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Translator Natalia Lilienthal
© Natalie Yacobson, 2023
© Natalia Lilienthal, translation, 2023
ISBN 978-5-0059-4892-2
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
Flames in the woods
Clement was gathering brushwood in anticipation of an attack. Though he now wore simple peasant clothing, and a sharp dagger with a costly hilt was hidden in his bosom. He would pull it out instantly if his pursuers sought him out again.
There was a deafening dragon roar through the forest. It almost made his ears bleed, it was so loud. Clement had expected anything but a dragon to appear. It was up to the humans to attack. His friends and allies had warned him that assassins had been sent for him. The main thing was that none of them would think of disguising themselves in a peasant’s shirt, as Clement himself had already done for the sake of disguise. If his enemies had the same plan, they would be indistinguishable from ordinary passersby. Well, almost impossible.
Clement himself was kept safe by his uncle’s magic. It was good to have a wizard uncle and a royal father, but only as long as your kingdom was not overrun by monstrous beings from the black sands. They were non-human, and they knew magic very well. His uncle had gone to great lengths to place impenetrable spell protections on his nephew and his new habitat.
Until yesterday Clement had slept at the palace; today his home was an abandoned hut in a forest of ill repute. There were stories in the old days that the place was haunted. It had been said that berry-picking peasant women had seen dryads and vicious elves in the trees. The dragon was probably part of the forest’s magic, and not an agent of the new ruler of Aluar. His aim was to kill the only surviving prince.
When his country was overrun, Clement himself survived only by going hunting. The young prince was bad with a sword, and could not improve this, though his instructors had exhausted him in the training ring. But he was so good with a crossbow and a bow that no royal archer was a match for him. Clement had always believed that if a prophecy came true, and the Aluar’s heir’s life was in danger, he would be saved by his skill as an archer. And so it was! It was only indirectly, not directly.
If he had not gone on that fateful day to hunt, he would already be dead. The kingdom had been overrun at night, and the prince had been so caught up in the hunt for game that he roamed the woods until morning.
Now there’s no way home. Black creatures are nesting in the king’s castle.
«They are a special race! They will either overwhelm and enslave Aluar’s people or utterly destroy them,» his uncle, who had only escaped the castle by virtue of his ability to obscure the eyes that watched him with magic, told him.
It turned out to be possible to verify his words in the nearest city, where there were more monstrous creatures than ordinary citizens. Clement’s allies still hoped that he could wrest the power back. But it seemed rather doubtful. It is better to escape. Clement had already been attacked more than a dozen times by archers and knights in black armor. The dragon, on the other hand, would not attack. It just flew by. Its scales glittered so brightly overhead Clement had to squeeze his eyes shut. You could go blind!
«Run away, you fool!» A villager of some sort dropped her basket of blueberries and sprinted from the thicket. «Dragon in the sky! Expect fire!»
But there’s nothing on fire! Clement looked around in astonishment, and spotted another squad in black armor. It was time to run. Or should they fight back? The knights had spotted him too, and despite the magical protection, they knew who he was.
Clement quickly reached for the crossbow, hidden under his shirt, on his back. It was time to fight. It was too late to run away. Suddenly the villager, running away, flashed like a match.
Could it be that lightning had struck the tree beside her? There seemed to be no thunderstorm! And the trees were all intact. Clement opened his mouth in amazement as the band of black knights burst into flames, too, like one big bundle of brushwood.
What is this? Was it a heaven’s punishment for these men trying to kill the true heir of the country in which they live. If so, so be it for them. But why did the villager burn? On the contrary, she was trying to warn him of some danger.
Clement waited until the knights had burned almost to the ground and walked over to examine the remains. The charred limbs beneath the pieces of the armor looked monstrous.
But the real monster hovered overhead. Clement shuddered, realizing that it was not the fire of justice that had burned the men alive, but the fire of a dragon.
«Sit in the gamekeeper’s hut and wait while I send you a helper,» his uncle instructed before parting. Did he really send a dragon to help him? With a dragon and no army, there’s a chance to regain his rightful throne! Only Clement’s joy was premature. The dragon was quickly gone.
All that remained was to bemoan his fate. He would need a dragon companion, and an army of ghosts who could overpower the invaders.
