Natalie Yacobson - Tamlane – Prisoner of the Queen of the Fairies – 2. Release

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.

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: