Ви Корс - The Mist and the Lightning. Part VI

“The only truly wise adviser we have is death. Every time you feel how it often happens to you that everything goes wrong and you are on the verge of complete collapse, turn left and ask your death if this is so. And your death will answer that you are mistaken, and that besides its touch there is nothing that really would matter. Your death will say: “But I have not touched you yet!”

Carlos Castaneda.

Part six Chaper one Lis sleeps

Mountains were black, as if covered with soot. A gloomy landscape. On one of the sooty sites in front of the dark pharynx of the cave people were working. People? Liswas not at all sure of this. Wrapped from head to toe in black, clothes as dirty and soiled as everything around, they made up a whole with a bleak landscape. But the outlines of their figures and measured movements still resembled human ones. Lis couldn’t say more precisely which creatures were working there. Slowly, as if they had an eternity in reserve, they rolled some iron barrels into the cave. As black as these mountains, and these entities and this cave, in the depths of which Lis caught a glimpse of the

flame. From time to time its distant but bright reflections burst from the depths, illuminating the arches of the entrance and the platform. In these moments, the creatures froze, as if waiting, then again took up work.

Lis, fascinated, watched their tricky actions. He didn’t know who they were, and what the name of the place was, but he KNEW what was in these barrels! Remains. The human remains.

And these gloomy and detached workers were not people, they could not be people, the world of people remained somewhere there, far, far away, Lis felt it, and an expression involuntarily came to his mind: “Not a single living soul” . So it was. Angels, or demons, in any case, of a lower order, were monotonously rolling barrels into the cave. And

their work had no end.

Lis didn’t smell the decay, the smell of rotting remains of perishing flesh. No. There were no such smells, because in the barrels were not parts of the bodies: arms, legs, tripe. In these terrible vessels of death lay the remains of dead human souls. The human nature itself. The immortal eternal starlet ceased to shine. Eternal? Lis saw now that no. Empty shells, distorted pieces, radiating no more life. Souls: dead, broken, broken, unable to survive, turned into dust.

And therefore, in the air there was no smell of decomposition of flesh, but something much worse – longing. Relentless, all-embracing, bottomless and endless longing. The one that makes you want to howl and tear off the hair on your head. The longing that you will never experience on earth, so hopeless and absolute it was.

Lis squeezed his temples with his hands and closed his eyes, trying to get rid of the obsession, of this all-consuming feeling of longing and hopeless despair. He became scared, very scared from the mere thought that his soul might be there… in one of these barrels.

WAKE UP AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

Lis was lying on the bed, breathing heavily and staring into the darkness, but such a familiar darkness of his room.

No, he’s not Arel, he will never scream in his sleep!

And feeling the familiar comfort of his bed, Lis closed his eyes. A heavy dream, yes… But he is not Arel to worry about such nonsense. You

never know what a dream you can see. Does he, who has taken so many stimulants and “drugs” in his life, not know this. He knows in what terrible worlds can lead more than once subjected to correction, and that’s why unbalanced consciousness. So there is no need even to think about it.

He woke up safely and lay in his bed. In his room. And his room is securely locked. He is safe. But…

And Lis felt how cold goose bumps ran down his spine, holding his body in fear, because he very clearly understood now that there was someone else in the room. And this “someone” was lying nearby, right behind him, quietly, not moving. And in a kind of panic, a strange thought occurred in Lis’ head, that if he makes some movement, then this “someone” will move too. And it will be faster.

Lis froze, thinking only that this creature behind him didn’t have to realize that he had already woken up and knew… Knew what?! That in his bed, in which, he perfectly remembered, he lay down alone, now someone else lies? Rave! Complete nonsense! Lis didn’t leave slaves for the night, and when did he have a slave for the last time? Why did he even decide that someone was lying behind him? The whole point was that he didn’t decide. He KNEW.

This is a dream. A damn dream again! And Lis is not Arel to scream… But damn it! How he now wanted to do it!

Drawing himself together instantly, like a cat, like an animal, Lis jumped up. At one jump, away from the bed, pulling the canopy to the side, and at the same time turning around.

Her dark hair was still braided in two tight braids, long to the floor.

Lying on his bed, Shela looked at Lis with strange whitish eyes without pupils.

A match struck, and the darkness of the room was a little diffused by a blinking light. Lis turned to the light, and Nikto saw it. Nikto lit a candle.

“W-what the hell is going on here?” Whispered the Lis.

Nikto shook his head oddly, and laid aside the open book lying on the table. It was a book of Lis. It was very convenient for making various drugs.

“A useful book,” said Nikto, “and a complicated one. However, I never doubted you,” he added, trying to smile. And in the dim light of the candle, his grin turned out to be truly creepy.

Lis staggered back and looked at Shela:

– She…

“She was cold there, in the basement where the servants threw her. At the very bottom. See what the rats did to her?”

Lis with undisguised disgust looked at Shela, at her chewed stumps instead of her hands. Hands that once so gently and skillfully caressed him. Her legs were chopped down to the knees. Exactly chopped off. Lis knew that. Rats could gnaw them, but they would leave bones. And too evenly they were bitten off. Apparently others feasted on her feet. Other, eternally hungry creatures living in this castle, and having maybe even less rights than rats. Slaves of Prince Arel.

