Kitabı oku: «Youngest Son of the Water King. A bride for the water prince», sayfa 3

The Green Diva

The ghastly face she’d seen in the pond wouldn’t leave her mind. The nose of the gondola drew a smooth line of spray on the water of the narrow channel, and she saw the face of the green prophetess.

The gondola was luxurious, but without an inner cabin with a canopy in which to hide. She had to sit under the supervision of a page, who turned out to be a gondolier. He handled the oar very skillfully.

Desdemona was accustomed to see gondolas exclusively with a cabin, over which the canopy spread like a tent. Where else would noblemen hide from the servants if not in the closed cabin of the gondola? Apparently, it was to remain under the supervision of the gondolier’s page during the short voyage. He explained that this canal would take them straight to the house where her stepmother was staying. It was very unusual. There were no direct channels to anywhere. They branched off, flowing into others. It was hard to swim to the target. Sounds like a lie. But the narrow channel did wind in an endless ribbon, going forward. Daffodils and irises grew along the sides of the canal. The gilded face of a female jellyfish on the nose of the gondola squinted unkindly at Desdemona. Just like a living thing. Once it even seemed to wink at her.

The pageboy’s hands looked like toad’s feet with webbing between the fingers. Maybe he’s a freak.

“You’re not sailing toward your destination, you’re sailing away from it,” came a hiss from the water. A green vapor rose above the gondola, as if the water had become a swamp. Desdemona saw overboard a familiar face framed by vipers and shrieked.

“Don’t be frightened!” The henchman was paddling as if nothing had happened.

“Did you hear that too?” She almost jumped on the spot. Why is he so indifferent? Does he have a weapon on him?

“They’re green divas.”

“What do you mean?” Desdemona’s never heard that before.

“Divas are creatures of the swamps,” the boy explained coolly. “They are usually women who look like water gods and can see the future. There are also male divas, but they are dangerous monsters. They live in the jungle. It’s risky to meet them. Swamp divas sometimes crawl into the water to muddy it and foretell bad luck.”

And he says it so calmly! Desdemona’s heart grew cold.

“Can they overturn the boat?”

“They might sink it, but they won’t. I’m with you, and I know them. You’re safe.”

That’s great! She has a child bodyguard. Maybe it’s his age that makes him so brave about the fairy tale creatures he sees. Children don’t know how dangerous fairy tales can be.

“How old are you?”

“I am at least a few hundred years old. What’s it to you?” snapped at the henchman.

“Don’t take offense! I understand perfectly well that you need to eat at any age, so no one is too young to work.”

“But they tell me that I am too old to work on the land,” said the henchman sullenly. “I’m going to work at the palace for the last hundred years, and then I’m going to be a boatman. I’ll make sure that not too many Aquillanians are dragged to the bottom by mermaids. It’s Prince Moran’s decree. Oh, I mean the King of Aquilania.”

“It is the new king. You know him personally?”

“I was talking.”

The page was sadly silent. He didn’t look old at all. He was a boy with a boy’s face and brown skin. Not white skin, but greenish for some reason. He must have had swamp fever when he was a baby. It turned his skin green. Many children died of it in the cradle. They said they were stolen by mermaids.

The henchman also looked as if he’d been briefly kidnapped and then brought back to earth by watermen.

“Sometimes I forget myself,” he tried to excuse himself. “Actually, I’m not very good with my head. I can’t remember certain human traditions. For example, you should never say what you think. It’s considered impolite on land.”

“But we’re on the water now. Say what you want. What did you say about the swamp divas? How accurate are their prophecies?”

“One hundred percent,” he said without thinking.

Desdemona was frightened.

“And what motivates them to surface to predict people’s fate?”

Now the henchman wondered.

“It is common to ask about summoning them to ask them their fate.”

“There were enough fortune-tellers in the market square.”

“There are fortune-tellers everywhere. But a diva will only make an accurate prophecy if you call her across a lake or a pond. You need clean water.”

“It is curious,” Desdemona shivered, remembering the vision in the garden.

“One must throw a gold coin into the pond and drop one’s own blood. Then a green diva will appear from the water and utter a prediction. But someone in the family will die after that. The death of a relative is the price for her summoning.”

“But no one in my family has died, except for the maid.”

“Did you summon her?”

“I don’t think so. She did show up unexpectedly, just showing up in the pond.”

“Well, then why are you worried?”

“I’m afraid of everything. Especially my stepmother’s frivolity and that my brothers will drown during the long voyage.”

“All you young human ladies are so fragile and fearful,” the henchman said with a careless snicker.

So much was it for her gratitude for pouring out her soul to him. One should never be frank with servants. Stepmother was right. She often lectured Desdemona. Her admonitions made her ears ache.

