The Serpent Bride. Sara Douglass

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СКАЧАТЬ mystery. Each King of Escator, and his heir, had to learn it all in case they one day had to assume once more the crown of Elcho Falling.

      There was an enormous amount of information, of ritual, of windings and wakings, and of magic so powerful that it took great skill, and an even better memory, to wield it. There was so much to recall, and to hand down through the generations, that long ago one of the Persimius kings, perhaps the last of the sitting Lords of Elcho Falling, had created a memory palace in which to store all the knowledge of Elcho Falling.

      They called it the Twisted Tower.

      Maximilian now entered the Twisted Tower, recalling as he did so the day his father had first taught him how to open the door.

       “Visualise before you,” his father had said, “a great twisted tower, coiling into the sky. It stands ninety levels high, and contains but one door at ground level, and one window just below the roofline. On each level there is one single chamber. Can you picture it, Maxel?”

      Maximilian, even though he was but nine, could do so easily. The strange tower — its masonry laid so that its courses lifted in corkscrews — rose before him as if he had known it intimately from birth and, under his father’s direction, Maximilian laid his hand to the handle of the door and opened it.

       A chamber lay directly inside, crowded with furniture that was overlaid with so many objects Maximilian could only stand and stare.

       “See here,” his father had said. “This blue and white plate as it sits on the table. It is the first object you see, and it contains a memory. Pick it up, Maxel, and tell me what you see.”

       Maximilian picked up the plate. As he did so, a stanza of verse filled his mind, and his lips moved soundlessly as he rolled the words about his mouth.

       “That is part of the great invocation meant to raise the gates of Elcho Falling,” said his father. “The second stanza lies right next to it, the red glass ball. Pick that up, now, and learn …”

      Maximilian had not entered the Twisted Tower since his last lesson with his father, just before his fourteenth birthday when he’d been abducted. That lesson had, fortuitously, been the day his father had taken him into the final chamber at the very top of the Twisted Tower. Despite it being well over twenty years since he’d last entered, Maximilian had no trouble in recreating in his mind the Twisted Tower, and travelled it now, examining every object in each successive chamber and recalling their memories throughout the height of the tower.

      As he rose, the chambers became increasingly empty.

      It began at the thirty-sixth level chamber. This chamber was, as all the chambers below it, crammed with furniture, which in turn was crammed with objects, each containing a memory. But occasional empty places lay scattered about, marked by shapes in the dust, showing that objects had once rested there.

       Maximilian turned to his father. “Why are there empty spaces, father?”

       His father shifted uncomfortably. “The memories held within these objects have been passed down for many thousands of years, Maxel. Sometimes mistakes have been made in the passing, objects have been mislaid, memories forgotten. So much has been lost, son. I am sorry.”

       “But what if we needed it, father? What if we needed to resurrect Elcho Falling?”

       His father had not answered that question, which had in itself been answer enough for Maximilian.

      Now Maximilian entered the final chamber at the very top of the tower.

      It was utterly barren of any furniture or objects.

      Everything it had once contained had been forgotten.

      Maximilian stood there, turning about, thinking about how the chambers had become progressively emptier as he’d climbed through the tower.

      He was glad that he had remembered everything his father had taught him, and that he could retrieve the memories intact as he took each object into his hands.

      But, contrariwise, Maximilian was filled with despair at the thought that if, if, he was to be the King of Escator who once again had to shoulder the ancient responsibilities of Elcho Falling, he would need to do so with well over half of the memories, the rituals and the enchantments of Elcho Falling forgotten and lost for all time.

PART TWO

1

       LAKE JUIT, TYRANNY OF ISEMBAARD

      Lake Juit, as old as the land itself, lay still and quiet in the dawn. The sun had barely risen, and broad, rosy horizontal shafts of soft light illuminated the gently rippling expanse of the lake, and set the deep reed beds surrounding the lake into deep mauve-pocked shadow.

      A man poled a punt out of the reed beds.

      He was very tall, broad-shouldered and handsomely muscled, with a head of magnificent black tightly-braided hair that hung in a great sweep to a point mid-way down his back. He wore a white linen hipwrap, its simplicity a foil to the magnificent collar of pure gold and bejewelled links that draped over his shoulders and partway down his chest and back.

      He was Isaiah, Tyrant of Isembaard, and the lake was surrounded by ten thousand of his spearmen, while on the ramshackle wooden pier from where he’d set out waited his court maniac, the elusively insane (but remarkably useful) Ba’al’uz.

      Ba’al’uz narrowed his eyes thoughtfully as he watched his tyrant. One did not expect one’s normally completely predictable tyrant to suddenly decamp from his palace at Aqhat, move ten thousand men and his maniac down to this humid and pest-ridden lake, saying nothing about his motives, and then get everyone up well before dawn to watch their tyrant set off by himself in a punt.

      Ba’al’uz had no idea what Isaiah was about, and he did not like that at all.

      Isaiah poled the punt slowly and steadily forward. He did not head out into the centre of the shallow lake, but kept close to the reed beds. Occasionally he smiled very slightly, as here and there a frog peeked out from behind the reeds.

      As Isaiah got deeper into the lake, he watched the dawn light carefully, waiting for the precise moment.

      He poled rhythmically, using the regular movements of his arms and body to concentrate on the matter at hand. What he was about to do was so dangerous that if he allowed himself to think about it he knew he would turn the punt back to the wharf and the watching Ba’al’uz.

      But Isaiah could not afford to do that. He needed to concentrate —

      At one with the water.

      — and he needed to focus —

      On the Song of the Frogs.

      — and he needed to draw on all the power he contained within СКАЧАТЬ