The horse was worried, spinning his ears, and not at all because it was the first time he had been so far from the castle stables. He was feeling something. Rhiannon touched him with her hand and felt him tremble.
He may not have had enough hay today, and he may have been cold in the wind, but she could sense that his behavior was not one of resentment over a bad life. Rhianon recognized that expression in the animal’s eyes. He was afraid. She ran her fingers over his fur and wondered if he looked as numb as humans do when they’re startled, but she could feel the shivers inside him.
The girl backed away. Something flapped behind her, an enormous wing, it seemed, but no bird’s presence was felt nearby. There was no flight, no long cry, only the flap of a wing and the soft contact with the coat that covered her back. The wounds on her shoulder blades immediately began to ache. Rhianon shivered from the cold and the pain. She should go back to the warm tavern, warm herself by the fire, drink a cup of something hot and dismiss the thought that there was someone lurking in the hearth, bold, laughing, watching her. No one’s eyes were watching her from an empty space, and it was time to accept that.
Still, she wanted to check out what was behind the horse’s back. What was the animal so afraid of? Rhianon looked around, in the distance is nothing but wasteland, and in front of her an old abandoned village cemetery. It was all overgrown with sod, and only now and then she could see the tombstones, lit by the moon. It was not a cross or a tombstone, but something else in the dreary landscape. It looked more like a monument, except that it stood too far from the cemetery and suspiciously close to the inn, almost a couple of meters from the horse-holding stable with the frightened stallion. Rhianon was willing to swear that when she’d come here a few hours ago, she’d never seen anything like it. And what was it. She moved forward, hoping to get a better look. Someone’s ears seemed to catch her every uncertain step, and they succeeded, even though her footsteps were muffled on the loose soil. Someone had pointed ears, an oddly shaped head, and huge wings extending over a bulky bronze torso. It’s a statue. It was just a huge bronze statue. Rhianon was already sighing in relief, but the horse’s frantic snorting made her wonder, even wonder what makes this thing so distinctive, a pedestal with something written on it. Such a huge, majestic sculpture in a place where there are hardly any craftsmen capable of creating such a marvel. Rhianon could not even examine the beautiful or ugly winged creature. She had to raise her hand to reach the edge of the pedestal and touch the long bronze claws with her fingers. They were sharp and warm. She immediately jerked her hand away. There was something wrong here.
She took a few steps back. The moonlight almost caught her face out of the gloom, framed by the wings folded behind her head in a circle, but Rhianon had already turned and ran away. Back to the tavern, back to the warmth, back to the people. Someone came out of the warm building and slammed the door behind him. He stared at her. Something glittered in his hands in the darkness, a folded penknife it seemed.
«You’re a nifty boy,» said a gruff, mocking voice.
Before Rhiannon realized she had to run, someone had wrapped his arms around her from behind. One or two, someone’s arm held her too tightly.
«I’ve been watching you from Loretta,» the knife-wielding man approached her, the blade pressed against her throat, gleaming in the moonlight. Rhianon shuddered; she was a second away from having her throat slashed. Maybe it was the duke’s men. They didn’t look like his retinue, more like mercenaries. The poorly dressed, tipsy men reeked of booze, sweat and blood. One of them had just cut himself. Rhiannon could smell blood, even when the injured man was a great distance from her. Her nostrils immediately flared and caught the strangely pleasant scent. Her nostrils flared up, picking up a strangely pleasant scent and associating it with the opening of a wound. Rhianon almost smiled, though it was inappropriate now. Where did it all come from in her head, scratches like flowers of fire, a bowl of blood, and someone with wings.
«And don’t tell me fairy tales about the princess disappearing at the mountain pass itself, kid,» the bandit grinned a gap-toothed smile, his accomplices clawing harder at her.
«You’re a hustler, you’re a runaway servant, you clever boy, but now you’ll pay,» the blade sliced harder into her neck, and now her own blood would gush out. That was the smell of her blood, and it wouldn’t smell so good. On the contrary, the smell of her own blood always made Rhianon sick, but the blood of this cut man, though disgusting, smelled so appealing. He didn’t recognize her, or he did, but he was in no hurry to reveal his plans. In any case, she was about to get her throat slashed for her lucky winnings, and something had to be done, but not a thought occurred to her.
Rhianon covered her eyes, trying not to look at the blade pressing closer and closer to her. She sniffed at her enemy’s blood, and it seemed to her that someone else had caught that divine scent in his nostrils, and his nostrils had widened just as much as hers.
