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Tamlane – Prisoner of the Queen of the Fairies – 2. Release
«What about the fire elves?» Janet wondered. «What can they do with their fire?»
«Oh, they’re not to be messed with,» the fairy said. «They burned my flowers long ago. Cannes. They grew by the waterfall. They called me Canna, too, after the flowers I lived in. So it’s nice to meet you.»
«I am glad to meet you too!» Janet wanted to ask the little girl a lot of things, but she hesitated.
«Are you in love with Tamlane?» The fairy shamelessly inquired.
Janet nodded.
«It’s dangerous!»
«So what is of it?» Janet was getting tired of everyone warning her about the danger coming from him or anyone else holding him captive.
But the fairy, as it turned out, had something else entirely in mind.
«Your father would not approve of this choice. He himself once stole a mortal from her husband and now, as a sign of remorse, tries to dissuade others from repeating his daring deed. Ridiculous! He did it himself, and he tells others that mortals and immortals must no longer make love.»
«You’re confused,» Janet interrupted her. «My father is a mere mortal and so is my mother. None of them are fairies or elves. We are human. It’s Tamlane who looks like an elf. Well, at least in part.»
«I’m not confused,» the fairy frowned. «I’ve been around a lot longer than you, and I know a lot more. But you only know what you’ve been told. That’s all you know. How could you know who your parents were? You weren’t smart when you were born, but I’ve seen it all and understood it all. And I’ve seen your parents on secret dates, too.»
«That’s enough,» Janet didn’t like hearing lies. Even if a fairy liked to make up all sorts of stories, she shouldn’t pass them off as truth. It wouldn’t make the conversation any more interesting.
«By the way, your friends are coming to get you. A knight named Ambrose has persuaded them to take you to the village to see an old hag who is an illegal witch, and often gets in our way. He thinks it is time to rid you of the child you conceived by an elf, who may well be born a monster, or at any rate a creature with unusual and dangerous powers for mankind. I myself have seen such children from the union of humans and elves, they are capable of destroying entire cities with their spells, and they do not understand why they do it themselves. They are driven by instinct, which is why they are called monsters in both our worlds and yours. But sometimes they can be very beautiful.»
Janet’s ears perked up from her babble. Soon Nyssa and Latonia actually came after her and began to persuade her to go to the village with them. It was as if they had unexpectedly gone there themselves to see some kind of celebration. They did not mention that Ambrose had sent them. Janet thought it was nice to have a fairy friend who could fly over and spy on everything and report back to her. So getting to know the tiny creature seemed useful.
All the way to the village, Latonia tried to hide her face, which was swollen and puffy, as if its features were being washed away by water. She hid all her other previously naked body parts: arms, shoulders, even her fingers, under her long, wide-sleeved outfit, buttoned up to her ears. She would also do well to put a veil over her face, so that no one would notice that her skin had turned a watery color, and her ears and eyebrows resembled the curves of seashells. Had the water elves bewitched her? Janet looked at her with apprehension and sympathy.
Nyssa, on the other hand, had been looking in the mirror she’d once bought from Quentin the whole way. Was that unusual, too? She’d never been so narcissistic that she couldn’t tear herself away from her own reflection for even a moment. She even seemed to talk to it. Her whisper, addressed to the mirror, could be heard all the way. How could you talk to your own reflection? It certainly wouldn’t have occurred to Janet. Talking to Tamlane or the fairy Kanna was much more pleasant. Nyssa didn’t think so. Her whispers reeked of passion, and in response, from the mirror, it was as if someone was whispering something. The voice was different from Nyssa’s. Janet noticed that the golden face of the supernatural being in relief on the back of the mirror sometimes seemed alive and moving. It even winked at her. Janet immediately looked away. Magic objects can be dangerous. And this mirror definitely contained some kind of magic. No wonder it did. After all, Quentin had sold it to her, and he had something to do with the magic world himself. Maybe she should have warned Nyssa that the thing in her hands wasn’t easy. But Nyssa was so engrossed in her dialogue with the mirror that she paid no attention to anything else.
On the way, Latonya began to feel sick. They had to stop the carriage for her to go out to the stream and get drunk. The girl complained that she couldn’t stand being away from water for long periods of time.
