Rhianon began to drum her nails against the armrest of her chair. Sparks shot out from under her fingernails, lightly marring the smooth, polished surface.
She didnt know how to call out to the spirit, for it had no name, so she only asked quietly.
«Could you answer one question?»
«What is it?» He answered readily.
«Why do dragons turn their backs on me now? Am I so ugly that I frighten them? Or is it something else?»
He grinned quickly. The laugh was like a slap in the face. It was the same way she felt when the dragon turned away from her.
«They dont like me for abandoning Madael?»
For the first time, the spirit did not find something to answer. His jaw must have dropped, or he was running out of words.
Rhianon stared sadly at the flames. It was as if she were right. For all her charm and resemblance to their fallen leader, they loved him more. They still did.
She clawed at the chair with her fingernails. What charm it takes to be worshipped by those you cast into hell.
«I want to be like him,» she muttered into the void.
«Well, then you must learn how to wield a sword,» the spirit inside her responded.
Rhianon was in complete agreement, except that she wished it wasnt enough.
Rhianon made an appointment in the forest before the caves. The spirit insisted that she should not go there herself, because it would be easier to send him, but as always Rhianon insisted.
She could send no one else on such an important errand. Besides, how could she have known that the spirit would give the dragon exactly what she said, not her own embellished version.
She could only negotiate with someone in person. But the forest greeted her with a sullen silence. The large clearing in the thicket, where someone had uprooted and felled all the trees, was empty.
The place had been cleared, but the dragon was gone. Rhianon already regretted wearing the crest that was supposed to be the identifying mark.
She waited until she began to notice some movement behind the trees. She was immediately reminded of the nighttime treasure hunters. What if something similar was happening in this forest?
She listened to the silence to catch the clatter of shovels against the hard ground and scraps of conversation. Some voices were indeed conversing in the thicket, but it was not about stealing or digging up anything at all. Rhianon kept listening, though. She could not do anything else while she waited for the dragon. The speaker was not a woodcutter or a late traveler. Rhianon even ventured to step away from the clearing for the meeting to look at them.
«Dont go!» The spirit warned her as she made her way along the moss. «I can eavesdrop and tell you later.»
«Dont,» she said in a whisper. «I can hear everything. But I want to see.»
It was unnecessary to explain to him that the conversation had already intrigued her, and only that she wanted to spy on the talkers. Who are they? That was what was most intriguing to her. It would have been difficult for a human to see in this darkness, but she had long ago noticed in herself the peculiarity of seeing well in the dark.
«One of them is Vivian,» the spirit warned her at once. «Hes here to hunt dragons, you understand. He has a nose for them.»
«And who is the other one?» Shed guessed that from the hoarse tone, but felt obliged to ask again.
«It is the pretender to your hand,» the spirit said, hesitating for a moment.
Rhianon understood him at first. Shed seen countless suitors for the hand before, and the furthest thing from her mind might have been that he was the least likely to succeed.
But it was hard not to recognize the husky voice. It sounded like it had dropped a few octaves since shed last heard it. It used to be a little pleasant, but soon it would be a bass. It was as if Prince Rothberts throat had been cut. She even chuckled at the thought that one of the dragons he had never tamed might have stepped on his neck. The prince had escaped, but he was hoarse. Such a scenario seemed amusing to her. Rhianon even managed to get a glimpse into Rothberts thoughts. He did not sense that he was being spied upon. Rothbert was spying on someone else, and his mind was elsewhere. Rhianon, on the other hand, had learned many interesting things. For example, as a child, this sneaky little magician, who had already detected the rudiments of evil in himself, put frogs in the laundry of washerwomen, and sent locusts on plowmen. He poured his potions into the ladies linens to cause a festering rash, and he bewitched the mens weapons so that they would break during battle. He destroyed his own as well as others without remorse. He also grew unusual reptiles in his flasks and released them into rivers, wells, or sewers. Then the harmful boy began to wait to see if his pets would grow into bloodthirsty dragons. Sometimes these experiments succeeded. Here was one time he managed to raise a dragon right in the well of his home castle. The night it was discovered, there was a commotion in the yard, his fathers dukedom was crumbling because the dragon demanded tribute, and the nasty boy was laughing in his room. Thats when someone came to him Rhianon couldnt make out a face in his mind, as if that fragment of Rothberts memory were completely absent. She could only wonder if it was someone from the School of Witchcraft, or someone even more dangerous. She could see little else about the night visitor, but she did see a tower in Rothberts mind, a tower of books from the ground floor to the ceiling beams, and a girl who lived in that tower. There was nothing there but twigs braiding the walls and books. There were no entrances or exits. Nevertheless, the prince had his eye on the mistress of the tower named Diana. She had already turned him down, but it didnt matter to him.