A second more and her blood would gush directly onto this knife from her opened jugular vein. Rhianon flinched after the knife had been taken from her throat. Whoever was standing in front of her was already lying on the ground, screaming in pain. She couldn’t see what had happened, and it was dark, but she caught sight of someone’s clawed paw stabbing at her. The writhing body under her feet, writhing in a pool of blood, was nauseating.
The two behind her had already let her go. They had no time for their victim.
«Look!» One of them was pointing to an empty pedestal. There was a third man between the men, but it was not a man. He had a non-human figure. Rhianon definitely saw wings and claws. She watched until the carnage was over. One could have huddled against the wall of the inn and watched others being killed. We need to get out of here before the bodies are discovered was her first thought, but someone or something was already dragging the bodies into the darkness, dragging them along the ground, leaving bloody footprints. The pedestal plunged into darkness, but something was still there. It was foolish to think about avoiding people’s questions about the murders when they might have killed her, too. Someone clawed at her shoulders and pressed her tighter against the inn wall. Someone’s clawed hands either squeezed or hugged her. It looks like love, it flashed through her mind. How strange it was that they wanted to kill her, and these wings rustling in the darkness, these claws and the blood on them seemed to her to be symbols of love incarnate.
«Don’t tell anyone,» whispered a quiet and commanding yet penetrating voice over her ear. Some very tall creature leaned down to examine her features. And then it abruptly let her go, and the girl nearly fell. It was hard to stay on her feet, not only from the suddenness of her release, but also from the intense nervous shock. She herself did not fully understand. She could only look around confusedly, looking for someone who was no longer there. The horse was still snorting fearfully, but the reason for its fear was gone. The surroundings were empty and dark. Maybe just someone was sitting on the roof, waiting to spring into action.
Rhiannon tucked her beret back into place, to cover the long locks of hair. It was cold and frightening. Her feet carried her back to the warmth and comfort of the tavern. Even the rough shouts and noisy laughter of the customers didn’t seem so nasty to her now. She sank heavily into a chair near the empty table, as a swaggering boy should, and gestured to the innkeeper. He had already brought another glass of wine before she ordered. Rhianon had already had a few today, but now she needed another. Of course, it wouldn’t hit her head and erase the memory of what had happened, because she had never been drunk. That was one of her strange innate traits. Wine didn’t get her drunk. And it was one more thing. If she needed to get warm or turn the lives of others into a blazing inferno, that wasn’t a problem for her either. She snapped her slender fingers, cutting a thin spark from beneath her skin. Fire was born of emptiness and air when she needed it. I had to smile guiltily at the astonished innkeeper, who couldn’t understand how a light could have flashed in the boy’s hand if he wasn’t holding a candle.
She could still play and win again. She felt she could. Luck was with her for now and would not leave her until morning, maybe longer. She was devilishly lucky at gambling, and her former partners were calling for her again, but Rhianon shook her head in the negative. It was enough gambling for today. She needed to calm down, finish her wine, and banish the intrusive thoughts of someone watching her from the most unexpected places.
«Do you believe in luck?» A sudden question brought her out of her thoughts. On the other side of the table, in the seat that had been empty a moment ago, someone was already sitting there, and his eyes glared at her feline-like from the half-darkness. How unceremoniously he sat down, and how silently he approached, as if he had materialized out of nowhere. Around him, the darkness seemed to thicken. A white, narrow, extremely long palm floated out of the darkness and tossed a gold coin over the table.
«I can give you luck… along with this gold piece.»
Rhianon was taken aback, not by the strange offer, but by the sight of the stranger. Dressed all in green, with bells dangling from his hat and an unpleasant glint in his eyes, he resembled an evil elf from a fairy tale. Red and yellow patches seemed to slip into his attire, but it was impossible to see exactly, for the whole figure on the other side of the table seemed to be woven of fog. The stranger sat beside him, it was only necessary to reach out a hand to touch him, and at the same time Rhianon did not dare to do so, for she was afraid of feeling of emptiness instead of him. This must be what a creature from the looking-glass must look like, not entirely in this world, but balancing somewhere between here and nowhere else. It would not take much to frighten it away, one gesture, one movement, and it would disappear, but the girl did not dare. She looked at the man who sat down beside her as if he were a curiosity. He looked a wonder, too, in that outfit, with his skin like it was covered with white clay, what a lean, mobile body he had, and what unusually thin long fingers. They caught the tossed coin so deftly that the dime barely had time to flash over the table before it was clenched again in his thin fist.
