behind the clouds and blown a handful of sleeping charms in his face, he would not have given up so easily. He wouldn’t have expected more danger from the beautiful lady than from a whole company of evil spirits.
Now this most beautiful powerful lady had become his mistress. Such a companion every knight could only dream of, but not Tamlane. A love imposed by compulsion tormented him more than shackles. Perhaps if Medea Shai had behaved tactfully and not forced her dark passion and intimacy upon him at once, he would have loved her in time. But to love a being who forces intimacy on you and seeks to control all your desires is too much!
But for all those who have not yet managed to force a love bed, and such gathered in the lobby of her palace most of them, Medea Shai caused sincere admiration. She was feared, but her truly magical beauty still inspired involuntary respect. Every fairy secretly wished to be like the queen, every elf dreamed of sharing a bed with her.
Thierry, the elves’ chief with whom Tamlein had not so long ago clashed in the woods, had been watching her dusky majesty unceasingly. He had longed for a queen for a long time, but he had never had a chance to be in her bed. Everyone knew that Medea Shai preferred to take only dragons as lovers. They are her equal in strength and power. So no one would serve her better than them. But Thierry was strong too. He was the strongest of the elves in Corund. He kept hoping… At first the dragons, scaly and clawed and fire-breathing, had bypassed him, he tolerated that. But when Tamlane appeared and took the bed to which Thierry himself had been aiming as easily as a dragon breathed no fire. Medea Shae’s black lover had not even had time to breathe a flame, and he had already been displaced by a mortal. Thierry hated him fiercely. It was hatred he cherished in his soul like a precious flower. Even now he looked as if he was ready to kill Tamlane at any moment if the queen commanded it. But she was in no hurry to give such an order. And Thierry grew more and more angry. For all his elfish beauty, he looked more and more like not an elf, but a chain dog who was not allowed to bite to death a burglar who had broken into a house.
He regarded Tamlane as the worst evil in the universe and wished to drive his rival out of Corund. In the latter, Tamlane would gladly agree with him. He himself had dreamed of escaping from here. If only it was that easy… Medea Shai’s charms were as strong as her blind love for her own captive.
Before he knew it, she was there. She knew how to move subtly and quickly. Her long, spidery fingers stroked his shoulders. The black moths that flew over her head were like a living veil.
«I can feel the resistance in you,» Medea Shai said to him, kissing his cheeks, his temples, his lips. «It’s as if you don’t belong to me. Your consciousness is somewhere far away now. Not with me! Don’t you like being my prisoner? Look,» she turned him to face the retinue of elves. «Any one of them would give anything to be you, in my heart, in my bed, beside me. And you act like you’re not happy.»
She frowned gracefully. Her flying black eyebrows resembled the curve of wings. The skin of her face was white as a shell. The intricate relief of her cheekbones made her face look even more like a shell that had been carelessly painted over with feminine features. The red stone in her forehead seemed merely a pendant to a glittering crown, but in fact it grew straight out of her skin. Tamlane knew this because more than once at night he had touched it and felt its heat. Not once did the fairies’ queen fall asleep in his arms. She didn’t sleep at all. Forever awake was her habit. And yet she was never tired. She didn’t want to eat, she didn’t want to drink, she didn’t want to sleep, but she encouraged the pleasures of love. Her embrace always resembled captivity. Tamlane wished to break free of it and could not.
«What is so special about me that your elves don’t have?» He asked the question so often that the words had become a fable. «Why am I so different from everyone else that you have chosen and tormented me?»
«Is it a torture? I give you all my love.»
«It is a black love,» he wanted to strangle her, but he could not, her throat seemed iron, and all the attempts to kill her were like a love game.
«You won’t get any better on earth. The love of a fairies’ queen goes only to a select few.»
«They are elves, not humans.»
«But you are my beautiful mortal, and I love you,» she ran her webbed hand over his cheek, «though you are rebellious.»
«That’s what attracted you to me in the first place. You love to tame wild dragons and harness them to your chariot.»
«And I love to tame wild elves and make them my lovers, but I like mortals better. Why? I do not know myself.»
«Let me go!»
«Why? Your old father forgot you long ago.»
«He wasn’t an old man when I left on that hunt. Or was it a fight,» he could no longer remember much himself. Medea Shai’s potions were corroding the fragile human memory. When he had forgotten, he would no longer claw his way out of her captivity, but would be an empty shell, fit only to give pleasure to the queen of the fairies. If only that moment had never come. Better to die. But she would not let him die. He had already tried. There is no escape from the captivity of the fairies’ queen, dead or alive.
Medea Shai gently stroked his forehead, as if testing when the man’s memory will be gone forever.
«I love you very much indeed, my beautiful knight. I remember when you rode your horse through the thicket at the head of your frail human troop and without your helmet. Your hair was like the sun, and I knew in that moment, as I flew over the forest road, that you must be mine.»
The wretched helmet! If it hadn’t scratched his cheek, Tamlane wouldn’t have taken it off and drawn the fairies’ queen’s attention. The unusual helmet had been given to him by a legendary warrior, his ancestor, and was kept in the castle, a rare chosen few could touch it and not cut themselves on the dragon spikes on it. Tamlane was able to take it and fight in it, but ended up hurting himself. Apparently the helmet was not meant for him. He took it off and was captured. The creepy creatures flooded the thicket and pounced on his warriors so quickly and with such ferocity that it was almost impossible to resist them. Tamlane killed many of them in battle, but they rose from the dead even more embittered, reattached their severed limbs, and raged on to attack again.
«Love is an amazing thing. When you see someone, you realize that there is no other creature in the world so beautiful. I was flying on a black dragon over the forest when I first saw you, and the dragon realized that he would never lie with me again in a bed of love, strewn with rose petals in the king’s bedroom.»
«That’s probably why he’s so angry with me,» Tamlane surmised. The dragon has been watching him forever, even now slumbering under the door of the hall, waiting for an opportunity to burn him in passing. «He hates me and wants to incinerate me.»
«That is impossible! After your nights with me you have become invulnerable to fire.»
Tamlane did not believe her. There is a fire that can strike down a magical creature as well. The supernatural fire of the flame elves, but they dance in the hills too far from here to be reached. He had already tried, but it was painful to go farther than the edge of the forest. Medea Shai’s power was pulling him back with invisible chains.
«You wanted me to spare the guilty servants. I did. They were not executed. Out of love for you, I am capable of much.»
«Then let me
