Rhianon-4. Secrets of the Celestials

“Can I help?”

“I don’t think so,” he said in a startled voice. “No one can.”

Help him? It must have sounded silly, and yet she believed in her strangeness and advantage over even higher powers.

“Sometimes women can be more cunning and resourceful than men.”

“I’m not a man, I’m the devil,” he said innocently. Is he a devil? His surroundings may have made him doubt otherwise, but Rhianon remembered the other things: the tent, the bed, lily petals.

“I know you as a man,” she reminded him, “others remember you as a warrior, and no one knows the truth.”

“Not even myself. Sometimes you can get tangled up in all the things you’ve created yourself. It’s like a golden web, you’ve woven it and now you’re surrounded by it. But I’m looking for ways out.”

“I really can help. You don’t believe I’m capable of anything?”

“I don’t want to risk you,” he looked at her seriously. “This is not a child’s game, Rhianon. This is combat. Not the tiny battle you fought on earth. It can take forever, and it can become more and more complicated. It is difficult to fight forever, even with my powers. And you have such a frail body.”

He put his hands on her shoulders, so thin and delicate. With a press of his fingers he could crush every bone in them. His acquisition, made in a mortal world, was so vulnerable, it would take only a push to wipe it away, and yet he looked at his new toy with unspeakable tenderness. There in heaven he had a bracelet, here on earth a girl appeared. During the battle in heaven, the bracelet twisted from the sun’s rays in the shape of a golden crowned snake came to life and stung him with such fury that he was no longer able to clutch his sword in his hand. Maybe that’s why he lost. Maybe…” Madael lowered his head, unable to finish the thought. What would the girl bring him? His favorite with golden curls and eyes as clear as the sky, would she one day be able to strike out at the one who embraced her? Is she capable of betrayal?

“It is always the most beloved who betray,” his former assistant’s voice whispered to him from the darkness.

He did not want to think about that now. Rhianon may be a copy of him in appearance, but only in appearance. He would not give her cause to rebel against himself. He would be very gentle with her. Though it is amazing how a hand capable of clutching a sword and slashing without mercy can be gentle at all. Perhaps there is a romance. Strength resigned to beauty. Gently he lifted her face by the chin with his fingertips and touched her seductive lips with a light kiss.

“I’ll give you anything you want, just don’t put yourself in danger for anything. Don’t risk, just wait until I bring you what you want. Believe me, in time I can give you everything.”

He tried to put all his feelings into those words. Did Rhianon understand him?

She looked anxiously at the spot where the harp had recently been lying. The musical instrument had disappeared somewhere. The drapery no longer fluttered either. Then Arnaud was no longer there. Perhaps he really is capable of leaking into any crevices. Rhianon breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, Madael could have found out about everything. He would have been able to read it in her eyes, but now he was busy with his own complicated business and the intricacies of the world’s laws. So her lie passed easily. She didn’t want to explain to him about the harp or Arnaud. What if he got angry? Would his anger cost poor Arnaud his life? She didn’t want to let the minstrel down at all. Whatever he was, he deserved the right to live. Unlike the rest of her acquaintances, he had never once plotted against her or uttered hurtful words, so she could repay him in kind.

“You said we wouldn’t spend the night here,” she reminded him.

“Are you sleepy yet?”

“No,” she looked at him questioningly, as if he were planning something, or thinking of making some sort of suggestion.

“Then let’s go. If you want a new experience, I have something to show you,” he took her hand and forced her up. “You know, I’ve always wished to wander my kingdom with someone, not alone.”

Rhianon felt someone place the cloak of purple damask with silver edging on her shoulders and quickly unfold it. She did not even have time to look back. The shadowy servant had already vanished into the darkness.

“It’s cold out there,” Madael explained.

“Is it outside?”

“It is outside the walls of that tower.”

He said it casually, as if he were used to being or keeping prisoners. Rhianon shuddered. The walls of this place truly seemed to her to be living creatures, capable of emitting moans and evil energy. She looked around, but she saw nothing strange this time. Everything around her was silent. But she already knew how deceptive that calm could be.

Night was already falling over the land when Madael took her outside. In the tower it was impossible to tell exactly what time of day it was, for there was always darkness, just as in their celestial castle it was always dawn. Rhianon had already realized that in some of the enchanted places chosen for the unearthly to dwell, time could simply stand still. It did not apply to the mortal world. She sensed a sudden change. It was indeed much colder than the last time she had been on earth. A frosty wind blew in her face as they flew into the darkness of night. Above the black valley that surrounded the tower, Madael suddenly descended. Poisonous fumes whiffed in her face.

