Читать книгу: «Dame Dragon», страница 2

Troubled times

Everyone I wanted to interview came to me. Usually anyone who wanted to report something urgent ended up right in the throne room. They didn’t even have to pass the castle gates. They would appear as if from the ground. This time, the victims acted more cautiously. First, they appeared out of nowhere in the courtyard of the castle. Some brought with them stacks of burnt straw, others charred bricks from their burnt dwellings, one nymph came with torn ears that were missing two earrings. Here I realized at once what was the matter?

The beautiful woman sat down in a curtsy, as if casually pointing to the slightly burned hem of her azure dress. It resembled the color of her skin, and was recovering very slowly. Usually all wounds on nymphs and fairies healed as quickly as they did on their bodies. What can you do, the outfit is part of their skin.

The Leprechauns began to complain to me intermittently. Their chorus made my ears ring. The dwarves looked warily at the stakes with the severed heads of my enemies, placed in a semicircle in the courtyard. Each one was barely smoldering to remind them of my victories. I called this circle the Ring of Triumph and was quite proud of it, but the guests trembled at the sight of it. Dragon trophies are not something that can please the faint of heart.

In addition to Chloe came a few more burned dryads, who apparently were also homeless. They dignifiedly introduced themselves to me and sat down in curtsy. Their names, given one by one, were mildly perplexing. Their names were Cypress, Ash, Beech, Aspen, Willow, Cracker, Birch, Elm, and Pine. Apparently, the names echoed the names of the trees in which the lovely creatures lived. The only reminders of their woody origins were the leaves in their hair and a bit of bark on their delicate skin. They were not burned as badly as Chloe, but the roots stretching from under their dresses like trains spread the smell of burning and ash. To me, those roots seemed alive and silently moaning in pain after the burns they had received. What wonders there are in my Empire? But the injured beauties are pitiful. They gathered in an ornate circle, resembling a green wreath, as their dresses were all green, skillfully sewn from leaves. Only the last two dryads, Palm and Bamboo, resembled exotic oriental queens. The huge green leaves in their outfits looked like greenish peacock tails.

“All our houses are ashes. We have nowhere to live,” Cypress complained. “Yesterday we had comfortable shelter in the trunks. We would wither without them, even if you offered to let us stay in your castle.”

“I could plant trees for you in the yard,” I suggested politely. How could I drive away such pretty girls? Let them stay to brighten my loneliness. I clenched my hand into a fist, and huge trees began to grow from the pebbles that littered the courtyard. I wish I’d realized that I was growing them on the site of mass executions. The trunks rose and grew fast, but they bled. The branches groaned and the growths on the limbs took the shape of severed heads.

Those who watched the sorcery were badly frightened.

“Have mercy on us, Monsignor,” Bamboo bowed down on the pebbles of the courtyard. I’d forgotten that in Eastern countries it’s not curtsy, but bowing before sultans or sheiks. The dryad just stretched out on the ground, sweeping the yard with the leaves of her outfit. “We don’t want to turn into bleeding trees.”

“And we don’t want to die,” Palm added timidly. She did not fall down, but lowered her eyes shyly. What magic wind had brought these strange eastern fairies to my Empire? But I was glad to have them. Like all beautiful creatures who could entertain me in Rose’s absence.

I was aware that dryads could only live in the trunks of their own trees, and I could, with the help of charms, grow sprawling trees right in the floor of my castle’s ballroom in a matter of minutes. But if they would rather live in groves or forests, then so be it. I’ll grow new trees for them there. And it’ll only take me a moment to heal their burns. I heal as easily as I burn. We must calm the beauties and invite them all to an evening feast. Afterward, we might have a hot night with dragon fire that would only light the candles but not burn the dryads, and lovemaking. I’m tired of my wife-hater and wanted to have fun, but first we need to deal with the other petitioners: dwarves, leprechauns, and even a couple of burnt trolls.

“We would be glad if the raids would stop,” one dwarf, who was timidly crumpling his hat in his hands, took it upon himself to speak for everyone. The others nodded in agreement.

“I would have stopped them immediately if it had been me. It’s not in my nature to scorch my own state.”

