Natalie Yacobson - Rhianon-4. Secrets of the Celestials

“Who is it?” Rhiannon looked at him worriedly. Somehow she didn’t like the suggestion. At that moment footsteps sounded in the distance. A piercing echo echoed through the darkened enfilade of the hall. Madael was hurrying this way.

Arnaud could not utter another word as he sensed his approach. He quickly put his fingers to his lips to indicate silence, and then darted behind the drapery. He had already disappeared, and his pleading gaze still haunted Rhianon. Arnaud asked her not to tell anyone about him or what he’d said.

“I hope I do not have to stay here tonight?” Rhianon tried to draw Madael’s attention away from the moving drapery before he crossed the threshold.

“Not if you don’t want to,” he tossed aside his helmet, scrolls of some sort, and began to remove the steel wires around his wrists as if they were fetters or chains. He had never attempted to remove them before. Rhianon was surprised. She had thought the bracelets, so intricately wrought, had become inseparable from his flesh. But it turned out that he could just as easily have thrown them off. The skin beneath the removed hoops was not scarred. He looked at his wrists as if he’d never seen them before.

“You know, in heaven, I wished I’d worn some kind of jewelry, but everyone was equal there. Our only difference from the clouds and the ether was our beauty, not tiaras or crowns. Jewelry was forbidden.”

“And then you wove a bracelet out of the sun’s rays,” she didn’t remember how she knew that. It wasn’t like he’d ever told her about such things.

“Yes,” Madael turned to her and stared at her for a long moment, as if he thought she was someone he’d lost and known, but couldn’t.

“And it was nice to have the distinction that no one else had. It was as if you made yourself the boss, and you were allowed to?”

“I was the favorite,” Madael shrugged lightly. “Everyone’s favorite. But in the end, my jewelry became my shackles.”

“I know that,” she traced the coils of gold patterns that wrapped around his skin like a net. Until now they might have looked like tattoos or gold snakes parasitizing on a living body, but now it turned out that they were all part of a body that would have been perfect without them. He didn’t need jewelry, either. He decorated the dark hall around them with his very presence. It was enough to look at him and all fears were dispelled. Rhianon shrank back; he belonged to her, and yet he seemed so unreachable at the same time.

“What’s in the scrolls?” She asked as if casually.

“So, ancient truths,” he said. “I wonder how to break them…”

“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.