Kitabı oku: «Rhianon-5. Along the way of deception», sayfa 4

Ron knew they would come again. The moments when he wrote were only a temporary respite. He had ruined more than one sheet of paper and cut up several tabletops with a knife trying to carve the signs he had dreamed of. He should have left a warning for Rhianon to keep her out of all this. Would that she knew how dangerous it was and how invincible those who sought her out were.

It was light and dark. Ron saw them as soon as he closed his eyes. It was as if they were still standing on the doorstep of the tavern, beckoning him invisible to the others, and he’d start hysterical and chase them away, making people think he was crazy. He didn’t care anymore. The only thing he wanted to do was to leave a warning, but his knife-cut fingers were almost impossible to obey. The innkeeper had already stopped shouting at him, and the other drunks had stopped bothering him, because despite his physical exhaustion, he was still able to fight very well. No one dared to admonish him for defacing other people’s property.

Of course, what he was doing was pointless. It was unlikely that Rhianon would ever walk into that inn and see the inscription. She was now a noblewoman, pampered and dressed up, a girl in satin and silks who might have been a match for a prince or a king, not the country boy he was now. Yet would she have known what danger was flying after her. Ron was smart enough to understand, supernatural beings are two kinds — light and dark, but both are equally dangerous. No matter how one was light they were still capable of killing, and absolutely ruthlessly and without feeling any remorse. They were considered good, but the evil caused to man became something ordinary and natural to them. They considered it their right to destroy anyone and did it without any regret. The fact that man was innocent meant nothing to them. Such was fate and the will of the Almighty, they nodded, leaving Ron to be torn apart by the demons each time. His dark guests weren’t so restrained; they ripped objects from his hands, pointed the blade of a knife so as to hurt him, spilled their drinks on passersby, drawing Ron into the fray. They laughed at him. They whispered that he meant nothing to Rhianon. None of the bright ones tried to restrain them. On the contrary, it was as if the two elements of light and dark were encouraging each other.

His head was splitting from their intrusive advances. They sat on the other side of the table from him and clawed at his wrists. They whispered to him that he should leave Rhianon, but he couldn’t. He had to leave her a message, even if she never read it, he still had to try. Maybe one of her confidants would come in here someday, see the writing on the tabletop with a knife, and pass it on to her. Of course, it would be better to scribble the words somewhere in the woods on the trunk of a centuries-old tree, or even to take a chisel and carve them on the wall of some building. Only he and she would understand the signs of the inscription. This language is understood only by those who have encountered higher powers.

“It it the language of angels,” Ron dodged the claws of a nearby demon, invisible to all around him, and glanced toward the empty doorway above which the bright but stern creature had hovered a short time before. “To us, involved in your eternal argument, it seems to be the language of mere mortals.”

He indeed seemed to be carving the simplest of letters and numbers, though there were absurdly complex symbols emerging from beneath the knife’s edge. He could scribble them all over the world, leave them in tree hollows. Perhaps one of the messages will be found by Rhianon.

“You have no idea the danger you face,” Ron felt his time running out. The dark spirits whispered to him that it was time to put the knife to good use, but the light spirits were cold and arrogant. They would not help him, but blame and punish him, because he had interfered in their affairs unwillingly. He did not know what Rhianon meant to them. He was still grateful to fate for the moment she had come to his campfire.

The beautiful bright angel who had long been a vision to him, was angry. The sternness of his beautiful features was even more terrifying than the ugly countenance of the ifrit seated across the table from Ron. The young man tried not to look at either of his guests. They came to him anyplace, anytime, anyway. They didn’t care about his reluctance to communicate with them.

“You saw something no one should ever have to see,” they declared, their obsession driving him mad. His world was already sliding into a terrifying black abyss. The people were being swept away by intangible and malevolent creatures, easily layered on top of the picture of familiar life. He was tired of them, but they would not let him go. Wherever he went, they were already there waiting for him.

“If there was a god, he wouldn’t allow this,” Ron whispered as he carved the last symbol with bloody fingers.

“And why do you think the god is what you mortals think he is?” The claws of the ifrit seated opposite touched the young man’s smooth forehead, leaving a scratch. “He’s the one who brought his pet down from heaven, so why should he pity you humans?”

