Читать книгу The Complete Darkwar Trilogy: Flight of the Night Hawks, Into a Dark Realm, Wrath of a Mad God - Raymond E. Feist - Страница 17

ALL EYES WERE ON NAKOR.

He pulled an orange from his seemingly-bottomless rucksack and offered it first to Miranda, then to Pug, and then to Magnus. All declined. He stuck his thumb into the peel and began to remove it, a process all of them had witnessed a thousand times before.

‘Nakor,’ said Pug, ‘what are you not telling us?’

‘Nothing,’ said Nakor. ‘At least nothing I knew until Magnus arrived.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Miranda, sitting on the side of the bed where Caleb lay sleeping.

Pug stood at his younger son’s feet and Magnus occupied the other chair in the room.

‘You know who the old witch in the village was, yes?’ asked Nakor.

‘Not really,’ said Magnus. ‘I’ve encountered her twice before and all I sense is that she’s more than a common purveyor of charms and herbal remedies. There’s power there, but it’s muted.’

‘You said the Goddess called her an echo,’ said Miranda. To Nakor she said, ‘What does that mean?’

Nakor glanced at Pug who said, ‘I think I understand, or at least, I have a partial understanding. Tell us what you know.’

Nakor shrugged and his usual happy demeanour vanished. Instead, Pug saw the darkest expression Nakor had ever revealed to him. ‘The Gods are beings of vast power,’ Nakor began. ‘Our understanding of them is filtered through the limits of our perceptions.’ He looked at the other three. ‘All of you have been to the Pavilion of the Gods, so you know that it is both a physical place and a metaphor for something much less objective. It is a place of the mind as well as a place of the body.

‘When I have encountered beings of a certain type in the past—’ He stopped and was silent for a moment as if considering his choice of words, then he resumed. ‘I mentioned Zaltais of the Eternal Despair,’ he said to Pug, who nodded. ‘Do you remember him being cast into a pit – I said he was a dream, remember?’

Pug nodded. ‘You’ve said that each time he’s been mentioned, yet you have offered no explanation.’

With a slight smile, Nakor said, ‘I assumed, perhaps in error, that you would have gleaned the truth without my having told you since we discussed this all down in Krondor, before the Serpentwar destroyed that city.’

Magnus said, ‘This is all new to me, so why not explain it now?’

‘The Nameless One sleeps,’ Nakor said.

All three knew of Nalar, the Greater God of Evil, who had been cast out by the other Controller Gods, as the Greater Gods were sometimes called. ‘That is the legend, anyway,’ continued Nakor. ‘When the Chaos Wars raged, the Nameless One seduced the Valheru and caused them to rise up and challenge the Lesser Gods, just as he had seduced the Lesser Gods to rise up and challenge the Controllers.’

Magnus said, ‘I’ve studied the lore as much as any outside the priesthood, Nakor. But nowhere have I read about the Nameless One bidding the Lesser Gods to attack the Greater Gods. He was a Greater God. Why would he invite such an attack upon himself as well as the other Greater Gods?’

‘To skew the balance,’ answered Pug. ‘To change the dynamics between the seven Controller Gods.’ He looked at Nakor, who nodded, and Pug said, ‘Before the Chaos Wars, when the old order died and the new order arose, there were seven Controllers.’ He started to count on his fingers, as if emphasizing each in turn. ‘The Nameless One, who is the Darkness; Arch-Indar, the Light; Ev-den, the Worker from Within; Abrem-Sev, the Builder; Graff, the Weaver of Desire; Helbinor, the Abstainer, and at the centre, The Balance.’

‘Ishap,’ supplied Magnus.

Pug nodded, and Nakor resumed. He finished his orange and put the peel into his bag, licked his fingers, and held them up as he counted on them. ‘After the Chaos Wars, the balance changed.’ He held up one hand, displaying four fingers and a folded thumb. ‘Left behind were the Nameless One and the four dynamic gods: Abrem-sev, Ev-den, Graff, and Helbinor.’