«You said there was another,» Vivians pleasant baritone was hard not to recognize.
«All you have to do is to wait. Ill make sure he loses his strength.»
«Very well, then, I must get some help.»
«You cant do it alone?» Rothbert even snickered. «That would be fair.»
«But you said it yourself,» Vivian seemed unabashed at being accused of a lack of valor. «By the way, if I hadnt taken men with me to the borders of Menuel, you would have left me alone.»
«Dont be silly. There was no one there to fight. Everyone was already drugged by the fog Id put on them.»
«And I thought those black things had ravaged their land. They were feasting on the battlefields, too. On dead bodies,» Vivian put his hand up to his dull, young head. «Yes, I remembered, you said you had some sort of condition before you let me kill the dragon.»
«Yes, there is,» Rothbert rubbed his palms together, rolling out a glowing lump. «Youll leave me his carcass, all of it. No tongue, no eyes, no spilled blood. Do you understand?»
«But why is it?» Vivian obviously didnt understand.
«You idiot, I have to prepare the next potion.»
«But you said you could only make useful substances and miracle cures out of the organs of these monsters.»
«Why shouldnt poison be useful if it can be applied to whoever needs it?»
«Well» Vivian was clearly hesitant.
«By the way,» Rothbert interrupted him. «You wont touch the scales this time, either. Ill need my armor soon, too.»
Rhianon turned back, sensing someone approaching the appointed spot. It could only be him, the dragon who must serve her. She knew that Rothberts trick would not go away already as she made her way resolutely toward the clearing. The trees, fallen and uprooted from the ground, were a chaotic sight. It looked as if a hurricane had passed through here, but Rhianon knew that a living thing was the cause of it. She would have to negotiate with the dragon herself, and they would figure out with the spirit how to steal Rothberts potions and rob him of his powers later.
To steal the flasks with his lizards and ingredients for magic solutions, she will send a spirit to his principality. The dragon will have to fly over the sea again and wait until she summons him. This will be soon, the war has almost begun. The messengers with her announcement have already been sent, and the place of the first battle has been set. The dragon will have to fly to her on that day and no later, and only if she needs his help. That is her only wish. When they met on the cleared ground in the thicket, he bowed his head again in reverence, as if he hadnt noticed the glint of a comb in her hair that had been stolen from his treasure.
«You will go to his castle,» Rhianon insisted. It was difficult to get anything out of the spirit, but she demanded, pleaded, threatened with clenched fists until he began moaning.
«I dont want to go there,» he squeaked.
«And what you want is of no concern to anyone.»
«Maybe Id better follow Vivian.»
«Hell be out in the woods all night. Well have to keep an eye on him later, not now.»
«I would rather follow other dragon. He lives in the caves near the Duchy of Rothbert. He is the one who keeps the prince in fear. He is a wise man. He has a tower of books carved there in the mountain. He keeps the scrolls of an angel who called himself Mastema. You are not interested in that.»
She almost dropped the brush she was running through her hair. Mastema! Madael! He was the same under every name. Only his character was different for everyone.
«With his runes, his coils, his annals, and so much more, I learned in his own tower,» she cut out. «There is not much the dragon can teach me. He is only a follower, not an innovator. Madael was the first to rise, and the others only followed.»
«And now theyre all biting their claws in frustration. Take me, for example»
«I dont care about your complaints. If you wish to be with me, serve me, but if you will not do as I command, I swear I will find a spell that will banish you once and for all.»
For a moment the room was silent. She could even hear the fire crackling on the logs. Any sound would have seemed loud now.
«Well, all right,» the spirit agreed reluctantly and in such a mournful tone as if she were sending him to his own execution.
Rhianon wasnt going to feel sorry for him.
«While you look around the castle and steal anything of value, Ill have a word with the dragon you told me about.»
«Youll have an easier time with him,» the spirit cheered up. «He could be called a scholar. At least he has more of his memory than most. Or rather, hes forgotten almost nothing. You know what I mean?»
