Kitabı oku: «Tamlane – Prisoner of the Queen of the Fairies – 2. Release», sayfa 2
«Not him, but the people around him. And there is a scar on your arm…»
Janet only now noticed that Tamlane’s kiss had left a mark on her palm, like a burn in the shape of a bizarre sorcerer’s symbol. In the afternoon, as they said goodbye, Tamlane intercepted and kissed her hand for some reason, as if her lips alone weren’t enough for him.
Ambrose was good, too. He looked at her with such condemnation during the day, and at night he admitted that he himself was at the mercy of some fairy who had long ago abandoned him. No wonder, then, why he’s so eager for Janet’s love to break, too. After all, he hasn’t found reciprocity himself. He is nothing but a jealous man.
«I’ll think about everything you said,» Janet assured her, «but I can’t promise to give up my elf.»
Ambrose nodded, signaling that he respected her decision, however reckless it might seem to him.
«Remember, if you need any advice on how to fight magic, I’m always here for you.»
He bowed to her. He left, and the tapestry beside her seemed to breathe, the figures on it as if they were moving, acting out a scene from the past and trying to warn her about something.
Wishes in Chains
«You first did it because you wanted to, not because you were forced to,» Malachite flew behind Tamlane, noisily discussing his recent intimacy with the mortal girl. «The queen will notice that. You changes, you feel the hope of deliverance in you. Medea Shai will kill us all for this!»
Tamlane did not answer him. What was the use? The emerald colored serpent was only worried about his own precious hide.
«Keeping you prisoner is cruel,» he tried to justify. «Forcing you to sleep with a monster is even more cruel. But those are the rules. Once you’re captured, you don’t get to choose what you want or who you love.»
«You could have kept quiet,» Tamlane said. «And there was no need to peep at me. Don’t you have enough keyholes in the castle? You only used to peep through them. You look into Medea Shae’s bedroom every night, and that is until her dragon hisses fire when he smells a spy.»
«This is your bedroom, too, until a new minion displaces you,» Malachite reminded him reasonably.
«This is my prison,» Tamlane corrected him firmly. That’s what he considered his forced love affair with Medea Shai a prison and slavery.
«But a dragon doesn’t consider it a prison,» the serpent behind him jokingly remarked.
The dragon, because of Tamlane, had to hole up on the roof of the tower that housed the queen’s bedchamber to observe the starry skies all night. Sometimes he would crawl inside and huddle in the boudoir. He wanted to kill his rival, but the queen would not let him.
Everything in the Forest Kingdom, Corund, was subject only to the queen’s wishes. No one here had the right to his will. Medea Shai had tight control over everyone. If she found out someone was dreaming something in secret from her, she would immediately clear his mind with magic. She was good at reading minds, and if any supernatural creatures were not deft enough to hide their thoughts in time, they were subjected to various magical experiments in her hands and open harassment by her dragon retinue. Medea Shai loved to deprive her unfaithful even at the thought of her subjects of reason, memory, and hope, and they were transformed into helpless puppets that she treated as broken toys. Someone who lost his mind after her sorcery, she then banished from the kingdom to be mocked by mortals. After all, humans were so fond of catching and displaying creatures at the fair that looked something like funny animals with wings and tails and fins, even if combined with an elegant elf’s head.
Tamlane grew sad, thinking that if Janet managed to get him out of Corund without fully casting a spell, he himself would pass for such an amusing beast in people’s eyes. The green sprouts on his skin alone make him a peculiar creature.
Lily had it a lot harder. She had turned into a tree. She had been a clever and resourceful girl in life, but she had no idea how to escape now. She could only watch in silence as everyone who was lazy picked leaves from its branches and moan in pain. Other than moaning, the tree made no sound. But Tamlane somehow believed that Lily had not lost her ability to speak. Her graceful lips and eyelids were clearly visible against the wooden head. It seemed as if she was just about to open her mouth to say something. Since the tree stood right in the hallway, Lily could hear everything the secretive fairies were gossiping about. All their secrets were instantly known to her. If Tamlane could talk to her, she would probably retell him some overheard secrets that might prove useful to the rescue. But the wooden lips were so still. It was as if it was hard for them to move, though they tried.