He then unfolded his thumb. ‘Ishap, in the middle, is the balancer. He is, in a way, the most powerful, for he will add to any side that is disadvantaged, and he will oppose any side that seeks to gain supremacy, always striving to restore the balance.

‘All of them are vital to the very existence of our world. One is action, one is reaction, one is higher purpose and mind, and the other is all things unseen and unknowable, but vital to our very being. And the last maintains the balance.’

He put his hands together, his fingertips and thumb forming a circle. ‘They are a unity. They form the very fabric of our reality. But they are but expressions of forces. Those forces are vital, dynamic, and they are the expression of even more basic beings.

‘The Selfless One, She Who is Light, and the Nameless One, He Who is Darkness, are the sources of those two basic powers. The Good Goddess died in the Chaos Wars, and the other five Controllers were forced to imprison the Dark One in another realm, under a mountain so vast that this entire world could rest upon a ledge on its peak.

‘There he slumbers.’ Nakor looked around. ‘Zaltais was one of his dreams.’

Pug said, ‘I thought I understood, but I didn’t.’

‘If one lies in a prison, might one not dream of a surrogate, a ruler who sits on a throne in a distant place and who can command armies to free the prisoner?’

Miranda said, ‘Zaltais was trying to raise an army to storm a prison on another plane of reality?’

‘No, it’s just a metaphor,’ said Pug.

‘Everything is a metaphor,’ said Nakor. ‘The witch is but an echo of the Good Goddess.’

Magnus said, ‘Wait. The old woman I encountered in the Pavilion may have been such, but the village witch is a real person.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ agreed Nakor. ‘The gods will often place a tiny fragment of themselves within a mortal. It is how they learn to manifest their roles in this world, to understand fully their obligation to their worshippers. When the mortal dies, the spark returns to the god.

‘The relationship between gods and humanity is complex. The gods are also manifestations of how humanity sees them. Ban-ath here in Midkemia and Kalkin in Novindus are essentially the same, yet they manifest differently, with slightly different charges and natures.’

‘So the old witch has a divine spark within her?’ asked Magnus.

‘Just so,’ said Nakor. ‘Arch-Indar is dead as we understand such things, but her power was so vast, so profound and fundamental, that even ages after her death the echoes of her being still influence us.’

‘Is that why you started that religion down in Krondor?’ asked Miranda.

‘I didn’t start it,’ answered Nakor. ‘I only resurrected it. When the avatar appeared, I knew that eventually goodness will return. When that young girl, Aleta, started manifesting all those abilities, I knew that it was the right choice.

‘When it does, the other Controllers will release the Nameless One from his prison and return the order of our world to its proper place. Without Arch-Indar to offset his evil, the Nameless One must stay imprisoned.

‘Remember that Ishap is also “dead”, but his followers have retained considerable power, some from the other Controllers, but some simply from the memory of the Balancer. He’ll return before the Good Goddess because his temple has been restored for a longer time, and the one I reinstituted is still very young. But, when Ishap’s back, and Arch-Indar eventually returns, then the other Controllers can release the Nameless One from his prison, and return the order of our world to its proper place. Without her to offset his evil, the Nameless One must stay imprisoned.’

‘And having worshippers will cause that?’ asked Magnus.

‘Eventually,’ said Nakor with a shrug. ‘How long is anyone’s guess.’

‘Centuries,’ said Miranda.

‘If we’re lucky,’ said Nakor. ‘It could be longer. Certainly it’s unlikely that any of us will live long enough to see it – and we’re all going to live a lot longer than most!’ he added with a grin.

Magnus sighed loudly. ‘You speak of centuries into the future, longer perhaps; what has this to do with our current situation?’

Nakor put both palms out and gave a dramatic shrug. ‘I have no idea.’ He looked at Pug. ‘Do you?’

Pug nodded. ‘A little. One of our problems is that the Nameless One still impacts on our world, even if it is over a vast distance and only indirectly. The Good Goddess may have left her echoes and memories, but she has no direct impact on this world, even on the level that her opponent does. So, in a way, we are her agents, attempting to counteract those who are being influenced by the Nameless One.