She nodded. The sight of the angels, who retained memories of their former glory only in their dreams, depressed her. To her mind they were magnificent even now, looking like the living contents of a jewel box in their dragon armor. But they had been different before, truly beautiful, wise and seductive. Now, when they looked at their own reflection, they could feel only pain. So they preferred to gaze at the jewels and gold as a reminder of their former brilliance.
Some dragons still retained their former minds, they also collected books. Madael said that the greatest punishment for most of them was the loss of their sanity. It is hardest for those who have lost all or part of their memory, because the mind tries to return to something former, but runs into a wall of timelessness. Its painful to know that you have to remember something thats slipping away. But from here on earth, the creators of poetry, music, and verse emerged. Their partial memory pours out only as fantasy, and their path lies toward the Cathedral of Thunder and the ritual knife. At the thought of the blood sacrifice, Rhianon shuddered. Those renegades of Madaels army, condemned as punishment to feel like mere humans, sacrifice their mortal bodies to gain their lost wings. But at least they can do so by becoming their former selves, albeit extremely angry, while magical beings have no such option. It is only for those who have suffered most. Rhianon imagined how crushed an angel felt, retaining scrappy memories of brilliance but forced to consider himself a mere mortal. People do not accept him, heaven rejects him. Hell puts a choice before him. And then there is the Cathedral of Thunder and the bloody path to it. Sometimes she dreamed that she was walking down this path lined with roses. Her feet are already wounded and bloody from their thorns, and there is still no end to the path. Madael said that this path appears only during an eclipse of the sun, when one of the chosen ones is ready to take it. No man would ever walk this path, only those who belonged to his army. Rhianon was not one of them. By tearing her own guts out during the ritual, she could only die. Or did the fact that she had slept with a fallen angel make her equal to his host?
She had many difficult questions. Perhaps the wise dragon could answer them all. Of course, only if he retained all of his former mind, not just the remnants of it.
Though if he collected the scrolls that held the symbols and secrets of the angels, then Rhianon could read them herself. She understood their language, so the mysterious writings would be comprehensible to her as well. She knew that the important thing was not to trouble oneself with trying to read or decipher something, if she was strong enough to do so, and if she got close enough to the forbidden, the mysteries would reveal themselves to her. That was how she first understood the magical symbols, just by looking at them. That was how she began to understand the language of beasts and birds. Thats how she learned to read minds.
And that wasnt all she could do. She could see more clearly than dragons. She could sense the presence of supernatural beings from afar. And she could hear everything for miles around. She could hear everything, down to the smallest of sounds. Sometimes it seemed to her that not a cacophony of voices, but a whole cobweb wove the world, and in this cobweb she could distinguish any sound.
Thus she knew that the dragon was awake even before she approached his cave. It was hard to call it a cave, to be exact. From a distance the magnificent tower, with its many staircases and branching passages, might have looked like a real building, but only up close did she realize that it was carved entirely out of the mountain. It had once been a mountain range, but now it took the shape of a bastion. It would have passed for a fairy joke if the light in the distant windows had not been burning.
As they approached, another oddity became apparent. The tower had no gates or doors, only arched windows, disproportionately huge and devoid of glass or any visible barrier. They seemed to beckon birds to fly in.
Rianon could not fly. It was the one ability that Madael had never given her. But she had her pegasus. He could easily carry her to one of the huge windows. This time, though, he hesitated for a long time. She reassured him in a quiet whisper, explaining that she would be fine. Just in case, he would have to stay close to one of the windows to help her out. They had been traveling together a lot lately and had become very close. Rhianon could easily read his mind because he let her do it herself. So she learned that before, that is, when he was still an elf, his name was Noreus, and there was a time when he sought advice from this very wise dragon, under whose tower they were now. All members of the magical race who could not remember something themselves turned to him for advice or help. The fairy slipped out of one window in tears seemed to be no exception, and apparently the dragon had refused to help her or told her something that upset her greatly. Rhianon glanced at a figure in greenish attire hovering overhead. She resembled someone strongly. Rhianon had seen a peaked cap with a veil over her red curls before, but what was the name of the fairy who wore it? Certainly she was not one of the fairies who had met Rhianon at the ball. Who was she, then? She looked a little like a spinster, but they were tiny, and she was tall and statuesque. Rhianon followed the figure until it disappeared into the darkness. The transparent wings fluttering behind her reminded her of those of a dragonfly.