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I have already decided that this is a funny episode, of course not for the victim, but for the observer, but suddenly I saw something blurry and unclear what looked through the turbid glass. Blurred paints merged into a bizarre combination of black with white spots. The strange picture, voiced by deaf clapping, as if a flock of the pigeons once broke off and rushed into flight. For some reason, I thought that if I tried to look deeper, I would see something scary or at least unpleasant, so I hastily removed my fingers from the smooth surface.
«You do not want to leave this castle?» I turned to Rose. «There are many oddities around, but I managed to make sure you are brave. Tell me, one bloody rag can not scare you? In addition to frightening, there must be at least something that you like. Is it truth?»
«Well… I like you,» Rosa hid her hands behind her back, as if she felt that the ring prevents us to speak on equal terms. Nobody, besides her, could be able to put me in a dead end so often. So this time I froze from amazement. Is it possible to be in the rank of the idol in her eyes? She managed to see the wonderful elevated creation there where others saw the cruel and inexorable enemy.
Perhaps I would consider the beauty as a crazy or a pretender if she said it, knowing that I was a dragon, but she did not know, and I was hoping that she would not know as long as possible. I did not care about the opinion of Rothbart, who considered me as reckless and ungrateful rake, as well as the opinions of people who have nicknamed the dragon, the worst of evils, but the contempt of Rose could burn me much more than I myself had burned my victims. How it so came out, I myself did not know. Until now, no one managed to capture me. And she managed.
Recently, I did nothing and enchantingly watched Rose, and it was not shifted with manuscripts from the dead point. Someone, for sure, would be wondering why I having a lot of power, needed new spells, since I was already able to conquer the overwhelming part of the world, but I have always sought more, even if this desire could burn me yourself.
Anyone would have stopped at the achieved. I was in the castle, where the basements were clogged with treasures, where the turbulent force performed all my orders. There were many books on the shelves. Odil would envy me. Rose called them «black books» and stayed away from them. I was sure, she had already managed to hear a seductive whisper from the books, the very whisper, that had repeatedly worried me at the first stage of my learning. I got used to disembodied interlocutors, and then learned to use them for my own purposes. Conversations with them for a beginner were informative. But it was strange, probably, to be alone in the library and suddenly hear someone’s disembodied voice. It was trying to draw you into a conversation, laughs, joking, teased with suspicious suggestions. Rose immediately should have understood that the sounds did not come from a living being. Even a person with a very good hearing was difficult to believe that the books suddenly gained voices, but Rose believed.
Personally, I without fear touched any of the books. It was not even necessary to go to the library, it was worth only to wish, and the desired book itself turned out to be in front of me on the table and revealed on the required page. So now I looked at one of the volumes without much interest. The pages turned over themselves. A sideline observer could seem that the wind turned them.
Rose gradually began to get used to the fact that the most ordinary problems here were solved in some incomprehensible way. All, ranging from cooking and ending with cleaning and heating of the rooms, happened by itself. Rose did not see if I began to burn the fireplace or I lit the candles, but, nevertheless, it was warm in the castle, and the lighting has never been excessive or too weak.
Color illustration flashed in unusually bright kaleidoscope. Fancy ominous symbols alternated with simple letters, and those and others were the same for me easily understandable. It was worth learning foreign languages, whether an ancient one or a dialect of a neighboring country and it became for me as my own. Therefore, I guessed I felt everywhere at home. It was not difficult to me to speak in foreign languages, on the contrary, the sound of foreign language words was strangely pleasant. At least some variety.
Rose, as far as I understood, hated two things: embroidery and studying other people’s languages, because she was taught against her will. It suffered her pride. I shared her belief that bad teachers could inspire hatred for the most interesting subject. Prince, bless the Lord his negligence, rarely tried to explain something to me, therefore he did not have time to distract an independent student from curiousness. I still haven’t tried to become a mentor, but I was sure that if I became, I would be able to breathe in the student a love for my dark art.
Another young lady could be imagined as a gift a basket with knitting, a set of needles, threads, or in extreme cases of a necklace. But if I tried to impose Rose as a gift an embroidery, she would at least be offended. She needed quite another.