‘I doubt that our old nemesis, Leso Varen, has even the most remote idea when he became a thing of evil. Perhaps it was something that he chose – striking a deal for power in exchange for service.’

‘He may not even realise who he serves,’ suggested Nakor. ‘Remember that situation with the Tear of the Gods?’

Pug’s expression darkened. ‘I had a long and heated discussion with Arutha about not letting me know about that until after the matter was decided.’

Nakor nodded. He knew the story, but hadn’t been directly involved. And he also knew it was a painful subject because William, Pug’s eldest child, and Jezhara, one of his better students, had been at the centre of the confrontation.

They, along with the man who would later become Duke James of Krondor, had managed to thwart Varen and his agents in their attempt to steal the Tear of the Gods – the artefact that allowed the temples to communicate with their deity.

Nakor continued. ‘We will never fully know some aspects of that story. From what we do know, the man called The Bear was acting on his own. He had ceased taking instructions from Varen, and that’s one hallmark of those serving the Nameless One; they are often mad and go off at … whim and wreak havoc even among their own allies.

‘That’s one of our few advantages; the Conclave are united and even those who view us with some suspicion – such as the temples or the magicians at Stardock – don’t interfere with what we’re doing.’

‘They don’t know what we are doing,’ offered Magnus.

Pug laughed indulgently. ‘Do not underestimate them, son, nor attach too great an importance to ourselves. The temples and monarchs have a very good idea what we are about, else they might be less cooperative than they have been.’

Nakor laughed as well. ‘When the day comes that we must confront the agents of the Nameless One, we may have great need of these people you disdain.’

Magnus had the good grace to look crestfallen.

Nakor continued. ‘What troubles me is that these manifestations of godpower, these dreams and echoes and memories, are now appearing with more frequency. At least a dozen strange incidents that our agents have reported since the Serpentwar lead me to believe this is so.’

‘What do you think it means?’ asked Miranda.

‘That something is coming. Something that is tied to the slumbering enemy.’

Pug looked at Nakor. ‘The Dasati?’

‘It was the Nameless One who influenced the Pantathians to bring the Saaur through the rift to our world. We know it was a ruse to loose demons here.

‘Destruction and chaos are the Nameless One’s allies. He has no cares for the short-term effects on this world, so long as horrors and evil are visited on people and his powers rise. I can only guess,’ said Nakor, ‘but I think he dreams of supremacy, else why try to establish Zaltais on a throne, instead of the Emerald Queen? He needed his surrogate, his dream being, in control, so he could hasten his return to this reality. He seeks to put himself above the other Controller Gods before they can return the balance.’

‘Madness,’ said Magnus.

‘By it’s nature, evil is madness,’ replied Nakor. ‘Hence the Days of the Mad Gods’ Rage.’

‘The Chaos Wars,’ said Pug.

Magnus said, ‘So we must struggle and die and our children are to struggle and die after us?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Nakor. ‘We may never know a moment of transcendent triumph, a time when we can say, “the day is ours!” and know the struggle has passed forever.

‘Think of us as ants, if you will. We must topple a mighty citadel, a monstrous thing of stone and mortar, and we have only our naked bodies to spend in the effort.

‘So we labour for years, centuries, millennia, even epochs; scraping away at stone with our tiny jaws. Thousands, tens of thousands, millions of us die, and slowly the stones begin to crumble.

‘But, if we have a design, and possess knowledge, we can choose where to bite. We will not trouble all the stones, merely the keystone upon which all the others rest. And then we may wear away at the mortar around that stone, so that at last, the stone can be pushed aside, and once that is accomplished the massive stones above begin to move, and over time, fall.

‘No, we may never see an end to this struggle, but in time the Good Goddess and the Nameless One may return, and the balance would be restored.’

‘What sort of world would that be?’ wondered Magnus.

‘One with less strife, I hope,’ said Miranda.

‘Perhaps,’ said Nakor. ‘But even if it is not, the strife will be far more prosaic. What we do now is contest with worlds hanging in the balance.’

Magnus looked down at his younger brother. ‘And the price of defeat is too grim to contemplate.’