«It gets too stuffy, as if I’m going to melt,» she excused herself for her behavior as they drove on. Her behavior was strange, indeed. No well-mannered lady would stoop to the stream and drink directly from it like a doe at a watering hole. Latonya didn’t even ask to have the goblet, so she hurried to the water.
The old fortune-teller in the village received Latonia first and spent very little time alone with her. Judging by the look on the girl’s face as she left her, it was clear that she could not be helped. Nyssa did not go to the fortune teller. She stood by the roadside and talked to the mirror. Her curiosity about fortune-telling ended the moment she found herself holding a magical object. And she had once warned Janet to beware of magic and not to be friends with elves. What a hypocrite. Kanna flew beside her and laughed at the affected creature. The fairy was so tiny that no one paid any attention to her. As the earl’s daughter’s new friend, she followed her everywhere, while remaining, herself, unnoticed by anyone.
For some reason Janet was afraid to go to the fortune-teller. The last time she had been here was when she was a child, with her mother. She remembered the shabby little house, standing in the middle of nowhere, just over the cliff. It was dangerous to live here. If you stepped any farther away from the house, you’d fall straight down into a crevasse. But the old witch, as the locals had dubbed her, was obviously happy with the location.
Nothing had changed inside the house. It was dark even in the daytime, the hearth was burning, a cauldron of some kind of brew was hanging on chains from the ceiling, and the skins of slaughtered animals were everywhere.
«You came at last,» Belladonna seemed to be waiting for her. She approached Janet, shaking her gray hair, and suddenly placed a wrinkled hand on the girl’s waist.
«I knew it! Just like your mother. Do you really want to get rid of him?»
Janet jerked away, and backed away a little. She stumbled back toward the cauldron and stopped. The smell from the cauldron was not appetizing; it wasn’t cooking food, but something that smelled disgusting and irritated her nostrils. It even seemed to Janet that something shapeless but alive was reaching for her from the cauldron.
«I only wanted to see you.»
The old woman gave a distrustful snort.
«No one around here wants to see the witch again,» the old woman grinned incredulously.
«Are you a witch?»
The old woman was even embarrassed by Janet’s direct gaze.
«Oh, your lover is strong. Even now, in your presence, I can feel his green claws strangling me,» she complained. «I wish you hadn’t come.»
«I didn’t want to,» Janet admitted honestly. «I only wanted to reassure the people in the castle. They would have thought I was cured after they’d come to see you.»
«Is it from your love of elves, from your friendship with water and fire, from the handsome man in the thicket, or from your magical bloodline. What exactly would they want to heal you from? Almost none of these things are curable. Even the temptation you succumbed to in the thicket cannot be cured. You can only banish its fetus,» she ran her stubby finger along Janet’s waist again.
«I don’t think I want to cure anything. Love is not a disease.»
«But you’d better think of it,» said Belladonna, «for Aspasia spoke of you as a young, naive creature who thinks of nothing but amusement. And thus you lose a great deal. You’re naive! For example, I could drink all your youth and strength out of you right now, and you wouldn’t even think anything of it. Everyone would think you’d have withered away from your illness. But your friend from the forest won’t let me. It’s good to have a lover who cares about you and can do anything. Well, almost anything. If he was king of the elves and fairies, Amaranta’s story would be the same as yours. He would have come after you to the earl’s castle with his army of evil spirits.»
«Who is Aspasia?» Janet was more alarmed by the name than by the old hag’s chatter.
«She is my sister. She’s in Rodolit now.
«She is a fortune teller,» Janet guessed. But how could that be? Belladonna was an ancient, gray-haired old woman, and suddenly she had a young, attractive sister. Yes, she’s old enough to be her granddaughter.
«Don’t think I’m lying,» Belladonna warned her, sensing her doubts. «You see, one abuses magic and feeds on other people’s powers more often than the other. But I can do something, too.»
She turned for a moment toward the hearth, where orange sparks flickered. Her body trembled, and she turned back to Janet, already young and enchanted. Even the fortuneteller in Rodolit was not so pretty.
«Have you seen enough?» Belladonna was a moment later a hunchbacked old woman with long gray hair. «I don’t like to deceive people for a long time.»
«Does Aspasia like it?» Janet inquired.
