Читать книгу The Seekers of Shar-Nuhn - Ardath Mayhar - Страница 6

Chapter Three

The Man Who Thought Batwise

Si-Lun and Kla-Noh sat upon their terrace, gazing across the Purple Waters at the far side of the Bay of Shar­-Nuhn. Just visible in the evening light was a jumble of fallen stone that marred the neat shoreline.

“And there stood the house of Tro-Ven, merchant lord and warlock,” said Kla-Noh sardonically.

“Such seems the fate of those who seek to overcome the limitations of mankind,” answered Si-Lun. “One other such have I known, and his fate was stranger—though not, perhaps, more unexpected—than that of yonder de­parted wizard.”

Kla-Noh’s eyebrows rose in an arc of surprise. “Never before have you spoken of your past,” he said. “And though I am a Seeker After Secrets I have never sought beyond your willingness to reveal. But surely, now, you have a tale to tell me, and I am anxious to hear.”

And this is the story told by Si-Lun:

* * * *

Across the Purple Waters, many months’ voyage be­yond the Far Islands, lies a vast continent whose forbid­ding mountains, clothed in forests of fir and pine, hide valleys of the utmost fertility and cities of amazing splendor. In the deeps of those mountains I was born and grew to be a youth. And when the time had come for me to learn a trade, my father sought in the greatest city for a master who might appreciate and bring to fruition the talents of Si-Lun, his only son, for even then I was adept at ferreting out things hidden and things forgotten.

Though I longed for the life of a seafarer, my father was adamant. My fortune would be made, did I but apply myself and please the master he chose. So he ap­prenticed me to Lo-Vahr, Doctor of the Sciences and In­vestigator of the Unknown, and I was sent to live in his tall house which, though of utmost luxury, was placed most strangely in the narrow streets of the oldest part of the city of Am-Brak.

Seldom, I should surmise, was there an apprentice who loved his master. Never, I’d wager, was there one who more heartily despised his than did I. Lo-Vahr was a nar­row man—in body, face, eyes, and mind. For though he sought to know that which was unknown, he had no real interest in what he learned. Only for the furtherance of his plots and machinations did he seek, not for the dis­covery of the truth and the straightening of tangled lives and purposes.

I was young, very young, and Truth was the goddess I worshiped. How I despised that one-dimensioned man who would not respect her, but used her as he would a trull!

The missions upon which I was sent did not increase my liking for him. Into squalid tenements I went, seeking filthy crones who bartered stinking bundles for my master’s coin. Only once did I investigate such a burden, and never again for years. The hag who provided it had bitten the good gold coin that my master had sent to her, then had looked me in the eyes with such a mocking and leering glint in her own that, as soon as I was out of sight in the higgledy-piggledy alleys, I opened the wrapping and peered into the box I carried. It contained a newborn child; I think it had been strangled. I left the good meal I had eaten in that alley, and never again, until I had learned a purpose of my own, did I seek to know what it was I was transporting.

Necromancy was some part of what Lo-Vahr practiced, though I doubt that he was an adept at that, or at any­thing. Alchemy he dabbled in, without success. I found, indeed, that his reputation was based upon his mysterious demeanor and great wealth, which he had had from his fathers, and not from any effort that he put forth. He needed no apprentice, for he had nothing to teach. Only for a messenger did he have need.

So for three years I trudged through slimy alleys and into night-bound burial grounds, seeking for things I would not think of for purposes I did not wish to know.

The familiarity of daily contact dulls perception. For how many months a gradual change in my master had been taking place, I cannot tell, but one evening it was brought forcibly to my attention.

It was my duty to stand behind his chair at the evening meal and to keep his glass filled and his needs satisfied. Upon the evening in question, I was more alert than usual, for Lo-Vahr had guests, one a lovely young girl who was the daughter of an agent whom he was enter­taining.

During the meal he flattered the father and watched the girl, and I watched him, thinking, “How strangely bent he has grown, and how pointed his ears. Hunching his thick shoulders forward and bending his head as he speaks, he looks like nothing so much as a bat.”

And as I thought this, he turned his head and looked me in the eyes, gesturing for me to fill his glass, which was by no means empty. The glance he gave me was like a hot needle through all my nerves, bringing me to full alertness. Though I hurried to do his bidding, my facul­ties were focused upon the meaning that those slitted black eyes had conveyed.

Narrowly I observed him then, noticing the accumulation of oddities that had settled upon him like a pall of dust. As he escorted his guests from the hall, he took the arm of the young girl, and in his black cloak, with his thin arm crooked and his stooping shape turned to her, I could see nothing save an enormous bat. The girl felt something of the same aura, for she shuddered from head to foot and then apologized in a frightened manner.

