Dragon’s Empire – 5. Society of Shadows

He staggered away at a brisk pace. Without his cloak he looked like a bird without wings. The cloak, like a tattered plumage, lay near the scaffold.

«No one can escape us,» Charlo shouted threateningly. «And you,» he said suddenly to me. «Why you not burn us. If you can breathe fire, why haven’t you burned all your enemies?»

«I can’t,» I said. «I can’t leave just a handful of ashes from everyone. Otherwise, I would put the executioners, who are on duty day and night in the torture chambers of my castle, out of a job. They have to practice their trade on someone, too, lest I turn them away.»

Charlo fell silent. He was uncomfortable with the prospect of my prison.

«I won’t be back for a while, but I’ll pick my own time,» I said as I left. «I’ve taught you a lesson, and now I’ll give you time to think. Consider, Charlo, what you’ve just seen, and conclude for yourself, perhaps your nighttime walks are bad for your sanity, perhaps you’ve just seen things no one else has, and perhaps I, the dragon, only exist in your sick imagination.»

I waved my hand, glowing like a firefly in the darkness, as if to send them all into oblivion, and ducked into the alley, where Klovis’ footsteps were already fading around the corner. I knew that someone swift and unpredictable was following him, nimbly leaping from one roof to another, hiding behind chimneys and ledges, scratching the tiles with his claws, and all the while intently observing the figure of the young man, who from a height looked only a dot crawling through the narrow streets.

There was again a nimble, precise leap. Someone’s claws caught on the ledge of a stacked brick chimney and scratched it. The gutter creaked, the heel of someone’s boot scraping lightly against the iron-clad heel. Klovis, of course, didn’t hear all that. He couldn’t have been as sensitive to the presence of another predatory creature near him, his hearing was not as acute as mine, and his thinking was not as quick. Compared to me, he was short-sighted. So, who could he have spotted on the rooftops, if even I guessed the existence of a stalker not because I noticed it, but by the sounds it made as it moved. Even I had a hard time distinguishing him from the average yard cat that climbed up on the roof.

«Don’t turn around!» I chased and shoved Klovis aside so that some heavy glass object, thrown from above, whistled nearby and shattered on the sidewalk. One sharp shard killed a mouse that had carelessly darted out from under the basement grate. Klovis barely restrained his nausea from my pushing it to the ground, not so far from the slashed body of the beast.

«It would have been you,» I tossed the ugly corpse with the edge of my boot where it belonged, behind the sewer grate.

The boy swallowed convulsively and nodded, as if trying to say «thank you!»

Someone who had jumped off the roof was now running away from us through the tangled streets. A person could not remain unharmed and uninjured by jumping from such a height. Another man would have been dead by now if he had dared such a maneuver, but this one was still full of energy and was running away almost at a hopping pace. Isn’t that monkey agility?

«What did I ever do to deserve your help?» Klovis got to his feet and shook down the dirt.

«Normally, help is required of me. But, believe, if I were to come at you from around the corner, no amount of help would bring relief.»

«He won’t let me get away. Wouldn’t he?» Klovis turned as if he could see the flaming footprints left on the stones by someone’s soles.

«He is strong, but he is not omnipotent…» I remembered that I had not only escaped the dungeon myself, but I had broken all relations between us.

«What do you mean by that?» Klovis looked to me hopefully, as if I were someone smarter and more experienced, someone who could answer any question correctly.

«Sit back somewhere, and then, who knows, things may turn in your favor.»

«Sit back? I must sit back as a fugitive?» There was a sound of doubt in his voice. Klovis wasn’t sure he could do nothing for a long time without growing tired of it. He was the sort of man for whom any work was better than forced idleness. Even doing useless work he would know that life goes on and maybe one day work would bring success, but lurking somewhere and fearing for himself was tantamount to burial for him.

«You are a fugitive,» I reminded him, though he knew it already.

«And where would I hide, they scatter through the city as night falls, as numerous and inescapable as the cloak of darkness that descends on the earth toward evening.»

«I would suggest you go to a monastery, but I’m afraid that, though it is the only escape, it would be unacceptable to you.»