«She’s an aristocrat,» said Belladonna. «She appreciates fancy things. She wants revenge on the Queen of the Fairies for petty quarrels that aren’t worth a damn.»
«How do you feel about the fairies’ queen?» For some reason Janet became curious.
«I’d rather know how you feel about her. After all, she does whatever she wants with your lover. She owns him like he owns you. And she can destroy you both unless your father comes to the rescue.»
«And what can a mortal earl do against a fairies’ queen?»
«Am I talking about an earl?» Belladonna was greatly surprised. «I am talking about the king of the elves.»
Janet almost laughed.
«Don’t you know your mother is with him now?»
«You’re confused about something.»
«Girl, I never confuse anything. Not the past, not the future. I know everything,» with these words the old fortune-teller took out a roll of some kind and put it in front of Janet. The roll was moving. Claws were coming out of it.
«Take this! It’s your mother’s bastard and King Dagda’s bastard! They both don’t want it. You can take him with you.»
«You don’t like it, you’ll have to take care of others. Medea Shai has bastards, too.»
With what a sneer she said it, as if she hoped to hurt the girl’s feelings.
«You should know that she bore children to her mortal captive!»
Janet ran out of the distraught fortuneteller’s cottage, fearing that the creepy creature from the roll might come out and chase her.
She was leaving the village in a hurry, and she suggested she stop at Rodolit on her way. We must try to find Aspasia there and get her to refute all this terrible news. Unless the fortuneteller had left town, she could dissuade Janet that she was the old witch’s sister and reassure her that she didn’t agree with all this nonsense.
The area outside the house where Aspasia had once dwelt was now unfamiliarly empty. Janet walked alone toward the square where the fair had been held not so long ago, and noticed one abandoned tent. Some animal was whimpering there, begging to be let out. In a human voice! Janet rushed over there.
She found the cage in which the dwarf was sitting. It was a real dwarf, with eyes that glowed scarlet like fire. Janet recoiled at first, but then decided she’d better let him out. Surely he had been banished from Corund by the fairies’ queen and was helpless before the inhabitants of Rodolit dared to catch him and show him off in a circus for the public’s amusement.
She felt pity for the unpleasant looking creature on the one hand, but she was afraid of him on the other.
«Do not be afraid!» He caught her fear. «Just pull back the latch.»
His voice was husky and gruff. His eyes glittered dangerously. Janet hesitated for a moment, then she pulled the latch. The cage swung open easily, but the dwarf struggled to get out. The opening of the door was too narrow; Janet helped him by grabbing both hands. She almost pulled him out. He found himself on the sidewalk, jumped up and down with joy, and turned to Janet.
«Thank you, madam.» he bowed, and was gone.
Well, there, one magical creature, exiled from Corund and held captive by humans, she has set free. But could she free them all? Rose whispered to her that there are many others, and she has released only one so far.
«It is not enough to be queen,» Eloise admonished her.
«But I don’t want to,» Janet admitted. «Why would I want to be their queen? I’m happy with my position as it is.»
The white rose did not believe her.
Gloomy Captivity
The past came back in dreams, like a magic mirror. Tamlane would fall asleep or stare into the mirrored glass, surrounded like a frame by enchanted black roses, and see everything that had happened to them years before. If it weren’t for the mirror and the dream realm, he would have forgotten all about it long ago. Before he was captured by the fairies’ queen, he was young and naïve. His father was a duke. And Tamlane was his only son and heir to all his possessions. All the girls in the area knew this and were crazy about him. Because besides being rich and noble, he was also good-looking. It was a rare combination. Beauty as an elf, not as a mortal, many whispered. At that time Tamlane did not know that in time some evil force in the person of Medea Shai would try to make him a real elf. In those days he had lived a carefree life, learning the art of warfare, spending his days at the hunt and the roustabout, flirting with the ladies, listening to his old uncle’s tales of the great ancestors of their kind who had faced danger and magic.
