Kitabı oku: «Rhianon-5. Along the way of deception», sayfa 6

Rhianon wondered. And it was he who had sold her the house, this Prince Rothbert, or Raven, whatever he really was. Now he had her dimes jingling in his pockets. Even from a distance she could hear them trilling and some inarticulate “thank you.” Or does it only seem that way to her. Perhaps by touching the coins he had learned about Madael. It is unlikely he had ever seen the fallen angel himself. At any rate, Rhianon found no memory of him in his mind. Only the boulders and ceremonies performed in their ring were imprinted there. Rothbert had somehow survived, even having been there. Though it was probably there that he lost some of his appeal. His face seemed to bear the mark of darkness. He might even have been handsome if it hadn’t been for the blackness pressing down on him from within.

“It is a gloomy cloud, not a guest,” Rhianon said to herself, and she closed the shutters tightly. Suddenly there was a tiny latch, and Rhianon snapped it shut.

“There, no more guests.”

“What about me,” someone squeaked from behind the statue of the dead sphinx. “You forgot about the underground passages, Princess. I can get through them to any place in the world, even the Cathedral of Thunder itself, no matter what you do.”

Of course it was Fate. His high hat peered out from behind the sphinx’s lion-shaped shoulder, his evil eyes gleaming like flames in the half-light.

“Get out of here,” she said to him. Except that his reference to the Cathedral of Thunder awakened something unpleasant in her soul. She wondered if he’d really been there, or if he was just lying. Was such a place at all? Madael had said there was. He could be trusted. But then, it was a scary place. People lost their lives there, their minds, their human bodies. Rhianon squeezed her eyes shut painfully. The flame seemed to flare up inside her again. Everything under her heart was on fire. There was a child in there now. He was right inside her. Involuntarily she tensed. She really wanted to get rid of it. She was afraid of this child. It was already causing her so much pain. And then what would happen? What would the birth be like? Would she surely die giving birth to a non-human creature?

“You allowed this to happen. You didn’t choose us,” the dwarf said, his mumbling or croaky pixie voice unlike his clear high-pitched one. “We wouldn’t give you up to anyone.”

She turned around. Maybe she only thought she saw in the corner a beautiful slender figure with long dark hair and white wings. Blue eyes looked up at her from the almost transparent face. They gleamed like sapphires. She had never seen anything like it before. She imagined a second such angel, more like Madael and also skilled with a sword. He, too, was everywhere behind her, seeping into every room like a rain of fire. Transparent as he was, he showered his fiery breath on everything. Who was closer to her? He was dark-haired, calm, cold, and pervasive as air or water. Looking at him she remembered the lilies for some reason.

The angels were calm, impassive, strong and yet never in a hurry to help, but bringing too much trouble. Their scrutiny had cost her dearly, she knew that now. They were so bright, but they were by no means to be trusted. They were striking in their beauty, but they were nothing compared to Madael. With him she could know love, tenderness, and passion, but with them she would be withdrawn, empty, and unfeeling. Exactly like them. And now, why would she want them to propose to her?

“It’s too late,” she said coldly. And his sigh was no comfort to her. He himself had always been insensitive to human suffering and to those who prayed to him. He could send trials rather than help. In this way he made those who suffered suffer even more. So why should she pity him. He wouldn’t get a copy of the lost angel in her person, no matter how much he wanted it. No matter how much he wanted them both.

As if sensing her determination to reject him, he disappeared and so did the other. But the running water and the fire burning in the candles still seemed to retain their presence. Even the air around them was full of them and the scent of lilies, more spicy and luscious than the ones Madael had had.

These two are completely false. Perhaps it was because they didn’t want it that she suddenly decided to keep the baby. She had to do something to contradict their wishes. Why do they think that everything in the world should be the way they want it. It’s arbitrary. No one can be in charge enough to command your feelings. They were already trying to indoctrinate her with their thoughts.

“Come to us! Come to us! Come to us!” It sounded like a refrain in her head. It was the echo of the celestial spheres and all the coldness of the skies. The snow is so pure and white too, but it burns with cold when it comes into contact. Here they are like snow, in spite of all their high qualities.

