The Seekers of Shar-Nuhn. Ardath Mayhar

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