The queen of the fairies was discussing something with the hideous black creatures that scurried beneath her feet like pageboys. She noticed her knight’s appearance in the hall, and smiled slyly at him. The large scarlet gem that grew from the skin of her forehead flashed mysteriously. It was rumored to have sprouted in her skin when she had seized power in Corund and now replaced her third eye, which was, of course, all-seeing. Tamlane did not know how true these rumors were, but Medea Shai’s power over magical beings was truly limitless. Tamlane was the only one who resisted her influence. He wasn’t exactly a magical creature. His humanity had not yet died in him. No matter how hard the queen tried to take away his memory that he had once been human, she failed. He was the only one she had not yet succeeded in taking away his mind. She was, of course, not happy about that. It was more convenient for her to turn the captive knight into her obedient plaything. But Tamlane resisted her, and their life together in the realm of fairies was turning to hell. The black dragon was jealous, and the fairies’ eyes awakened a fierce desire to rival the queen, which they, knowing the queen’s violent temper, did their best to conceal, but the atmosphere still heated up.
The elves hated Tamlane, sensing in him a strong rival. They all wanted his wonderful dragon-body armor, but they burned themselves on it. But he had managed to take them himself once. And he paid the price. Not right away! In the beginning he won the war. His enemies fled from him. Legends began to circulate about him that he was invincible. And some strange creature on the battlefield stood hunched over and listened. Tamlane did not pay attention to him at the time, mistaking him for a cripple who had come to beg from the victors or search to see if anything of value was hidden in the pockets of the dead. Marauders were not usually welcome, but he did not touch one crippled creature, and then regretted it. The creature with the red eyes and rags was the spy of a fairies’ queen. And the black bird with the puffy tail and corundum in its forehead, flying over the field and as if counting dead bodies, was Medea Shai’s personal spy. Even then one could detect laughter in her cawing.
«You are a knight in dragon’s armor. You are a dragon knight,» she cawed. «You will not win forever. Because there is no knight my people cannot defeat.»
She was almost mistaken. His troop, with which he was returning through the forest, was attacked. And he almost defeated them all. Yes, they couldn’t be killed. Superbeings live on, even with their heads cut off. Arms, legs, paws, and tails reattach as soon as you cut them off. And they have to look for their heads blindly. He’d cut their heads off all of them and run away while they put them on. Probably try to burn them all. Though they didn’t burn all the way through in the fire, either, he was doing them harm. If Medea Shai had not descended on a dragon from behind the clouds and blown a handful of sleeping charms in his face, he would not have given up so easily. He wouldn’t have expected more danger from the beautiful lady than from a whole company of evil spirits.
Now this most beautiful powerful lady had become his mistress. Such a companion every knight could only dream of, but not Tamlane. A love imposed by compulsion tormented him more than shackles. Perhaps if Medea Shai had behaved tactfully and not forced her dark passion and intimacy upon him at once, he would have loved her in time. But to love a being who forces intimacy on you and seeks to control all your desires is too much!
But for all those who have not yet managed to force a love bed, and such gathered in the lobby of her palace most of them, Medea Shai caused sincere admiration. She was feared, but her truly magical beauty still inspired involuntary respect. Every fairy secretly wished to be like the queen, every elf dreamed of sharing a bed with her.
Thierry, the elves’ chief with whom Tamlein had not so long ago clashed in the woods, had been watching her dusky majesty unceasingly. He had longed for a queen for a long time, but he had never had a chance to be in her bed. Everyone knew that Medea Shai preferred to take only dragons as lovers. They are her equal in strength and power. So no one would serve her better than them. But Thierry was strong too. He was the strongest of the elves in Corund. He kept hoping… At first the dragons, scaly and clawed and fire-breathing, had bypassed him, he tolerated that. But when Tamlane appeared and took the bed to which Thierry himself had been aiming as easily as a dragon breathed no fire. Medea Shae’s black lover had not even had time to breathe a flame, and he had already been displaced by a mortal. Thierry hated him fiercely. It was hatred he cherished in his soul like a precious flower. Even now he looked as if he was ready to kill Tamlane at any moment if the queen commanded it. But she was in no hurry to give such an order. And Thierry grew more and more angry. For all his elfish beauty, he looked more and more like not an elf, but a chain dog who was not allowed to bite to death a burglar who had broken into a house.