«Is there somewhere else I could take refuge?» He wished to prolong his life, but his adolescent recklessness prevailed.

I waved with my hand in the direction of the rounded golden domes of the church belfry.

«Only there,» I said, and then added. «I don’t mean to turn you into a monk or lay-brother, but if you can get there you’d better not go out yet.»

I turned and wanted to go, but he stopped me.

«Does the Infanta really live with you?» He asked me hesitantly.

«Yes,» I said easily. «Did she call herself Infanta?»

«She said we could call her Infanta of the Shadows or Rosabella,» he admitted. «We didn’t know each other’s real names until you came to us.

«I mustn’t be too long, but I’ll see that you get to the porch safely, otherwise you’ll have to rely on yourself,» I did not add that Rose was already waiting for me. He was already a little upset.

«See you later,» I said goodbye to Clovis at the door, and added to myself, «I hope that you will be still alive.»

On the way, after picking up the gifts for Rose, which had remained untouched only by the cloak of invisibility, or their bright wrappings would have attracted someone even at this late hour, I headed back to the castle. Even before I flew over the square, I already knew that it was empty. All the shadows had scattered. There was no sign of Charlo on the platform, not even Clovis’s abandoned cloak. To the casual observer it would have seemed as if nothing had happened. The silence that followed the storm seemed unnatural to me, too. The storm had passed, the fire in the night had gone out, and the rage had at least reluctantly but temporarily subsided, if not cooled.

I returned to the castle at the moment that fate seems to have given us on purpose, to learn how to resist temptation. The writing-case I had noticed Vincent carrying more than once lay lonely on the table, while the owner himself was away. It would have looked abandoned had there not been a half-written sheet of paper on the writing-stand beside it, and the ink-stained quill had not yet had time to return to its hole in the inside of the case. A stack of neatly beaded sheets lay on top of the blank paper. The sandstone inkpot was half-empty, and small vials and bottles of colorful ink were designed specifically to highlight the most important lines in the manuscript. The pen-sharpening knife at the tip of its blade was painted in scarlet ink, as if the author had slit his wrists to sign the epilogue to the work in blood. A signature made in the wizard’s blood would burst into flames in a moment of danger to protect his copyright, but against my peeping, petty sorcery was powerless.

I could not resist the temptation. I had long guessed that Vincent was writing a book, most likely his own biography. It was something like a long confession. I wanted to know what he had experienced before he first met me and during our long separation, but I was too lazy or too delicate to dig into his thoughts or ask him directly. I feared that as soon as I began to read, some evil spirit would laugh at me, saying that the manuscript was only a decoy, the inked paragraphs would spread on the paper, and the paper itself would scatter with papyrus dust, but nothing of the sort happened. I settled myself in the chair in front of the fireplace, looked back at the door almost thievishly, to think I felt like a thief in my own house, but putting aside conscience and morality, I began to read, and I was unspeakably surprised. No confession on Vincent’s part. The charming weasel was too careful for that. What I held in my hands was the story of my own life, that is, of the section of it Vincent was watching. An incorrigible romantic, he had, either with Rose’s help or his own initiative, turned the whole novel into a love-adventure story. There was, of course, more fiction than truth. If Vincent had dared to put my entire background on paper, I would not have forgiven him. It was my right to tell the whole truth about myself, and I could not have a dodgy hanger-on confessing it for me. Fortunately, Vincent decided to be a fantasist. He sang the dithyrambs of my looks on almost every page. I was, of course, flattered. More than that, I was embarrassed for the first time. It turns out that Vincent saw me as a noble, almost blessed creature, which I had never been.

«What’s your opinion?» Suddenly Vincent’s voice came from behind the back of the chair. Rose had already crept quietly into the room, too, and it seemed to me that both she and Vincent had not entered through the doorway, but had grown right out of the ground.

«Who was that for?» Rose humbly clasped her hands behind her back and stared intently at the newly brought boxes.

«It is not for him,» I remarked about the gremlin, who, wielding his paws much more deftly than human hands, had already removed the lids from the boxes and was enthusiastically touching the soft orange ruffled skirt with his claws. He seemed to think that the whole pile of fancy rags had been brought here specially to make a cozy nest for him to sleep in.

