face… She seemed not at all a stranger to him. He wanted to know something about her, and what he did not understand himself.
Ujai’s diseased limb should have been a warning to him. Something similar can happen to him if he pokes his nose where he should not.
Taor moved a little away from Ujai and watched his dry hand vibrate slightly under the bandages. What if you take a blade and cut them off his hand? What will he see then?
Taor could hardly resist the temptation to check. After all, he is a warrior. He saw a terrible death, and an unusual infection, and even the living dead in the last war. What he sees under Ujai’s bandages shouldn’t scare him too much after that.
This was the very place in the garden by the pond where Alais performed the ritual with the slaughtered birds. Ujai just reminded him of a bird so withered that it only remained to be buried in the ground. He stopped looking like a living person. Anubis seemed to have forgotten to come for him in time, and the dry shell remained moving to live. But how long is it? The movements of the living corpse became more and more sluggish.
He wanted to say something else to Taor, but his language clearly did not obey. Then Ujai raised his good hand to his mouth and bit his own finger. The blood went slowly, there was little of it, as if it had almost dried up inside the body, but it was enough for him to draw a hieroglyph on the wall. Only one. And, probably, he drew it incorrectly, because there was not enough strength for the clarity of the lines. Taor did not know such a sign. You can’t read it. And Ujai won’t write more. His hand dropped limply.
«Let’s go! I will take you to your chambers». Judging by his condition, much cannot be done for him. It is unlikely that he will last long. But you can do at least something to make him a little easier. Experienced doctors are familiar with drugs that help at least forget, if not relieve pain.
«Leave him alone!» The imperious voice made Taor flinch. He was like steel. You won’t even hear such notes from commanders in war. The very tone made him obey.
Taor gave up his vain attempts to lift the seriously ill man to his feet and turned around. Before him stood the high priest of Aton himself. No security. No accompanying persons. Well, isn’t it amazing.
«He likes to bask in the sun,» Merira nodded at the unfortunate man, as if he were some inanimate object. «After all, the sun is all that we live by now».
«But he’s trying to stay in the shadows,» Taor looked back in bewilderment at Ujai, who was hiding in the shadows, entwined with plants, of a column. The hieroglyph inscribed in blood stood out strangely on it.
«Do you know what this man wanted?
«To touch the burning solar disk and not burn out?» Shrugging his shoulders, suggested the young man.
Merira looked at him like he was a complete idiot.
«Destroy you completely. Do you even recognize him?»
«It’s hard to recognize him, but it’s still him».
«And if he feels good again, he will continue his fight for the first place, and, most likely, he will destroy you, as he intended at the beginning. Do you allow this?»
«Quite. I already had the