She wanted to banish them once and for all, so that they would no longer bore her with their hypocritical sorrow. Every time she felt them, it was as if they were preparing to bury her belly and weep for her on purpose. Who needs such friends or patrons? Let them be gone forever along with all their grief. If they lost their beloved Dennitsa, that’s their problem. They couldn’t keep him and now they can’t get her in return for him.

Rhianon found the candle and lit it with her sigh. Then she held the flaming tip up to the bowl of water. She wasn’t very good at spells, but she hoped it would work. Steam went off the water. The fire hissed without touching its surface. There seemed to be a barrier between them. The two elements did not want to merge and resisted each other. But if she managed to mix them, the uninvited guests would be gone forever.

“Michael, Gabrielle…” she whispered the names she suddenly remembered. “I do not recognize you as my patrons. You have no right to my lover, to me, to my child. Leave me forever.”

The incense went out touching the flame, but there was no water left in the bowl either. It had evaporated. Only a slight vapor emanated from the empty vessel. It dissipated before it could rise into the air. Good. At least she was free of them now. Rhianon held the torch to her lips again, but did not breathe on it again.

“If you’d been with us, we’d have kept you from Madael,” their voices echoed farewell and whispered, far away, as if in a dream. “You regret us, too, don’t you?”

“I wish I’d chased you away before,” she answered aloud. “Madael and I would have met sooner.”

Obsession

Ron knew this was his last night. They had already told him that. The rustle of their wings, both light and dark, echoed eerily in his ears, completely enslaving his will and taking away his perception of the world.

The thin voice of his mind was still trying to break through the thickness of nightmares and oblivion, but it was doing almost nothing. “What is the matter with you, Robert, son of a noble feudal lord, have you been bewitched so badly that you have imagined yourself an outlaw, waiting for the noose, and are now writing messages in your own blood for a girl you only imagined. She does not exist. You write warnings into the void. And the golden-haired fairy from the forest doesn’t exist in the world. She’s just your fantasy. What a pity you can no longer live without that fantasy.”

He shook his head stubbornly and brushed the unruly blond strands from his forehead. His hair was even longer, though he’d recently trimmed it with a dagger, quickly and unevenly, but it looked well-groomed and neat. Long hair was a feature of an angel or his victim. Ron didn’t feel like anyone’s victim. He was just dying for love.

“And for someone who doesn’t love you,” the voices from beyond the clouds whispered in his mind, impertinent and mocking in all their coldness. He tried not to listen to them. They could tell him nothing new. He had already learned too much and now he could not live with that knowledge. But he tried to impart that knowledge to her.

“Do you want to die by yourself and save her?”

“Yes,” he said, his tone so harsh that the other innkeepers stared at him in amazement, for they had not seen what he was talking about. And a young man was talking to himself is too much, even for a drunk. Only he wasn’t drunk, he was obsessed. Obsessed with her…

Some of his unearthly overseers had left oddly minted coins on the table, and now they gleamed ominously, as if they had just been plucked from the hands of a dead man. On one of them was a distinct profile of Rhianon, as if she were already queen and her face had been etched into the coin. Maybe he was imagining it. She seemed everywhere to him now. Coins with her profile didn’t need to be cast to remind him of her. He recognized her in everything, in the whispering of the spirits, in the pleasant coolness of the wind, in the blue of the lakes. And these gold pieces are as golden as her hair. Their ringing is like her laughter still echoing in his ears. Though it was her laughter he had never heard, he had rarely even seen her smile, most of the time it was sad and mysterious, but now for some reason he imagined her just laughing, a wicked, tinkling, laughter. And he liked her like that even more. Just the thought of her sent a sharp pain through his brain. Such attacks were frequent now. Along with them his consciousness began to burn, and he didn’t know where to go from his pain. Something seemed to roll over him like a black cloud, squeezing him and preventing him from living or breathing. Even in a dungeon, in a stone sack, or in a narrow cage he would not feel so broken and destroyed. It seems now, after meeting the princess, he is even more of a prisoner than he would have been in the dungeon. She came into his life and left, all golden and seductive, but after her there remained in Ron’s life and such a black abyss opened up that it consumed the whole world.