Therefore, I picked up for her in arsenal the most elegant and light musket, a sword with hilt, snapped with small diamonds. And I also rashly promised to teach her fencing, as if I did not know that the acquired skill she would always have time to apply against me. Of course, she was able to fence, she managed to take a few lessons of fencing by the father. But she, like me, always sought more. Once I was one of the best knights, I neglected the education, but overnight everything has changed. The hand, accustomed to the sword, could not adapt to the feather, but during the captivity I was so young and reckless, that I believed the explanations of the prince about my great destination. Therefore, I hated him, he managed to deprive me of freedom of choice, but could not deprive me of my pride.
«You have a beautiful ring,» I noticed.
«It’s pretty hard,» Rose frowned painfully.
«Why don’t you take it off?»
«I can’t,» a concise answer, and after him a short scribe of thought «Surely, the scar will remain.» Did I manage to catch her thought. Having dropped to the side all the tricks, I independently turned the page and pretended to read.
«I tried to use soap, but, alas,» Rosa made a theatrical sigh. «It is necessary to resort to the extreme method, take something sharp, say, a razor, but there is no single razor.»
«It isn’t simply needed here.»
«There is no scissors here too. Don’t you never cut your nails.»
«Actually…» I almost blurted out «No», but I restrained on time and transferred a look at my even elongated, but seemingly well-kept nails. They grew only in those terrible cases, which Rose was better not to observe, and then they did not grow at all, as well as the hair. For me it was quite usually, but people would certainly have any questions: why he was not such as we, there was something wrong.
«If you need scissors, I will find somewhere,» under the «somewhere» was meant in the first house, where there were no owners or in the inexhaustible reserves of Percy, who has repeatedly managed to circumvent other housing before me.
«I didn’t say that I needed something definite, I just looked for something acute. The sword is too large, besides, no one even bother to sharpen it.»
«Indeed?» I somehow did not think very about it, I was accustomed to the fact that in the castle the steel did not rust, I could not to check the sharpness of the blade. For a long time there was no case of challenge to a duel. Recently, I mostly accounted for any other skills, but not the military.
«It will fit,» Rose extended a thin hand and with amazing ease pulled out from me a dagger of the belt.
«Do not cut yourself!»
Rose, probably, believed that it was better to lose her finger than life, but I didn’t share her opinions, so the dagger’s handle slipped out and hit at the table.
«I am quite ingenious to come up with a less painful way,» I explained, unlikely turned the next page and noticed an unfamiliar illustration. That is, I did not remember that I had met it in this book before. I saw it somewhere in the forest. I remembered everything almost immediately, I even remembered that I did a notch exactly in the very place where it is drawn in the picture. «In the memory of our meeting,» then I said, took an ax, rushed across the trunk, and the tree responded with a long deaf moan. In the picture, everything was repeated to the smallest details and even what I did not notice when I was under the tree. Then I just felt the presence of some kind of hidden strength, but I did not guessed the source. Under the roots in loose porous soil was some kind of metal. For a long time under the tree, among the same woven network roots, I managed to find a treasure, but this time nothing pointed to the treasures buried in the forest. In the ground was a sword. The sword with a long wide even slightly rusted blade was confused in the roots.
Henry was then hurt. Until now, it was unclear why he needed to turn round next to this tree and why Odil executed the guilty maid there. I would never have guessed, but as usual, the book gave answers to everything. Who else could I ask the advise? I lovingly stroked the book.
«Do you know what is happening now in your homeland?»
«I guess,» Rose said sadly. «Shooting, death, battle. A war can cause damage no less than his raid.»
She again replaced the word «dragon» by pronoun. Maybe she simply did not want to call evil by name and most likely it simply seemed to me that instead of «His» she wanted to say «yours.»
«If you could put an end to war, would you do it?»
«Yes, probably,» she uncertainly shook her thin shoulders. «But I can not.»
«But I can,» I closed the book. «At least it seems to me that I can.»
«Is it profitable for you?»
«Do you think I can only help someone from the benefit?»
«I don’t know,» Rose whispered with a sigh, and our eyes met.
Suddenly I caught the sounds of someone’s unexpected presence at the bottom floor in the spacious castle hall. There was only Vincent. He had been frightened before and began to ask me about the permission to stay in the castle at night with persistence almost an abandoned mistress.