Not everyone believed me. Some even murmured. The country still remembered the appearance of my magic double Simon, who cleverly gave orders for me, and no one could expose him for a long time. True, he didn’t turn into a dragon. But no one paid attention to that at first. The subjects preferred to see me in my beautiful human form. It didn’t occur to anyone to ask me to turn in front of their eyes and scare everyone that way, probably even burn them. So Simon had managed to hide his identity for a long time. But now everything was back to normal. Simon took his place in Roshen in the alliance of magical creatures banished from the Empire by me. Here they would be the local nobility, but in the human world they were merely actors, playing at being evil. Their community was called the Alliance of Magic Talents. I jokingly referred to them as the Union of Beings who had wronged Edwin, who was me. There weren’t many such beings before. You could count them on the fingers of one hand, especially if you had six or seven fingers like dragon claws. But now there was a whole court of the wronged and the dispossessed. And all of them, for some reason, thought that it was none other than me who had wronged them. Even the azure nymph was sulking, though I had long ago touched her cheek and easily healed the ugly burn.

“The dragon that attacked us was also golden like you,” Cypress explained stammering. – Until now, we thought that only those with magical royal blood could turn gold after transformation. After all, color is your distinguishing mark. It symbolizes privilege and high descent – from Madeel himself.”

A scarlet lightning bolt glittered far in the sky, a reminder that a forbidden name had been spoken aloud. The corners of Cypress’ lips bled, as if one of Madeel’s invisible demons had given her a clawed fist on the lips for breaking the rules of conversation. The girl frowned guiltily and began crumpling the green leafy train in her hands as if she had no other concerns.

“I certainly didn’t attack you,” I said. Since when do I have to justify myself to them or explain anything to them? I wonder what kind of dragon put me in this awkward position. Probably it was some strange foreign beast that had escaped from the cage of some eastern sultana and flown into our midst. I remembered my travels in the eastern countries, when I had sought allies and enemies for Queen Serafina, whom I had loved for a short time. Sheikhs, rajahs, sultans or their viziers sometimes kept river and sea dragons in their special pearl cages. They could not be kept captive for long and could not be bribed with caresses. Such creatures did not usually breathe fire, but poisonous water, which put them to sleep and drove them mad. One sultan’s daughter died thanks to such a pet. Those lands stretched far across the oceans, but they were the only lands I had not explored where magic existed. If some dragon I didn’t know had come, it must have come from there. True, I hadn’t seen it yet.

“I’ll fix it,” I promised. But no one really believed me. They’d never disrespected me like this before, and there were only a tiny handful of my subjects here. Maybe I should blow fire on them for good measure. They’ll know not to honor their emperor.

“Maybe you just don’t remember,” Palm murmured uncertainly. “There are means to stupefy even our minds so that we forget something or someone…”

“Is it oriental remedies?” I revived. I hadn’t studied them yet, unlike the local ones, but I could use one to forget Rosa. “Do you know how to make them?”

Palm was even startled.

“I have never given anything like that to anyone,” she immediately began to justify herself.

“That’s not what I mean. I need a cook who can make such tinctures in the castle kitchen. You know how many gory details I want to forget after night raids on mortal lands.”

I didn’t mention the fact that I only want to forget Rose, of course. Why would anyone want to know about my heartbreak?

My wily and beautiful friend Queen Serafina, whose late husband introduced her to complex Eastern magic, opened my eyes to how much magic is hidden even from me in far off overseas domains. But Palm, apparently, though a countrywoman of the local fakirs and sorcerers, knew nothing of such things. Probably her tree had been taken out of there when it was too young, and now I had to create a new home for it by magic. And all because some dragon, be it a dragon, had started attacking my domain. I even suspected the intervention of Princess Odile. Maybe she decided to take revenge for the betrothal she had once broken, waited centuries, and conjured something. Not that she really wanted to marry me, but the thought that she had naively lost all my dragon treasures with me, still did not give her peace.

And I, a simpleton, even began to think about whether to support her financially. The thing is, I had flown over her kingdom more than once, and I began to notice that over the centuries it had become noticeably impoverished. It was because Odile’s mortal husband, the king, had died and could no longer support his immortal and eternally young wife, who was always short of money, with riches from the tomb.

Even though I was a dragon, I loved doing charity work. I supported not only friends, but also former detractors. For example, Simon’s society, and even Baptiste de Villiers and the detective Gabriel, who had hunted me in Roshen. But whoever set such an attack on me as the fire-breathing beast that burned my domain, I would grind to powder with my own hands. To hell with charity and compassion, it’s time to restore order. I am first and foremost an Emperor in my Empire, and I must protect it.