He regarded Tamlane as the worst evil in the universe and wished to drive his rival out of Corund. In the latter, Tamlane would gladly agree with him. He himself had dreamed of escaping from here. If only it was that easy… Medea Shai’s charms were as strong as her blind love for her own captive.
Before he knew it, she was there. She knew how to move subtly and quickly. Her long, spidery fingers stroked his shoulders. The black moths that flew over her head were like a living veil.
«I can feel the resistance in you,» Medea Shai said to him, kissing his cheeks, his temples, his lips. «It’s as if you don’t belong to me. Your consciousness is somewhere far away now. Not with me! Don’t you like being my prisoner? Look,» she turned him to face the retinue of elves. «Any one of them would give anything to be you, in my heart, in my bed, beside me. And you act like you’re not happy.»
She frowned gracefully. Her flying black eyebrows resembled the curve of wings. The skin of her face was white as a shell. The intricate relief of her cheekbones made her face look even more like a shell that had been carelessly painted over with feminine features. The red stone in her forehead seemed merely a pendant to a glittering crown, but in fact it grew straight out of her skin. Tamlane knew this because more than once at night he had touched it and felt its heat. Not once did the fairies’ queen fall asleep in his arms. She didn’t sleep at all. Forever awake was her habit. And yet she was never tired. She didn’t want to eat, she didn’t want to drink, she didn’t want to sleep, but she encouraged the pleasures of love. Her embrace always resembled captivity. Tamlane wished to break free of it and could not.
«What is so special about me that your elves don’t have?» He asked the question so often that the words had become a fable. «Why am I so different from everyone else that you have chosen and tormented me?»
«Is it a torture? I give you all my love.»
«It is a black love,» he wanted to strangle her, but he could not, her throat seemed iron, and all the attempts to kill her were like a love game.
«You won’t get any better on earth. The love of a fairies’ queen goes only to a select few.»
«They are elves, not humans.»
«But you are my beautiful mortal, and I love you,» she ran her webbed hand over his cheek, «though you are rebellious.»
«That’s what attracted you to me in the first place. You love to tame wild dragons and harness them to your chariot.»
«And I love to tame wild elves and make them my lovers, but I like mortals better. Why? I do not know myself.»
«Let me go!»
«Why? Your old father forgot you long ago.»
«He wasn’t an old man when I left on that hunt. Or was it a fight,» he could no longer remember much himself. Medea Shai’s potions were corroding the fragile human memory. When he had forgotten, he would no longer claw his way out of her captivity, but would be an empty shell, fit only to give pleasure to the queen of the fairies. If only that moment had never come. Better to die. But she would not let him die. He had already tried. There is no escape from the captivity of the fairies’ queen, dead or alive.
Medea Shai gently stroked his forehead, as if testing when the man’s memory will be gone forever.
«I love you very much indeed, my beautiful knight. I remember when you rode your horse through the thicket at the head of your frail human troop and without your helmet. Your hair was like the sun, and I knew in that moment, as I flew over the forest road, that you must be mine.»
The wretched helmet! If it hadn’t scratched his cheek, Tamlane wouldn’t have taken it off and drawn the fairies’ queen’s attention. The unusual helmet had been given to him by a legendary warrior, his ancestor, and was kept in the castle, a rare chosen few could touch it and not cut themselves on the dragon spikes on it. Tamlane was able to take it and fight in it, but ended up hurting himself. Apparently the helmet was not meant for him. He took it off and was captured. The creepy creatures flooded the thicket and pounced on his warriors so quickly and with such ferocity that it was almost impossible to resist them. Tamlane killed many of them in battle, but they rose from the dead even more embittered, reattached their severed limbs, and raged on to attack again.
«Love is an amazing thing. When you see someone, you realize that there is no other creature in the world so beautiful. I was flying on a black dragon over the forest when I first saw you, and the dragon realized that he would never lie with me again in a bed of love, strewn with rose petals in the king’s bedroom.»
«That’s probably why he’s so angry with me,» Tamlane surmised. The dragon has been watching him forever, even now slumbering under the door of the hall, waiting for an opportunity to burn him in passing. «He hates me and wants to incinerate me.»
«That is impossible! After your nights with me you have become invulnerable to fire.»
Tamlane did not believe her. There is a fire that can strike down a magical creature as well. The supernatural fire of the flame elves, but they dance in the hills too far from here to be reached. He had already tried, but it was painful to go farther than the edge of the forest. Medea Shai’s power was pulling him back with invisible chains.