Ron pulled away fearfully. Hot blood trickled down his face, staining his pale brow. He had to put his hand to his face and wipe away the blood. There was bound to be a scar on his forehead now, but it didn’t bother him anymore. His most searing wound was much deeper, in his heart. And that wound made him want to scream, probably even louder than the fallen angels in his dreams.

He fell asleep rarely and very briefly, and every time he dreamed something unimaginably nightmarish.

“That’s how anyone who was into contact with us feels,” the angel hovering outside the window told him in a cold, indifferent tone. “Are you still happy that you didn’t pass by the one that should belong to us?”

“And I won’t believe in you, just in her,” Ron whispered stubbornly and began to carve the tabletop further. He hoped that somewhere far away Rhianon would hear it, but his fingers, against his will, kept on working the knife.

Rhianon dozed briefly in front of the lighted fireplace. When she awoke, faint flames were still dancing on the logs. The house was still warm and cozy, but something seemed subtly different.

She sat down on the rug and looked around. Everything was in the same place, where she remembered it. Even the broadsword she had discarded was now lying on the floor, and the place on the wall in the brackets was empty.

Rhianon looked around. There could be no one in the house but her. She remembered locking the front door and sliding the shutters on the first floor windows. No one could get in. Unless there was a secret passage under the house or someone was hiding in the cellar. She felt as if there was someone nearby, though she saw no one.

Sparks still danced in the fireplace’s yawning fireplace. The fireplace itself looked like an open mouth of a fire-breathing monster. Rhianon looked closely and saw that the fireplace was framed like an open dragon’s mouth. She had never seen anything like it before. She had never seen anything like this before. No one had ever adorned their manors, their houses, or even their coats of arms with dragons. It was considered bad luck. By placing images of monsters in their houses, it was as if the owner was summoning the devil. But there were also brave men. There are such powerful rulers who decorate their standards with images of wild animals, as if they want to take their power in this way. Perhaps one day a dragon might appear on someone’s coat of arms. It would be the best emblem of battle imaginable. And here on the mantel it was also made with extraordinary grace. The high shelf above the fire was a crest on a dragon’s head, and the chimney hole covered on the outside of the wall by a pillar appeared to be a wiggling tail, the patterned divots extending from the pillar across the wall its wings. Rhianon would not have been surprised to see more images of sphinxes, griffins, or basilisks in the house. They belonged exactly where it was supposed to be. An ingenious architect would have placed them all there, and even made them part of the most commonplace objects.

Rhianon noticed that the overlaid stairs leading to the second floor were in the shape of intertwined mermaid bodies. And the light fixture on the ceiling really does resemble a griffin fluttering its wings in flight.

“It is curious here, isn’t it?”

“What is it?” She was dumbfounded when she heard a low, nasal voice beside her. Only a dwarf would talk like that, but she hadn’t called any dwarves to her house. Rhianon turned around and realized she was not mistaken. Next to the mantelpiece was a tiny man in fancy dress. How he had gotten in was a mystery. Rhianon could only hope that dwarves had secret passages under the ground everywhere. They could get into any house they wanted. The appearance of such a guest does not mean that her new home is accessible to many other visitors. It’s also possible that it’s just a character in her dreams. Maybe she is not fully awake, and therefore sees all these strange objects around her, which should be more in dreams, but in reality such a fairy house full of figures of magical creatures is simply impossible to see.

“You dropped this,” the guest swung the chain with the sparkling pendant in his hands, “but it is not yours.”

“But I found it,” Rhianon recognized her pendant. She demandingly held out her hand for it, but the dwarf nimbly backed away from her.

“Give me the riddle and I’ll give it to you.” The firelight cast a sinister glow over his puffy face. He could pass for a little devil with evil eyes.

“What a riddle is it,” Rhianon rose nimbly, but the dwarf was faster. He was already standing on the other side of the room, staring up at her angrily.

“What’s in the basement?” He blurted out after a moment’s silence.

Rhianon looked at the low oak door, which seemed to lead to a cellar or some other basement room. She hadn’t had time to see what was there yet. Frankly, she had only just noticed the door.

