Ви Корс - The Mist and the Lightning. Part 9

Chapter one

A dream

Yellow autumn leaves circled and fell from the trees. Arel recognized this place – exactly there Nikto brought him long ago. There, for the first time, Prince Arel knelt down, asked Nikto to make him his slave and accepted slavery of his own free will. And he agreed to the brand. He agreed to wear a black tattoo on his face forever and received a dog collar on his neck as a gift. This time there was neither Amba nor her dog. It was this time autumn there, and the trees were all adorned with golden foliage.

Arel suddenly realized that he was wearing a woman’s dress, white with a pile of fluffy satin skirts and a tight corset laced up in the back so it was hard to breathe. At the same time, his chest remained open, the corset began a little lower. On the rings inserted into his nipples, large teardrop-shaped pearls now additionally hung, and strings of mother-of-pearls were beautifully stretched through the rings, encircling his chest and hanging down in semicircles onto the corset.

Arel wore a woman’s dress a couple of times in his life as a joke or for a loss at cards, so he knew these sensations, but he never tightened the corset so much that it was difficult to breathe. He was sitting on the ground covered with fallen leaves, dazed, breathing convulsively, pearl drops quivering on his chest. Nikto stood before him.

“Hug me,” Arel asked. Nikto sank to the ground, pulled him to himself and gently touched his lips to his. Arel reached out to him, kissing him back and taking his lower lip towards him, stroking his tongue and touching the rings that were threaded through it. Nikto closed his eyes, thickly painted black; his eyelids twitched.

“I’m your bride,” Arel whispered, barely audible.

No one threw him to the ground, continuing to hug him with one hand, and with the other lifting up the fluffy skirts of the white wedding dress. Yellow leaves rustled beneath them, surrounding them with the tart scent of ripe autumn.

“Just don't leave me! Just don't leave me anymore! Nik, I beg you!”

Nikto turned him over, burying his face in the fallen leaves. Arel’s shoulders trembled from the jolts, and the rigid corset didn’t allow breathing. He didn’t see that Lis was standing very close to them, near the orange tree.

He only noticed him when Nikto let him go, but maybe Nikto noticed Lis before?

“Fox, don't be jealous, I fell in love with Nik,” says Arel somehow lifeless. “Sorry,” the last word sounds guilty.

But contrary to his expectation that Lis would understand, his face twisted into a grin.

“I'm jealous?! Advice and love!”

Nikto doesn’t move, but Lis falls as if from a blow. His red hair mingles with red foliage. He lies without moving or getting up.

“Don't do that,” Arel pleadingly asks Nikto. “Let him say what he wants. I'm not offended at all. Don't punish him.”

Nobody pulls out his box of “medicine” from the bag. It is not a syringe that he pulls out of it, in his hands there is not a glass rod and steel, but a beautiful and thick gold ring. It is smooth and shiny. Engagement?

“Well, come to me,” Nikto calls, and Arel gets up, comes up, not taking his eyes off the golden ring. But contrary to his expectations, Nikto doesn’t take his hand, he is not going to put the wedding ring on his finger as his bride, but stretches out his hands, raising them higher and unclenching the ring, and tries to insert it into Arel’s nose, right into the nostrils. Arel recoils in confusion, not wanting to have a dubious adornment, and then Nikto pushes him, throws him to the ground, leaning on his back again with his whole body, and, opening it, inserts a gold ring into his nose, pushing it into his nostrils. Arel feels how the decoration painfully tears the septum in his nose, feels how it widens his nostrils, interferes with breathing, feels heaviness.

Lis slowly rises from the ground, several fallen leaves tangled in his wavy hair. He looks at Arel, who now has a gold jewelry sticking out of his nose, with some horror, and Arel feels a burning shame.

“Nik, don’t,” Arel tries to say, but his tongue twists, as if it’s swelling in his mouth, and all he gets is a kind of mooing through force.

“Don’t…”

“Prince Arel! Arel! Wake up!” Lis shakes him by the shoulders. Dear Lis, so dear and homely, sleeping in bed nearby.

“What are you humming there? More nightmares? It's the same every night!”

Arel looks at Lis with eyes still dull from sleep, not understanding:

“Lis,” he finally says, and his gaze clears up, “Nikto will return in autumn.”

“You’re delusional,” he chuckles and at the same time asks, “but what, the man you sent to the Royal Route for news has not returned yet?”

“No,” Arel shakes his head, “he hasn’t returned, but I think he will return soon. And Nik, Nik will be back soon too!”

He jumps out of bed:

“I dreamed that I was in a white wedding dress…”

“Oh no! Not that! I'm not going to listen to your nonsense!”

A tattered piece of “Upper Messenger” lies on the table in front of Lis: “The Son of the Devil, nicknamed Nikto, made a daring escape from the Royal Prison, using the Black Sorcery… je opened a mysterious portal leading straight to the Underworld… hidden in the depths of the ancient catacombs, where no man has gone…”

Lis looked up at Valentine, who was standing next to him.

“Has the owner already seen this?”

Valentine nodded in dismay:

“Yes, he told me to show it to you as soon as you return from the hunt.”

“I see. What else did he say?”

“He ordered to bring wine,” Valentine trembled. “And this … this Son of the Devil, will he come here? Sir?”