«I don’t want to play anymore tonight,» Rhianon muttered, not taking her eyes off the red glittering eyes on the other side of the table.
«Winning is good, isn’t it?» The stranger grinned merrily, but not at all kindly. «And will it be so tomorrow?»
«Tomorrow is still to come,» Rhianon thundered down her mug on the table, she had to be swaggering, now that she was a boy, no one should question that.
«Yes, it is extremely difficult to survive in these times, isn’t it?» The stranger winked understandingly and leaned a little closer, the bells on his hat tinkling playfully in time with the movement of his head. It didn’t seem to be ringing really, but laughter. It was the laughter of dozens of little tongues.
Rhianon moved a little farther away so that the skinny hand reaching across the table would not touch her in any way. She didn’t like the intrusive interlocutor, though there was something about him that made her heart beat faster. It was as if she recognized an old acquaintance who shared all her interests with her. Except that this was a man she had never seen before. And was he human? He acted like a buffoon, but his eyes… That voice, those understanding nods. She clenched her hand under the table so no one could see. The lines on her palm began to itch. It had happened before. That momentary flash of recognition occurred to her at the sight of those who knew of her secret predilections.. A fleeting sorcery, quick, secret, inept… She had done it herself and now invariably recognized in the crowd those who had done it as well. And they recognized her, though they had never seen her before. But the doomed, that is, those who roll down the same path to hell and can no longer stop, easily recognize each other, easily dragged along with them. She had no choice, they might have, but they always looked at her derisively, just like this stranger sitting imposingly on the other side of the table. There was something else entirely.
«I’m almost on the run myself,» he whispered confidentially, and his eyes flashed dangerously again, as if he could see into her thoughts.
«I’m not,» Rhiannon finished the glass in front of her with a gulp. She tried to be rude and manly, but her overly-cute appearance must have spoiled the impression. It also made her feel uncomfortable how easily the man had figured out her plans. It was a fact one could only look at her wary demeanor and realize she had someone to run from.
«We’re on the run from ourselves,» the stranger said in a gentle voice, and he brushed aside any disbelief that might have been created by his first indiscreet words. «Sometimes what’s inside creatures is stronger than they are, and they try to escape it, but there’s nowhere to go. The danger is inside you, not outside. There’s no escape.»
«What do you know about it?» She asked haughtily, but nevertheless she glanced cautiously at the already-empty glass. The half-full bottle beside her now disgusted her and almost terrified her. How many times they had tried to convince her that her peculiarity was born in herself, like a curse. This curse needed no fuel to fuel it, but Rhianon was certain that alcohol promoted ignition. She couldn’t feel the heat inside her, and she didn’t see the fire rising out of nowhere, but even now she feared that if she got angry, the fire would flare up right on her fingertips, right on the dice on the wooden table in front of her.
She swallowed hard. Can the damned be seen in their faces? It is said that extraordinary beauty marks only those, like rebellious angels, close to the fall. In any case, at court so often whispered behind her back, unaware that she could hear everything from a mile around her. The royal astrologer hated her in silence until her father’s death, but on the king’s deathbed he was able to say it all.
Extraordinary beauty marks those from whom the fallen angel will come. Then she will be the worst of all, because no one has ever been more beautiful than her. Did the stargazer know of the terrible forbidden books she had collected? Rhianon guessed that he hated her for a very different reason. Just like every other mage she encountered. They all looked at her with envy and jealousy. And why was it? She wasn’t all-powerful and unlikely to ever be. Though she needed it so much, to gain superhuman strength and regain all that had been taken from her. To claim her property, she must first defeat all her enemies. And for that, even becoming a powerful king is not enough. Rhianon sighed. The trickster, ready to perform tricks now at her table, could hardly be of any real help to her. But he, with that same sly smile, kept making suggestions.
«I can make you win every time, every day, every night, at whatever hour you wish, the dice will fall as you wish. But do you want to?»
She looked at him for the first time with mild interest and wonder, the haggard face under the brim of his hat suddenly even began to look cute to her. The feverish, hungry gleam in his eyes was gone. They no longer glowed red. The skin on his cheeks was a little pinker. He seemed to be the kind of creature that feeds on the sympathy of his interlocutor. Like magic smoke, it only became alive and tangible when someone paid attention to it. That’s why he’s so interested in communication. Rhianon smiled at her own thoughts. He obviously took that smile as encouragement and continued to flirt as best he could. His bells were ringing even more merrily now. Their tongues no longer exuded laughter, but song.
