The door itself slammed with noise, as if it separated two worlds.
The hut of huntsman was long empty.
One pure bed immediately became a bed for Rose.
Some creature appeared outside the door. It creaked and opened. Someone sniffed to the air and, apparently, having revealed me, rushed away. So, the new tenant will not be disturbed. Well, it’s even good.
Rosa managed to frozen much, but I knew that I could save her. My blood can return to her vital warmth. I looked around the sides in search of a knife and not finding it, without a ceremony bit the veins at my wrist and put a bleeding brush to her mischievous lips.
«Just do not die,» I mentally asked. «Who, besides you, will be able to divide my dark addiction to ancient magic with me. Maybe if you are near, I will understand all the ancient manuscripts.»
In the hut was even colder than in the forest. It seemed to be an icy wind in all the cracks. I could tell the fire to burn, but instead of it for some reason I began to look for firewood. Empty hero did not give hopes. Nor fire, nor firewood was found. I broke down a couple of unnecessary chairs, quickly clicked my fingers, carving a few sparks, and hastily turned on Rose, hoping that she had not woke up yet. And if she woke up, it would be strange to appear in front of it – the magician made the flame from nothing and broke off the chair with such ease, as if it was a thin twist. Nails from broken furniture fell on the floor. Their chime could wake up and dead, but Rose did not wake up for a very long time.
«Who are you?» The voice of Rose brought me out of stupor.
«Do you not remember?»
She just looked at me with beautiful, empty eyes. Eyes in which there were no memoirs left.
«Where is the dragon?»
«Where is the dragon?» I almost laughed, stupid, deaf, lost, but instead of it I only shrugged and lied. «I do not know.»
And it is instead of to honestly admit: «He is in front of you.»
I listened to the inhuman whisper of my subjects in air height, to quietly cautious steps of wolves in the snow, to the spiders in the cracks and thought what from these sounds Rose could catch, and what not. Perhaps she also heard the echoes of the conversations of the elves in the snowy storm, as some spirit laughed, looking into the pipe, and this laughter echoed in chimney. Whether she looked attentively to me in search of the angel’s halo over my head or tried to consider a black double satellite, which, remembering the past, broke out of the shackles of the human body and again, like a shadow, standing behind me.
«You also became his victim?» Rose looked at me with regret.
«Yes,» at least once I answered the truth. Once upon a time, my life was brought to the sacrificial altar so that my shadow satellite – the dragon gained the highest strength. Now he is an integral, dark part of me. He is no longer a separate monster, but only a black soul in a beautiful body. He was a master, and I am a servant, until I was able to tame him. He is dark, and I am his bright reflection, his shell, his mask.
Remember that mask I left you on the windowsill and you will understand what my essence is, I tried to say it Rose with one glance, but she either did not understand or interpreted everything in her own way. And does she remember any mask? Does she remember something at all?
«Rose?» I cautiously called. It seemed to me that even she was here, but her soul was somewhere far, perhaps still in the dragon claws.
«Do you know my name?» She was alerted.
Great, she at least did not forget her name. She forgot only me and, obviously, everything connected with me.
«Do you remember the evening in the „Marionette“ and the fearful play by author named Camille?»
«I remember something,» she said. The motive was the murder of a marquise in Viniena. Now I know who ruined her, but the author from where he could know that the dragon killed her?»
«Maybe he himself saw,» I mumble uncertainly.
«Or maybe he killed her himself, and he wrote the play to make the dragon guilty,» Rose said. «If he saw it, he would not write about it.»
«Yes, yes, probably,» I hurriedly confirmed.
The fire has danced in the furnace.
For the first time I had to shoot a deer, not to take revenge on Odil, but to provide a princess a dinner. I never knew how to cook food and prepare hot drinks, so I had to rely exclusively on witchcraft. It remained to hope that Rose would not think about from where the bottle of wine and glasses suddenly appeared on the empty table.
«Tell me, can he return for his victim?» Rose did not break her eyes off the fire. She didn’t want to pronounce the word «dragon.»
«If he wants to find you, then the locks are not a barrier for him.» I struck with such a force with the fist along the wall, that it seemed the house was itself shaken. In a smooth masonry there was a dent, and I did not even feel pain. Fingers are just a little bit of numb.
«You can lock behind the steel doors, in the dungeon, in a dried well on the edge of the world and still he will find you. He will arrive on the smell of your blood, because…»
I started to nauseate from the fragrance of fried meat. I would be bad from the smell of any meal, because I was hungry. My hunger did not have anything in common with human food, he demanded victims.
«So you need quickly to run away from here,» I finished the phrase and hastily put the wallet of gold on the table. «Take the crew on the road. If things go quite badly, came into any church.»
At least, there my subjects and the prince will not be able to touch you, I almost added.
As soon as she fell asleep, I went out in a frosty night, wander around the forest. It was better to kill the deer than the princess. That night I didn’t meet any small animal to buy her life with its blood. Even the wolves were hidden from me. But if a person met me on the forest path, he would not even suspect the danger. Any oncoming offered me his company and would be careless until he noticed in my eyes an obsessed shine and did not understand that he was going next to his own death.
One deer still came upon my claws. Until then than the rage did not subside after the successful hunt, I didn’t even notice that some strange beast would steal behind me. When I left the carcass in the snow, I heard someone with claws watched with greed for each my movement. There were no footprints in the snow, but the pursuer himself was. It was possible to swear in the fact that this someone, contrary to all the laws of nature, has imagined himself as a predator, and I was a victim. For him, the game was full of sharp sensations. In addition, I was so desperate that I did not even notice him. Let him crawl or flies through the forest, anyway any predator is powerless in comparison with me.
I could not let go Rose on the will. In the morning, in an hour after she left, I realized that the danger would steal behind her along the trail just like the faceless clawed pursuer after me. In addition to the Henri’s soldiers, who noticed Rose in a small roadside tavern, other, invisible enemies chased for her. I could only be patient, prepare the sledge and wait on one of the forest’s
