grinned quickly. The laugh was like a slap in the face. It was the same way she felt when the dragon turned away from her.
«They don’t like me for abandoning Madael?»
For the first time, the spirit did not find something to answer. His jaw must have dropped, or he was running out of words.
Rhianon stared sadly at the flames. It was as if she were right. For all her charm and resemblance to their fallen leader, they loved him more. They still did.
She clawed at the chair with her fingernails. What charm it takes to be worshipped by those you cast into hell.
«I want to be like him,» she muttered into the void.
«Well, then you must learn how to wield a sword,» the spirit inside her responded.
Rhianon was in complete agreement, except that she wished it wasn’t enough.
Rhianon made an appointment in the forest before the caves. The spirit insisted that she should not go there herself, because it would be easier to send him, but as always Rhianon insisted.
She could send no one else on such an important errand. Besides, how could she have known that the spirit would give the dragon exactly what she said, not her own embellished version.
She could only negotiate with someone in person. But the forest greeted her with a sullen silence. The large clearing in the thicket, where someone had uprooted and felled all the trees, was empty.
The place had been cleared, but the dragon was gone. Rhianon already regretted wearing the crest that was supposed to be the identifying mark.
She waited until she began to notice some movement behind the trees. She was immediately reminded of the nighttime treasure hunters. What if something similar was happening in this forest?
She listened to the silence to catch the clatter of shovels against the hard ground and scraps of conversation. Some voices were indeed conversing in the thicket, but it was not about stealing or digging up anything at all. Rhianon kept listening, though. She could not do anything else while she waited for the dragon. The speaker was not a woodcutter or a late traveler. Rhianon even ventured to step away from the clearing for the meeting to look at them.
«Don’t go!» The spirit warned her as she made her way along the moss. «I can eavesdrop and tell you later.»
«Don’t,» she said in a whisper. «I can hear everything. But I want to see.»
It was unnecessary to explain to him that the conversation had already intrigued her, and only that she wanted to spy on the talkers. Who are they? That was what was most intriguing to her. It would have been difficult for a human to see in this darkness, but she had long ago noticed in herself the peculiarity of seeing well in the dark.
«One of them is Vivian,» the spirit warned her at once. «He’s here to hunt dragons, you understand. He has a nose for them.»
«And who is the other one?» She’d guessed that from the hoarse tone, but felt obliged to ask again.
«It is the pretender to your hand,» the spirit said, hesitating for a moment.
Rhianon understood him at first. She’d seen countless suitors for the hand before, and the furthest thing from her mind might have been that he was the least likely to succeed.
But it was hard not to recognize the husky voice. It sounded like it had dropped a few octaves since she’d last heard it. It used to be a little pleasant, but soon it would be a bass. It was as if Prince Rothbert’s throat had been cut. She even chuckled at the thought that one of the dragons he had never tamed might have stepped on his neck. The prince had escaped, but he was hoarse. Such a scenario seemed amusing to her. Rhianon even managed to get a glimpse into Rothbert’s thoughts. He did not sense that he was being spied upon. Rothbert was spying on someone else, and his mind was elsewhere. Rhianon, on the other hand, had learned many interesting things. For example, as a child, this sneaky little magician, who had already detected the rudiments of evil in himself, put frogs in the laundry of washerwomen, and sent locusts on plowmen. He poured his potions into the ladies’ linens to cause a festering rash, and he bewitched the men’s weapons so that they would break during battle. He destroyed his own as well as others without remorse. He also grew unusual reptiles in his flasks and released them into rivers, wells, or sewers. Then the harmful boy began to wait to see if his pets would grow into bloodthirsty dragons. Sometimes these experiments succeeded. Here was one time he managed to raise a dragon right in the well of his home castle. The night it was discovered, there was a commotion in the yard, his father’s dukedom was crumbling because the dragon demanded tribute, and the nasty boy was laughing in his room. That’s when someone came to him… Rhianon couldn’t make out a face in his mind, as if that fragment of Rothbert’s memory were completely absent. She could only wonder if it was someone from the School of Witchcraft, or someone even more dangerous. She could see little else about the night visitor, but she did see a tower in Rothbert’s mind, a tower of books from the ground floor to the ceiling beams, and a girl who lived in that tower. There was nothing there but twigs braiding the walls and books. There were no entrances or exits. Nevertheless, the prince had his eye on the mistress of the tower named Diana. She had already turned him down, but it didn’t matter to him.
«You said there was another,» Vivian’s pleasant baritone was hard not to recognize.
«All you have to do is to wait. I’ll make sure he loses his strength.»
«Very well, then, I must get some help.»
«You can’t do it alone?» Rothbert even snickered. «That would be fair.»
«But you said it yourself,» Vivian seemed unabashed at being accused of a lack of valor. «By the way, if I hadn’t taken men with me to the borders of Menuel, you would have left me alone.»
«Don’t be silly. There was no one there to fight. Everyone was already drugged by the fog I’d put on them.»
«And I thought those black things had ravaged their land. They were feasting on the battlefields, too. On dead bodies,» Vivian put his hand up to his dull, young head. «Yes, I remembered, you said you had some sort of condition before you let me kill the dragon.»
«Yes, there is,» Rothbert rubbed his palms together, rolling out a glowing lump. «You’ll leave me his carcass, all of it. No tongue, no eyes, no spilled blood. Do you understand?»
«But why is it?» Vivian obviously didn’t understand.
«You idiot, I have to prepare the next potion.»
«But you said you could only make useful substances and miracle cures out of the organs of these monsters.»
«Why shouldn’t poison be useful if it can be applied to whoever needs it?»
«Well…» Vivian was clearly hesitant.
«By the way,» Rothbert interrupted him. «You won’t touch the scales this time, either. I’ll need my armor soon, too.»
Rhianon turned back, sensing someone approaching the appointed spot. It could only be him, the dragon who must serve her. She knew that Rothbert’s trick would not go away already as she made her way resolutely toward