«So how about my first… well, almost first literary audition,» Vincent insisted.

«Are you telling me you’ve written anything before that?» – I grinned, and then met his disapproving gaze. You can’t joke when someone has opened up to you about the most important thing. «Well, I guess no one’s ever made a villain a positive hero before.»

«Hmm…» Vincent was clearly expecting something more, at least praise for his labors, but instead of chiding me for being disrespectful, he nodded toward the carrier and suggested. «Open the secret compartment. There’s a hidden spring, push it.

I didn’t want to touch his personal belongings, the inviolability of which had already been violated, but since Vincent suggested it himself. I opened the stash easily and pulled out a stack of letters. There was no address on the envelopes. Half of them had a capital «B» written in ornate handwriting, and the other half had something like a red-ink-soaked fingerprint. All the letters were already printed out, so I unfolded the first one I picked at random and read it out loud:

«Your grace! I am your humble former secretary, having served under you as chief assistant, archivist, housekeeper, bookkeeper, housekeeper, cook, etc., etc.» I didn’t have the strength to list all the things I had read. My tongue was bony from what I had already read out loud. After skipping three lines, I continued. «Overcoming my innate shyness, I take the liberty of disturbing you, not through impudence or immodesty, but by virtue of grave circumstances. Our illustrious monseigneur has taken possession not only of the Lara, but of every acre of land around it, and there is not even a corner where I can rest my head without fearing every moment that it is about to fall off my shoulders. If I could find a corner in a warehouse or a cellar, where I could hide without the fear that a bat might fly past and report to its lord that there was an extra in town. No attic, alas, though it looks uninhabited, is actually so. Everywhere the servants of our sun-like monseigneur live, fly, or nest. Your humble servant would never trouble you with a request for intercession, knowing full well that it would be an impossible burden on you. You may wish to ask why I should not leave Lara, so I will answer in advance that, first, the protective ring of spells does not let anyone in or out of the city, of which you yourself are well aware, and that, second, I cannot afford to live anywhere else. On this point I dare remind you that you still haven’t paid me three-quarters of my regular monthly wages, and the whole of last month’s. Do not think that I resent you. I could have lived with my usual trade if all the purses in the city had not been counted among the servants of the new lord. Where one strong robber has gone, there is nothing for the smaller ones to do. Again, I would not have disturbed you if it hadn’t been for the utmost need. I heard recently that somehow you had managed to find a remedy for the return of youth. You have always reproached me for being too young, but time passes, and now, sitting in my fragile shelter, the doors of which may at any moment be blown open by a fiery explosion or a visit from a terrible guest, I feel like a decrepit old man. Even, my hand trembles when I write, unable to write out the letters accurately. Please tell me the secret of your transformation, if only as a reward for the one year, seven months, twenty-nine days and five hours I served you in so many positions before you not quite politely chased me out. I served you faithfully, and this sudden dismissal can be explained either by an empty treasury or the appearance of a new favorite, but I am not offended. As a reward for all the services I have rendered you, out of infinite respect for your person I do not demand a penny of money, only send me a prescription so that I can, like you, rejuvenate myself. P.S.. A blank piece of paper, so you don’t waste any money, enclosed. I would also enclose a postage stamp and printing wax, if you and I were to use regular postage. Thank you in advance, eternally yours, Vincent.»

«It’s a good thing I didn’t correspond with you,» I said with a sigh of relief as I read the letter. – You show a meticulousness in your written explanations that you would have been beaten for in real life.»

«And it was all for your sake,» Vincent said angrily. «I wanted to help, but it hasn’t worked out yet. Do you know what that fuddy-duddy wrote back? That he didn’t want anything to do with beggars. Then I wrote to him again, in the same way, but no longer with requests, but with threats. Only sternness has an effect on scoundrels. I was immediately given a polite answer, with even more meticulous apologies than mine, but he did not dare to reveal his secrets, as if he did not know what he was talking about, saying that he had no secrets from society, and he asked me humbly not to write further, as he had no money for a secretary, and he could no longer be away from work just to write some letters.»

