Lilith’s Castle. Gill Alderman

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СКАЧАТЬ a mother hen on its feet of twigs. The little flock had run beneath it and settled in the dust to bathe. Gry sighed, but did not know if she envied the chov-hani or was merely tired of her questions and her conversation. She yawned.

      ‘Show me – something wonderful, something I can only dream of such as Pargur, the illustrious Crystal City, or else the handsome knight I see when I sleep. Please, Darklis,’ she pleaded. ‘Show me a glad sight, something to cheer a fugitive.’

      ‘No,’ said Darklis. ‘The leaves are spent,’ and she tipped them into the fire. ‘Instead, let us smoke a pipe together.’ She felt in the pocket of her skirt and drew out a knobbly, briar-root pipe and a small sack of tobacco closed at the mouth by a piece of red cord. She filled the pipe, tamping the tobacco down with a horny thumbnail, and gave it to Gry.

      ‘Take a glowing twig from the fire – there is one! – and hold it to the weed; but suck on the pipe and draw your breath in as you light it, or there will be no smoke and no satisfaction.’

      The pipe-end was worn and marked by the chov-hani’s teeth. It tasted foul but, persisting out of fear and a wish to propitiate the witch, Gry persevered, sucking hard. Smoke shot into her throat and she choked.

      ‘More gently. As if you tried to suck a spirit in, for that is what you are doing, communing with the soul of the tobacco. Which brings contentment.’

      And now the smoke flowed, cool and aromatic, by way of Gry’s throat into her nose, her vision, her heart and soul, and she was filled with calm and good will.

      ‘Aah!’ she said and handed the pipe to Darklis. They smoked quietly together, turn and turn about, until the Swan, the Hoopoe and Bail’s Sword itself were visible through the smoke-hole in the roof.

      ‘Like you I journey,’ said the gypsy, ‘but my quest has an object where yours discovers its objective as you search.’

       Darklis Faa’s Story: The Silver Dwarf and the Golden Head

      Once upon a time, not so long ago, I was camped at Lythabridge with my tribe. My sister, Lurania, had been taking the air and improving her fortune by cheating the men of their gold – which they have far too much of. She came to me in high spirits and with merry mien, accompanied by a dwarf of lofty ambition, resplendent courage and singular appearance.

      I recognised him at once: he was Erchon, the Silver Dwarf. You may know (or you may not) that the miner-dwarves of the Altaish are marked by their trade and take on the colour of the material they win from the earth. Thus an Iron Dwarf has a rusty skin and a Copper Dwarf is the colour of a new penny, an Emerald Dwarf is green – and these are easily told from their common brothers, the Stone Dwarves, who are merely grimy. Silver Dwarves are more rare and Gold Dwarves only heard of.

      Erchon is famed for his dense colour, like a duchess’s teapot – all over I don’t doubt! – and is a fine rapiersman always armed. Also he wears one of those flourishing hats of the fantastical kind, large and highly-coloured with a gigantic cock’s feather, for dwarves as you may also know (or not) are celebrated for their voracious carnal appetites and like to demonstrate their potency in an obvious and manly way. It does no harm!

      The dwarf my sister had met bore all these characteristics. So, to cut the thread close, there was I exchanging pleasantries with the eminent Erchon outside this very bender-tent, which was pitched by the roadside.

      He is bold and he is brave, I thought. I will test his courage and see if it can bring me gain; I will try him for my own amusement. So I made him a proposition and would have offered to pay him whatever his heart desired – but that, he was already in pursuit of though he knew it could never be his. He loved the Lady Nemione, his mistress: she who could never be his Mistress for she was courted by both Koschei and by the Kristnik, the stranger-knight. He took up my challenge out of goodness of heart and his love of adventuring. I thought that he, of all brave hearts, could find what my heart desired and bring it to me.

      I wanted him to bring me Roszi, that wonderful gold head which sees and speaks all; Roszi, who was once a beautiful nivasha in the Falls of Aquilo; Roszi whom Koschei, by joining her icy soul and head to the body of a fire-demon and enchanting them both, had made into a puppet, a mere bed-toy to play with in the dark.

      Ah, how I long for the Golden Head, spoiled and wayward though it be. How it would improve my shining hours! I would give it a proper, fitting use.

      My wits are – a very little – sharper than Erchon’s; nevertheless I was surprised when he obeyed me and lay down on the banks of the river, the mighty Lytha. Before he could raise his sword or otherwise resist, I kicked him into the water and at the same time spoke a spell. I turned him into a drop of river water and off he went to Pargur, which at that time was under siege from the Kristnik, Lord Parados, and which the Archmage, Koschei the Deathless, held.

      Erchon tricked me, somehow, somewhere. He never returned from Pargur; much less carrying the Golden Head with him. I do not believe him dead, for no one has seen him or Roszi – but she is no longer in Koschei’s gluttonous grasp, for she vanished the same day from Castle Sehol.

      Darklis blew out a fan of smoke and idly watched it float above her head.

      ‘I fear that he is using her, though I did not know he could work magic. Certainly, he uses her for his convenience and pleasure. Neither dwarf nor man, if he love a nivasha, will ever rest easy or be content with a common, mortal woman.’

      She put down the pipe and leaned forward.

      ‘Have you seen them, little Princess? Did they stray into your Plains, pretty Gry?’

      ‘They are surely creatures from a fable – no!’ breathed Gry. ‘I have never seen nor heard of anything, of any creature like this Roszi. No. But I knew Githon, the Copper Dwarf –’

      ‘Who is Erchon’s cousin twice-removed in the female line?’

      ‘Yes. Githon is a fine, upstanding dwarf, a travelling philosopher and lover of the curious. He was my father’s friend.’

      ‘Where is he?’

      ‘I do not know.’

      The gypsy witch stared long at Gry, paying particular attention to the luminous, unwavering flame above her head, which was the light of her soul and which only she could see, and to the depths of her dark pupils. Gry, like all Ima women, could hear the soft interior pulse-beat and other tiny sounds a person’s soul makes within him; now, feeling the eyes and attention of the gypsy on her, she listened for Darklis’s soul and soon heard it yawn and begin to snore, calmed into slumber by the strong tobacco. Soon, Darklis herself yawned.

      ‘I am quite sure you are telling the truth,’ she said, a little grudgingly. ‘How late it is – or how early! You had better take my bed. I will sleep here, in the chair. There is too much of soft living in that bedroom for me: it is an ambitious conceit and I am happier by my smoky fire.’

      Gry lay between clean, white sheets beneath a quilt of softest eider down and a coverlet embroidered with rainbows and clouds. The tobacco made her drowsy and her attention wandered, following the long journey she had made from home, and straying on the borders of sleep where the knight dressed all in silver waited to welcome her to his castle.

      A gentle, querulous neigh broke into her dreams,

      ‘I trust you are lying in the lap of luxury, dear Gry?’

      ‘I СКАЧАТЬ