When it grew late and the guests took their leave, I went about lighting the night lamps and checking the bolts of the house doors. As I drew near the chamber of Lo-Vahr, a strange compulsion came upon me. I moved noisily past his door and down the curving stair. Then I crept back up, slipped behind the heavy garnet curtains that covered the windows at the stair head, and stepped out onto the ledge that circled the second floor of the house.

His window was faintly lighted. Crouching on the narrow ledge, I peered cautiously in, risking only one eye’s width past the window edge. Then I froze in the dark­ness, attempting to melt into the chilly stone of the wall. Lo-Vahr stood at the window, arms spread wide to grip the frame, head tilted back, as if he watched the sky. But his room was firelit and the sky was dark—what could he have seen?

To me he was a dark shape against the orange glow. It was then I noted that he had taken to having his cloak cut out into points at the hem, like to the wings of a bat.

And then, above me in the night sky, I heard a chittering of many shrill cries and felt about my back the swift brushing of passing wings.

Abandoning caution, I retreated along the ledge and into the window from which I had come. But I was not seen. He was communing with his familiars.

Then did I watch him indeed! So used was he to my presence that he seldom noticed me. It was possible for me to observe his comings and goings, his visitors, and his expeditions into the old city. And I found ways to watch him even when he locked himself away into his cham­bers. For the attics above were untenanted and capa­cious, and it was simple work for a youngling to find the way to those above his apartments and to make peep­holes in well chosen places.

Of his disgusting rites I will not speak. The thought that I had carried the...ingredients...for them through the streets in my hands made me quease. But there was a dreadful consistency in his incantations, and a sort of diverse similarity in the things he used in his spells, that spoke of a single, focused purpose.

Being young, I was without strong moral scruples in things of this kind. I knew, certainly, that the Initiates in the Towers of Truth taught that this work was all that was evil and corrupting. I watched, nonetheless, with no thought of thwarting him, but my old affinity for secrets led me to learn what I could.

More of my time was now taken up with his odious er­rands, but I examined the things I bore and noted them upon a tablet, which I kept faithfully. Also did I note his words and motions, as he made his private magics, to puz­zle over their possible purpose in the deeps of the night when I could not sleep.

Often he invited the agent and his daughter to the evening meal, and the women servants began to whisper in the halls and kitchens that the master must be intending to take a bride. Attentive he was, but not, it seemed to me, in the way of a suitor. And the conversations be­tween the father and my master began to have strange undercurrents, almost like—haggling?

The girl grew pale and thin, and I knew her to be afraid, though we never exchanged any word. Then I began to have an inkling of my master’s course, perhaps of his ultimate purpose.

I believe that the girl’s intuition led her to much the same conclusions that I reached, so far as her part in the program was concerned. And being young, I was also chivalrous. I determined to protect her if it might be done, and to avenge her if it could not.

Thus it was that I decided upon a bold course. There was in the newer city an Adept of science and sorcery, well respected by the Initiates and feared by the petty warlocks and practitioners of unclean arts. He was re­moved from evil, but not sworn to expose any who came to him with unorthodox problems. To him I went, bear­ing my tablet of notes and my strange tale.

At the door of his modest house I almost lost courage. He was indeed a great man in the city of Am-Brak and in the country. Why should he concern himself with the troubles of an apprentice? Yet I knocked, and to the ser­vant told my name and that I was the apprentice of a warlock in the city, not naming him.

After a time that seemed long, the servant returned and beckoned. I followed her down a white-paneled hall into a low room filled with light and warmth that ra­diated from a dazzling globe set into a niche in the wall. So absorbed was I in trying to puzzle out its mode of operation that I almost missed seeing the sturdy old man who walked forward and looked at me piercingly.

“You are Si-Lun,” he said. “And who is Si-Lun, and why does he seek En-Bir?”

I started, then recollected myself and bowed. “Si-Lun is a lowly person with an uncommon tale to tell, though I must not name names other than my own. Here”—and I proffered my notes—“is a tablet filled with observations of rites practiced by my master. Greatly do I need to know where they are leading and if”—I looked up at him uneasily—“if they might mean harm to any human being.”

His gray eyes sparked and his brow crinkled as he mo­tioned me to a chair and sat down with my tablet upon his knees. Long he perused it, turning back at times to read again bits at the beginning. When he turned to question me, he seemed to know my answers before I made them.

When he was satisfied, he leaned back before the bright globe and sighed deeply. “This is a heavy matter you have brought to me,” he said. “You are right, by moral laws if not by the laws of apprenticeship, to ques­tion the aims of these practices. For the rites that you have shown to me culminate”—he looked at me narrowly—“in the murder of a virgin.”

I trust I did not blanch. I nodded and said, “Such was my conclusion, though I hoped that I was in error. Yet I cannot, by the rules of honor and of apprenticeship, re­veal my master’s name to you, that yon may put an end to his works. What can I do to make this evil turn to good, and to save the unlucky wench he has chosen?”

