The doors are all shaped like works of art.
«What lies behind them?»
«There are rarities from distant lands, treasures and wonders.»
«And are they not prisoners? Say, punished subjects?»
«I don’t lock up my subjects. They’re loyal enough,» the fairies’ queen jangled a bunch of keys hanging from her belt. They all had whimsical shapes, like the sun, elephant, mermaid, crown, moon, month, sickle, apple, heart. And even a sheaf of ears! The voice at the door was not lying.
«Would you have locked me in here?» He decided to test her.
«Why would I lock up someone who already belongs to me?»
«Someone who loves you,» Conrad corrected. «And how do you feel about me?»
Medea Shai turned on her dragon. He muffled and crawled away resentfully.
«What do you feel for me, not your dragons?» Conrad insisted.
«I love you,» she said, her voice indifferent, but her dark eyebrows rose in surprise.
What’s the matter with her? Can’t she understand her own feelings? And he can’t dare tell her about his fiancée. Or does she already know? They say fairies can read people’s minds.
Medea Shai touched her hand to his chest, and his heart was pierced with pain. When the queen of the fairies took her hand away, a rose with black and red petals was left on his skin. A moment and it dissolved into his skin, but he felt the thorns of its stem pierce his heart. It was painful and sweet at the same time. It was strange that he had survived. After all, if you pierce the human heart with something, people die. Unless, after the nights he spent with the fairy, he got a piece of her immortality himself.
«I propose that we unite,» Medea Shai proclaimed. «You are the ruler of Aluar. I am the lord of magic, dragons and fairies. Together we can build a great state where mortals and immortals can learn to get along together.»
«But you must be my wife to do so…» Conrad shrugged. «I have already tried to make an alliance with one empire.»
«Is it by marriage?» She guessed.
He nodded.
«But you are not married yet.»
«But the wedding has been arranged, though we must hope for Araminta’s frail health. Her physicians said she would not last more than a year.» The illness was a mysterious one, contracted on the magical moors on the road to Aluar. Araminta was summoned from the mire by strange voices, and after that she fell ill. It was said that only a fairy could heal the king’s bride. Fairies were searched all over Aluar and found none. And so, as soon as he met a real fairy, he realized that he no longer needed a bride.
«Don’t be worried!» Medea Shai brushed an unruly lock of hair from his forehead. «I can be your co-ruler without being your wife. Besides, your wife would die in a century, and you yourself could have eternity.»
She added the last sentence coquettishly, but the dragon grumbled unkindly behind her back. Steam billowed from its nostrils and wafted down the corridor. Behind the doors someone sighed, sobbed, whispered:
«As soon as she gets tired of him, he’ll join us!»
But Conrad no longer believed the voices. Nor did he believe that humans and fairies could become one people, but on leaving the castle he discovered that his warriors were already getting along with the monsters of Medea Shai. The monsters were teaching the knights to play a strange game similar to a golden checkers. Purple tents and shawls with witchcraft emblems woven on them were reminiscent of palace luxury. They were displayed on the black field by Medea Shai’s servants. The tents themselves were already populated by slender fairies, and not only black-winged ones. Conrad had seen silver fairies, gold fairies, rainbow fairies, and even those with wings like rose and peony petals. Some of the fairies wore exotic oriental robes.
«It’s peri!» His marshal whispered to Conrad. «They were sent to entertain the warriors. The queen of the fairies turned out to be generous.»
Above one of the tents it rained gold coins. They fell to the black soil with a melodious ringing. The rank-and-file warriors eagerly collected them. Their eyes became enchanted, seeing nothing but the glitter of gold. A little more and they would have a fight on their hands.
«We shall have to pay for our gifts in blood,» remarked one of the Councilors sullenly. «Considering that they may give a lot, they’ll ask for something impossible to return, like some ancient faerie relic from the sea floor.»
«The queen of the fairies and I have a deal,» Conrad brushed it aside. He wasn’t so sure of that himself. The strange voices at the door might have seemed like a nightmare, but they warned of danger.
Only now Conrad remembered that he had not obeyed the request of the invisible adviser and tried to take one of the keys from Medea Shai. Though he could have! She was standing beside him, and on her belt were as many keys as pendants on a Christmas tree. He could have discreetly taken one off while she was kissing him. Someone at the door was waiting for his help, but he didn’t give it. Probably no one would help him at the crucial moment, either.
Against his puny mortal army, the fairy queen’s monsters seemed like giants. So far they had treated humans as if they were amusing toys and entertained them with magic. Surely the queen must have told them to be nice. And what would happen if she told them to attack? Such an outcome is best not even thought of.
Roses’ charms
Araminta will have to be married, even though she’s ill. The King’s physicians are swarming around her night and day. They use every potion they can get, even from across the sea, but her skin grows ever greyer, and her strength dwindles. She will not live long. You can wait a year or two and she will die a natural death. There is no need to hurry. But Conrad so desired the fairies’ queen that he didn’t care.
He had been foretold that he would die by the blade of a conspirator, by an enemy tyrant king, by a contagious epidemic, but never by unhappy love. There was no such thing in the prophecies. His love for the fairies’ queen made him feel even sicker and weaker than Araminta did. When he returned to Aluar, he realized that he could not go on without Medea Shai. Separation from her was like torture, and the thorns in his heart were becoming knives. It was not for nothing that the fairies over the battlefield had foretold him trouble.
Now they were hovering outside the window over the sunny garden, but no longer fighting, but arguing in a half-voiced voice.
«He will not do it!» The white fairy insisted.
«Yes he will!» The red one objected.
«Love was supposed to ennoble him,» the white-winged fairy sighed almost in despair.
«Passion rules him!» The red fairy protested. She clutched at the hands of her snow-white either rival or girlfriend. The bodies of the two fairies intertwined in flight over the garden, and suddenly disappeared, while the petals of red and white roses rained down like fireworks over the garden.
Conrad looked out the window in amazement. The whole garden was overgrown with prickly pink wattle and daub. They encircled the castle walls, the wrought iron garden fence, stretched along the borders of the fountains, braided the garden sculptures, even lay on the curtains. Earlier the garden had been filled with camellias and honeysuckle, but now red and white roses swarmed the place. Even the lilac bushes could not be seen behind them. The roses had very prickly stems, but they exuded a wonderful fragrance.
Either Conrad was imagining it, or there were quiet whispers coming from the roses:
«What would the king choose: passion or love? Is it the fairies’ queen or the mortal girl?»
Conrad’s sister Princess Marianne had already noticed the changes in the garden and asked the gardener for something. Probably that he cleared away the thorny wattles of her favorite magnolia trees.
«The