«Has he sent you your letters back?»

«Yes, he must have thought that every piece of paper was precious to me, or maybe he thought it was bad luck to keep the things of someone who was about to be caught in the clutches of Monseigneur dragon. Just don’t think I gave him our address in Lara. I found letters every time in the hollow of an elm tree. The crows would bring them. I would put mine under my pillow, wish before I went to sleep the name of the addressee, and in the morning it would disappear, already in his hands.»

«It’s funny,» I agreed. «It’s news to me, too, that you’re in such dire straits.»

«Well…» Vincent blushed. «It would be a plight, though, if I took my scribbles closer to the printing press.»

«Who would agree to that?» I laughed. «Remember the sad experience of Camille, who only managed to get a play into an unpopular theater by threatening the director?»

«My case is quite different,» said Vincent confidently. – In addition, you are able to buy for us all the bookstores in Lara and not one printing press, and not a dozen pairs of workers. Gold or threats, it doesn’t matter to you what you pay with.»

«I may soon find myself in the claws of your venerable former employer, and you want to make a book hero out of me.

«For if the prince gets you back on your old path, you might find your biography with a delicate velvet bookmark on your bedside table, and you wouldn’t have to seduce anyone, they’d already be in love with you.»

«And if it’s not about the girls? What about the agitated superstitious peasantry, the suspicious laymen, the soldiers, the youths, the merchants, the proprietors? Do you think they will all love the one whose fiery breath could at any moment collapse on the roofs of their houses and turn a peaceful night to a burning hell. No one, from ministers to long-suffering students, wishes for such an end.

«Stop, Edwin. People are mostly mistrustful. They will consider all my work to be mere authorial fiction.»

«And that outlaw I spared? He told anyone who wanted to know about me. What if there was a survivor who managed to leave the burning city and noticed me. They wouldn’t believe them either.»

«Of course they wouldn’t. Sometimes in books, there’s a line where the fictional character becomes flesh. He’s already living on his own and can be too affecting for the impressionable. Ask Rose. She’ll confirm.»

Rose, who was at this moment looking for a way to coax the curled-up gremlin out of her new dresses, looked at Vincent dubiously and shrugged her shoulders.

«Francesca would have confirmed it,» he sighed. «You were a legend to her above all else.»

Rose gave up trying to wriggle new dresses out of her boyfriend’s clutches and came around to us.

«Edwin!» She rustled a cloud of silk skirts toward me. «It’s been hours and hours and the parcel is still on our table. You see, I cannot bear to have a dead rival near me.»

«It will be a long journey, with no map, compass, or guiding star to guide us.»

«But your magic will save us.»

«I hope so,» I said modestly. Rose was confident in my abilities, while I myself had my doubts.

It didn’t take long to pack. I didn’t need much to take with me, just a few scrolls, which I stuffed in my pocket as a precaution, a flask of wine, and some food in case Rose got hungry. I had no need for a telescope or compass. Superhuman eyesight substituted for the former, and intuition and the ability to orient myself in any unfamiliar space for the latter. I took my weapon with me not for self-defense, but out of habit. I liked to have a sword on my side and a musket in its holster, so that I looked like a simple man who could not grow dragon claws on his bare arm in a moment of danger. I carried the bloody bundle under my arm, and covered it with the hem of my cloak.

Rose was sure we would have to walk for God knows how long to our destination, so she spent a long time choosing shoes with sturdy soles, trying on boots, lace-up boots, and even some of my pairs of boots before she found something she liked, but despite her calculations we got there in a matter of minutes. The ocean was behind us, and before us was the desert mainland.

«Could this parched soil ever have been cultivated and sown?» Rose looked critically at the thick smears of ash on her leather boots. «Oh, Edwin, I find it hard to believe that even the smallest settlement, let alone an entire country, could once have stood here.»