Then that great man leaned forward and spoke, and I listened, and when he was done I bowed and kissed his hand and went away to my own place.

In a week it was known in the house that there would be a guest to stay, and the maids giggled in the halls as they made up a set of rooms in the same hall as my master’s. I listened with contempt to their scandalous gossiping, thinking how far better it would be if Lo-Vahr had only designs upon her virtue.

There was great feasting upon the night that little Ne­-la came to stay in the house of Lo-Vahr. The great wheels of candles were lit in the state chamber, and fires were set to burning in the cavernous fireplaces. But the only guests were Ne-La and her father, and when the fa­ther went, the lights were all put out and the house stood in darkness.

Then Lo-Vahr sent for me and, in a voice taut with ur­gency, said, “This night you go upon your most important errand for me. In the street of the Crane, in the house of At-Nah, you will find one who waits with a parcel ready. Give her this bag of coins and hurry back with your bur­den. This is of great import. Go, and return with utmost speed.”

So I hurried out and made my way with all speed to the appointed place. But when I had the bundle, I went first to the Tower of Truth that stood in the old city and knocked upon the door. To the attendant I said, “I must see an Initiate. I am the one sent by En-Bir, the Adept.”

The Initiate came at once and took my bundle from me. Into an interior room he took it, and I could hear him chanting in the high language of the Initiates, and I could smell strange fragrances. But when he returned it to me, it was just as it had been.

The Initiate looked me full in the face and said, “It is a responsibility, heavy for one so young, that you have been given. Strong thoughts and good will go with you, to strengthen your spirit and steady your hands. Your ap­prenticeship is at an end, though you may not yet know it. When you feel that you are free, return here, and we will find a way”—and here he smiled—“to find you a berth upon an honest ship, that you may have your heart’s desire.”

As I hurried away, back to the house of Lo-Vahr, I was consumed with wonder. How had the Initiate known my secret wish? Never had I mentioned it to En-Bir. Cer­tainly they were wonderful men, but their ways were mysterious and fearsome.

I returned well within the time set by my master, for so smoothly had the extra time been spent that it cost me only a little effort at speed to recover the lost minutes.

Lo-Vahr waited at the door of his chambers, looking now and again down the hall toward the closed door of Ne-La’s rooms. When he heard my step, he turned, and his cloak spread in the draft, so that a bat, in truth, stood with claw outstretched. I placed the bundle in that awful hand and turned and fled down the stair.

Now was the hardest of all disciplines mine to learn. I must wait, hoping, believing that the rites of the Initiate would render the thing that my master would use to begin his ritual destructive to him. Yet I stole back and hid behind the garnet curtains. Should all fail, I would still try to save the girl, Ne-La.

In my heart I pictured my master drawing his foul dia­grams upon his hearth, setting out the tools of his spell. His eyes would be glittering, I knew, with his awful lust, not for a woman, but for the ability to fly like a bat.

Strange, is it not, that so childish a desire should devour a man in his prime, to his utter corruption?

I learned waiting, and dreading, and prayer, in that short time which seemed so long. But beside my heart I felt the presence of the Initiate’s promise, and it warmed me from despair.

Faintly I could hear Lo-Vahr’s chanting and the clink­ing of vessels as he moved them. More faintly I could hear Ne-La’s steps as she paced nervously in her rooms. But above all there hung a pall of dark silence, a waiting, airless miasma of stillness.

I leaned back in the embrasure of the window, and my eye was caught by a blur of motion. Making a frame of my hands, I peered out and saw by starlight a cloud of bats that whirled and boiled about the house of Lo-Vahr. I opened the window and leaned far out. His window glowed with fitful light, and I knew that his fire burned high.

Then, on the wall of the adjoining house, I saw his shadow appear as he moved toward the window. Arms spread wide, cloak drooping like bat wings, he seemed to stagger, and I heard a terrible cry.

There was a growing red glare from the fire, which seemed to have caught the room. I turned and leaped from the window space to the door of Ne-La. “The house is burning!” I cried. “Come to safety!”

Never had she heard my voice, but she knew it was not his and came at once. Sending her down the stair, I went to the servants’ wing and cried a warning to them, then hurried after Ne-La, but she had fled into the night and, I hope and believe, to some place of safety unrelated to a father who would sell her to a warlock.

I sought for her for a time as the firelight grew behind me. Then I turned and looked a last time upon the house of Lo-Vahr. It was a tower of flame. I could see the ragged line of servants straggling from the wide door. The window of Lo-Vahr was upon the other side, but I could see a sprinkling of specks against the light that I knew to be the bats, and I could hear their cries as they fled the heat down the dark alleys. Then I knew that I was in­deed free, and I went to the Tower of Truth.

So I became a seaman and lost for a time my love of se­cret things, and for all time any desire to look into the ways of warlocks.