“What was out there?”

She spotted some creatures wriggling on the ground. The writhing bodies were naked despite the cold, and the pathetic, muddy rags that covered the sores were scarcely what they looked like. From below, cries and moans could be heard.

“They burn like you from within, though there is no fire inside them, only infection.”

“I want to take a closer look,” she saw, even from her height, that some small creatures were climbing up to the sores and gnawing into them. It was hard to tell who was squirming in the potholes on the ground: humans and nonhumans. If human, they had lost their human appearance as quickly as Madael’s angelic servants.

“It’s dangerous,” he warned. “Even immortals get infected from them sometimes.”

“So why don’t you burn them. Leave only ashes of them.”

“It is poison ashes,” he corrected. “It will scatter across the world and poison others, your beautiful fairies, for example. Besides, who told you that when we are dismembered, shattered, or even burned to ashes, we cease to feel pain?”

“But…” She thought it was too monstrous.

“Chop me up into thousands and thousands of tiny pieces, and each of them will retain all my feelings, including my feelings for you. The latter is fine. But they don’t have that feeling. They have only anguish.”

“I pity them.”

“Don’t feel sorry for them. They’ve earned theirs.”

His indifference echoed over the valley of sores like a bell. Even she was hurt by it.

“But they are your army. They went after you.”

“So what is it?”

“Should you feel anything for them?”

“They chose their fate.”

“Stop!” She felt something attached to her belt snap off and fly down to the contaminated ground. It was the mirror she’d been carrying, and it must have shattered, falling from such a height, but she still wanted the golden frame back, even if it had no glass.

“Come down, please.”

He complied with her request and let her pick up the shiny object. Rhianon brushed dirt and lumps of earth from the mirror. To her joy it didn’t break or even crack. The glass must have been enchanted. She twirled it around, catching reflections of the squalid wasteland in the distance and the writhing bodies nearby. She held the mirror up to the moaning creature beneath her feet and almost dropped it in surprise. It reflected not a black, hunched-over creature, but a beautiful creature, wounded, moaning, but beautiful. Blood streaks ran down its white face and the same white wings behind its shoulders, but they did nothing to spoil it. The same two deep streaks also dissected his back at the point between his trembling wings.

“Let’s go!” Madael grabbed her arm. “You can’t stay here much longer, you might get infected.”

“And what if I’m already infected?” she was used to playing with fire, and even feeling it in her, but she found this place truly creepy.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if all the incurable diseases that existed on earth were just the remnants of the contagion that had come down to us.”

Rhianon saw the lights of a village in the distance.

“What is there? Is it a place where ghosts dwell?”

“It is worse,” he drew her to him, as if to shield her from the decay around her. “Come, I’ll show you.”

He led her to the little village faster than she’d expected. It seemed that even now, as he stepped on the contaminated ground, he was not walking, but flying. The golden sandals on his feet didn’t have earth or lumps of dirt clinging to them. He clutched his companion to him as if he wanted to carry her with him through space. Rhianon marveled. She was sure that if she had walked alone, it would have taken her most of the night to reach the mud huts. She’d seen the village so far from the heath that the low, one-story houses seemed like dots against the horizon. Now she stood beside them and could even peer through the windows. It took only a few minutes to get all the way here. Yes, with a companion like hers she didn’t need speed boots. Rhianon walked through the narrow, dirty streets, leaning here and there to one window or the other. Sometimes the light inside was on. People were awake, but they looked so haggard they probably couldn’t get out of bed. The narrow bunks, soaked with the stench of disease, were not even beds.

“What a miserable place this is!”

“They’re all sick,” Madael said. His voice echoed through the dull silence with an unusual golden echo, bringing a kind of magic to the darkened alleyways. Even the pestilence and epidemic vibes that danced there seemed to stop for a second.

“Death was already dancing on these logs, walls, thatched roofs, but people didn’t die for long. And anyone who wanders in here is also infected. After a while, no one will be alive here, and anyway, if, centuries later, anyone who wanders in here accidentally or on purpose and seeks adventure, the same thing that happened to them will happen to them. You can’t clean a place like this.”