His uncle had promised to send him just one mate-fighter and one bride. The latter was superfluous in Clement’s opinion. To marry penniless and on the brink of death was unwise. Then his bride would be executed along with him. But his uncle had lectured him on the benefits of an alliance with a wealthy neighboring princess, whose kin would support him in case of trouble with their armies. His uncle was probably right.
Clement was a good-looking fellow. But that’s how a cranky princess was going to like him in peasant clothes. All the princesses he knew were mean and selfish.
But the elf-like girl who emerged from the thicket stunned him with her beauty. Pale, slender, dressed in a light white dress, as if she were a bride. She had a wreath of white daisies in her blond hair. One glance at her shocked Clement, but she was not looking at him, she was looking at the ash-covered ground. She was looking for something, and when she found it, she grabbed it and disappeared. What she had found was beyond Clement’s comprehension, but he supposed it might have been something magical, something dropped by a dragon in mid-flight. Who was this girl, picking up what the dragon had left behind? Was she a sorceress? Was she a forest nymph? Or who else might dwell in the thicket?
As Clement pondered whether to speak to her, the beauty’s body turned into a silvery haze that billowed skyward.
Raymonda
The beauty came to his hut in the middle of the night. A village was burning nearby. The smell of fire reached here. When Clement woke up to the stench of smoke, he had the feeling that everything was about to burn, but the beautiful elfish woman he had seen in the woods that morning smiled sweetly and said:
«Don’t worry, the fire is far away! The forest is not on fire!»
He was at once relieved. If she says all is well, it must be so. How could he not believe her? But Clement was worried.
«But the village where I bought the wine and candles is burning. It stands behind the forest edge.»
«It has already burned!» The beauty corrected him without regret in her voice. «The people weren’t very nice.»
«Has anyone survived?»
«It is hardly. Only ghosts. They come often from the ashes of dragon fires.»
«So a dragon burned the village?»
The beauty silently trimmed a cascade of snow-white skirts, covered in a layer of silver sequins as if they were stars. Her bouncy blond curls snaked down her chest and back. The puffed sleeves accentuated the grace of her thin arms. How beautiful she was! Clement regarded her, forgetting to ask how she had managed to get through the latch-locked door.
Only the window was open, but girls in expensive dresses certainly didn’t climb through windows. Clement knew how meticulous court fashions were. It was as if the guest had walked through walls. If she’s from a tribe of elves, that’s no surprise.
«Are you an elf princess?» Clement asked directly.
She only laughed in response. Her laughter was infectious and beautiful, like the ringing of a bell. Her presence in the wretched hut had somehow brightened the air.
«I knew that huntsman who lived here before you, and now there are only bones left of him,» she said.
«But I did not know him!»
«No wonder you didn’t. He was eaten by a dragon before you got here.»
Again she spoke of the dragon. It made Clement uncomfortable to think of it. Surely he’d burned down the nearest village for sport. There would be no place to buy spirits now. He would have to make do with spring water. That’s all right. It’ll be soberer. Perhaps then the wood elves won’t seem so beautiful to him anymore.
«How did you get in?»
«You called me when you were sad for me,» she said in a simple voice. «The boys let me in as soon as they start pining for me. And the dragon comes with me. Don’t you want me to go?»
«No, I don’t. Stay!» He took her words as a joke. How can she be connected to the dragon?
«You have nowhere to sit!» She paced about the hut rustling luxurious skirts.
«This is not a royal mansion.»
«And you do not look too much like a huntsman,» she reproached.
«But I am dressed as a peasant.»
«I look like a pixie, but I have no more than a drop of pixie blood.»
There was not a drop of blood from the peasant race in Clemente, but he remembered that he had to remain incognito. Suddenly she is the beautiful spy of the chief of the black tribes, Shai.
«Who are you?» Clement questioned her. «Where do you live? Do you live in the woods?»
«Well, I live almost in the woods,» she corrected him. «There are a lot of places here that are forbidden to humans, but are open for me.»
«You look like a ghost in the moonlight,» Clement decided. «You must be a moon fairy! I have heard of your kind from my uncle.»