“I don’t know,” Rhianon muttered, then realized that she had made a mistake.

“It is a wrong answer,” the dwarf waved a gold pendant in the air, taking on a new forceful shape, and ducked behind a low stool.

Rhianon was at a loss. What should she do? Catch the dwarf, or check what was in the cellar. It was a moment’s hesitation, and she chose the second. The low oak door beckoned to her. Rhianon opened it and peered inside. Narrow, uneven steps led down into the cellar. She could see nothing unusual there, only wine casks, but Rhianon sensed a musty grave.

Cautiously she started downstairs. It would be good if the door didn’t slam shut right now, and that same dwarf didn’t ban her here. Then she’d definitely have to call Madael for help, because she couldn’t get out on her own unless she burned the walls around her.

Strangely enough, there were no food supplies in the cellar, only wine barrels. Maybe there was ale in them, though, or beer, or whatever was left to ferment. What made her think they were full of wine? Nothing, she just imagined it.

Rhianon sighed. She’d been seeing a lot of strange things lately. To confirm her premonition, she reached out and pulled the cork from one of the barrels. To her surprise, no wine poured out of the resulting hole. There was no liquid inside the cask at all; there was something dry and pulverized to a powder. Rianon had already thought that gunpowder was about to fall at her feet, but she was wrong again. From the hole in the barrel a torrent of gold dust poured down her slippers, intermingled with tiny specks of ground emeralds, sapphires, and rubies.

Rhianon stepped aside, gazing in amazement at the glittering pile. Were all the barrels here full of something so shiny? She took turns pulling the plugs out, curious. This time she wasn’t disappointed. The barrels were full of crushed piles of diamonds, garnets, turquoise, and gold pollen, all interspersed with each other. There’s a whole fortune in the cellar here. The owner of the house must have been extremely wealthy. Why on earth would he agree to sell her this house full of treasures for just a few coins?

The money she gave him was not even suitable for circulation in Vinor, Loretta, or any of the states she knew. They were coins of unusual coinage, made by inhuman hands, and perhaps to a connoisseur they might have been of great value, but would they be enough to pay for entire gold mines.

Rhianon checked further. One cask did turn out to contain wine, not gold. It dripped down her skirts, staining the turquoise blue brocade.

What a pity. Rhianon wondered where she could get water, but there was only a reddish trickle coming out of the barrel. It grew thinner and thinner, and the puddle on the floor grew wider.

“Drink! Drink!” a thin voice whispered in her ear. “If you drink something like that, close your eyes, you will find yourself in a completely different world.”

Rhianon had heard of something like that, but she had never tried it. And she wouldn’t risk it. She knew that such drinks were addictive, and one would go mad if left without them, but now she could not help herself. Even if she were used to this kind of wine, Madael would have the means to cure her.

Barely had she thought of having a glass, when the crystal shot glass on a stem was clasped in her fingers. The crystal was murky and covered in cobwebs. There were a dozen such glasses lying on a lopsided shelf nearby, some of them broken and all covered in cobwebs. Strangely, she hadn’t noticed the shelf before, and she didn’t remember taking one of the glasses from it. Rhianon put it under the stream.

Rhianon brought the fragrant liquid to her lips. It smelled like a bouquet of scents, as if someone had combined many fruits and tastes in one drink: cherries, pomegranates, plums, blackberries and raspberries — all the fragrance of a summer meadow. Rhianon imagined a sunny day, summer, fairies and elves picking berries from branches and the flutter of their wings over the crushed fruit. She took a sip, just one, but the liquid rolled down her throat in a refreshing wave. The wine should have fueled the fire, but instead it quenched it. It was warm and pleasant inside, but not hot. Rhianon could almost feel the bubbles from the berry wine exploding with flashes of pleasure in her bloodstream. She got the pleasure, but it hit her in the head. The room swam before her eyes.

“Do you remember the barn ghosts?” Someone whispered in her ear.