“Here we go!”

The canal, oddly enough, flowed right to the doorstep of the small cottage. The water collected in a small pool around the steps leading up to the porch. The base of the staircase was underwater, and on the door instead of a handle hung a ring embedded in a bas-relief in the shape of some terrifying sea creature. Desdemona was even frightened.

The gondola docked at the half-submerged steps.

“That’s it! I must go back to the palace,” the page helped her out of the gondola.

What hands he has! Desdemona shuddered at the touch of webbed fingers partially covered with scales. Even swamp fever doesn’t leave marks like that.

“Thank you for bringing it,” she said forcefully. You have to be polite.

“Thank the king. He’s the one who told me to escort you home.”

“Who did it?”

That sounds too fanciful. More like a corny boy’s joke. Who doesn’t know that every poor provincial girl dreams of attracting the king’s attention? Desdemona turned sharply with the intention of reprimanding the pageboy for his insolence, but both he and the gondola were already gone. The canal they had come from had somehow disappeared with them. Only a path overgrown with daffodils led to the cottage. There was not even a puddle near the cottage.

Swamp Prophetess

Candida rented a small but cozy two-story cottage. There was somewhere to stay while waiting for the official festivities after the coronation, which all the nobles were expected to attend. Those who were richer either had their own houses in the capital or rented entire mansions. This was not their case with their stepmother! Their cottage was surrounded by wild honeysuckle, balsam and rose hips. It was a picturesque place, but too far from the city.

Desdemona thought someone was hiding in the attic windows. It was all imagination. She pulled the ring. The door creaked nastily. The cramped hallway was dark. None of the servants greeted her.

But Desdemona mistook a green horned silhouette with many octopus-like limbs standing at the window, blocking out all the light, for a coat rack. And when she realized who was in front of her, she recoiled like a scalded woman.

The green diva, erect at full height, resembled a giantess from the swamp. Snakes swarmed in a halo around her head. There were several arms. From her back grew something like numerous slimy tails. They were fanning over her neck.

Desdemona did not know what to think. The creature in front of her was both magnificent, like an ancient deity, and horrible, like a character from children’s horror stories.

“You ate my whole family? Why is this place empty? It’s not a swamp! Go back! Or crawl away!”

The green face grinned snidely. Yellow eyes glittering yellow stared at the girl.

This was not the diva who had spoken to her from the pond. The face, though similar, was different. It would be beautiful if it weren’t for the frightening lumpy growths, like gills, and the predatory gaze. In addition, a third eye suddenly opened on her forehead beneath her snake hair. It was not yellow, but red.

“You are nineteenth Priestess,” the diva held out one clawed green hand. “As soon as you join us in the temple, the whole country will sink. All you need to do is perform the ritual.”

Desdemona staggered back, hit a large floor candlestick with her back, and knocked it over. It was better than if she had fallen herself. The floor beneath her feet was slippery. A viscous green sludge coated the floorboards.

“Do you know you’ve been prepared as a sacrifice?” The diva moved all her long octopus limbs, but she dared not touch Desdemona. “If you are opened and refreshed during the ritual, with your death the canal will close for us for another nineteen years, and the country will not sink. But a new ruler has come. Darunon has the right not to sacrifice you, but to perform another ritual. Then everything will sink, but you will survive and become the favorite priestess of the sea god.”

“Go away!”

Desdemona didn’t believe her anymore. It sounded too much like nonsense.

“If you don’t get to the temple on time and stay alive, the whole country will sink before the new moon. If you find a lover instead of becoming a priestess, the country will sink too. No choice!”

It doesn’t make sense. Desdemona was about to say so, but the diva’s silhouette began to fade, as if the paint had been wiped away with a rag.

The diva vanished as if the damp air had absorbed her, but a large muddy puddle remained on the floor, just where the guest had been standing. So it wasn’t a dream.

“What are you doing here?”

The sudden appearance of the stepmother behind her back was even more unpleasant than the visit of the swamp creature. Desdemona was suddenly enraged at her arrogance and disdain. How could you abandon her in the square in the middle of a storm!

“Actually, I live where my family does, which is, for the moment, you alone.”

Brothers at sea can be left out for now. As soon as they return, Candida will send them somewhere else. She usually chooses them to go where it’s more dangerous. Stepchildren are a burden to a young stepmother. A stepdaughter is a double burden.

“How did you get in?”

“The door was unlocked.”

“Was it?”

“Do you lock yourself out from me?”

No answer to the rhetorical question. Candida grumbled unhappily.

“Why is there a puddle on the floor? Didn’t you dry your dresses after you got caught in the rain?”

“I almost drowned. It was a mess in the square when you left me there.”

