refuge from death in the castle on high ground either. It will come in time.
If the words of the angel are to be believed, then he chose to come now, not later. Rhianon waited with everyone else. Could it be that her demand had proved so important to him? She herself had not expected him to listen to her when she suggested it. So he had decided to change his plans after all. She wondered if it was for her or for something else.
Her heart began to beat a nervous beat. She wished the tension in the hall would subside. But no, there was only increased murmuring among the assembled crowd. Even the king’s presence did not seem to bother anyone. And Ferdinand himself was clearly not himself today. Was he worried, too? Rhianon looked up and noticed the beads of sweat on his forehead. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the open doors. Apparently today’s news was the first shattering of his life. There had never been a war, much less an epidemic, in his reign. And now a stranger called death, either a ghost or a powerful sorcerer, has decided to show up at the palace. What will he demand?
«Surely your soothsayers must have foretold that I am the cause of this epidemic?»
Ferdinand looked at her in confusion. Rhianon couldn’t quite put his finger on why he was so surprised. She asked the question without opening her mouth. She was too accustomed to making small talk with a spirit to think that it would be strange to do the same with a human. She was already feverishly considering how to justify herself, when suddenly the impossible happened. She heard footsteps behind the swinging door, but there was still no one in the doorway. Rhianon glanced around the room and was surprised to find that none of the motley crowd was wearing the garb of a astrologer.
«He told not to allow any of them in tonight,» said Ferdinand to her unspoken question.
«In that case I am grateful to him,» she answered in a low whisper. «I do not like sorcerers, trying to use the dark power.»
«And who loves them?» Ferdinand said.
«Then why do you tolerate them at court?» She asked. «Are you afraid of them?»
He shook his head negatively.
«I am afraid that one day I may need their help.»
«But they are powerless today.»
Rhianon was convinced she was right when she saw him enter the hall. He looked even more terrifying in the bright light than he had at night in the dark alley. He had seemed merely sinister to her then; now she might have choked with fear. Other ladies had already fainted at the sight of him, and in far greater numbers than before. Seeing him was far more frightening than hearing of him. Here and there frightened shrieks were heard, and men grasped useless weapons. Mortal hands rested on the hilted hilt and hilted sword, and he walked through the hall, immortal, but bearing death. Invulnerable to mere weapons or disease, but covered with sores himself. Even his handsome features looked frightening against such a backdrop. Rhianon would not have been surprised if people were not just dying at his touch, but decomposing alive. She followed his every movement with her eyes. He walked so smoothly, as if he were floating above the marble floor. A gray coat was developing around his body, but the angel’s grace made the rough canvas look better than the most expensive garment. He would wear the badge of shame with majesty, too. He was so graceful, so beautiful and so powerful.
«And I am the bringer of death,» he added with one lip as he approached the throne. He glanced at Rhianon, and his face suddenly turned into a smile that was predatory, full of meaning and seductive at the same time. Had he dreamed of seducing her or to kill her? She looked at him closely, and no one else around her noticed. The frightened people in the hall seemed to have vanished. Rhianon sat upright on her throne. The golden armrests slid beneath her fingers. If it hadn’t been for a spirit behind her, clutching at her shoulders, she would have run toward him.
«Stop, you’ll ruin yourself!» He whispered fervently, nestling into her very ear. His hot breath burned her lobe. Do spirits have breath? Or does he feed on her energy and soon burst into flames himself? What difference did it make to her? She’d rather he left her alone. All Rhianon saw before her was the angel of death. Even if he wore a gray turban and didn’t even want to show his wings to others, or maybe he just couldn’t, even if his tender moon-shimmering skin was pierced with deep sores, even if he carried death and destruction. She no longer cares. After all, he looked so much like her Madael. She looked at him and wanted to see another. Obviously, the angel noticed this, and the smile slowly came off his lips. It was as if she saw a shooting star, and the angel’s features became calm. There was no more of the lover’s teasing smile, only a stern look from under his pitted eyelids, and worms crawling across her tightly closed lips. Words were expected of him, but he said nothing. He only looked at Rhianon, so intently and attentively that the eyes of everyone gathered also turned involuntarily to her.
Ferdinand was the first to pull together. No one had any doubts about who the terrible guest was. But the king had the courage to affirm the obvious.
«Then you are death.»
He didn’t even nod. Moreover, he had no reason to turn on the speaker. Rhianon thought for a moment that his pale lips were curled back into a sneer.
A low, weighty sound echoed through the hall:
«Yes, I am.»
But no one saw the angel speak. How unshakeable he is, after all. Like a statue! Rhianon kept her eyes fixed on him. Sores had built up around his whites under his eyelids, but inside his pupils she could see two slivers of azure sky. True, it was slightly tinged with grayness.
«Do you love me?» She asked mentally. «Would you be willing to stand under my banner?»
She knew she was shocking him and herself with her impertinence. If he became angry, the consequences would be unpredictable. He could do what he wanted to the city, and to her. And it didn’t matter that she wasn’t quite mortal anymore. He could think of something to punish her for such liberties. She thought herself superior to Dennitsa, superior to his former commander, his brother-in-arms and his idol.
«Do you love me more than him?»
So the unspoken words hung over the hall like a golden cloud. The angel’s face was impenetrable. Rhianon was already preparing for the worst, when suddenly the words came to her, addressed this time to everyone.
«I won’t touch this city again.»
«Because of you,» she was the only one to hear.
Rhianon sighed, expecting to fill her lungs with the black miasma of sickness, but the air was fresh. She noticed the admiration that flashed in his eyes for a moment. The golden curls streaming from beneath his gray hood seemed almost white. His eyebrows and eyelashes were silver in the bright daylight, and he himself would have seemed almost translucent had it not been for the ulcers in his shimmering skin. For one more moment he looked at her. Just a moment, but sometimes one look meant more than a physical connection. If they had been in the same bed together, she would not have felt closer to him than she did now. He truly admired her, far more than an ordinary mortal queen, even more than the one who had once long ago led him into that first heavenly battle.
Rhianon wanted to say something, or at least address him mentally with words of appreciation, but her lips would not listen. Consciousness, too, seemed for a moment to be shackled. But the angel was in control of himself. He knew he had to go. There was a moment of perfect understanding between them, and then he suddenly put his ulcerous hand to his chest, to the very place where people’s hearts beat. But he had no heart, only a lump of worms, not muscle. Rhianon shuddered at the thought of what his chest might be filled with. What did he want to show her with it? Could he feel toward her what Madael felt? The leper’s hand froze motionless at her heart, and then the angel slowly bowed to her. It was to her, not to the king. Rhianon clutched at the armrests of the throne. She watched as the majestic gray figure bowed before her, the bumps of hidden wings curving on his back, the silky curls sliding downward peeking out from beneath the hood. How angels are like girls after all, for all their masculinity. Rhianon was