The innkeeper’s daughter passed by, a beautiful dark-haired girl, her breasts high and sharply defined by the neckline of her blouse and her seductive swollen lips. Previously Ron would not have been able to take his eyes off her; now he wouldn’t even look. The mug in front of him was full again, but he knew that the wine wouldn’t take away his pain or even help him get drunk. On the contrary, the more he drank, the heavier it became, as if there was something in the heady liquor that reinforced the curse that hung over him, the unquenched passion, the love… Yes, he loved Rhianon. He adored her, and he knew that she was unavailable. He was young, he was strong. He was agile enough. He could find common ground with the most desperate bandits and steal even the king’s daughter from the castle. He could kill a guard, take his armor, disguise himself in it, and sneak into the king’s chambers. A hundred plans would mature in his mind, one riskier than the next, but in the end he would find the right path to his goal. Rhianon would have been his if she had been just a princess, a mere mortal no matter what rank or kind, but she was almost a deity. The mere sight of her burned him. Strangely, he couldn’t see her at all, but she seemed to be everywhere: in every blaze of fire, in every rustle of leaves, at every bend in the road. He is possessed, the priest in the small village church told him, but what can priests know about it. For them, any young passion is an obsession. Ron was tormented by something else entirely. He was confronted with something unknowable and unbelievable, something that was now destroying him and, after all, he was still in love.

The young man clung to his glass again and of course this only caused a surge of new rage.

“Don’t you dare touch what’s mine,” the still fiery whisper sounded in his ears. “Don’t you dare go near her, don’t you dare even think about her. You can yearn for her all you want, but she belongs only to me. And you’ll be mine when you’re dead, just like any other scum like you.”

The claws in the hair at the back of his head felt like they could have burned through his head, but they didn’t. The pain only burned his brain from the inside out, there were no marks left on his body, at least not visible marks. But Ron was certain that if the Inquisition guards had grabbed him now and started looking for the devil’s mark on him. They would have found it for sure. He felt that he was already marked by the devil. And it wasn’t about going to the cursed valley at all. It was something else…

It might be the last sunset of his life. The fire-red glare of the sun on the facets of the window pane reminded him of the shimmering wings of a fallen angel. He had a fiery sword and guarded Rhianon. He shielded the princess with his inhuman winged body. And behind his back, she remained unreachable.

“You won’t let anyone near her…” Ron whispered, not at all concerned that anyone would hear his words, addressed into the void.

“What do you mean?” One of the maids who’d obviously wanted to linger at his desk looked suspicious. She, too, was brunette, young and very attractive, but Ron looked at her as if she were nothing.

“Get off,” he didn’t notice her pursed lips and angry look. He just didn’t care. And he’d looked after attractive girls before, especially dark-haired ones. His own blond hair had kept him from being attracted to blondes. With Rianon’s arrival, everything was reversed. Now he looked at the gold and remembered her, and he was also unspeakably tugged by the blade of his knife.

“Mastema,” he whispered the forgotten and forbidden name, and then he remembered the dazzling face that had both attracted and frightened him. “You are the fallen angel. You are son of the Dawn. Was she your concubine or your mistress?”

He himself believed more in the latter. Rhianon had always become his mistress. As fragile and touchingly defenseless as a child, inwardly she was unspeakably strong. And she was also so beautiful that it was impossible to take your eyes off of her. And this was no ordinary earthly beauty to look at and forget, but a manifestation of some divine essence. He could not put into words why exactly Rhianon was above all others, but he felt it. She simply wanted to be worshipped, but it was becoming impossible to live without her. No, Dennitsa didn’t have to push him at all. He would have done it himself. Ron glanced once more at the beguiling blade of the knife. Oh yes, he was no longer afraid of the gallows. The blade gleamed so dangerously and seductively. It was as if it were calling to him as voices playing in the streams of the stream had called before, and he reached for it with his own hand.

Now all that remained was to rent a tiny room on the second floor of the tavern; the money they had left him was enough for that. He would properly ban the door and write a final message. Blood is oozing from under his fingernails. There’s enough of it, and he doesn’t need a pen. He convinced himself of that as he scrawled strange symbols on the door and the walls, but they seemed so clear to him. Someone, perhaps a demon, had left paper and pen in his room. Ron used it, too. The more messages there were, the more likely one of them would reach her. He had done all he could for Rhianon.