He chuckled as he remembered that he’d seen her during the day too. Moon Fairies cannot appear in daylight.
«I am Raymonda,» the beauty said.
«And I’m Clement, but it is just Clem to my friends…» He should have used an invented name, but he’d already blurted it out. Too late to make amends.
«Would you like to dance the night in a circle of moon fairies or elves? I know some of them. I could set you up with dryads or nocturnes or nymphs or…»
Raymonda curled her fingers as she enumerated. He probably thought she had more than five fingers on each hand.
«I have a fiancée,» Clement muttered reluctantly.
She grinned wickedly at him. «How many fiancées have you got?»
«What do you mean?» Clement didn’t understand. «I haven’t even had one recently. But I happen to be engaged. It’s a family whim! I am waiting here for my betrothed.»
«It is even so!» Raymonda suddenly softened. «You’re faithful! That’s good! I wouldn’t have anything to do with a traitor.»
Her blue eyes suddenly twinkled dangerously, as if there were ice inside her pupils.
«You want to see some magic?» She fluttered her curls into a halo-like blaze, and the cards his uncle had left at Clement’s hut shot up into the air and started shuffling on their own.
«Come on, then!» Clement was frightened that he was actually asleep and couldn’t wake up.
«Well, all right, sleepyhead!» Raymonda suddenly leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. «Sleep till morning, and I’ll come and see you in the afternoon.»
He thought she had scales of skin under the pendants of pearl on her bare forehead. It was probably part of the ornament. It’s hard to see in the dark.
What kind of pendants do jewelers attach to pendants? Sapphires cut in the form of drops or stars, beads, even cameos. Suddenly it occurred to someone to make a crown of dragon scales. What fashions will not be introduced! And the court ladies will support any innovations, even those that would cause them to burn themselves on jewelry made of dragon scales.
What surprised him more than scales was the veil in Raymonda’s hair. It was thin, like a spider’s web, but white. How similar to a bride’s veil!
If she is the one he is waiting for, she is certainly no princess. She is a forest nymph or an elf! His uncle has promised him a sorceress!
Or is it worse and Raymonda has been promised to someone else? It is for a wood elf like her, for instance. Clement’s heart ached, but there was no time to question Raymonda about her marriage. The beauty had vanished. Literally! Where she had stood, a luminous puff of smoke wafted toward the open window.
Ashes
Clement dreamed that he and Raymonda were dancing on the ashes of a burned village. Raymonda has an unusual crown of golden spikes, vignettes and claws in her hair. Her robes are orange, like flames. She is the one who dragged him away to dance on the fires. The dance is like flying in the starry skies, though it is ruin all around. Raymonda’s bare feet barely touch the ground, as if she could fly. He wondered where her slippers have gone, and if she had them. Noble ladies do not walk around barefoot. Judging by her fine clothes, Raymonda was certainly neither a peasant nor a bourgeois. She was probably the daughter of a lord or a duke, or perhaps the elf king himself.
What did she see in Clement? Why did she start flirting with him? And why would she want to have fun in a burnt-out ruin? The dance quickened, more and more like a fiendish dance. The houses were burned to the ground. No survivors! And the two of them whirled with the ashes. Raymonda’s white dress is soiled in the ashes, and she laughs so happily, as if all her enemies lived in this village. And suddenly fire bursts from her lips!
Clement woke up terrified. She had scorched his face!
The young man rushed to the bucket of cold water and only when he noticed his reflection in it, he realized that he had no burn. He had only dreamt of the wild dance on the ashes of the peasants’ houses. And the dream had been so real!
He could still feel the heat of the fire on his skin and hear the rustling of the ashes. The dream never seemed to end. Something must have risen from the burned houses.
Something monstrous…
Clement covered his eyes and imagined Raymonda’s bare feet dancing on the ashes, and charred skulls visible in the ashes.
«Awake at last!» Raymonda had just come in and put a basket full of berries on the table. «You’re such a sleepyhead! You’ll sleep for the rest of your life!»
«But it’s night!» Clement was indignant. «I have the right to sleep at night.»
«I don’t sleep at night. I like to walk in the dark woods.»
«You must have a magic light so you don’t stumble in the dark.»
«I can see very well in the dark!»