“What did the dragon that came at you look like? Did it look exactly like me? Or is it only in color?

The silence became long.

“Well,” the azure nymph shrugged. Her naked skin resembled flowing water. “There’s not much to see when fire from the heavens is raining down on you. I barely managed to slip out of the burning stream. The water was on fire! Can you imagine? Where the creek had been, all that was left was a toxic black sludge.”

“I’m sorry,” I nodded, “but that description won’t help me much in my search for the raider.”

“I thought that dragon was a little smaller than you,” Cypress interjected. “I didn’t get a good look at it, though. And I’m not as sharp as dragons. Humans need a telescope to spot a raider.”

“Is it smaller?” That definition wasn’t much help either.

“Well, he is more elegant. And he didn’t shine as bright as you do. You were like the sun, but his glittering scales were more like moonlight. I turned around as I ran away from him across the field and noticed his eyes were emerald, not aquamarine like yours when you turn. As soon as I looked right into them, he covered his mouth for some reason, even though he was about to rain fire down on me. And he had spikes on his head in the shape of a crown. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was a crown of thorns. Even you don’t seem to have one. Or you’ve decided to transform yourself with a little magic.”

Cypress didn’t know what to insult me with and what not to, so she stuttered at every phrase.

“It is a crowned dragon! It’s truly amazing,” I didn’t even believe her, but if she had an accurate look at it, I now had a clue where to look for it. I’ll have to look in the ancient volumes in my library. There’s probably some mention of such a creature somewhere. It could have been hibernating for a long time, like in the mountains, and now it’s awake. Such beasts wake up either from a century-long hunger, then after satiating a couple of villages, they fall asleep again. Worse, if they have been slumbering in the vents of a volcano, and the fire within them has grown to an unbearable burning. Then the dragon will not rest without burning most of the world. It’s time to take action. It’s just strange why, after attacking a couple times, it’s disappeared, and I haven’t heard of any new fires yet.

Just in case, I’ve sent my spirit spies to every corner of the empire. Have them sniff around, ask around, and report back to me. The efforts of Percy, my steward, will be enough to rebuild housing for the dwarves and the rest of the wicked and give them healing elixirs. Well, what awaits me is an evening feast with the dryads and the azure nymph. I invited them into the castle, ignited numerous candles with my breath. The viands appeared on the table. The wine, slightly diluted by the fire, quickly cheered everyone up and ignited an inordinate passion. In my new bedroom there were wide oriental beds, and no more empresses. I was going to invite all the ladies to my room for the night. My good looks usually captivated women so much that they would throw themselves into my arms, regardless of the risk of burning in them. Only now it was as if I was possessed by an insidious genie. I wanted to seduce with the help of charms, to deceive, to lure into a love net and to kill. It was as if some demon had come through the windows into the banquet hall and hid behind the curtain, taking the shape of a woman in a golden dress with a high openwork collar and a hoop of moonstones on her forehead.

I could not see the lunar vision as I was drunk, but the lovely dryads were already hanging on my arms and shoulders, kissing me and noisily thanking me for the wonderful dinner. Cypress offered to play the lute, Ash offered to sing, and others offered to dance.

– It’s a pity we didn’t invite our sisters, Cherry and Lilac,” complained Willow, “but their houses haven’t burned down yet, and they had no reason to come here. Maybe we’ll invite them next time.”

“Of course,” I nodded eagerly and finished my glass of fiery wine. Everything inside of me was on fire. I put my arms around Willow and began to unfasten her corset. The laces were thin green vines. There was bark growing on her breasts instead of nipples, but I liked the strangeness of it.

“Cherry and Lilac are probably more charming than any of you,” I muttered drunkenly. What I’m reduced to without Rose. I’d never gotten drunk and clung to women before. It is rightly said that only a husband who has a good wife can be a good husband. My wife wasn’t a good wife, and I blossomed. The skin with a mixture of leaves and bark began to excite me, I caressed it, slightly burning with fire, but the dryads liked it all the same. Only the nymph was afraid to burn, so I wanted to ask her to leave right now. There are enough enchantresses here without her, but she wouldn’t leave. And there was jealousy in her azure eyes.

