A Time of Exile. Katharine Kerr

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СКАЧАТЬ an exultation touched with dread. It was time, and he felt ready.

      That first day, Aderyn did his usual chores in the garden and hut, but he kept thinking about the task ahead. He had at his disposal a vast amount of ritual lore – tables of correspondence, salutations to the gods, invocations and mighty calls to the spirit world, signs, sigils, and gestures to set in motion streams of force and direct inner energies. In his excitement, his first thought was to use them all, or at least, as many as possible, to create a ritual that would sum up and climax all rituals, as elaborately decorated, braided, laced and spiralled as a beautiful brooch fit to give a king. While he weeded cabbages, his mind raced this way and that, adding a symbol here, a prayer there, trying to fit twenty years of work into a single mighty pattern. All at once he saw the irony: here he was, grubbing in the dirt like a bondsman and making grandiose plans. He laughed aloud and contemplated his mud-stained fingers, calloused with years of menial work such as this. The Great Ones had always accepted his humble status and lowly sacrifices before. No doubt a simple ritual would be best now. With the insight came a feeling of peace, because he’d passed the first test.

      But just as with a simple meal or a simple garden, every element would have to be perfect of its kind and perfectly placed. The second day, Aderyn worked furiously all morning to finish his chores by noon. He ate a light meal, then went outside to sit under a willow tree by the shore of the lake, sparkling in the soft spring sun. On the far shore, the stony hard mountains rose dark against a blue sky. He looked at them and thought over his lore, rigorously pruning instead of proliferating it. A simple approach to a central symbol – he looked at the peaks and smiled to himself. For the rest of the day he practised every word and gesture he would use, mixing up the order so no true power would run through them. In the evening, by firelight, he prepared his magical weapons – the wand, cup, dagger, and pentacle that he had made and consecrated years before. He polished each one, then performed the simple rituals of consecration again to renew their power.

      On the third day, he was quiet as he went through his work. His mind seemed as still as a deep-running river, only rarely disturbed by what most men would call a thought. Yet in his heart, he renewed, over and over, the basic vows that open the secret of the dweomer: I want to know to help the world. He was remembering many things, sick children he’d helped heal children who had died because they were beyond the help from herbs, bent-back farmers who’d seen the best of their harvests taken by noble lords, the noble lords themselves, whose greed and power-lusts had driven them like spurs and made them suffer, though they called the suffering glory. Someday, far in the future, at the end of the ages of ages, all this darkness would be transmuted into light. Until that end, he would fight the darkness where he found it. The first place he would always find darkness would be in his own soul. Until the light shone there, he could do little to help other souls. For the sake of that help, he begged for the light.

      At sunset, he put his magical weapons in a plain cloth sack and set off for the shore of the lake. In the twilight, he made his place of working, not a rich temple glittering with golden signs and perfumed with incenses, but a stretch of grassy ground. He used the dagger to cut a circle deosil into the turf, then laid his cloth sack down for an altar in the middle. On the sack he laid the dagger, the wand and the pentacle, then took the cup and filled it with lake water. He set the cup down among the other objects and knelt in front of the sack to face the mountains. Slowly the twilight deepened, then faded as the first few stars came out, only to fade in turn as the full moon rose, bloated and huge on a misty horizon. Aderyn sat back on his heels and raised his hands, palms flat upward, about shoulder high. As he concentrated his will, it seemed the moonlight streamed to him, tangible light for building. He thrust his hands forward and saw to the east of his rough altar two great pillars of light, one all pure moon-silver, the other as dark as black fire shining in the star-strewn night. When he lowered his hands, the pillars lived apart from his will. The temple was open.

      One at a time, he picked up each weapon, the dagger for the east, the wand for the south, the cup for the west, and the pentacle for the north, and used it to trace at each cardinal point of the circle a five-pointed star. Above and below him he finished the sphere, using his human mind alone to trace the last two stars, the reconcilers of the others. When he knelt upon the ground, he saw the temple glowing with power beyond his ability to call it forth. The Lords of Light were coming to meet him. Aderyn rose and raised his hands to the east between the pillars. Utterly calm, his mind as sharp as the dagger’s point and deep as the cup, he made light gather above him, then felt and saw it descend, piercing him through like an arrow and rooting itself in the ground. His arms flung out as he felt the cross-shaft pierce him from side to side. It seemed he grew huge, towering through the universe, his head among the stars, his feet on a tiny whirling sphere of earth far below, enormous, exalted, but helpless, pinned to the cross of light, unmoving and spraddled, at the mercy of the Great Ones.

      The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.

      ‘Why do you want knowledge?’

      ‘Only to serve. For myself, naught.’

      With a rush like cold wind, with a dizzying spin and fall, he felt himself shrink back until he stood on the damp grass and saw the temple around him, the pillars glowing, the magical weapons streaming borrowed light, the great pentangles pulsing at their stations. He nearly fell to his knees, but he steadied himself and raised his hands in front of him. In his mind he built up the vision between the pillars – a high mountain, covered with dark trees and streaked with pale rock under a sunswept sky – until it lived apart from his mind and hung there like a painted screen. Calling on the Lords of Light, he walked forward and passed through the veil.

      Pale sun glinted on flinty rock. The path wound steep between dead shrubs, twisted through leafless trees, and over everything hung the choking smell of dust. Aderyn stumbled and bruised himself on rock, but he kept climbing, his lungs burning in the thin cold air. At last he reached the top, where huge boulders pushed out from grey soil like the bones of a long-dead animal. He was afraid. He had never expected this barrenness, this smell of death as thick as the dust. Although the wind was cold, he began to sweat in great drops down his back. It seemed that little eyes peered out at him from every rock; little voices snarled in cold laughter. He could feel their hatred as they watched him.

      ‘Would you serve here?’ the voice said.

      Aderyn had to force the words from his lips.

      ‘I will. I can see there’s need of me.’

      There was a sound – three great claps of thunder, booming among the dead rocks. As they died away, the eyes and the voices died with them. The mountain top was lush with green grass; flowers grew, as vivid as jewels; the sun was warm.

      ‘Look down,’ the voice said. ‘Look west.’

      Aderyn climbed to the top of a boulder and looked out, where it seemed the sun was setting on a smooth-flowing wide river. Oak forest stretched on the far bank.

      ‘West. Your Wyrd lies west. Go there and heal. Go there and find those you will serve. Make restitution.’

      As Aderyn watched, the sun set over the river. The forest went dark, disappearing under vast shadows. Yet he could hear the water flowing. With a start he realized he was kneeling in the dew-soaked grass and hearing the hundred water-voices of Loc Tamig. In the west, the moon was setting. He rose and walked back between the pillars, then knelt again before the altar to raise his hands and prayed aloud in thanks to the Lords of Light. As he finished, the pillars disappeared, winking out like blown candles. He withdrew the five-pointed stars into himself and erased the magic circles.

      ‘And any spirits bound by this ceremony go free! It is over. It is finished.’

      From the lake came three hollow claps of thunder in answer. Aderyn stood and stamped three times upon the ground, then СКАЧАТЬ