“But your tower is untouched by the pestilence, built at the very heart of the pestilence,” she blinked when she realized what she had said was foolish. Of course his tower could not be affected by the disease, and neither could he.

“Why did this village seem so close to your land?” She asked instead.

“You see that mountain range there in the distance,” he pointed ahead. “They call it the Dark Spit, and you don’t want to go near it. There’s a lot of strange and dangerous stuff up there, except for the Ifrit up there, who’d throw stones at anyone, but there’s a lot of gold up there, too. Precious ores, stones, gems, everything valued by mortals, are found in such abundance in that black hole as nowhere else. One day a stranger in a black robe came to the village and showed the people a handful of gold nuggets. He succeeded in awakening their greed and luring them closer to the Dark Spit. He said that he had mined it all there himself and would now live like a rich man, and that there was more treasure left for them in the mountain womb. Enough to make several countries rich, let alone a single village. In a ring of mountains, closing in the shape of a sickle, he suggested that they build a mine. So the peasants abandoned their ploughs, cattle and homes and decided to settle close to the mountain range. No warnings from spirits or ghosts had any effect on them. They even built a village here. The houses turned out so miserable because before they could set them up, the epidemic had already done its work.”

“Dark Spit. Is that the name of those mountains?” Rhianon squinted, staring at the massifs drowning in darkness. She couldn’t see much in the dense darkness until gold sparkles flickered before her pupils.

“They curved in the shape of a braid, you see?”

Now she could really see. A slight glow began to illuminate the darkness in front of her. In spite of the sparks, everything around her remained gloomy, but at the same time it was clearly visible. Was this really how Madael saw the night, dark but full of clear outlines and stars?

It is very much like the scythe of death,” he grinned. “If you like, I can take you above them and let you see for yourself.”

“Better not,” she thought of the altitude they’d have to fly to get around the mountain tops and felt sick with fear. Or rather, it was not the murderous fear of heights that she had felt before, but only a slight tremor. Even that, however, was rather unpleasant.

“I’d rather walk on the ground.”

Even if it’s contaminated, she added to herself. As Madael had put it, death was dancing in every nook and cranny, but Rhianon didn’t see it, and she wasn’t afraid of it. She peered through the windows, noticed the sick, and then moved on to the next house. Everywhere the same thing, only once she dared to go inside. The door was ajar, and the candle’s light attracted her. It smoldered faintly, like a life already departing.

Madael followed her in, wings almost touching the doorjamb. It looked as if it should have left a fiery imprint, but there was none. Rhianon saw another angel-like creature sitting by the dying girl’s bedside. She suddenly wanted to hold a mirror up to it, as she had done the first time, and see how it was reflected in it, but there was no need. The tattered wings and bruised face were still beautiful. The bright white wasn’t black even on the feathers, but it wasn’t ghostly either. More like the color of chalk or paper than a ghostly sheen. Rhianon stopped. The bruises under her eyelids gave the impression that the angel was crying blood. Or maybe he really was crying. The sores-covered girl in the narrow bunk did not wake up. She could not see that a strange guest was sitting by the barely lit candle, as if to catch her last breath.

“Sethius!” Madael froze on the threshold and looked sternly at the man sitting by the candle.

Rhianon was about to ask him why this angel still kept an attractive appearance, but then the head with ruffled curls lifted and the bruises on his face suddenly became sharper, along with them came the burns and bruises. A moment more and he lost much of his attractiveness. The light arcs of his eyebrows turned black, something disgusting that resembled bugs crawled across his skin. Sethius could have been mistaken for a work of marble, so white he was, were it not for these glaring imperfections.

“I don’t…” He could barely move his split tongue, a trickle of blood coming out of his mouth. “I don’t do anything you can’t do.”

“Then keep doing it,” Madael gestured to Rhianon toward the door. He was going to leave and leave the creature here. At the threshold, Rhianon turned around. She saw Sethius lean over the dying woman. He was not frightened by the sores or the supernatural contagion. He almost pressed his lips to her throat, as if he were really going to catch her last breath and the life that was flying away.

“He thinks he’ll regain his former appearance, at the expense of the others’ beauty,” Madael whispered as they left.

The candle, meanwhile, was almost out. There was only a tiny spark in the wick, but it too was about to go out. Rhianon could hear the faint whisper of an angel behind her, and she heard the rustle of wings. This time it seemed ominous to her. The black wings of death must have rustled just the same: wild and dreary. Not even the sound of a requiem would have upset her so.