«But it was here, there, on the coast, was the castle where I lived. Not alone, of course, but among an anthill of courtiers, advisors, consuls, servants, and many idlers who did who knows what they did and did what they did, just to stay near the shadow of the royal throne. There was the port,» I waved toward the sandy shore. The sand was now mixed with ash and had long since lost its usual yellow color. «There had been a flourishing city near the port, trade, merchant ships came here from the farthest shores, and then the watchmen on the ships could even see the light on the lighthouse, but they could no longer dock ashore. Back then, the world still remembered that my father’s country existed, but no one could reach it anymore, an invisible barrier prevented it, and gradually the whole state disappeared from the world map. You wouldn’t believe, of course, that once this desert had blossomed and borne fruit. Now, even if someone settled here, the withered earth would never grow again.»

I glanced toward the waves licking the scorched shores. Only the foamy swells remained unchanged. The fires of hell had flared up, devoured the country, and faded away, but the ocean remained.

«How I would have liked to put the prince on that very galleon, denying him both crew and anchor and shelter, off any shore, so that he could wander around all latitudes, no longer daring to harm anyone. Then he would finally understand the meridian of life that opened before me as I left the flaming homeland.

Ahead lay only a bare plain under the night sky, but suddenly somewhere in the distance I could make out a light, the smoke of a fire, the smell of burning. At first I had a crazy idea that that terrible night had returned, that everything would be reenacted, like in a shadow theater, but I would no longer be a participant in the performance, but just a spectator. But there could be no shadow performance where there was no memory of the past, no lodges, no stones, not even just descendants, nothing that could infuse the energy of disembodied beings who like to appear to someone, not to an empty space. So the mainland is not as desolate as I thought after all.

«Come on, let’s go see who got here,» I grabbed Rose’s hand. «Maybe someone was shipwrecked or thrown overboard from a pirate ship. Fishing boats could have gone off course in a storm, too.»

Rose hid her hair under a smart beret and looked like a boy.

«I didn’t see a boat by the shore,» she protested. «I didn’t even see a raft that would have helped rescue the passengers from the sinking ship. There’s only one way to get here: by flying, or with the help of a guide like you.

We approached the fire close enough to see those sitting around it, but so that they couldn’t see us. I wrapped my arms around Rose’s waist and soared into the air with her, a few meters off the ground, so I could see what was going on below without the danger of being seen.

There was only one man I knew warming up by the fire; I didn’t know the rest of them. Royce, stretched out on the ground and taking the most comfortable seat by the fire, looked like a puny schoolboy who had strayed into the respectable company of adults. I wondered how his roughly dressed, unshaven companions, accustomed to the hardships of outlaw life, would not push him aside to make them comfortable.

Royce looked regretfully at the bones that had been picked off by the fire, and clung to a half-empty bottle for solace. The single teenager in black looked strange, even unnatural, next to people dressed in sheepskin vests and darned linen shirts and simple pants, as if he were invisible to human perception and only Rose and I saw him because we were the same elusive creatures, and those who sat by the fire had no idea that an evil spirit was lying around them and watching them. Royce’s eyebrows drew together at the bridge of his nose, his fingers nervously tugging at the strings of his blanket as if he were really invisible, wondering what he could whisper in these men’s ears to incite them to a scuffle. It was more the evil spirit’s job to make mischief than to watch, but he couldn’t think of any suitable tricks, so he just lay there by the fire and kept silent.

– It’s getting cold,» someone from the untrustworthy company remarked. «Why don’t we go warm up in your caves or the ravine? Where’s that ridge you were talking about? I walked a couple of miles, almost got lost, but I didn’t see anything, not a cliff, not a rocky ridge, not even an ordinary rock underfoot. It is a damn island. I won’t let anyone else drag me to such a place.»

Some of those sitting by the fire, though they weren’t cold, shuddered at his words.

«We’re not going anywhere,» Royce said in a commanding tone. «My lord told us to wait here and keep an eye on what’s going on.»

«What can happen here?»

«Something interesting,» said Royce, his eyes sparkling mischievously. «If you could read, I’d let you see the story I stole, but you think learning to read is a sin. Why learn to read and write when you can sign on the throats of those who are late and have coins jingling in their pockets?» Royce laughed. «And since you are illiterate, my friend, you will have to content yourself with what I can state verbally.»

«Have you seen the demon the story is about?» Someone else asked, with interest, evidently someone who had spelled a little and read a few things for himself.»