«You wanted me to spare the guilty servants. I did. They were not executed. Out of love for you, I am capable of much.»
«Then let me go back to the humans.»
«Leave me?»
«Yes.»
«Out of my kingdom?» It was as if she was playing around, asking questions.
«To the world of humans, where I was born. I am not a creature of your world, you have no right to keep me here,» he pulled her hair, but it became living snakes that hissed around his arm.
«Don’t resist! You can’t leave. You have been with me too long. Legend has it that a man who stays too long in a magic realm will grow old and die before he sets foot on mortal land again.»
«I have not been with you long enough to be an old man. I was still young, if I’d lived my life in the mortal world.»
Medea Shai sighed.
«Don’t be so torn back! There’s nothing there that I couldn’t give you either. It’s just that things are better and more magical for me.»
There’s a girl, Tamlane wanted to say, but he prudently didn’t. Medea Shai has no reason to know about his new crush. Lily, turned into a tree because of her sympathy for him, was still groaning heavily in the hallway of the magical palace. Various dwarves and trolls plucked leaves from her, hurting her. And once he caught a whole group of laughing fairies doing this. They were even breaking branches off of it. It was the same as ripping off a man’s fingers, for the tree trunk had become her body. Medea Shai had punished her like that for falling in love with Tamlane. Janet cannot be allowed to suffer the same fate.
If a fairy queen is even capable of destroying a rival he never desired for one liking, what will she do to the girl he has already managed to fall in love with?
Fairy Girlfriend
Janet felt lonely because she herself knows about the world of other creatures and others don’t know about them and can’t keep up the conversation. The maidens were playing in the garden, but she would not join them. They would not have been thrilled, either, to be approached by a girl who was branded by everyone as a lost, seduced by elves, et cetera, et cetera. People judge too superficially.
«If only I had a friend who understood me in everything,» she made a wish, looking out the window, and a tiny fairy appeared on her desk. It was as if she had been formed out of thin air. She had wings and a dress that looked like a flower. Her face and body resembled that of a grown-up girl, though she was no bigger than her little finger.
«Well, did Tamlane send you?» Janet wondered.
«Not him. I came to get you, and I decided to live here. I’m actually a garden fairy, not a forest fairy. I’m cozier here, and I can be your companion.»
«Were you the one who spoke to me yesterday and stuck a lost pin right into my pillow?»
The fairy nodded cheerfully.
«Don’t do that again,» Janet asked. «I might have pricked myself.
«But you didn’t prick on a live rose,» objected the fairy.
«I pricked oh her congeners,» said Janet, showing her scratches and wounds.
«Go to the water elves. They can heal anything with water.»
«I don’t believe it.»
«They can heal anything with water, but they can do irreparable damage, too. Water in their hands is both a cure for all diseases and a terrible weapon.»
The conversation with the little one began to take interesting turns. You can learn a lot about the magical world and its inhabitants from this little one.
«What about the fire elves?» Janet wondered. «What can they do with their fire?»
«Oh, they’re not to be messed with,» the fairy said. «They burned my flowers long ago. Cannes. They grew by the waterfall. They called me Canna, too, after the flowers I lived in. So it’s nice to meet you.»
«I am glad to meet you too!» Janet wanted to ask the little girl a lot of things, but she hesitated.
«Are you in love with Tamlane?» The fairy shamelessly inquired.
Janet nodded.
«It’s dangerous!»
«So what is of it?» Janet was getting tired of everyone warning her about the danger coming from him or anyone else holding him captive.
But the fairy, as it turned out, had something else entirely in mind.
«Your father would not approve of this choice. He himself once stole a mortal from her husband and now, as a sign of remorse, tries to dissuade others from repeating his daring deed. Ridiculous! He did it himself, and he tells others that mortals and immortals must no longer make love.»
«You’re confused,» Janet interrupted her. «My father is a mere mortal and so is my mother. None of them are fairies or elves. We are human. It’s Tamlane who looks like an elf. Well, at least in part.»
«I’m not confused,» the fairy frowned. «I’ve been around a lot longer than you, and I know a lot more. But you only know what you’ve been told. That’s all you know. How could you know who your parents were? You weren’t smart when you were born, but I’ve seen it all and understood it all. And I’ve seen your parents on secret dates, too.»