“It’s a shame you came back alive,” Candida said sincerely. “This house is cramped without you.”

There was no reason to resent her stepmother! At least she speaks sincerely. Lies – that’s what offends.

Candida was always short of money. This time, although it was enough to rent a cottage, it wasn’t enough for a maid.

“Come on! You can help me unbuckle my corset now that you’re here.”

Desdemona brushed her wavy blond hair with a brush and grudgingly recognized her stepmother as a beauty. Although it was hard not to be pampered and luxurious, sitting idle at home.

Candida seemed to have read her mind.

“Rumor has it that the young king is very handsome. He’s looking for a worthy bride right now. Do you think he might like me?”

“Don’t forget you’re already married.”

“Yes, to your sickly father,” Candida said with a bored look. “He may not last long, but the trouble is that kings are only suited to innocent maidens. It would be good to pretend that you are my stepmother, not the other way around.”

Desdemona almost dropped her brush in surprise.

“We’re almost the same age. And you have such a lean look, as if you were almost a widow.”

How like Candida to sin and be hypocritical, even though she doesn’t realize she’s doing wrong.

“The King is no petty aristocrat from the provinces. If the deception is discovered, you will be executed for such an adventure,” Desdemona informed her in a mentor-like tone. Usually it is the heads of families who teach their children and stepdaughters wisdom, but it is the other way around. The stepmother’s head is as naughty as a five-year-old girl.

Candida shivered as if she was cold.

“I’ve heard that execution in Aquilania is a gruesome process where the criminal is tied up and left by the water, from which something crawls out… Well, not even a corpse is left on the shore.”

“You will probably be dragged away as a traitor by the sea king and put on the throne instead of execution, breaking the treaty with the Earthlings and not drowning you. Legends say it’s happened before.”

“Do you think it exists?”

“Is it a sentence where a traitor is handed over to the sea creatures for execution?”

“No, you are fool! Is it a sea king?”

Candida polished her already polished fingernails.

“I don’t know him, so I can’t guarantee it,” Desdemona cut her off.”

“You’re so boring.”

“And you, having a stepdaughter of the same age, wanted to get a girlfriend?”

“Well, at least an interesting companion. You’re a mess. You’re good enough to sacrifice to the sea god.”

“Are you sure they sacrifice priestesses?”

“Only a few, I think.”

Desdemona’s heart sank.

“Have they done something wrong?”

“Probably,” Candida shrugged her lily-like shoulders. “I do not know exactly, I am not particularly religious.”

Surprising! Only an immoral person could cling to a wealthy old man. Faith and dignity aren’t always the same thing. Isn’t it immoral to sacrifice human beings to the sea? That’s what believers do, isn’t it?

There was a knock at the door. The brass ring was jingling.

“Come down and see who’s there,” the stepmother commanded her, as if she were a servant. “But first look out of the window, and don’t unlock the door at once, or you’ll let in a gang of robbers.”

“Robbers don’t usually knock on doors. We don’t have anything to steal, except outfits.”

Candida just hummed something. The sight of sea creatures crawling through windows and doors didn’t bother her. Desdemona, on the other hand, dreaded the reappearance of the divas.

But this time it was someone in menial livery. He stood at the door. A triangle with armorial patches made him look like a royal ambassador. Well, well! He had come from the palace, and his fist had dented the door as if a sea monster had knocked on it.

As it turned out, the messenger brought news from the king’s castle. His hand was indeed ugly and overpowered. Blunt black claws pierced the glove. Desdemona took the letter with distaste. There was a dirty mark on the parchment. But the seal at the bottom was definitely royal. It was an invitation to an event that looked suspiciously like a viewing! She was taken aback.

“Put on your evening dress!” commanded the messenger in an unpleasant, husky voice.

“Is it right now?” Candida, who had come downstairs, yawned with the urge to sleep.

The creature grinned at the sight of her. The stepmother herself also had a frightened look. She wasn’t used to lackeys that looked more like the underwater race.

“Such ambassadors would be delivering letters now? It’s immoral. I will complain.”

“To whom do you complain? They say the King is like them.”

“It is slander!”

“It is as you wish!” Desdemona shrugged her shoulders.

She herself had always felt like a servant. They told her to pack, so she had to choose the best dress and hurry to the palace.

The royal council

The king’s tentacles braided the table. They were his tentacles, not the monster that had supposedly been there when the young king had crushed the foreign armada. Theon looked at the new king with distaste. The handsome face resembled a mask that had been placed over the slimy body of a morgen. Moran could tame with a single glance, not to mention long, strong tentacles that had knocked the weapons from all the conspirators who were unhappy that the king had crawled in from the sea. All those who had something against him instantly shut up and pretended not to be familiar with their own bodyguards, who were just preparing to use swords and sabers. The corpses of several assassins sent to kill the king were found disheveled under a balcony on the coast.