His uncle was an alchemist. He knew all about rare metals and alloys. But even he didn’t know what the armor, which was shaped like a human-sized dragon’s body, was made of. They were so skillfully made that one could mistake whoever wore them for a steel dragon. Legend has it that they were made using both real magic steel and scales taken from the body of a dragon slain by his ancestor. Tamlein believed in these legends, but his uncle did not. He would sit up nights in his workshop, surrounded by ancient scrolls, strange implements, and retorts, trying to determine the nature of the metal’s origin. Tamlane’s father would not allow him to borrow the armor for experiments, but his uncle got hold of a glowing piece of scales from a helmet that resembled a severed dragon’s head. He’d stolen it one night from the armory. He joked that he’d met a beautiful fairy who’d flown through the keyhole in the moonlight and helped him get what he wanted. Of course, the love story between the now-aged uncle and the enchanting fairy seemed like a joke to Tamlane. But only until under the door of the armory he heard a maiden’s musical laughter and a melodious voice saying:
«I will fly to you with the moonlight and the next night. I will fly here as long as you wait for me. And if you want to leave with me, we’ll disappear from here together.»
«No, until I finish my experiments, I can’t leave. Understand, Mirabel, my brother, my nephew is in danger… unless I’m right. I must find confirmation of my hunch.»
A sad sigh sounded in reply, also reminiscent of music.
«So you will grow old and die before I have time to take you away. I can rejuvenate an old man, but I can’t bring a corpse back to life. Even the powers of a fairy aren’t enough to do that.
Intrigued, Tamlane looked out the ajar door. His uncle was sitting on the floor in front of his dragon armor shimmering in the darkness, and the translucent winged silhouette glowing softly beside him looked more like a disembodied ghost. Tamlein held his breath. Surely this must be some other experience. Uncle had only created an illusion! But that illusion moved, danced in the moonlight, and even kissed his uncle on the lips.
«You had better get rid of your armor,» warned the one whom Uncle called Mirabelle. «The spirit of a slain dragon still lives in it. He doesn’t realize he’s dead. And he is furious. He thinks you are holding him prisoner. As soon as he arrives at whatever body he sees fit, he merges with it. And trouble for the man who puts them on. The dragon will want to make him his own. And then he will wish to incinerate our magical realm as well, for we did not prevent his murder, and you people, for killing him. He doesn’t remember exactly what happened, but he wants revenge on the world. I can feel the flames about to erupt from this armor.»
She held up her transparent hand as if to catch the moon’s rays, and in her fingers a thin stream of flame shot from the dragon’s helmet, but it didn’t burn her, didn’t burn anything. It, too, seemed ghostly.
«These armors are about to summon someone,» Mirabel continued. «I sense that their chosen one is near. They all tremble at the prospect of merging with his living body. Dead dragon scales and enchanted steel in fusion with a human body will be the union that will destroy the world.».
That’s the common name for the evil ones. Tamlane tensed. And the fairy slid a glowing hand across the breastplate of her cloak, and the scales glittered as if she were reflecting a nonexistent flame. It must have lurked within the armor itself, for all the torches in the armory were out. If the moonlight didn’t shine unnaturally brightly into the room, you wouldn’t be able to see anything.
«I’ve got a present for you,» his uncle took out a necklace of seashells. He must have made it himself, and collected the shells near the castle on the seashore. They were amazingly embossed and the same size. Those are hard to match. And the necklace chain was made through his alchemical experiments. The thing came out amazing. But Mirabelle shook her head sadly.
«I can’t take it. You know I can’t. It’s material. And I am the Moonlight Fairy. I am made of ether. Material jewelry is not for me.»
As if to prove her point, she held out her hand to take the necklace, and her fingers slid right through it.
«Do you see?»
Mirabelle was so sad and lovely, but Tamlane was already focused on the armor. The metal dragon seemed to call to him, and the call burned his mind like fire. The armor demanded that he take it and put it on, that he wield it. But, after all, according to Mirabel, they would be the ones to own him.
Mirabel, however, is only a fairy. She is immaterial. Her presence here may turn out to be nothing more than an illusion or a dream. Why listen to her warnings.
«You and I were made for each other,» the metal dragon whispered. Its fiery whisper haunted Tamlane even as he stepped away from the armory door. The whisper was tempting. The young man only fought the temptation until word spread through the country that war had broken out in the kingdom. The old duke wanted Tamlane to gather a troop of his vassals and join the king in battle. After all, they, too, were only vassals of the king. If a threat was imminent, it was their duty to support their suzerain. So Tamlane decided it was time to take up his armor.