Rhianon didn’t remember, but the vision of a woman in darkness in a musty orange dress exuding the scent of the grave seemed to cross the threshold of this house now, too. Rhianon could almost touch the red hair that had been touched by decay, the face that had already been decayed. Rhianon had seen other ghosts in the same rotten clothes and with traces of decay on their faces. She could only guess that in life many of them had been quite good-looking. She did not know who these people were or what had happened to them. She could only guess that they were from that barn, and here in the basement of the house she was in, something like that barn had happened.

The house itself around her already seemed unreal. Her mind was flying somewhere far away, first across a sunny meadow, where bees gather nectar from flowers and tiny fairies squeeze juice from berries to make a miracle drink. Her mind soared over the flowers like these fairies, reaching the treetops, the clouds, and the rainbow sparkles behind them. And then she saw night and the realm of dreams, some creatures cowering in the darkness. They were indeed afraid of the light, and palaces were carved out of the dark rocks. A creature on a golden throne with dark hair and wings was tearing at its own flesh with its claws.

It was one of those who had followed Madael and fallen with him, Rhianon concluded. She saw other such creatures, pale wounded bodies in golden robes and ivory crowns, strange insects with human faces swarming in their wounds, and unimaginable creatures crawling on the ground between the gold coins and bones. In her dreams, everything was upside down. And in her mind, the narcotic vapors of a magic potion were now spilling.

Rhianon wished her imagination would sweep over the battlefields where the armies of Loretta howled, but her wishes meant nothing now. The stream of fantasy carried her forward on its own. Rhianon was tired of the shifting impressions. One vague picture was replaced by another. Not even in dreams. It seemed that her mind itself had become like wine flowing simultaneously through all the magical places of this world and the other. Or was it that she became part of the wine and eventually dissolved into it? Rhianon no longer knew which reality she was in. When she stood up and realized suddenly that she was lying right on the cellar floor, she couldn’t tell for sure if she was still dreaming.

It was much darker than she remembered. The gap between the door and the lintel glowed slightly in the darkness. The outlines of the walls were not clear. Nor could she see the barrels of gold. Everything seemed so fuzzy in the darkness, and yet she could recognize the outline of one single figure. It was a child, thin and frail, dressed in an elegant black camisole with white lace trim, as if in the uniform of a student of the School of Witchcraft. His long blond hair shone like a halo in the dark, and his face was strikingly beautiful.

“Eve?” Rhianon suddenly felt that it was no longer the cold floor beneath her feet, but the satin blankets. She was home again, in her bed, not far from the open window that awaited the arrival of the angel, and the ghost of the dead child stood before her. And how touchingly beautiful he was. He was an extraordinarily gifted boy who should not have died. He could have lived, could have grown and become even more beautiful and skilled. Rhianon sighed heavily. No matter how it was, Eve might live, if the demon did not wish him.

She wanted to stroke his head, whisper something comforting, but she didn’t dare. The eyes on the child’s delicate face sparkled in the darkness like two rubies embedded in flesh. Rhianon at first could not believe what she was seeing. Could it be that Madael had also inserted precious stones into his empty eye sockets, as he did with the skins of slain animals, or that Yves was simply bleeding from his clawed eyelids and making his eyes appear red. Then is he capable of seeing her when she is bleeding like that? But he could see, and he even spoke, addressing her. The pale lips moved with difficulty, but the words were fierce.

“You want it, don’t you? Do you want me to be part of this child?” Now he reached forward himself to touch Rhianon. The lace cuff under her black sleeve was also covered in blood. Eve wanted to reach for it, but Rhianon pulled away.

“I don’t want to!” She objected sharply. She felt pity for him, of course, but her fear was stronger.

She felt pity for him, but her fear was stronger than pity. Eve pulled away. He looked as if he’d been slapped in the face. Tears streamed down his face, tears of blood. She remembered the hammer and the nails and the claws again. It was as if the hammer had struck at him again, ripping the angel’s face with scratches. The cherub turned into a blood-crying demon, retreating into darkness.

Let it be only a dream, she begged, but there were traces of his blood on the floor. Some insects greedily licked it off and changed before her eyes. Rhianon turned away so she wouldn’t have to see it. The disgusting noises plagued her for a moment, and then it passed. But even here, sitting in the safety of her bedroom, she felt the beating of the devil’s clock like a pulse beating. The clock is like one living organism, or like a heart. It beats to a measured rhythm, but if something special happens, there will be an explosion.