“I don’t know!” Lis got up. “It's not your concern!”

“Yes, of course, I'm sorry,” Valentine, bowing, scared back to the door.

Lis entered the prince’s room without knocking and saw the already pretty drunk Arel.

“Are you drinking?” He winced with disgust.

“I celebrate the victory!” Arel raised his glass. “Join!”

“Hmm, a victory?”

“Don’t play the fool, Lis, you understand everything perfectly! My Nik made them all and escaped from prison, right from under the noses of these pouty sirs! And they thought they were so smart! He'll be here soon, you'll see! He will return! Soon!”

“Do you believe in this nonsense?” Lis threw the “Messenger” sheet on the table. “The Son of the Devil bewitched Karina, daughter of the head of the Royal Security Service, when she brought him medicine and food. This is complete nonsense!”

“No-no,” Arel happily shook his head, “this is not nonsense! I was there, Balthazar asked her to go down to Nikto’s cell and make an injection, since he himself didn’t want to climb the stairs!”

Lis looked at him incredulously:

“Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“I didn’t attach any importance to this then, and to be honest, I felt bad, Lis, since Kors crushed me a lot.”

“And he bewitched her?”

“Well, it was probably invented for beauty, of course, that Nikto bewitched her. But obviously they somehow got there in the cell and came up with an escape plan, although, who knows, maybe he bewitched her, I don't know, it doesn't matter! Drink with me, Lis! Drink!”

“Maybe you have had enough?”

“No! I will drink, I am happy! My Nik is coming soon!”

“Where did the portal take him to? Maybe he’s in his Unclean Limit. Two months have passed!”

“He will come. He will come to me. He promised!”

“And what about Karina?”

“What Karina? I shit on this bitch! Who cares?!”

“Well, then you asked me: “How will he take revenge on Kors? How will he take revenge on Kors?” You see, he took revenge. He ran away, making a fool of him, and grabbed his beloved daughter!”

“Yes! He's cool, right?!” Arel laughed.

“And you whined, you were afraid that nothing would come of it.”

“I believed. I believed, and…”

“What?”

“We need to prepare for his meeting! We need to meet him properly!” Arel opened a drawer and took out a box of dyes, smiled a drunken smile, looking at Lis.

“What are you up to?” In the voice of Lis there was tension.

“I don’t have a bell strip here, otherwise I would put it on you again.”

Lis said nothing, but a look of doom appeared on his face.

“I have here a lot of muzzles for slaves,” Arel threw a muzzle mask consisting of thin straps at Lis.

“Do you want to put it on me?” Lis asked somewhat defiantly.

“I wanted to. You're a slave of Nikto, and I thought that such a meeting he would like. Twenty years ago, all the slaves here wore such. They are slightly different so that you can immediately identify a slave from a plantation or a slave from a barnyard. This is the muzzle of the slave who served in the house.”

“And, that is, it should be an honor for me? Well, Arel, give me the muzzle of the slave of the cesspool cleaner! I'll put it on!”

Arel laughed:

“Lis, I wanted to do it, but I changed my mind.”

“It's strange. I can't even imagine why?”

“They all have a leather flap in place of their mouths. When the slave ate, he could lift it a little, and still he always walked with his mouth shut so that his rotten teeth were not visible and so as not to offend the sirs with the stench.”

“And? What confused you?”

“I like to see your mouth, your lips. How you twist them, even now, in an attempt to seem indifferent. This is so funny! You make me laugh, Lis. And I remembered, remembered something that will hook you much more than a banal slave muzzle.”

“You…” Lis looked at the box in his hand.

“Who are you, Lis?”

And Lis lowered his head:

“I'm a jester, I'm a fool,” he said quietly. And the drunken Arel laughed.

Chapter two

Black Bey

“The old man said everything right,” said Mike Rout, “as he said, there they went out.”

“Well, like this!” Edin Ol, sitting next to Black Bey, grinned, content.

“There are not many exits from the Great Quagmire. Everyone knows that!”

“And from there to the Royal Route in the most remote place,” Mike continued.

“So we'll meet them at the abandoned cemetery,” Bey said.

“Yes,” Mike nodded, pouring local muddy liquor into a rough earthen mug on the table. He drank it all down in one gulp and winced, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

“We grazed them all day, they are heading in this direction, as the old one said.”

Bey grimaced as if he had also taken a sip of the moonshine of the marsh, although he didn’t take a sip:

“Don't remind me of him once again, this vile old man pisses me off!”

He looked around the squalid little room of the low hut in which they were. The scarce furnishings of the dwellings of the bog dwellers didn’t favor a cozy pastime. Bey slanted down, looking at the dirt floor and the rotten straw heaped in the corner.

“There's something there! I swear in the name of Gods! And I don't like it!”

They stared at the pile of straw.

“I also hear some sounds from there, especially at night,” Toby said carefully.

“They are rats rustling in the straw,” Edin Ol replied.

“You shouldn't have quarreled with Gregor,” Toby said.

“I didn't quarrel with Gregor,” Bey objected, forcing himself to tear his eyes away from the corner he hated. “I simply explained to him that I was no longer able to pay for his expensive magical experiments and so-called “ingredients”. We had to choose: either this outing, or dubious magical rites!”