«You will be a young hero,» the steel dragon whispered in his sleep, enveloping him as if in metallic flame. In the dream, the dragon’s body was as illusory as Mirabel’s. But the dragon armor proved more desirable than even the fairy. Tamlane wanted it by all means. He longed for it like a lover. And the door of the armory was locked at all times, with sentries standing beside it.
«This armor cannot be taken without a special blessing,» his uncle explained to him. «Once upon a time, saints from Roshen were invited here to give their opinion on how dangerous this thing was. Somehow they got burned by the armor and forbade anyone to go near it. They could not take them with them, nor destroy them, nor remove the spell from them. All the people get burned by that armor.»
«Do you think this is magic?»
«I’m an alchemist, not a magician.»
«But they say it’s one and the same.»
«Not exactly,» his uncle countered. «I believe there is an intelligent explanation for everything, and there is no such thing as a logical interpretation of magic.»
«Maybe we don’t know it, but we’re looking for it.»
«That’s right,» the uncle squeezed the stolen scales from his armor and went to do experiments on them again. Not long after one such experiment he was found dead. Something in the workshop exploded. His uncle’s face was burned, as if a dragon had breathed on him. Tamlane saw the burned corpse and the inscription carved in relief on the table, «all my experiments I dedicate to the moonlight fairy Mirabella.» The uncle was a romantic, but he died by fire. Tamlane aspired to fire and glory.
The next night, when the armor called to him, the sentries at the door were asleep for some reason, and there was a key in the door. It was an unusual key with an image of a dragon’s head instead of the usual relief on the head. Tamlane turned it and entered. The armor shimmered and cast flames in the darkness. The helmet seemed to bring the dragon’s head to life. A hissing voice called out:
«Put it on! It’s yours! My hero! The second part of the dragon is you! Put on your armor and go into battle to crush the world!»
He was able to put on the armor himself without the help of a squire, though for other knights this was impossible. But the armor itself helped him. The metal clasps opened and closed by themselves. All he had to do was pick up his helmet. In these armor he felt as if his body had become fiery.
He left the castle without even saying goodbye to his father, lest he notice he was wearing forbidden armor. His detachment took banners and torches and rode out into the dead of night. They reached the battlefield in the midst of the battle. And it was Tamlane who proved to be the decisive force that helped the king to win. He was honored as if he was the king himself. Everyone thought he fought like a dragon. The young hero was praised. No one noticed the creepy black creatures that flew high above the battlefield, both in the midst of the battle and now.
«You are intervened! You stopped our queen from seizing another country in addition to Corund!»
Tamlane looked around, trying to figure out where the voices were coming from, but they reached his ears as if from heaven. He looked up and spotted the foul creatures, as if no one had ever seen them before.
«Our queen will burn you for this!» They hissed.
He must be imagining it. They couldn’t really talk like humans. Their hissing voices suddenly hit him in the head as if he’d been stabbed in the head with a dagger. And his armor felt like it was on fire. He felt a fever throughout his body, as if he was burning alive.
The dragon’s armor! It was enchanted. He shouldn’t have put them on. But without them he would not have won the battle. And their country would have been destroyed or overrun by an unknown enemy who attacked without warning.
They praised him loudly, and Tamlane walked away on trembling legs. He felt sick to his stomach. He burned like hell. And a black bird with a red stone in its forehead was flying quite low over the corpses of fallen warriors. Its luxuriant tail resembled a black fan. It made the bird seem like it was bringing a whole swath of night with it.
The strange creature, hunched and lanky, wandered across the field, leaning over the corpses of fallen knights and sniffing at them as if they were food. It flashed bright red eyes at Tamlane.
«You are no hero and no dragon!» It hissed. «You’re just a petty thief who stole the power that belongs to a dragon. Did you know that the dragon whose remains you carry was the lover of my queen? She will punish you! You interfere with her plans, and she will interfere with yours.»
They should have had soldiers capture and punish the tramp, but Tamlane was lenient. That cripple will not live long enough as it is. Even his skin was blackened by the sun, and his clothes were crumbling like ashes. He did not know then that his clothes were tattered wings, and that such limbs were well proportioned for Duergar, Finodirri, and other creatures whose mere name was difficult for a human to pronounce.