Walking out of the house, she still felt like she was at a funeral.

“Sethius dreams of having his own crypt, and so do his friends,” Madael grinned for some reason. “It would be hard enough for them to have one, with all their pretensions.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You can’t. People survive on their own terms, and the damned have their own ways. Six of my best warlords have chosen to live on their own. Let them. I don’t need them anymore. Let them survive as they please. Now they have a burden on their shoulders.”

“What do you mean?”

“They were followed by the seventh angel, the one who didn’t fight on my side, but against me. It is wretched little soul. He couldn’t even hold his sword in his hands during the battle. The sight of his friends’ spilled blood made him sick. Lovers… what could you take them for? They are incapable of fighting against each other. And now he was freezing, starving, and losing his former attractiveness along with them in this contaminated land. He followed them himself. I used to laugh at him. Now I understand him.”

“What will happen to them?”

“I told you before, they want their own palace or crypt, a place where they can exist apart, feed off the energy of those mortals who fall under their spell. They want to be separate from my world, from earth and from heaven, but sometimes they need living souls. Who doesn’t want to have mortals as playthings and restore their beauty by taking other people’s lives?”

“Do they believe they can do it?”

“So far, only they believe. They don’t have much success. Perhaps they haven’t found a soul vicious enough to surrender its domain to them. In time, however, someone may seem so greedy for the cursed gold that they will worship the fallen angels and build for them their coveted crypt. It is a crypt for the seven angels. Here will be their fun, someone’s tears and lots of blood.”

“I saw him crying blood.”

“He drinks too much of it,” Madael whistled softly, the whistle like the echo of a string through the sleeping village, awakening a long echo. – And there’s plenty left, but it’s infected. Who knows what leprosy he will bear with it?

“He’s gone right before his eyes,” she still couldn’t imagine how such a beautiful creature could change so drastically.

“It happens,” Madael grimaced. “And more than once. It is sometimes in front of mortals. Some are beautiful, or at least pleasant-looking, for a long time, and then they go bad. People see and are frightened. I make it look like they’re crazy. You never know what a madman will see. I have to put the madman on a chain so that the demons won’t bother him anymore. And those same demons will laugh later. We must not reveal our existence to anyone. That’s the law.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

The question sounded like a punch. Madael looked away sharply.

“And the helmet that you can’t take off doesn’t bother you, does it? Even a sword you can’t draw whenever you want?”

“Even if you read my soul as an open book, stop, Rhianon. Someday things will be different.”

“Is it soon?” She picked up her skirts and staggered away, not knowing where she was going. Above her head something flew noisily, almost clawing at her gold crown. It seemed to be an ifrit, flying down from a distant mountain range, or maybe from the roof of one of the houses behind her. She didn’t get a good look.

Madael stared tensely into the darkness.

His hand gripped the hilt of his sword tightly. “I’ll deal with him later.”

“Later?” She frowned. “Is there anything else you want to show me? Or was this village the only thing you wanted to show me?”

“I didn’t want to bring you here in the first place. You asked for it,” he said, furious. “And there’s a sickness here.”

“So what if I’m with you?”

“Don’t be silly, even I can’t protect you from absolutely everything.”

“I don’t believe it,” she thought he couldn’t believe what he was saying either, but he looked worriedly up at the sky once more. No one else had flown across the gloomy sky, but there was an unpleasant, dark residue, like a comet’s mark, in the darkness. Evil has been here… Rhianon tucked the edges of her cloak tightly around her. She felt cold, though she felt hot inside.

“What were you going to show me?” She thought that an innocent question would lighten the mood, but the darkness echoed ominously.

“There’s a town…”

“Is there a plague that’s killing people there, too?”

“Not at all,” he smiled mischievously, a boyish grin. “There aren’t any people there. From afar, the city can be mistaken for a sprawling island of moss, but come closer and you can see the outlines of the ruins.”

“Do spirits live there?” Rhiannon wondered.

“Spirits like Orpheus,” he confirmed.

“But then it is interesting.”

“Just stay close to me when we go there. I don’t want you to get lost in the labyrinths of the city. There are a lot of precipices and cracks in the walls and dried-up wells. It’s easy to get lost there and never find your way out.”

“I am not afraid,” she followed him eagerly.