The unearthly ones didn’t bother him anymore. One must give one last moment of solitude to one who would then forever belong to them. All he had left now were flashes of memories of the winged warrior and his beautiful ward. It was also his own wounds. He remembered the claws pulling curls away from his ear and against his cheek.

“All you can do now it is die,” Mastema’s whisper still lingered in his ears.

“It is for you, Rhianon,” he finished the last lines with the blood from his slit wrist, the red stained quill sliding across the paper, leaving a wet trail. And then he brought the knife to his other hand as well. By the time the guards found him, he was already dead.

Rhianon counted the remaining ducats. They were all different, but the embossing on them looked equally exquisite. Not money, but a work of art. She would not have dared to part with it. And who, except Prince Rothbert, would want to accept money like that, which no one in any country in the world could pay with, except in some magical land. Having accepted it, the people had only to melt it down. The gold was pure and excellent. But the embossing on it was so strange: roses, a solar eclipse, and wings of an angel… Rhianon flinched when she noticed the latter.

She wondered if she could trade her pendant back from the dwarf for one such coin. That Fate was so strange. There was no negotiating with him. He would just take a coin and cheat. She wished she could just swindle him out of his pendant. But how is it to do that. And where she can find him. If he don’t show himself or don’t answer, you can’t find him. But if he has a hiding place in the cellar where he sleeps, all we have to do is find his hiding place and steal the pendant. And what if he really does sneak into the house from underground? It’s not like she can go underground through a narrow manhole to find him. He might never come again and then the pendant is really lost forever. As she chased Fate away, Rhianon had no idea that she would still have to miss him. Without his help she can’t go back to the castle now. And did she want to go back?

Rhianon weighed the coins in the palm of her hand. They seemed to have been lighter recently. Gold can’t be expected to gain weight.

“Oh, it’s you… come here!” She noticed Fate’s head behind the stand by the spinning wheel. “Don’t be afraid! Come on! Or are you afraid of getting burned?”

Reluctantly he took a few steps forward. He looked ridiculous. Rhianon would have laughed if she’d seen such a funny-looking runt with a grumpy old face, but now she wasn’t amused.

“I have something I can give you in exchange for my jewelry,” she decided to be sly and show him one of the coins first. Rhianon thought that Fate would be rubbing his hands greedily at the sight of such gold, but he gave a startled sob and ran behind the spinning wheel as fast as if he were being chased by wild dogs.

“You’re not a lover of antiquities,” Rhianon said aloud in pity. If the dwarf had behaved like Prince Rothbert, who had expressed the keenest interest in the pieces of gold, it would have been easy to negotiate with him. If he had valued her coins as well, he would have given her a box of jewels in addition to the pendant.

After all, with just a few of those coins from a connoisseur of witchcraft rarities, she’d bought an entire house. Of course, her mind told her that she was too soon to be deceived. She’d managed to impress the evil creatures that lived there, but it would have been hard for anyone else. The walls themselves seemed alive and capable of moving on their own to crush a new occupant. Rothbert had muttered the first time they’d met that the house had driven him out. She hadn’t realized what that meant at the time, but gradually she began to guess.

Whispers seemed to emanate from the walls, patterns in the carpets that moved like snakes, statues or stuffed magical animals that came to life by themselves. It would be enough to drive anyone out of here. Even a wizard, if he couldn’t control the magic that lived here. But Rhianon herself had no intention of leaving. It suited her fine that the front of the house remained invisible to passersby. That way no one could find her, even if they looked for her. Of course, it is unlikely that the guards of Loretta would reach Vinor. And no one would allow them to take over someone else’s territory. Still, living in a cloaked house suited her just fine. No hassle, no need to make friends with neighbors or pay taxes or talk to any of the townspeople. Except that she would have liked to walk down the street. Too bad she couldn’t turn invisible herself.

“She would have woven a cloak for you that would make you invisible.”