«I want so much that I’m scared of my own desires,» she wanted blood, her hand clenched into a fist under the table again.
«And surely you don’t believe you can conquer entire kingdoms with agility?» He made some quick motions with his hands, and the dice on the table tipped over by themselves, revealing high points, and the gold jangled inexplicably.
Rhianon took a closer look at the coins. They were unusually minted. They were unlike anything she had ever seen. There were wings and sun on one side, there was a rose on the other. Somewhere she had seen this before, but not on doubloons. Somewhere else, and she couldn’t remember where.
«At least with dexterity you can get by,» she said smugly, though what she really wanted was something else. She had to take an entire country, overcoming the resistance of all her allies as well as the hired troops, mages, and diviners. Is it possible to accomplish such a thing? Somehow she became more and more convinced of this.
«Show me some more tricks,» she suggested in a commanding tone, wondering how, after all that had happened to her, she had not yet forgotten how to give orders. The capricious princess was sometimes dominant in her, and sometimes she tried to imitate the royal advisors, hypocritical and cunning, capable of prying everything out of their interlocutor and using it to their advantage. «I want to see something more serious than all the tricks you can see in the marketplace, too.»
He frowned, a little puzzled, a little disappointed.
At last she managed to get the better of him in some way. The playful, mocking look vanished from his face as if he’d had a moment’s makeup washed off. His features became elongated and pointed, the luster of his eyes faded.
«Well… here,» he muttered uncertainly, then he turned warily toward the inn.
«Not sure of your abilities?» She teased him.
He shrugged his angular shoulders as if they twitched violently in a comical manner. His expression became even more wary, and even the bells on his hat were somehow silent. He could tell he wasn’t telling the whole truth, or there was something he wasn’t letting on. «It’s not just my territory here…»
As if on cue, they both stared at the hearth. Not long ago she had felt as if someone were watching her right from the blazing fire and from every inch of ground and log wall and every pile, but that was impossible. Some super-powerful being cannot envelop the entire space around them with its power. It can’t be everywhere, like God himself. It can’t see and feel everything, and braid itself around every millimeter of air around them, and not burn in the flames. No one is capable of lurking in a burning hearth and peeking at everyone from there. No one can suppress the will of all powerful mages by their proximity alone. No one can be everywhere at once. Such a creature simply does not exist. But what if there is? After all, she could feel it. Unless it was a hallucination someone else had sent her. Such a game could have been a good thing, after all, to gain her trust. A lot of sorcerers do that – they send a person visions or premonitions on purpose, and then they sit down with him and pretend that they also went through such a thing. It’s a clever kind of scam. Rhianon had seen it before, and it wasn’t hard for her to figure out the trickster. When you know all the mages’ tricks, you can somehow parry them. She had learned too much when she had spied on wizards in the palace, including how to instill some sort of fear in a person that benefited you. But there was something else here. Her interlocutor wasn’t just trying to instill fear in her, he was afraid himself. She could sense that for sure.
He stared warily at the fire for a minute, then at the wine glass as if he could see dancing fairies in the liquid. He thought long and hard about something, his thin eyebrows furrowed at the bridge of his nose, he even bit his lips with sharp incisors, and then suddenly his eyes sparkled again, joyfully and mischievously.
«I’ve got it!» At last he exclaimed. «There is a place here. Well, more or less safe. Anyway, if there’s anywhere you can do tricks without worrying, it’s there.»
He must have meant forbidden «tricks,» so called magic tricks, which not everyone is allowed to do. She didn’t care. She was wary of something else. He had been so good at bringing it all up in that «one place». She wondered if he was going to trap her. Sometimes spirits do that to too trusting travelers. And often they’re not spirits at all. She didn’t want to end up in an outlaw’s den, or in some backwoods tract where evil spirits ran wild. And she’d heard tales of mortals being enchanted at such secret nocturnal gatherings.
«What is this place?» She wondered.
«Oh,» he smiled slyly. «It’s in the middle of nowhere, and no one can get there but us. I mean, no one but me, even if they wanted to, could find their way there, and I’m inviting you along.»
«That’s very kind, but I won’t go,» she moved his glass and bottle away from the mysterious gold glittering on the table, as if to say that she didn’t need it.