Theon was merely the keeper of the royal seal, not a minister. He had no claim to coup or power, but a ruler with an angel’s head, a monster’s body, and superhuman cruelty immediately became deeply distasteful to him.

It was as if the sea itself had been let into the council chamber. The round table, covered with the arms of Aquilania, was entangled in a net of tentacles that crawled out from beneath the floor of the royal robe. Moran’s face would have resembled a frescoed angel, were it not for the penetrating gaze of blue eyes beneath heavy eyelids. It looked as if the head of a living statue had been sewn onto the body of a monster, hastily covered with a purple silk robe.

Theon didn’t want to give him the royal seal, but the king’s hand was incredibly strong, even stronger than all his tentacles.

“This is now mine!” He unceremoniously took the seal away.

It was just a toy to him, like a rod and scepter. They must have different symbols of power in the sea.

Theon wouldn’t be surprised if his honorable position as seal keeper was abolished right now, but Moran was in no hurry to introduce the brutal mores of the Undersea Kingdom to the court.

Strangely, he breathed air just like everyone else and was in no hurry to take a dip in the water. There were no water tanks in the council chamber, by the way. So water creatures are capable of living on land like humans. Curious, how long could they go without water? Theon glanced at the clock above the entrance to the hall. It had stopped, and the hands were covered in tarnish. The same thing had happened to the chimes on the castle’s main tower. Had time stopped? Or did creatures crawl inside the clock, braiding the gears with algae? Moran brought with him an unholy entourage. Creatures had appeared in the palace, weaving webs of algae, turning dry halls into pools of slime, dousing passersby with a torrent of water just by opening their mouths. Theon himself had stumbled upon one such creature, its needle-like back slithered back like a hedgehog, right in his bedroom. How many of those things had crawled out of the sea after Moran? So far, it was impossible to count.

The new ruler was viewed with fear and suspicion. On the one hand he could single-handedly sink a whole armada of enemies. On the other hand he brought fear. Many mutilated corpses began to be found in the palace.

Lancier, the fiancé of the maid of honor, who had recently been found dead in the throne room, looked at the king with hatred. He could not accept the rumors of Elisandre’s murder by a man from the sea. The corpse had rotted away with tarnish, and something like coral had sprouted in it. In fact, the corpse itself disappeared very quickly.

Nevertheless, Lancier raised a scandal with the king himself and found himself pinned to the floor by a tangle of black tentacles, which drew wet from pus wounds on his face and chest. The defeated and disfigured young man had to shut up, but he held a grudge.

On the solemn occasion of the first gathering of counselors, Moran was supposed to make a speech, but given the situation, he refrained. Those who were just about to overthrow him would hardly be interested in his speeches. They were much more impressed by his strength.

“Words are for the weak, I prefer action,” his cold gaze communicated as his omnipresent octopus tentacles strangled the conspirators. He did not, however, choke them to the end. The terrified advisors surrendered and recognized him as ruler before they died of suffocation. Politics is the main thing. Sometimes you have to be humble, even if you’re unhappy about something. Everyone was dissatisfied with the monster king, except a few unpromising lazy people from noble families, who saw their positions at court as a burden, so they were happy with any ruler who would not bother them much. If the king alone can sink the enemy fleet, then he is a hero to them, because they themselves will not have to call the defense. And it did not matter that the enemy would not have attacked at all, if they had not learned that the king of Aquilania was a native of the abyss.

The people under the windows shouted with joy, because they were allowed to collect the expensive things left from the broken armada, which the waves had miraculously thrown ashore.

“You are a hero to the poor people, but not to us,” the Chancellor rubbed the marks on his neck left by Moran’s tentacles. Moran himself looked on indifferently, as if he’d never touched the venerable old man.

“I have protected my shores. That’s all. No thanks necessary,” he said icily.

“If it hadn’t been for you, we wouldn’t have been attacked at all,” Lancier interjected.

“Well, now they know it’s dangerous to attack,” Moran stood up and straightened to his full height. All his tentacles slid off the table and laced the hem of his robe. If you don’t remember what he’s wearing underneath, he’s as handsome as a deity.

“In case another armada arrives, call me,” he said as he left.

His new advisor, hunched at the entrance to the hall, looked like a creature of the sea himself. Apparently, all officials would soon be replaced by such creatures. What else can one expect when the country is ruled by an assembr? Or what else do they call the children of marriages between sea-dwellers and earth princesses?

Theon stared after him with only one thought. He must be overthrown before he floods the place.