«That’s enough,» Janet didn’t like hearing lies. Even if a fairy liked to make up all sorts of stories, she shouldn’t pass them off as truth. It wouldn’t make the conversation any more interesting.
«By the way, your friends are coming to get you. A knight named Ambrose has persuaded them to take you to the village to see an old hag who is an illegal witch, and often gets in our way. He thinks it is time to rid you of the child you conceived by an elf, who may well be born a monster, or at any rate a creature with unusual and dangerous powers for mankind. I myself have seen such children from the union of humans and elves, they are capable of destroying entire cities with their spells, and they do not understand why they do it themselves. They are driven by instinct, which is why they are called monsters in both our worlds and yours. But sometimes they can be very beautiful.»
Janet’s ears perked up from her babble. Soon Nyssa and Latonia actually came after her and began to persuade her to go to the village with them. It was as if they had unexpectedly gone there themselves to see some kind of celebration. They did not mention that Ambrose had sent them. Janet thought it was nice to have a fairy friend who could fly over and spy on everything and report back to her. So getting to know the tiny creature seemed useful.
All the way to the village, Latonia tried to hide her face, which was swollen and puffy, as if its features were being washed away by water. She hid all her other previously naked body parts: arms, shoulders, even her fingers, under her long, wide-sleeved outfit, buttoned up to her ears. She would also do well to put a veil over her face, so that no one would notice that her skin had turned a watery color, and her ears and eyebrows resembled the curves of seashells. Had the water elves bewitched her? Janet looked at her with apprehension and sympathy.
Nyssa, on the other hand, had been looking in the mirror she’d once bought from Quentin the whole way. Was that unusual, too? She’d never been so narcissistic that she couldn’t tear herself away from her own reflection for even a moment. She even seemed to talk to it. Her whisper, addressed to the mirror, could be heard all the way. How could you talk to your own reflection? It certainly wouldn’t have occurred to Janet. Talking to Tamlane or the fairy Kanna was much more pleasant. Nyssa didn’t think so. Her whispers reeked of passion, and in response, from the mirror, it was as if someone was whispering something. The voice was different from Nyssa’s. Janet noticed that the golden face of the supernatural being in relief on the back of the mirror sometimes seemed alive and moving. It even winked at her. Janet immediately looked away. Magic objects can be dangerous. And this mirror definitely contained some kind of magic. No wonder it did. After all, Quentin had sold it to her, and he had something to do with the magic world himself. Maybe she should have warned Nyssa that the thing in her hands wasn’t easy. But Nyssa was so engrossed in her dialogue with the mirror that she paid no attention to anything else.
On the way, Latonya began to feel sick. They had to stop the carriage for her to go out to the stream and get drunk. The girl complained that she couldn’t stand being away from water for long periods of time.
«It gets too stuffy, as if I’m going to melt,» she excused herself for her behavior as they drove on. Her behavior was strange, indeed. No well-mannered lady would stoop to the stream and drink directly from it like a doe at a watering hole. Latonya didn’t even ask to have the goblet, so she hurried to the water.
The old fortune-teller in the village received Latonia first and spent very little time alone with her. Judging by the look on the girl’s face as she left her, it was clear that she could not be helped. Nyssa did not go to the fortune teller. She stood by the roadside and talked to the mirror. Her curiosity about fortune-telling ended the moment she found herself holding a magical object. And she had once warned Janet to beware of magic and not to be friends with elves. What a hypocrite. Kanna flew beside her and laughed at the affected creature. The fairy was so tiny that no one paid any attention to her. As the earl’s daughter’s new friend, she followed her everywhere, while remaining, herself, unnoticed by anyone.
For some reason Janet was afraid to go to the fortune-teller. The last time she had been here was when she was a child, with her mother. She remembered the shabby little house, standing in the middle of nowhere, just over the cliff. It was dangerous to live here. If you stepped any farther away from the house, you’d fall straight down into a crevasse. But the old witch, as the locals had dubbed her, was obviously happy with the location.
Nothing had changed inside the house. It was dark even in the daytime, the hearth was burning, a cauldron of some kind of brew was hanging on chains from the ceiling, and the skins of slaughtered animals were everywhere.
