opened her eyes with difficulty. Her eyelids began to grow a film, like cobwebs. Her whole body was covered with gray pustules. She could hardly feel her arms or legs. She would only sit for hours in a rocking chair in front of a window overlooking the royal garden. Sore growths appeared on her back, as if wings were about to grow out of it. And then she would become like those swamp ghostly fairies who had called her. Because of these outgrowths she will not be able to wear the exquisite wedding gown she brought from Fenir. The Fenir’s princess was to be married in the most expensive gown, trimmed with diamonds and silver. But instead of the wedding, it was time to prepare the coffin. Araminta was rotting alive. And all because of a wonderful apple that was held out to her by a hand from the mire.
There was no need to take a bite out of that fruit. But the voices of the fairies enchanted her.
Now there were ordinary human voices in the room above her, and she wanted to hear the whispers of the swamp fairies again.
«She won’t last a year!» This was Marianne, the sister of the king whom Araminta is to marry, saying. «Everyone says it’s a disease from the marshes, but I’m sure she’s been sick ever since she ate the poisoned fruit from the strange tree that sprouted in the corner of the garden. It would have been cut down, but it withered itself and now resembles a sleeping goblin. My maidens complain that when they approach it, its branches cling to their dresses as if they were alive.»
«What if she was ill to begin with?» The second voice seemed to belong to the king.
«I doubt the ruler of Fenir would hide that from you. After all, the alliance is dynastic, not made for love.»
«What do you know of love?»
Marianne sighed resentfully. Araminta could barely hear her. She was sinking back into sleep. She hadn’t been awake for more than an hour lately. She was constantly drawn to sleep. Her eyelids were slipping, her mind racing back to the swamps full of evil and fairies, where the winged fruit waited. She probably took too small a bite out of it to die at once.
«Does she ever wake up?» Marianne carefully straightened her brother’s fiancée’s blond curls. They had turned almost gray, and a meshed gray rash stretched across the skin under her bangs.
«Don’t touch it! You may be infected!» Conrad warned.
«It is nonsense! I would have caught it a long time ago if it were contagious.»
«You probably only get it from swamp creatures, not humans,» Conrad agreed.
«I don’t want to say anything bad, but if you don’t get married right away, you’ll have to marry a corpse.»
«Shut up about the wedding!» Conrad suddenly became furious. Marianne had never seen him like that. He had changed since his return from Shai’s lands. He had seemed a stranger to her, as if an evil spirit had taken over his brother’s familiar body.
Conrad announced that there would be no war with Shai. Allegedly he had not found enemies there, but allies.
But the king looked grim, as if he was expecting a devastating war. The castle was flooded with monstrous knights from Shai. Each of them was a giant. Marianne was a little afraid of them. These monsters were completely indifferent to female beauty, so she could not twirl them around like ordinary knights. Attack her with one such monster, and her faithful admirers Lance and Henrik would not be able to protect her. What could ordinary warriors do against the giants?
Conrad assured her that there was nothing to fear. After all, Queen of Shai favors him. Marianne was struck by the very fact that Shai was ruled by a queen, not a king. Normally even widows retreated into the shadows, ceding their place on the throne to male heirs. And Medea Shai was no widow. But she was a lord of an army of giants.
Queen of Shai sent gifts for all of Aluar: baskets of black fruit, with wing-shaped growths on the stalks instead of leaves. They were the lightest cloths woven with mysterious symbols, daggers of unusual black steel. The maidens received wondrous ornaments and flowers which did not need soil, but took root directly in the carpet. The townspeople were given bundles of berries that evoked pleasant visions. Even the peasants Medea Shai had not forgotten, sending them sacks of black grain, the harvest from which should ripen in just three days after sowing.
«I don’t want any trouble with all these wonderful gifts,» Marianne worried, but her brother brushed her off like an annoying gnat. He had never been so inconsiderate toward her. But he looked at Araminta asleep, even with hostility. And he had liked her very much before. Marianne had the feeling that Conrad’s heart had remained in distant Shai.
«Better put that away!» She removed a light beige veil woven from Araminta’s curls, another gift from the strange queen.
Conrad was saying something about fairies. They lived in Shai and wove magical capes of cobwebs, but the two servants sent by Medea Shai were not fairies, but monstrous dwarfs in gorgeous oriental robes. They resembled two living bushes, one black, other green. Arms like branches held trays with gifts for Araminta. One held a box of costume jewelry, the other a symbol of sun and moon, and a peculiar star-shaped phial with a lid.
It is an elixir for sickness!» Conrad explained. «My new ally is kind, even though she is the queen of the black fairies.»
«She is a real fairy queen! Why didn’t you say so before?» Marianne’s mood immediately changed. She had only seen elves up close, but never fairies. But her dream since childhood had been to meet a living fairy. There were rumors about them that they were divinely beautiful and could bestow magical talents on anyone who appealed to them.
«Is the Fairies’ Queen really your ally?»
Conrad nodded silently.
«What did you do to make her your ally? Did you accomplish some feat?»
«She liked me.»
«Did you?»
For some reason Conrad became darker than a cloud.
«I might even have married her, had I not already been engaged.»
Marianne thought feverishly about what she heard. She knew she was being naive, but she wanted a fairy sister-in-law so much that nothing else made sense.
«You’d better marry a fairies’ queen!» She advised Conrad impulsively.
«And what is about Araminta?»
Marianne bit her lip. Becoming a fairy sister-in-law was far more interesting than being related to a Fenir’s princess. Besides, a fairies’ queen would be able to drive the aggressive giants away from Cassian’s mountain kingdom.
«Politics is complicated,» Conrad said philosophically, «and sorcery is even more so.»
What’s his point? Marianne watched the two bush creatures as they carefully poured drops of sparkling elixir into Araminta’s morning tea. The king’s bride was asleep, but the twig-like fingers of the servant still poured some of the drink into her pale lips.
«It is a medicine,» Conrad explained.
«It’s from Shai, like all the gifts he sent,» Marianne suspected. The queen of the fairies is too generous.
«So