Rhianon had grown accustomed to voices from the void, so she paid no attention to the little squeak. The spinning wheel in the corner spun smoothly, as if someone was sitting behind it spinning, but Rhianon tried not to notice it either. But sometimes it seemed to her that the few benches beside the spinning wheel were not empty.

She looked out the window. There were very few passers-by, so that she immediately caught sight of the tall figure of a pilgrim dressed in gray. At first she wondered if it could be Madael. Could it be Madael? But a moment later she realized it wasn’t. She could tell by his gait and the lean, long arms peeking out from between the wide sleeves. They appeared to be covered in sores. Rhianon shuddered, and before she knew it, she dropped a coin from her hands. It rattled like a melody and rolled across the floor, and at that moment the pilgrim looked up at her. There was no doubt; he had seen it, just as he had seen the house itself. Could it be? Rhianon stared at him dumbly, unable to look away. Yes, no doubt, under the gray hood was the face of an angel, but not of Madael. Pale skin slightly scarred, beautiful golden lashes almost covering empty eyes.

“Who are you?” she asked with one lip, but he heard her. A wing under her cloak seemed to flutter open, pointing toward the house with the mourning wreath hanging on the door. Someone had just died there, and a pilgrim was coming out of there.

Rhianon suddenly realized.

“It is Death,” the sores on his hands looked so much like the bubonic plague, only on the pale angelic skin they blurred. What if his wings were just as scarred and ulcerated?

His pale lips moved slightly. From this distance, of course, she couldn’t hear the words, but those clearly sounded in her head.

“What if the next one is someone you know?”

She didn’t feel sorry for her acquaintances at all. On the contrary, she would gladly send an angel of death to Manfred or any of the traitors who had robbed her of her throne. Conrad and Hildegard might as well be covered in bubonic plague. She should not feel sorry for them. Except that the first person she thought of was a young man with blond hair and a kind smile. Ron! For some reason she was frightened. She was almost certain the angel in gray was coming after him.

It only took her a few seconds to run outside. It was frightening to approach the angel who spread disease, but Rhianon was sure that the fire within would protect her from any infection, and even from death.

“Who are you following now?” She asked.

“Perhaps one, maybe all,” he moved his shoulder gracefully. Despite the wounds that covered his skin like pus flowers, he maintained a dignified countenance and an uncanny lack of restraint. He looked as if he were a statue.

Rhianon suddenly realized that no one else on the street could see him, only she alone.

“Perhaps even I have come for you,” the angel whispered, throwing his hand forward slightly. Rhianon recoiled frightened from the ulcerated fingers. No way should she let them touch her.

“Then you were sent by those I chased away,” Rhianon believed they were capable of, the rejected offers of angels cost dearly. “You’d better take this.”

She tossed one of her coins on the sidewalk. He slowly bent down to pick it up. Everything was happening as if in a dream.

“Is it possible to buy off your own death?” She joked.

“Yes, by giving it to someone else,” he answered quite seriously. “Imagine someone close to you dies today. Who would you give in return?”

Rhianon glanced around the street. People hurried past, as if they could sense the danger coming from a wicked-haired girl who stood in the middle of the road and bravely communicated with nothing.

“Well, who should I look to now?”

Rhianon did not know, and probably never would have seen the creature if she had come here without Dominic’s gold. It was all the coins he had enchanted. They gave her the property of seeing the translucent, visceral figure of sickness and paying it off so that it would go away and pounce on someone else.

“It is that florist,” she blurted out at random, pointing to a lush flower stall, near which an elderly man was bustling about with a cartload of geraniums.

“Yes, it is!”

The head under the gray hood nodded understandingly. This is all some kind of wild game. Rhianon backed away from the strange interlocutor, and he had already moved fluidly forward, disappearing in front of the flower counter as if to vanish.

She was still staring after him when a clatter of hooves sounded somewhere nearby. The wagon that had darted around the corner was now hurtling right toward her. Unfortunately, Rhianon noticed it too late. In a panic she covered her face with her hands, not knowing what to do. Let the wagon burst into flames, she begged, right now, along with the driver and the horses. Only the fire she’d summoned hit the shingles on the roof of some house, not the wagon at all. One more moment and she would be crushed. Rhianon braced herself for the worst. It was too late to run, and the danger was still coming.