«You came at last,» Belladonna seemed to be waiting for her. She approached Janet, shaking her gray hair, and suddenly placed a wrinkled hand on the girl’s waist.
«I knew it! Just like your mother. Do you really want to get rid of him?»
Janet jerked away, and backed away a little. She stumbled back toward the cauldron and stopped. The smell from the cauldron was not appetizing; it wasn’t cooking food, but something that smelled disgusting and irritated her nostrils. It even seemed to Janet that something shapeless but alive was reaching for her from the cauldron.
«I only wanted to see you.»
The old woman gave a distrustful snort.
«No one around here wants to see the witch again,» the old woman grinned incredulously.
«Are you a witch?»
The old woman was even embarrassed by Janet’s direct gaze.
«Oh, your lover is strong. Even now, in your presence, I can feel his green claws strangling me,» she complained. «I wish you hadn’t come.»
«I didn’t want to,» Janet admitted honestly. «I only wanted to reassure the people in the castle. They would have thought I was cured after they’d come to see you.»
«Is it from your love of elves, from your friendship with water and fire, from the handsome man in the thicket, or from your magical bloodline. What exactly would they want to heal you from? Almost none of these things are curable. Even the temptation you succumbed to in the thicket cannot be cured. You can only banish its fetus,» she ran her stubby finger along Janet’s waist again.
«I don’t think I want to cure anything. Love is not a disease.»
«But you’d better think of it,» said Belladonna, «for Aspasia spoke of you as a young, naive creature who thinks of nothing but amusement. And thus you lose a great deal. You’re naive! For example, I could drink all your youth and strength out of you right now, and you wouldn’t even think anything of it. Everyone would think you’d have withered away from your illness. But your friend from the forest won’t let me. It’s good to have a lover who cares about you and can do anything. Well, almost anything. If he was king of the elves and fairies, Amaranta’s story would be the same as yours. He would have come after you to the earl’s castle with his army of evil spirits.»
«Who is Aspasia?» Janet was more alarmed by the name than by the old hag’s chatter.
«She is my sister. She’s in Rodolit now.
«She is a fortune teller,» Janet guessed. But how could that be? Belladonna was an ancient, gray-haired old woman, and suddenly she had a young, attractive sister. Yes, she’s old enough to be her granddaughter.
«Don’t think I’m lying,» Belladonna warned her, sensing her doubts. «You see, one abuses magic and feeds on other people’s powers more often than the other. But I can do something, too.»
She turned for a moment toward the hearth, where orange sparks flickered. Her body trembled, and she turned back to Janet, already young and enchanted. Even the fortuneteller in Rodolit was not so pretty.
«Have you seen enough?» Belladonna was a moment later a hunchbacked old woman with long gray hair. «I don’t like to deceive people for a long time.»
«Does Aspasia like it?» Janet inquired.
«She’s an aristocrat,» said Belladonna. «She appreciates fancy things. She wants revenge on the Queen of the Fairies for petty quarrels that aren’t worth a damn.»
«How do you feel about the fairies’ queen?» For some reason Janet became curious.
«I’d rather know how you feel about her. After all, she does whatever she wants with your lover. She owns him like he owns you. And she can destroy you both unless your father comes to the rescue.»
«And what can a mortal earl do against a fairies’ queen?»
«Am I talking about an earl?» Belladonna was greatly surprised. «I am talking about the king of the elves.»
Janet almost laughed.
«Don’t you know your mother is with him now?»
«You’re confused about something.»
«Girl, I never confuse anything. Not the past, not the future. I know everything,» with these words the old fortune-teller took out a roll of some kind and put it in front of Janet. The roll was moving. Claws were coming out of it.
«Take this! It’s your mother’s bastard and King Dagda’s bastard! They both don’t want it. You can take him with you.»
«You don’t like it, you’ll have to take care of others. Medea Shai has bastards, too.»
With what a sneer she said it, as if she hoped to hurt the girl’s feelings.
«You should know that she bore children to her mortal captive!»
Janet ran out of the distraught fortuneteller’s cottage, fearing that the creepy creature from the roll might come out and chase her.
She was leaving the village in a hurry, and she suggested she stop at Rodolit on her way. We must try to find Aspasia there and get her to refute all this terrible news. Unless the fortuneteller had left town, she could dissuade Janet that she was the old witch’s sister and reassure her that she didn’t agree with all this nonsense.
