Natalie Yacobson - Rhianon-4. Secrets of the Celestials

“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, gems, everything valued by mortals, are found in such abundance in that black hole as nowhere else. One day a stranger in a black robe came to the village and showed the people a handful of gold nuggets. He succeeded in awakening their greed and luring them closer to the Dark Spit. He said that he had mined it all there himself and would now live like a rich man, and that there was more treasure left for them in the mountain womb. Enough to make several countries rich, let alone a single village. In a ring of mountains, closing in the shape of a sickle, he suggested that they build a mine. So the peasants abandoned their ploughs, cattle and homes and decided to settle close to the mountain range. No warnings from spirits or ghosts had any effect on them. They even built a village here. The houses turned out so miserable because before they could set them up, the epidemic had already done its work.”

“Dark Spit. Is that the name of those mountains?” Rhianon squinted, staring at the massifs drowning in darkness. She couldn’t see much in the dense darkness until gold sparkles flickered before her pupils.

“They curved in the shape of a braid, you see?”

Now she could really see. A slight glow began to illuminate the darkness in front of her. In spite of the sparks, everything around her remained gloomy, but at the same time it was clearly visible. Was this really how Madael saw the night, dark but full of clear outlines and stars?

It is very much like the scythe of death,” he grinned. “If you like, I can take you above them and let you see for yourself.”

“Better not,” she thought of the altitude they’d have to fly to get around the mountain tops and felt sick with fear. Or rather, it was not the murderous fear of heights that she had felt before, but only a slight tremor. Even that, however, was rather unpleasant.

“I’d rather walk on the ground.”

Even if it’s contaminated, she added to herself. As Madael had put it, death was dancing in every nook and cranny, but Rhianon didn’t see it, and she wasn’t afraid of it. She peered through the windows, noticed the sick, and then moved on to the next house. Everywhere the same thing, only once she dared to go inside. The door was ajar, and the candle’s light attracted her. It smoldered faintly, like a life already departing.