She would have screamed in a moment, but then a fireball, cleverly thrown, hit its target. It seemed as if a comet had flown down the street. What was it? Was it a lighted ball? Was it a flaming arrow? Either way, the frame of the wagon burst into flames, the burnt horses roaring terrified. Someone grabbed Rhianon by the shoulder and dragged her out of the way, away from the hooves of the rampant horses.

She couldn’t catch her breath for a minute, and then she looked at the masked face, the blond hair, and the uniform of the student of the School of Blacksmithing. It was Clive, of course. He was another ghost.

— How did you do that? — She was impressed by the fireball, as if it had been launched from a catapult. — How? You made it out of my fire. It’s so hard for me, but not for you. Why not?

“It isn’t hard,” his voice echoed, barely audible. “Learn it yourself. You can do it.”

And, of course, after those words he was gone, as a ghost should. Rhianon sighed. Clive was the second person to tell her that. You have to learn your talent by yourself, and no tutor can help you. Rothbert had meant the same thing.

She returned to the house, closed the door tightly, and became alert when she heard singing softly upstairs. It must be the disembodied voices again. The tune was enchanting, but ominous. The tone seemed both mocking and sneering and moody, but touching at the same time. It could be different, like a musical instrument making one or the other sound, and yet it seemed to remain monotonous at the same time. When you heard it, you could imagine the spinning wheel or the wheel of the whole world.

Only evil fairies could sing like that. Rhianon went upstairs, not expecting to see anything out of the ordinary, after all it might just be echoes taunting her from the walls, but the room was not empty. The spinning wheel was still spinning, but now someone was sucking and threading. It was a bright golden thread. Somewhere nearby a spindle was spinning by itself.

Rhianon did not immediately notice the six tiny figures around the spinner. She almost thought they were relatives of Athenais. The little ladies were all dressed in green, and their hair glowed with copper highlights. Heads as red as the bright sun did not even turn toward Rhianon when she entered. Except that the flowing thread suddenly played with shades of scarlet. Rhianon almost threw up. The thread resembled an elongated vein.

“Come in, don’t be shy,” one tiny lady’s voice impressed Rhianon. It really sounded like music. “Your friend left something for you, and we picked it up.”

“Was it my friend?” Rhianon approached hesitantly. The six tiny ladies fascinated her. There were no flowers growing in their hair, no mossy patches or leaves on their skin, but not even Athenais could match them. So cute! Rhianon wanted to touch one of them, but she didn’t want to burn them or burn herself. The spinsters were like hot rays of sunshine, softened a little by the green of their dresses.

“Your friend is a wandering writer. He wrote down the writings of the angels. You can read, and we can’t,” one spinster explained.

“Yes, we spin and weave and sew, but we don’t write or read.”

“And we, too, want to know everything,” said the third.

Meanwhile, neither the singing nor the sliding of the thread ceased.

Rhianon took a strange, blood-stained sheet of paper from the spinster’s hand.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Rhianon stared at the strange symbols. “But I can tell you one thing for certain — no one of my friends could have written such a thing.”

“Are you sure?” she nodded.

She nodded. Then she noticed the blurred lines at the bottom of the page. It didn’t look like a symbol anymore, it looked like a name.

“Someone died today because of you,” the spinster said, almost chanting. She could have avoided the high notes; her voice sounded like a tune as it was.

The yarn slid out of the thread. Now it was all red, not gold. It was quite unusual for yarn.

The red immediately reminded her of something dangerous, but not fire. Strangely enough, this time no flame stirred inside her, excited by the bright colors. But the rich scarlet hue frightened her all the same, made her pull back and hold her breath. The thread stretched like a vein. Fire had nothing to do with it anymore. Scarlet is associated with an even more crushing force than fire: human blood. It flows through the veins like life itself, and without it, there is simply no life. The messages in Rianon’s hands were written in blood. Why did she decide that these writings were messages? Yes, that’s it, it just occurred to her. She imagined the cut veins, the scarlet streak of blood on them, like a thread. It was a thread of life and a thread of death.