Rhianon held her breath. She seemed to understand everything. The clock is waiting for that moment. It was her moment in the Cathedral of Thunder.

The realization stayed with her only for a moment. And then she no longer felt the cloudy, soft bed beneath her, the marble floor under her feet, she walked under the mechanisms of the clock, the gears spinning above, and beneath the floor seemed to be buried bodies — hundreds of bodies, begging for retribution. Only Eve wasn’t among them. Rhianon raised her head to look up at one of the arrows and see him. He was just there, back in the same spot.

“Aren’t you afraid?” Rhianon could hear the rustling of black wings, demons flying here again, dwarves cowering below, and the boy with the face of an angel sitting on the hands of the clock, alive and unharmed, as if there had never been a murder. “What if they find you again? If you’re alive again, you’re just as vulnerable as before.”

“But I have a knife now,” Eve showed her the long, thin blade. It was strongly elongated and tapered toward the end, more like a stiletto. He held it so close to her cheek as if he were going to stab himself. Rhiannon wanted to shout to him to be more careful when he held the hilt, but then she saw the tip of the blade strike. It was some kind of insect or tiny creature with green skin. It might have looked like a frog had it not been for the colorful clothing on its slippery body. Leprechaun! Yes, very ugly. Rhianon grimaced dismissively. She didn’t mind that Eve had killed such a tiny monster, but he couldn’t even finish him off. Leprechaun was still twitching at the tip of his dagger. And Eve smiled smugly.

“I have something to protect myself from them.”

“I see,” Rhianon put her fingers to her corset, and she felt as if she were about to be scorched from the inside again. Perhaps it was idle fear; it wasn’t as if the boy could jump off the clockwork and throw himself at her with a knife. It wasn’t like he thought she was one of those creatures. She wanted to open her mouth and say that she didn’t belong to the race of creatures that had ruined him at all.

“But he does,” Eve glanced oddly at her arm around her waist. “Do you want us to be one with him?”

Rhianon did not understand, and he stared at her intently with his empty, exhausted eyes. His blue eyes were like two mirrors, reflecting the suffering he had endured. They seemed hunted and at the same time dangerous, angry. There was no pain left for him that he had not suffered himself, so he was not afraid to hurt others. Perhaps it would even be interesting for him.

“I look at people’s suffering with pleasure, because they can’t suffer the way I do, but I’m glad that at least someone else can suffer besides me in this world,” she remembered Madael’s statement.

For a moment she had even forgotten that Eve could be just a ghost. He was so alive and real, and the deathly pallor that covered him no longer mattered.

“Come here,” she beckoned him down. “I don’t know what it is to be someone’s mother, but I feel sorry for you. I could comfort you.”

She really had no idea how. How to erase from his memory all the suffering imprinted there. Eve’s glassy eyes were suddenly so distrustful. He twitched in his perch. He seemed to really want to climb down and rush toward her, but the distance to the floor is so high, and there are also some creatures running around on the floor below. His stiletto wouldn’t be enough to kill them all. Still, Eve made an attempt to climb down. The ghostly body shook slightly. It seemed almost material to her. Even as a ghost he was still so fragile. Rhianon sighed. She really felt sorry for him, but the vicious sadistic gleam in his empty eyes could scare anyone.

“Go!” She could already hear the fluttering of black wings nearby, the scurrying of dwarves and the rustling of bats. All of them could have swooped down on him. All of them were very near, or already close to the arched window vault. Soon they would rush in, but even sooner she would have time to embrace him as if he were her own child. And it didn’t matter that he was a ghost. She suddenly understood what it was like to become a mother. As soon as she felt his obsession to be born again, to become a supernatural creature, something inside her stirred. It was an unearthly child. Eve would have dreamed of being one. If his father was a fallen angel, he would be invulnerable. Wouldn’t that be the limit of his dreams?

“Come on, wake up,” someone shook her shoulder. She didn’t realize at once that it was a dwarf, and it wasn’t a castle around her, but the same cellar. Only this time there was a sort of circle drawn on the floor, and the dwarf was running across it, trying to approach in a way that would not only touch Rhianon and shake her up.