On the one hand I could experience pleasures like a sultan in a harem. By the way, an Eastern ruler advised me to have a harem. I think he wasn’t as wrong as I thought at first. On the other hand, a nagging self-pity lurked inside my mind. Why should I seek solace in temporary company like a mortal king? I was unlucky with my spouse, before that I was unlucky with my mother. Neither of them did their duty to me, gracefully excusing with the fact that I was a dragon and they hadn’t counted on that. I never have seen my mother, her opinion was relayed to me through random messengers. Rhiannon herself never once graced me with a visit. If she were a good mother and a mother-in-law who cared for her family’s welfare, she would have dragged Rose back here by the hair. One might not be strong enough to handle an Earth sorceress. But Rhiannon is the queen of hell. She can do anything. But she’s just forgotten about me. Unlike my loving father, who himself had once suffered so much from his beloved’s indifference that he now sympathized with me fiercely. But that was the end of his sympathy.

His compassion was expressed in storms, winds, floods and inclement weather. The earth was torn by volcanic eruptions and hurricanes. So that it was not calm on earth when disturbed by him. But all these inclement weathers mostly concerned the world where mortals lived. The dragon in my realm, on the other hand, became just my problem.

I hugged several dryads at once and wanted to put out the candelabras, but the flames in them suddenly sang, taking the shape of dancing figures.

“How can you continue to feast here without Rose?”

Did my friends hear that? Even if they did, they didn’t seem to. Their kisses made me drunker than wine, though they tasted of bark.

“Just as she can go on without me,” I countered. And the flames went out. The ghost’s moonlit silhouette still flickered behind the curtain. Perhaps it would get tired of hiding there and join me and the dryads in the imperial bedroom.

Unexpected raider

I awoke to the smell of burning. The night had certainly been hot, but not so hot that smoke was now seeping into the castle. All the flames were blazing in the bedchamber, and extinguished there as well. The dryads weren’t burned, only the canopy was slightly burnt. It can’t smell like that.

“It’s fields, Monsignor,” a worried gnome came rushing into the bedroom. Obviously he’d been here since last night. I don’t usually keep dwarves in the castle. They were too much trouble. And now the visitor was stunned at what he saw in the bedroom, blushed with shame and quickly ducked behind the screen so that I wouldn’t crush him.

The news he brought, however, was timely. The fields behind the castle were indeed on fire. The smoke was billowing. What a thing! When had I ever been attacked in my own castle before? Usually I was the one to scorch other people’s fortresses, but I had never been besieged.

The dragon outside intends to make my life a living hell. That sounds like the act of a jealous woman! Only Rosa could do that. I was even beginning to suspect that she had sent the dragon. But where could she have gotten it? After being married to me for so long, she was hardly attracted to dragons. And this dragon was unusual. He could ignite not only the summer fields, but also the snowy valleys that were covered in eternal cold at the gates of my castle. You couldn’t even light a match there, and his fire ignited even the snow.

“It is the moon dragon!” Cypress wrapped herself in the covers, jumped out of bed, and sprinted to the window. “He really doesn’t look like you! He is glowing like the sickle of the month!”

The others were just waking up, but I didn’t care what they thought. I rushed to the fields. That dragon, whoever he is, doesn’t realize the trouble he’s gotten himself into. Attacking the lord of the magic empire himself! On the one hand, it’s brazen and reckless. But secretly, I admired his courage and assertiveness. If he’s not insane, he clearly wants to assert his right to something and he’s challenging me to a duel.

The fire was terrible. The wall of fire almost reached the castle towers. All I had to do was to step onto the field and my charms began to extinguish the fire by themselves. There was no need for buckets of water or poison tinctures, which the Leprechauns had already collected. The flames first dropped to the level of my boots, then disappeared altogether. The poisonous fumes dissolved into the air. Orange sparks danced in sheaves on the burnt grass, and the leprechauns caught them, turning them into coins. The raid had turned into a form of magic trick, but that didn’t mean I was going to let the raider go in peace. He’s the one who shouldn’t go unpunished. I followed his flight through the azure morning sky. How beautiful that dragon is! It is indeed as pale golden as the moon, and the spikes sprouting from the scales on its head are indeed like a royal crown. Each scale reflects the light of the sun like a mirror. Involuntarily, I stared. The unfamiliar dragon must have tried to bewitch me. I shook off the obsession with difficulty and remembered its audacity.