Pug looked at his two sons and his wife, then said, ‘As well I know.’

No one needed to say more, they all knew that Pug’s first two children had died during the Serpentwar and that the loss was still bitter to him.

Nakor stood and said, ‘We should go. I’ll send messages to our agents in the region to see if the attack on Caleb was part of a greater design or merely an unhappy accident.’

‘Wait a moment, Nakor,’ asked Pug, as Miranda and Magnus left. ‘McGrudder was right we should move him?’

‘No,’ said Pug. ‘I think we leave him in place. If these are bandits alone, then no harm has been done. If those who attacked Caleb are Varen’s agents, let them believe they gulled us into thinking the attack was by mere bandits. If McGrudder comes under scrutiny, it should not be hard to discern in so small a place; we can always dispatch a watcher to watch the watchers.’

Nakor nodded with a grin. This was the sort of underhanded plotting that appealed to him.

‘There is another matter,’ said Pug.

‘What is it?’

‘I received a message yesterday and I am greatly concerned about it. Will you give me your thoughts?’

‘Always.’

Pug produced a scroll from inside the folds of his robe and Nakor glanced at it.

Pug said. ‘It’s not the first. They have been appearing on my desk from time to time for years now.’

‘How long?’

‘Since before we met. The first one gave me the instruction to tell Jimmy to say to you—’

‘There is no magic,’ finished Nakor. ‘I know. When I heard that, and from a magician no less, I knew I had to come to Stardock.’ He looked at the scroll again. ‘Where are they coming from?’

‘Not where, but when. These are from our future.’

Nakor nodded, then his eyes widened as he read it again. ‘This is … from you!’ he said, and for the first time since Pug had met him, the small Isalani was speechless.

Tad lay on the bed with his arm behind his head as Zane paced the floor. ‘You’re going to wear a groove in the stone if you keep that up,’ he said.

‘I can’t help it. Someone brings us our food this morning, and we’re told to wait. Then lunch. Then someone comes to fetch the chamber pot and bring us a clean one, and now it’s almost suppertime and still no one has come to tell us what we’re doing here.’

‘It’s obvious what we’re doing here,’ said Tad. ‘We’re waiting. What we don’t know is what we’re waiting for.’

Zane’s expression darkened, and Tad sat up on the bed. He knew that look. Zane was a thin excuse away from taking out his bad mood on his foster brother.

Just as Tad sat up, anticipating Zane’s pre-emptive attack, Nakor appeared at the door and said, ‘You two, come with me.’

He left so abruptly that Tad almost unbalanced himself trying to hurry after him. He caught up with Zane and the Isalani halfway down the hall and thought it odd how fast the little man walked.

‘Don’t stare,’ Nakor said.

A moment later, Tad hit a doorjamb. He had just walked past a large open door that led into a courtyard dominated by a huge pool. At the edge of the pool and in the water was a group of young women. Tad’s attention was diverted in equal measure by the fact that all the girls were remarkably beautiful, completely naked, and their skin was a pale green and their hair the colour of bronze wire.

Tad suffered another injury as he stepped backwards only to be knocked down as Zane turned around and came flying back to the doorway to verify if he had indeed witnessed the same scene.

The girls turned to stare at them and both boys realized that they had no irises and their eyes were pearl-white in colour.

Nakor helped Tad to his feet with one hand, and waved to the girls with the other. ‘I told you not to stare,’ he said, as Tad touched his nose to see if it was bleeding. ‘Come along.’

Tad said, ‘Ah …’

Nakor said, ‘They are six sisters of the Pithirendar. They don’t care for clothing much and they spend a great deal of time in water. They are not entirely human. Though they are human enough to get you boys into trouble, so stay away from them or I’ll give you even more to think about.’

‘Not human …’ Zane muttered, trying to convince himself that his eyes hadn’t betrayed him. Tad reached out and half-dragged him away from the door as they both followed Nakor.