“You can’t sleep that long, or you risk never waking up again.”

“Stand back,” she said. She didn’t like the sound of his nasal voice. “I want to see something else.”

Her head was already slumped back down, now, and the bare ground would be softer than a pillow to her. Rhianon wanted to sleep and have fantastic dreams, even if they were nightmarish like the ones with Yves, but they were sure to amaze the imagination, but the dwarf held her back.

“No more sleep, not a minute more.”

What an obsession. He’s just like a schoolteacher, gruff and pushy. Or like a ghost who knocks on doors every night, ignoring the fact that he’s not wanted. If gnomes could be banished like ghosts, Rhianon would certainly take advantage of it. She struggled to rise on her elbows.

“Well, what do you want? Give my pendant back!” She decided to quip a little, though she wasn’t entirely sure the dwarf wasn’t another hallucination. How lasting an effect could the wine have on her? Could what she was seeing still seem to her?

For a hallucination, however, the gnome was incredibly nimble and brash, and his touch proved all too tangible. Rhianon shot him a displeased look.

“This is a bad time, isn’t it?”

“I know,” he hissed angrily.

“Then why don’t you leave? It’s the height of rudeness to know you’re not welcome and still pester me. I don’t want to see you, go away, at least think about the fact that I didn’t invite you to visit.”

“But this is my house, not yours.”

Rhianon decided to put him in his place. “But I paid for it, and I intend to stay here. This house belongs to me now.”

“Do you even know what’s in here?”

She shrugged her shoulders dismissively.

Of course she was aware that such a creature needed no door, that he would go underground whenever he wished and wherever he could find a way, and that the locks on the doors were no obstacle, but she deliberately wanted to insult him. That the gold had been brought here from the dwarves’ mines, however, she hesitated.

“What’s your name, by the way?” Rhianon said. She didn’t know him yet, and she was willing to swear that all the short people were known to her by their real names, or the ones she herself had given them. Though they all looked very much alike, Rhianon had already learned to distinguish them. If she looked closely, each of them had some peculiar traits that were peculiar to him and his own manner of behavior. She could have sworn that this was the first time she had ever seen the strange man. Could he be crazy? A misfit who had broken away from a pack of creatures like him? The more Rhianon looked at him, the more strange things she noticed.

“You are not Soyro, nor Byrne, nor Ivan, nor any of your brethren I know. So who are you?”

The answer stunned her.

“No one,” the dwarf leaned low to her face, his eyes gleaming as if in the glow of a flame, but there was no flame except the one that burned within Rhianon herself. The dwarf seemed to be warmed by it. He reached for her like a candle, and then jerked his hand away.

“I am your destiny,” he whispered, baring needle-sharp teeth. “I am your fate.”

“Well, then I’ll call you Fate,” Rhianon smiled as her own joke succeeded, and the dwarf seemed disappointed and retreated into the shadows. The ominous-sounding words were now meaningless.

“You laugh too soon,” he warned her.

“I don’t think so,” she protested. “And it’s always nice to laugh, especially at other people.”

Now he clenched his fists in fury, but did not approach Rhianon again. Apparently the fire he felt inside her had driven him away for a long time, if not for good. Rhianon realized that she would have been glad never to see that angry, disheveled creature again, making grim speeches. She wished he’d never show his face to her again, and she wished he hadn’t begun to foretell her fate, casting all kinds of dire predictions and omens in every direction. She disliked those who believed too much in omens or threatened everyone with heavenly punishment. The pious people back at the castle in Loretta had often got on her nerves. She would never meet a dwarf like them again. Rhianon stared at the spot where he’d just stood, but she saw something else entirely. Something else, she thought, was in her nostrils: the smell of fire, burnt hay and straw piles, and burned flesh. She frowned. She imagined a barn, burning bodies, and strange pictures. A woman in an orange brocade dress and a worm-eaten face haunted her. Rhianon suddenly realized that she was not the first woman to have intercourse with fallen angels, but unlike her, it had always ended too badly for others.

“Do you want to show me that something like that happened in this basement?” She asked the dwarf, but he was gone. Or he was deliberately hiding somewhere in the dark, waiting for her to call out to him.