THE JUDGMENT OF FATE

The castle towers appeared in the distance. In the blink of an eye, the dragon overcame the snow-covered valley and flew up to the highest spire. Here he unclenched his claws and released his victim.

Rose landed on the castle roof. She tried to get to her feet. Darkness reigned around, the wind howled. Snowflakes circled in the icy air. The slippery stone floor made all movements clumsy and useless. Rose was looking for something to grab onto, and groped for some kind of support.

Suddenly several torches flashed. Holding on to the support, Rose knelt down, pulled herself up, and then her palm brushed against a cold, sharp object. The girl looked up and saw that a huge monster with bronze wings and the head of a goblin was rising above her. Her hand brushed against the claws on his leg.

Rose drew back from him. She looked with horror at the gloomy monster looming over her. He stood motionless, as if he had no intention of attacking at all. The glare of the fire gave it a majestic and ominous look.

Only now did Rosa realize that in front of her was a bronze statue. Probably, the sculptor tried very hard to create such a gloomy creation. Even after making sure the monster was not alive, Rose was still afraid of him. She crawled away and came across the same statues. There were many of them here, dozens of bronze monsters, frozen on pedestals.

Two rows of silent, ugly figures stretched on either side of the Rose, forming a kind of gallery of fear.

Meanwhile, the dragon landed on the roof. There was enough space for him too. It hung over the Rose like a sparkling rock. The girl prepared herself for death. Now nothing could save her.

Sparks of green and red danced across the dragon’s scales. A flash of blinding light forced Rose to close her eyes, and when she opened her eyes again, the golden pursuer had already disappeared. In his place, Edwin stood and studied the wedge-scale brush. One might think that a plate gauntlet made of gold and with claws was fastened on his arm.

The bright shine of the metal slowly faded away. The disfigured hand returned to its former appearance. A smooth wing flashed and disappeared behind the young wizard.

“I warned you,” Edwin remarked, not without reproach. His previously calm voice had a threatening note.

“So you are a dragon!” Rose exclaimed. She watched the one whom she had recently considered her friend. How she had not previously guessed about his duplicity. Of course, his ideal human appearance could mislead anyone. Who could have guessed a bloodthirsty dragon in a beautiful, silent youth.

“Why did you run away?” Edwin asked, trying to hide the bursting rage. “Do you have any idea what danger awaited you on the other side of the river? If you had time to cross the bridge, even I would not be able to free you.”

“So you’re not going to kill me like those peasants?” Rose inquired suspiciously, crawling backward from the terrifying, stately figure wrapped in a dark cloak.

“What for?” Edwin asked a counter question. “All the same, you won’t be able to give out my secret to anyone. I will never let you out of this castle again.”

He walked with slow, firm steps towards Rose.

“Suppose you run away,” he said after a little thought. “You will survive under the bullets and arrows of the enemy and return to your kingdom, which has now become the scene of a bloody battle. The Queen will try to remove the spell from you, but it will be completely useless. The stigma that was put on you in the courtroom attracts a dragon. In human form, I am still capable of pity, but in the form of a dragon, nothing can hold me back. Relatives can hide you behind a door bound with iron. But I will still find you and bring you back.”

“Why do you need me?” Rose crawled away from him, as far as possible, trying not to touch the terrible statues, lined up in two lines. The snowfall made it difficult for her to see.

Edwin waved his hand and a protective, shining film surrounded them, preventing the snow from falling into the enclosed space.

He shrugged casually as he considered his answer.

“You will be the decoration of this castle,” he said finally. “Because dragons are collectors, they want the best.”

“But I’m a human, and people get old.”

“If you stay here, you will never grow old,” was the answer. “To stay forever young, you have to become either a sculpture or a fairy.”

At these words, Rose almost choked with horror.

“All those statues in the lobby and corridors,” she began to recall, “were they living people?”

“Almost everything,” Edwin corrected.

“How could you do this to them?”

“I have not been my own master for a long time. I got eternal life and an evil, vengeful heart as a gift. I must retain power over my own subjects and at the same time I must obey the orders of others. In saving you, I took the first risk of breaking the law.”

Rose now felt the ancient, superstitious fear of the dragon. Although there were no signs of fierce hatred in Edwin’s behavior, his eyes, burning with insane fire, inspired fear.

“I don’t think we should turn you into a piece of marble,” Edwin decided. “The walls of this fortress have enough magic to preserve your beauty.

“Thanks for that,” Rose whispered. After so many misadventures, her sense of humor finally began to return.

“Will you put me on this roof or closer to the torture chamber?” She asked.