«You can even pick berries in the dark?»
Raymonda nodded.
«I hope they’re not poisonous?» Clement stood up and grimaced in pain. He hadn’t fought anyone lately, and his body felt like it was covered in battle wounds. Deep inflamed scratches had come from somewhere. They were just where Raymonda had touched him. She couldn’t have pinched him like that. Clement squinted at her suspiciously. Nonsense! Her fingernails were delicate and the scratches looked as if they belonged to animal claws.
Raymonda’s skin glowed in the darkness like a white candle.
«Try it! It’s a special berry mixture,» she offered.
The berries in the basket looked like their own special variety. They looked like raspberries and blackberries, and gooseberries and strawberries, and raspberries and hawthorn, and sea buckthorn – but the combination of all at once. The berries have a pyramid shape, not the usual rounds.
«Are they magic?»
She didn’t answer.
Clement decided they weren’t wolfberries, so he tasted them. His mouth was bursting with a cocktail of sugary tastes that killed thirst and hunger in a jiffy. All bad thoughts flew out of my head. He really wanted to dance barefoot on the stunted grass. Maybe Raymonda would keep him company. She beckoned him out into the woods, laughing. Her feet hovered lightly over the grass. It is probably a continuation of the dream? Clement eagerly wrapped his arms around the girl’s thin waist and spun her in a dance. This was the best moment of his life. No court coquette in the sumptuous Aluar’s ballroom was as good and free as this elf in the woods.
It was no longer a dream, but a sweet dream. One can only hope that the pale beauty does not turn out to be an evil moon spirit that lures him to the precipice.
«Is it a dream?» Clement wanted to kiss Raymonda on the lips, and she would not have resisted, but the clatter of horses’ hoofs could be heard in the distance.
The clatter of horses’ hoofs was muffled and unpleasant, like the clatter of gnoms’ hammers beneath the earth. It was as if it were coming from beneath the earth. Clement remembered the lore that the black knights of Shai were adept at finding their way along the roads of the Underworld, so they could appear on the surface or disappear at any moment.
The angry shouts and whistling of poisoned arrows were certainly not a dream. One arrow hammered into the timbers of the hut above Clement’s head and turned into a real dark red snake.
Clement turned around. There were riders rushing through the woods. It was a whole troop. Raymonda was gone when she saw them. Only the silvery smoke hung in his hands. What a coward! What did he expect? She is a lady. He should be her protector, not expecting her to conjure up a barrier of obscurity from the knights.
Clement’s weapon was left in the hut. The door, as luck would have it, was jammed. So what to do? The black knights had surely been sent here on purpose, and at night. Men sleep at night, but the Shai’s knights, on the other hand, are most active at this time of day. Surely their leader had already figured out from some magic mirror that the prince was hiding in the forest. Thanks to his uncle’s spells, though, it wasn’t so easy to pinpoint his exact location.
For a moment, Clement had a stray hunch in his head. What if Raymonda had brought them here? She might not have done it deliberately, of course, but accidentally. She herself had spotted him and thus removed the shield of impenetrability.
Clement could not think for long. Defending himself with his bare hands was also a waste of time. But once again a dragon came to the rescue. Its scaly belly glimmered in the dark, like orange gold. Clement had never realized that a dragon’s scales could be so dazzlingly beautiful. The dragon’s fire, on the other hand, was something to run for. The torrent of flame was once again rained down from the heavens as an act of justice. It didn’t hit the trees, or the hut, but went straight for the black squad. The knights burned like logs. The charred remains were smoking. The smoke was black and acrid. It made his eyes water.
«Raymonda!» Clement called. «Where are you?»
His cry echoed through the empty space.
«You may go now! The danger is over! The knights are gone, and the dragon has flown!»
There was no answer from Raymonda. She was probably miles away by now. The elf’s girls don’t seem to be shy, but Moon Fairies are timid. Perhaps she was one of the latter, after all.
The smoke made him dizzy. Clement began to think creepy things. Spirits of some kind, formed from columns of smoke, were trying to speak to him, to warn him of something. They were making faces and making silly prophecies.