Interestingly, do rats eat their own specie? Do they bite off their paws?

She was the same disenfranchised gray shadow, a rat, only in human form. And now she was lying on his bed, dirtying it with black stained blood from vile stumps.

“It's you!” Yelled Lis frantically. “You killed her! Now take her away! Let her bask in your bed! But she has nothing to do with me!”

“Really?” Nikto grunted. “I wonder, and what does she think about it? Maybe we’ll ask her? Let her tell how Arel mocked her. Or how she

went crazy with fear, but there was no one to protect her. Although, one person said that he loved her, that she was very dear to him…”

“Shut up! Shut your crooked mouth! She is just a slave, my fleeting whim, and if she didn’t understand it from the very beginning, this is her problem!”

“No, she understood everything, and didn’t pretend to be anything! Just this man reassured her. By the way, have you ever seen Arel having fun with his slaves? He kills them so slowly. Hours pass in agony. It may pass all night. Before…”

“Will you shut up?!”

“Here you will begin to grab at any straw. And of course you will believe, if someone promises you…”

“Shut up!”

“And quit you.” “Shut up.”

“To the mercy of fate.” “Shut! Up!”

“Betray you.”

“You're just a dream. My wacky nightmare! And I don’t care what you mean, Nikto. I'm sick of listening to you! You delivered her from a painful death, what a benefactor! Maybe it was easier not to choose her that day?”

“Maybe,” Nikto agreed. “But you made your choice, and I made mine. The first move was yours, first you. Then I.”

“You mean if I chose another…”

“I just fulfilled her last request. She wanted to see you again, nothing more,” and Nikto limped toward the door.

He opened it without any difficulties. And Lis nearly howled with rage. However, in a dream, locks really rarely save from uninvited guests.

“He walks around my room, touches my things, considers everything here!” Lis in indignation went to the table to hide his book.

Involuntarily he leaned over the open page:

“For, with hasty steps, at dawn someone is approaching me, someone who takes possession of me and cuts me down with a sword piercing me, and knocks me in order to bring me into harmony. And by the power of his hands holding a sword, he separates the skin from my head, and he connects the bones with pieces of meat, and all together, according to his plan, burns on fire until I feel how my body is transformed and becomes a spirit. And this is my unbearable torment.”

Lis sharply raised his head, suddenly realizing that he had read out, completely forgot about Shela. And in vain. Standing on the bed on all fours, Shela was preparing to jump.

And Lis screamed. Loudly, desperately, to finally wake up.

Chapter two

Lis reflexes

Lis looked in disgust at his reflection in the mirror. Black hair dye almost washed off, the color faded. Now he was neither red, nor black. Some dirty gray hair, not dark copper as originally, and not coal black as intended. Before, the color of his hair was often compared to fire. Women flatteringly told him this when he bent over them. They said that his face seemed to be framed by flames. And now the fire has gone out. Only gray ash remained. Not live hair. And Lis, with disgust, stroked them back, removing them from his face. He reached for his hairpin. The fluffy bright fox tail, habitually, gently caressing, lay down in the palm of his hand, but Lis immediately sadly laid it aside. His

favorite hairpin would have looked ridiculous on this dull hair. It used to be that his own tail argued with a fluffy decoration and clearly won, but now…

And Lis involuntarily caught himself thinking that now, as never before, he understands Squint-Eye. Squint-Eye, whom he always despised and humiliated. He called him a weakling, and considered a rag. Now he guessed the motives that moved Squint-Eye. Now these motives sounded in his soul. Now he barely restrained himself, so as not to grab the knife, and not cut to hell all his hair. Cut off this sign of the lord and the chosen warrior, and so on and so forth. A sign that has become so pathetic. And if he had been drugged, like Bert at that moment, oh!

Lis really wanted to inject something into himself now. But he endured because he was afraid of new trips. Even more terrible nightmares. He felt tired, awake, old and broken. Old wounds ached and reminded about themselves regularly. His body began to lose ground. He understood that. But he couldn’t fix anything.

And the face… it began to peel off because of this damn dye. Just like Arel’s. But Arel didn’t suffer too much from this, or it seemed that he didn’t suffer. It seemed to him that he really didn’t give a damn that people shied away from him in different directions. They look at them secretly, fearing a direct look. However, for Lis it is also all the same! Have they had enough of staring at him?!

“But why?! Why I was born this way?” asked himself a question stupid

Lis, not understanding how beautiful he really was. His mother was embarrassed of him, and Karina…

The sky is blue, there’s not a cloud, as if they are in the “Upper world”. Two captives are fighting in the arena below. Two blacks. They are just entertainment, meat, and Sigmer looks not at the battle of the “doomed to death”, but at her. At Karina. His Karina. He watches how intensely and concentratedly she watches the actions of her compatriots exposed for fun. As if she herself were fighting down there. She flinches at every attack, at each dangerous moment she moves forward, clutching her fingers in the parapet. He wonders, which one of them she supports. Sigmer is annoyed by it. But she does not notice that he is looking at her carefully. she is all down there, in dust and blood. He wants her to be distracted, to notice him, to look at him. Empty hopes.