Rhianon-2. Princess of Fire and the Winged Warrior. Natalie Yacobson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      He rubbed his hands as if they were burned. He could hardly have been burned by the contact with her shoulders. Rhianon regarded his gestures condescendingly, as if they were a joke. You would have been a fine clown, she wanted to say, but she listened to herself instead of bickering. She wondered if she should just take a random route and let the magic take her where she needed to go.

      Rhianon stared down one of the branches of the wide, dark corridor, and long rows of sconces flashed on either side, as if pointing the right way. It was so reminiscent of the Milky Way. Rhianon involuntarily stared at the flickering lights in the darkness.

      And then it suddenly seemed to her that she had missed something. There should have been some other rite or ritual, a test of her abilities, an initiation and a meeting, but there was none. The road before her seemed eerily empty.

      «Why does no one greet us?» She asked Orpheus quietly.

      «You are different and your story is special,» he shrugged nonchalantly, the ringing of the stirring bells in this space seemed ghostly rather than perky. It was so unaccustomed. Rhianon felt the fire inside her. But an icy wind had blown.

      «You are allowed to walk around here alone. The others wouldn’t be allowed to do that. And you go wherever you want, though there are so many forbidden paths here.»

      «I thought the way here was forbidden in itself.»

      «But there are rules, too,» he too stared into the darkness expectantly, as if he could see something she hadn’t seen yet. «Let’s hope you don’t get hurt, my beautiful princess. After all, you are special, and so pretty. If anyone is offended by your presence in their midst, they will be silent, out of respect for the fire within you.»

      «Stop your chattering,» she paced ahead of him.

      «I’m only trying to talk sense,» Orpheus kept her at her side for several paces. Orpheus would not allow her to go more than a few paces away from him, and he would be at her side as if he were bound to her. There was really no getting away from him. But if she could bear to be around him, listening to his endless chatter was becoming unbearable.

      «All you’re going to do is make my ears hurt,» she hissed, silencing him at least for a few moments. How nice it would be if he only commented on business and kept his own considerations to himself. Shall she tell him to do that? Was he bound to her by so much sorcery as to be compelled to do her every wish? That would have to be checked sometime. For now she was more interested in the aura of the place. Rhianon went wherever it seemed to be calling her.

      The train glided smoothly behind her on the marble floor. In the silence ahead some rustling could be heard. There were hundreds of voices. They were talking and whispering, making absurd suggestions and jokes and promises, but they were all part of one big overarching silence. Perhaps she could have singled out any one of these voices just by wishing to listen to it alone, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t even want to look beneath her feet and notice in the cracks of the floor a multitude of tiny uncertain creatures, like the midget she had seen in the carriage just for a moment. Then he gave her a bow. Did this mean that she had been expected here for a long time.

      Rhianon walked down the corridor for a long time before one of the open doors caught her eye. Every door she’d seen before had been closed, but here a golden light shone through the crack. She stepped closer, and all kinds of hues flashed through it. It reminded her of a rainbow. Rhianon was about to reach out and open the door, when she remembered that the star was still clutched in her hand.

      «There is a pendant from the neck of the condemned man,» she must have said the words out loud when someone in the empty space answered her.

      «Do you want to call out to him?»

      It was not the voice of Orpheus behind her, and it was coming from somewhere above, not behind. She looked up and saw that a tiny man, just like the one she had seen in the carriage, was sitting over the doorpost. He, too, had taken off his wide-brimmed hat when she looked at him, exposing his tiny head. He would have easily fit into a thimble or a walnut shell all by himself. The creature was no bigger than a ladybug or a bug, but he acted as if he sensed his own importance. It was dressed somewhat differently than her last acquaintance. Tiny legs in gold stockings dangled over the ajar door. Rhianon was sure that if he wanted to jump down, he wouldn’t crash, despite his tiny size. She even thought she could put her hand under his arm and he would fly down with a sweep of his cloak like a butterfly’s wings.

      «What do you mean?» she asked softly.

      «A dead one,» was the serious reply, «a dead one can be the mentor of a living one. You could choose him.»

      «I don’t need tutors. I like to learn everything myself, that’s why I came here. Those who are really good at something don’t need a mentor.»

      «It seems that way.»

      The lilliput was staring somewhere beneath her feet, and Rhianon glanced there, too, and noticed the scarlet drops on the floor. She’d squeezed the star too hard in her palm, and it had sharp ends. They were too sharp. Droplets of blood rolled to her feet, a few of them staining the hem of her dress. Others touched the floor and began to faintly ignite on it. But there was no smell of burning, as there usually was, and no shower of sparks or scorching flames. Rhianon saw the scarlet drops fade, and black flowers sprout from them.

      «No more frogs and toads that would emerge from the drops of my blood,» she whispered, looking at the tiny black magnolias or orange blossoms. She didn’t even know what they might be called. They don’t look like clover either, but they’re exactly the size of clover heads.

      «It is like a drop of your blood,» someone remarked.

      Rhianon glanced at the doorway, but there was no sign of the little man.

      «Don’t talk to them,» Orpheus warned her. «You see, they’re all over everyone, trying to lead you astray. They are empty-headed insects. They’ll do as much harm to you as locusts do to a field.»

      «But they’re funny,» Rhianon stared into the empty space, trying to see what else was there. But all the tiny creatures seemed to hide after Orpheus’ reproof. It was so easy for them to hide. After all, there are so many cracks and burrows and just dark corners around. They could fit everywhere.

      «What did he say about me?» she frowned and looked questioningly at Orpheus. «What do drops of blood mean?»

      «Well, if your blood is spilled, but fell on no treaty, then your soul is of no use to anyone here.»

      «Is it my soul?» She didn’t understand him.

      «There is a price to pay for learning, my princess. And what did you expect?»

      There is a golden crown, a triumphal procession, and a fanfare,» she joked, but then she realized this was no place for humor. Her laughter seemed to sink into the endless darkness, leaving only a crushing sense of emptiness. It was as if her soul had been drained out of her.

      «Don’t be afraid, they don’t want to take your soul for some reason, it must belong to someone else,» his own voice cut off and fell silent. Orpheus obviously did not want to finish something.

      «Is it my soul,» Rhianon repeated involuntarily, and this word sounded like a sigh and somehow frightened her.

СКАЧАТЬ