They turned a corner and Nakor motioned them to stand to one side. A thing – for lack of a better word – came lumbering down the corridor towards them. It was half the height of the boys and twice as wide. It looked like a table with a black cloth hanging over it and it moved on legs that resembled a crab’s. It also made an odd murmuring sound as it approached.

As it passed, Nakor said, ‘Good morning,’ and the thing answered in a surprisingly normal-sounding female voice.

After she had moved around the corner, Tad whispered, ‘What was that?’

‘A visitor,’ Nakor replied. He led them to a room where Pug sat waiting behind a desk.

The short magician rose and motioned for them to sit in a pair of chairs that were opposite his own.

They did so and Pug returned to his seat. Nakor stood by a window to Pug’s left. Looking at the two young men, Pug said, ‘We’re at something of a loss about what to do with you.’

Tad’s face drained of colour and Zane flushed. He said, ‘What do you mean, “do with you”, sir?’

Pug smiled. ‘No harm will come to you, if that’s what concerns you.’ He sat back and regarded the pair. ‘You may have already concluded that this community is unlike any others.’

Zane just nodded, while Tad said, ‘Yes, sir.’

Nakor laughed. ‘You seem to be handling it well.’

Zane shrugged. ‘I’m not exactly sure what to think, but Caleb has always been good to our mother and to Tad and me, so if you’re his family, then I suppose … well, I think we’re safe here.’

Pug sat back. ‘I don’t pry in the lives of my children, but tell me something about your mother.’

Tad spoke up as Marie was his real mother, though she treated Zane as his equal. He started off with the usual praise – that she was a good cook and kept the poor hut that served as home as clean as could be – but after a moment it was clear to everyone that the boy not only loved his mother, but respected her too. ‘It was hard after Papa died.’ He glanced at Zane. ‘But she took Zane in because he was my best friend and had no one else, when others in town looked the other way. She made do, and kept us both out of trouble.’

Zane added, ‘I’ve known her longer than I knew my real ma, so I suppose that makes her my real ma, if you understand, sir. She never took sides with Tad against me and she held me when I was a little boy. She loved me like I was her own.’

Pug sighed. ‘Even without meeting her, I can understand why my son cares for your mother, boys, and I can see why he cares about you. You acted bravely going back to the wagon.’

Nakor said, ‘Foolishly, from what you told me. Didn’t Caleb tell you to make your way to the village if you eluded the bandits?’

‘Yes,’ said Tad. ‘That’s true, but we had killed two of them already, and thought maybe Caleb could use some help. We had gained two swords by then.’

Pug shook his head. ‘And I for one am glad you disobeyed, and admire your resolve, for had you not done so, I’d have lost my youngest child.’ His eyes grew unfocused for a minute as he looked away, seeing something in the distance, and he said, ‘It’s something I dread more than you can ever imagine.’ He then turned to face the boys again and asked, ‘So, then, what shall we do with you?’

‘Caleb was taking us to Kesh to become apprentices, or on to Krondor, for there’s no work at home,’ said Zane. ‘If you need any apprentices, we’re willing.’

‘Are you willing, Tad?’ asked Pug.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, nodding his head.

‘We do have need for apprentices,’ said Pug. ‘But first we shall see if you’re up to such a calling.’

Pug stood and so the boys did as well. He pointed to his friend and said, ‘Nakor shall see to your instruction for a few days while my son heals, then I have other work for him, and then we shall have others test you. Now, I have work to do, so be off with you.’

They left, and Tad grinned at his friend. Their fears were now replaced with hope, for they had taken Nakor’s intimation that they might be killed for what they knew seriously.

As they walked down the hallway, Tad asked, ‘Nakor, what trade are we going to apprentice to?’

‘That remains to be seen, my young friend,’ said Nakor. ‘I’m not sure we have a name for what you might do. Let’s say that you’ll be apprentice workers.’

‘What sort of work?’ asked Zane.

‘All manner and type. Things you cannot even imagine. For if you are to become workers for the Conclave of Shadows, it is more than just a trade.’ With a suddenly serious expression he said, ‘It’s a lifelong commitment.’

Both boys were unsure what that meant, but Nakor’s expression told them they were not going to be happy about finding out.