The grass turning to dry hay beneath my soles must have reminded me that he had burned my fields. His arrival here had been unauthorized. No one invited him. And he did not come as a petitioner to my court, but as an enemy setting fire to other people’s property. It’s time to teach him a lesson!

I prepared to turn into a dragon, soar into the air, and pounce on him in flight. My fangs would sink into his throat. My claws would scratch his scales bloody. He’ll fall to the ground, and then I’ll take him down. So, what’s stopping me? The sudden feeling that as soon as I knock the enemy out of the sky, I’ll have Rose’s bloody corpse on the ground at my feet instead of a dragon carcass? I can’t believe what’s going through my head. Rose could have sent that dragon to me. One of the spirits told her I was having fun with the dryads and she got jealous. She’s out for revenge. I don’t think she’ll be happy that I mutilated her servant.

But I can’t just let him go. They’ll think I’m cowardly or inferior in strength. I don’t think so. The dragon was indeed very graceful and flexible. With brute strength, it would be easy to overpower him. It was more beautiful than powerful.

He was no longer in a hurry to spew fire. Wasn’t his goal just to lure me out of the castle for a meeting? It was only for that purpose that he had begun to scorch the fields. He was now planning over the towers and had no thought of breathing out fire again. He seemed to like my castle. The dragon hovered above the tallest spire for a long moment. His claw touched the standard with my emblem on it. The claw glittered like a real moon. I even felt a sudden longing for the night and the glow of the moon.

“Go ahead, attack again, and that will be an invitation to a fight,” I whispered to myself, but the dragon suddenly looked at me. Our eyes met. For a moment, I felt as if I were immersed in an emerald swamp from which there was no escape. It enveloped me like green honey. It seemed to me that I was drowning in this swamp, and above it the moon was shining brightly until my eyes hurt, and I was repeating some woman’s name that I did not know at all. I think it was:

“Sephora!”

I repeated it aloud, and some leprechaun, on which I almost stepped with my foot, squeaked and bounced away.

What’s the matter with me? I used to control myself and never hurt anyone, even accidentally. Especially crumbs like the Leprechauns, who hoarded their gold in holes in the fields like mice or moles.

The moon dragon stared at me for another long minute. Like a fool, I stood there and did nothing, even as the raider turned and flew away. To the mountains! Well, now I knew where to look for him. The high mountains beyond the forests were very often a haven for all sorts of suspicious creatures who had slipped through the magical borders unbeknownst to them. No wonder the arsonist flew to hide there. That’s where I’ll find him, but not tonight.

My head was spinning after what I’d seen. It felt like I was surrounded not by a burned field, but by a molten liquid emerald marsh that stretched as far as the eye could see, with the moon, not the sun, hanging over it. The moon is bifurcated. Or is it suddenly the moon and the sun merging into one?

I was brought to my senses only by the concerned murmurings of the dryads. They were all awake, dressed and out in the courtyard. The traces of the recent fire frightened them and made them whisper excitedly.

“Remember, you promised to grow new houses for us,” Cypress, the most sensible of the dryads, returned to the problem at hand.

“Of course, if I promised, I’ll do it,” I began to think about where it would be better to grow new trees for them to live in: right here on the burned grass or further away from here and closer to the forests.

“Where’s Perla?” I’m missing an azure nymph.

“She’s taken up residence in the shell-shaped fountain in your greenhouse,” Palma explained. “I would have taken up residence there too, but there’s nowhere to put down roots. I don’t want to ruin the castle parquet.”

I nodded.

“There’s a peach grove nearby and a beautiful lake behind it, and I think there’s plenty of room for everyone to plant a new tree. And the climate there is wonderful, I mean magical, both palms and birches will take root.”

Bamboo, bored, made a fan of her leaves, waved it around and nodded enthusiastically.

“Well, take us there,” she suggested.

Take us there? Do they really want me to turn into a dragon right in front of them and put them on my scaly back? Did the sight of a moonlit arsonist turn them off dragons at all? Somehow I didn’t even want to think about turning right now, but my night mistresses were waiting, and I couldn’t say no to them. If they wanted to fly on a dragon’s back and prick themselves on its sharp scales once in a lifetime, then so be it.