“I’m not as villainous as I seem. Do not take for the truth everything that superstitious people come up with. They do not realize that, in people, I am first of all admired by intelligence and courage.”

“Courage?” Rose asked.

“Yes,” he confirmed. “After all, to save the troll, you need to be very brave.”

Rose stared at him in surprise. It seemed that there was no such intimate secret in the world that he would not know about.

Edwin removed the protective film with a light wave of his hand and invited Rose to follow him. A black flag with the dragon’s coat of arms fluttered on the spire of the pointed tower. Through this tower it was very easy to descend into the warm chambers of the castle.

“Someday I’ll show you what’s going on under the castle cellars, in the bowels of the earth,” Edwin said as he walked.

“It’s interesting,” Rose agreed out of courtesy, “but I would like to know why the bridge over the river is so dangerous.

Limping slightly, she followed Edwin down the spiral staircase. Each step hurt, but Rose tried to keep up.

Steep steps from the tower led directly to the library. Most likely, it was the largest room in the castle. From floor to vaulted ceiling, there were bookcases lined with books. Narrow ladders led to the upper galleries and the highest shelves.

Rose had never seen so many books in her life. There were old folios, weighty volumes of spells, collected works of unknown authors, and small collections of poems in morocco bindings. The colorful covers of novels about knights and fairies attracted attention.

The bulk of the library consisted of magic books. Rose took from the shelf an encyclopedia of the most insidious inhabitants of the magic world. It provided information about gnomes, trolls, water spirits, but not a word about the island of sorcerers.

She wanted to get a guide to unicorns, but Edwin called her over to the wall with a map on it. All those countries that Rosa had ever heard of occupied only a small corner on it. Further on, a cold ocean turned blue, on the other side of it were several principalities. The human world, which Rose believed to be endless, turned out to be only the top of the map. And right in the middle, the borders of a huge empire were marked in emerald color, on which the dragon’s coat of arms flaunted – a scarlet heart, bound with a golden crown. Forests surrounded the empire with a black line. Beyond it stretched the seas and bays of mermaids. The island of sorcerers was outlined with a silver stripe.

Rose did not immediately find on the map that very ink river with a bridge thrown over it. Across the river lies the city of spirits and strange ruins.

“The knights of the order of elves gather in these ruins at night. They are nimble and cunning, but not dangerous to me,” explained Edwin.

“And the city of spirits?”

“Ghosts live there. Of course, you can go there on a small excursion, but if you stay there for more than an hour,” he paused and whispered, “you yourself will turn into a ghost.”

“You were there?” Rose asked.

“Repeatedly. There is nothing interesting there, except for architectural monuments. And it would be foolish to expect good from communication with local residents.”

“And what are these badges?” Rose jabbed her finger at the map.

“Outside the city of spirits there is a gate, they lead into the abyss, where one veil once imprisoned a black miasm. They are marked with this symbol,” Edwin began to explain. “The rest of the signs indicate the places of sinkholes and quicksand. All the land beyond the bridge is contaminated. As I flew over it, I often felt the weakness and the bad intoxication that the black plague causes.”

“I saw people who quietly rode around this land.”

“Are you sure they were people?” Edwin asked after a little thought. “After all, we are all like people and, nevertheless, we are not. One must be very discerning to distinguish the true form from the mask.”

Rose nodded in agreement with his simple and cruel truth. She herself did not know the difference. I didn’t understand that there is nothing in common between representatives of two different worlds. An example of this was the wizard standing in front of her. Even his pale, soulful face and smooth, weightless movements perfectly copied the spontaneity and grace of the dragon.”

“The bridge and the castle are so far apart,” Rosa turned her gaze back to the map. “Is it possible to overcome such a space as quickly as I do.”

“It’s your indiscretion,” Edwin chided her again. “If you trace your life line, then you can understand how imprudent you were from the very beginning. Over the course of my life, I have learned one truth: eminent persons suffering from kind-heartedness very often become victims of betrayal.”

“And what happened in your life, besides raids, fires and robberies?” Rose asked boldly.

He chuckled, but then a blurry veil of sadness and longing twitched his eyes.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “Perhaps I was mistaken about you, now you are not the chosen one, but just a curious person who looks at me like a magician.”

“Unwittingly, I became a participant in the events, which even now I am afraid to give an explanation,” “after a pause, he continued. “I saw the fall of a great power. I was both a ruler and a prisoner. But for people all these are empty words, they prefer to stick to their version about me and others like me.”