A snake arrow withered and petrified on the hut’s log, barely out of the knights’ sight. What wonders! It was too much for Clement, who could hardly master a few of his uncle’s magic formulas.
«I’m going to walk to the nearest village,» he decided to himself. «Maybe there was something there that had survived.»
Or maybe he was just imagining the fire. Alone in the woods, you can’t help but lose your senses. Loneliness makes people go crazy. At least, that’s what the hangmen say when they lock up the next conspirator in the prison tower. With only one dragon in the realm, the conspirators could no longer be imprisoned or executed, but merely fed to the beast for supper. But how do you catch and tame a dragon?
«You can’t! You can only make friends with a dragon,» someone whispered in Clement’s ear.
At times like these, it would seem as if there were dryads in the woods. Clement turned around and saw no one.
The path to the village was not long. He just had to know the side trails to get there quickly. By dawn Clement had reached there. The sight was sad. The village, even the outlying farms had burned to the ground. No cattle left, no houses, no hedges, no wells. The land was black with ash. It was nothing to rest your eyes on. There is blackness and sorrow everywhere.
«That’s what the world would look like if you let a dragon loose,» said a hoarse voice over the ashes. It sounded as if the speaker had swallowed enough ashes to make it impossible to speak his words properly.
Clement looked around, but saw nothing.
«I’m here!»
In the place that had just been empty, there appeared a figure sitting in the middle of the ashes. It, too, was all black, as if drenched in ash.
«Are you burned?» Clement got worried. «I know where to get healing herbs.»
«It’s too late for that!» The haughty voice cut it off. There was an unkind mocking tone to it. «It’s too late for that! She has you in her claws.»
«What do you mean?»
The black stranger laughed a dry, rustling laugh, like loosened ash.
«Who are you?» Clement kept expecting him to wipe his face from the ashes and introduce himself, but he sat motionless. His limbs were too long to be human and clawed. His figure was lanky. He had some sort of encrustation on his shoulders, and a crown or cap with bells on his head. He did not look like a jester or a king. He was a stranger, but his ashes were so thick!
The sinewy stranger wiggled, and then the ashes woke and wailed upon a multitude of black faces. Clement watched with horror. This was more than his uncle’s magic tricks. It looked like real ghosts. The ashy faces resembled the discarded masks of burnt creatures. They squirmed, crooked, frowned. They opened their mouths in a mute or muffled cry.
«We’re all burned because of her,» they whispered. «Run from her, at least you!»
«Run from her!» In tone with them said the black creature, sitting in the middle of the ashes as if in his own house.
«From whom it is?» Clement didn’t understand. From the dragon, it seemed, you should run. The dragon is «he,» not it is «she.»
«It is from her!» The faces echoed, ignoring, for some reason, the threat of attack from the beast. «She can turn anyone and everything to ashes.»
There they were again, talking about some sort of witch. Could she be the dragon’s mistress? Running away from a dragon made more sense than running away from the sorceress who was controlling it. Besides, Clement had gotten past the dragon’s fire so far. Except that the dragon’s slip might have been pure chance.
«We don’t know her name, but if you get in her way, the same thing that happened to us will happen to you. You will become ash,» the ash masks whispered.
Clement was frightened. He didn’t want to burn alive. The ash faces gave too tragic a prophecy.
The ash-soaked creature pointed with its claws busily toward the sky, as if it had seen a sign there.
Clement looked up as well. No dragon was flying over the ashes. So what was it?
As he pondered, the creature chanted in a low voice:
«Beauty and scales, but she is not your bride!»
It laughed and vanished. Only its black crown lay briefly among the ashes, and the black faces lamented in mass. They made the ashy ground seem like a sea of severed heads.
Flames and scales
Clement dreamed that he was walking through the throne room of the Aluar’s palace. Here everything had changed. Instead of a row of knightly armor and sculptures, creepy monsters in armor stood on either side of the hall. Each one was the size of a giant. Their horned heads almost rest against the ceiling. The monsters themselves are as motionless as statues. They do not hinder his advance toward the throne. Everything looks like the day of the coronation. Only on the throne lies a crown of golden laurel leaves, thorns, and claws. All these symbols are not part of the coat of arms of Aluar. Only the crown of some dragon kingdom could be like this.