Rhianon-4. Secrets of the Celestials. Natalie Yacobson

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      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, СКАЧАТЬ