His hand slid across the map, as if re-delineating cities, and pointed to an empty, gray spot, completely inconspicuous among the motley lines and signs.

“It’s over,” Edwin sighed. “And time cannot be turned back. Now I’m a famous villain to the whole world.”

“But your coat of arms is on these lands,” Rose pointed to the emerald borders of the empire. “What kind of people settled here?”

Edwin chuckled cheerfully, almost humanly.

“Those whom people called evil,” he replied. “And, in my opinion, they are a stronger, unreachable race. In fact, this is not a people, but a whole element and only one and only creature – the dragon – can keep it in obedience. Only the dragon agree to obey these proud and powerful creatures.”

Rose gave him a curious, suspicious look and said nothing. His appearance alone was beyond doubt. In front of her, indeed, stood an inhuman creature enveloped in a solar halo, in which all the attractiveness and all the evil of the magic world were combined.

“Until tonight I knew nothing about you or your domain.”

“How could you find out about this?” interrupted her reasoning Edwin. “Even the small information that was obtained by courageous people at the cost of numerous losses was hidden from you. Since you stepped on the middle road, I have welcomed you to my domain. Remember the absence of a snowstorm on this road, about the dense ice on the lake, which so successfully broke just under your enemies. Snow never melts in these forests, and inevitable death awaits aliens here. The valley and the castle are an obstacle on the way to a magic kingdom invisible to mortals.”

“Is it interesting there? Tell me how they live there.” Rose pointed to the forbidden borders.

“That’s what,” Edwin decided. “It’s your birthday at the end of the month. In honor of the name day, I will fulfill your wish and take you there so that you can see everything yourself. Such an adventure will be much more exciting than my story.”

He was much kinder than he seemed. But how could he explain to this mortal girl that he too was overtaken by the cruel sentence of fate. No, you shouldn’t explain anything to her. She won’t understand anything. She is just a beautiful doll – a new decoration for this deserted, gloomy castle.

“Wait, did you say what the gray spot on the map means?” Rose protested as Edwin led her out of the library.

“Once there was a rich, prosperous state, but now there are only ruins and dry, barren land, where no one wants to live.”

Edwin took Rose by the hand and pulled her along.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” he said suddenly. “I’m not a leper, and you don’t have to tremble like that at my approach. If the hunchback’s curse begins to work again, then without my help you will not live even a couple of days. By the way, on occasion I will remove this glass from your hand.”

He pointed to a ring with an extinct stone.

“Thank you,” Rose said. She had no doubt that Edwin was capable of removing the evil trinket from her finger. Now she wondered if she could get rid of the ring and cast off the Curse of the Swan at the same time.

The next evening, the dragon’s castle no longer seemed to Rose as gloomy as it had been when the verdict was pronounced. Yes, she is sentenced to stay forever in this mansion. It’s not that bad here. Snow glistens outside the window, her room is full of trinkets, and there are always a few books available from the library.

Someone knocked softly on the door.

“Come in!” Rose shouted without hesitation.

The door slowly opened, and a small, round face with brightly painted lips and eyelashes peeped into the room. In surprise, Rose dropped the brush with which she was combing her hair when several living puppets entered the room one after another. They moved independently, pushed and talked. Rose was so overwhelmed that she could not even answer the greetings.

Finally, the most elegant puppet stepped forward and announced with an air of importance:

“Our master has ordered us to serve your highness.”

“What can you do?” Rose asked immediately. She really could not understand how these fragile, small dolls could be useful, except to serve as toys.

You have to be a fool to entrust such weak, cute babies with some kind of work.

However, the puppets turned out to be very agile and neat maids. They worked together and cheerfully. Rose couldn’t get enough of the tiny people scurrying about the room. The puppets played the role of both maids and maids-in-waiting at the same time. In a quarter of an hour, the room was shining clean.

The puppets helped the princess put on a purple festive dress and strung small diamonds on her hair.

“The master is already waiting for you,” one of the puppets reported in her thin, melodic voice.

Edwin, indeed, was already at the front staircase. This elegant young man was nothing like a wicked monster hiding in the shadow of looted treasures. His cold beauty emanated not only twilight evil, but also wisdom and knowledge that only immortals possess.

The walls of the castle are also endowed with inexhaustible strength, the ability to prolong youth and heal. Rose felt it when, in just a night in the castle, all her wounds and scratches healed and covered with new transparent skin.

Rose was accompanied by two puppets. One minced ahead, pointing the way through the corridors, and the other carried her train.

“Where did you find them?” Rose dared to ask, when timid, agile dolls, seeing Edwin, hurried into the shadow of the nearest column.