LITMIR.BIZ

      ISBN 978-5-0059-0026-5 (т. 6)

      ISBN 978-5-0056-8618-3

      Created with Ridero smart publishing system

      Shine and Shadow

      His tower was like a piece of hell. It bore almost no trace of Rhianon’s presence. And yet he hoped that somewhere in the gloomy corridors her azure train was about to flicker. He could almost see it. He wanted to see it. God and defeat had given him the gift of creating those illusions that colored his bleak world in bright but terrifying hues.

      And now he imagined a hem woven with gold thread stretching over a cluster of black creatures crawling in disarray on the marble floor. Rhianon was above this chaos. A jumble of ghastly burned bodies, and bones must have been beneath her feet. And so was he. If she is even better than him, he belongs beneath her feet. He had forgotten his place. And now he was paying the price.

      Madael violently knocked the gold cups filled with blood off the table. They rattled across the floor, scaring the infernal creatures away. The infected blood, and the blood that had been collected on the battlefield, stained the marble. Soon his servants would begin to lick it off, but for now they howled in agony, burned and hungry. Their hunger would not be satiated by a whole hackneyed army for lunch. In the winter, all his demons roamed the forests, tearing apart packs of wolves for meat. Hungrier than wolves they had fed on animals; now, with the blossoming of spring, they would need human flesh. Well, forward to the battlefield, he was ready. How many battles were not in the recent past, and he wanted more. His hunger for battle and death was now nothing to satisfy either. He wanted blood. Not to drink it, but at least to spill it, to see its color and destroy the pain inside him. He and God had once had an argument, violent and bloody, that continued to this day. Even defeated, he felt victorious in the contest. He was sure that since he was the most beautiful creature in the world, he had the upper hand. With the appearance of Rhianon, everything changed. As soon as he saw her, he knew he had to give up his pedestal. She was created as if in mockery of him. Yes, a more perfect creature than Dennitsa could illuminate even the human world with her presence. He is no longer the first. Praise the new dawn. It pained him at the sight of his own sunset. Even the angels in the heavens did not suffer for him as much as mortals rushed to die for the beautiful Rhianon. Truly she was a new lightning bolt, brighter than the former favorite of the god in the heavens. But she was created after him and in mockery of him. The god decided to replace him with someone else. Madael stubbornly refused to acknowledge the primacy of his own copy. She was only a reflection of him. She was a female parody of him, since on earth the most beautiful should be women, not men. There was no such distribution in heaven. There, everyone was equally as sexless. And no one fought for supremacy but him. The fairest among all, he found his followers. They, with the appearance of Rhianon, got the chance to see that their head was not and would not be the best and the only one. It was quite a tangible blow. Madael never suffered it. He followed the impostor everywhere, trying to find a single flaw in her, but he was only more convinced that she was better than him. Those who had thought him great could now die of fervor. His fallen angels had chosen him as their warlord, dazzled by his unique beauty and strength. They thought there was no one equal to him, and if so, they were not afraid to die for him. There was no one to replace him and he was the best. If he were gone, there would be nothing left to exist for. Where would there be another dawn? There’s a new dawn. It is a worthy substitute for him. With a heavy heart, Madael had to admit it. His subjects began to look at her with interest, even to adore her from afar.

      Naturally, Madael’s dream was to get rid of the cause of his pain, but as soon as he got close to her…

      He gripped the golden goblet so tightly that it nearly cracked in his fingers. The warmth of the blood, laced with poison, stung his throat so that he could have screamed. But he was used to physical burns. Something else was more tangible.

      “A rose has thorns,” said a bard he had met on the road. In spite of his dark cloak and hidden wings, he recognized Madael, perhaps because he was a Fallen One himself, seeking the way to the Cathedral of Thunder. That is not important. The fact is that his phrase still rang in Madael’s ears, more poignantly than Arnaud’s perpetually whining flute.

      “The rose has thorns…”

      Or else he hadn’t guessed it himself. He kept repeating the phrase to himself hundreds and hundreds of times now. If he had said it out loud, his tongue would have broken.

      You have to be strong. One must rush into battle. It reminded his conscience, if only he had one. He knew that the rules of his long game on earth were subject only to force and sword. He and God played with human lives and felt quite comfortable. What are humans? God and his punished lover can spin them as they please. They are as soft as clay and pliable and trusting. You don’t need a sword with them if you whisper something in their ear. But Madael liked the sword better. He was meant to be a warrior. The game went on, the men were pawns, he was a force among them, and surely the Almighty was the moving hand that decided everything. He did not agree with that. He’d rather have him and God as equals. Some played white, but he always played black. He had yet to assert his rights.

      “You are a rose!” He whispered, leaning over the empty, clawed table, where bloody wine dripped and bones piled after feast. The rings on someone’s nibbled finger bones still glittered, just like the ones she liked to wear. And why was he the only one who found it so difficult to say her name. Why is it a rose and not Rhianon? A rose has thorns. He touched his hand to his heated forehead, brushing the disheveled hair from his temples. It was like scarlet gold, still pure with just a touch of something dark. His wings were already almost entirely black, but the bouncy strands of hair still twisted like gold worms. His eyes were still blue and his skin lily-white, too, except that the mirror was a burnt monster instead. There, beyond the mirror’s edge, a charred, incredibly evil and terrifyingly ugly creature lived and moved on its own. What if, shattering the amalgam but one day, it would burst into the outside world and swallow it whole. Absorb even the beautiful golden image of the still-existing Madael. He did not want to become that charred creature. But had his hour already come? What taboo had he broken to become this scarecrow? He wanted to be himself, but there was nothing he could do.

      “Only not to break his taboo,” his conscience told him, and the sword clutched in his hand said otherwise. He may be a devil, but he has honor, and his own desires and desire for freedom, even if the shackles never fall, he must be free in his choice.

      If he becomes as burnt and embittered as Asmodeus, the fragile line will be broken, the balance between sun and darkness will disappear. The world will cease to be a field of ruthless play between the god and his first warrior. Everything around it would become irrelevant.

      He pressed his fingers to his forehead, trying to hold back his tearing consciousness. So this is how people go mad, long and painfully losing their own sanity. He had helped them so far, his subjects whispering to them to speed up the process. He himself made sure that the pain inflicted on people was as full as possible. He watched the pains of others and still he himself was in more pain.

      Is it funny? People did not lose what he had lost. By falling, he had lost himself. Or on the contrary finally gained independence? Or maybe he was just taking the first step. As Rhianon would have decided? But here was Rhianon again. Could he not live and think without proclaiming her his chief advisor? Without her there was nothing to live for. If only the misery he was leading here could be called a life. He was the lord of worm gold, black creatures, and spilled blood. Alone in his tower, or rather surrounded by an evil entity, among whom he was alone all the same. And always will be.

      Once he lost his loneliness, and his virginity, and his impregnability. It was all for a mortal girl. He dug his claws deeper into the marble tabletop.

      “Damn you, Rhianon… and bless you. It was as if there was nothing but you…”

      He

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