"Charles Stross - Examination Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

to hurry him; after all it was going to be a long night ahead, and she was well aware that there
was no better defense against sleep than a lengthy conversation followed by a brisk walk.
And this was one night when it would be a very good idea to stay awake, perchance to greet
the dawn alive...

Two weeks previously:
The communicants were gathered in the chapel. It was night and a ritual of highest
jeopardy was commencing; their voices wafted in harmonious key from behind the fluted
bone partition at the far end of the chamber. Golden runes glowed upon the darkened floor
within the nave, fading whenever the lightning flashed outside the narrow windows, and the
sacrifice – condemned for membership of a forbidden cult – struggled with her silver chains
upon the altar.
Sebastian surveyed his fellow scholars with the gloomy satisfaction of the perennial
pessimist. Their numbers, twelve this time, were down by half: it seemed that more and more
of them absented themselves with excuses. Shadows flickered along the walls of the
academy as the masters, those who remained, raved and cursed. Still the spate of
unexplained frightfulness continued. Three students had died this month, and master
Frankenburg had been found charred to grey ash in his own study. Who would dare exercise
their scholarly arts when it might lead to such unforseen consequences? Of one thing
Sebastian was sure: that the interrogation of dark entities was becoming far more dangerous
than usual, and that the daemons alone were not responsible.
"Aharseus, Zycor, Ixtal! I commend thee to the wardens of the three points," intoned
Lord Kerein. The only wizard present, he was also the only person permitted in the body of
the chapel during this earnest and deadly rite. The interrogation of the forces of darkness – a
ritual rarely mandated by the Invigilation – could only be entrusted to one who was beyond
reproach; the temptation to go further was one which any mage might feel, and few could be
trusted to resist. He scattered powdered colchicum across the censers and uttered three
further words of power. "Hear and obey! I bind thee to the three points of power!"
"We who witness do bind thee," chanted the conclave of students behind the
partition, word-perfect despite their inexperience and fear. "Let thy lips be sealed, let thy eyes
be sealed, let the five orofices of thy anatomy be sealed, lest the soul of thy body be expelled
to the seven corners of the abyss and thy body sealed against thee for eternity."
 The flames in the censer leapt higher, casting a pale glow across the walls of the
chapel. Let this succeed just once, and I will reconsider, Sebastian decided. The awe and the
sanctity of the ritual combined to capture his spirit; the legal questioning of the most fearsome
daemons of the abyss by a mage was the high point of his training, only to be surpassed
before graduation by the demonstration in which he, himself, alone, would conduct the ritual.
Kerein cried out again. "Aharseus, Zycor, Ixtal! I abjure thee to enter thou this
consecrated vessel! Speak, as thou art commanded. See, as thou would be shown. I abjure
thee! Enter thou this vessel!"
The sacrificial victim thrashed and spasmed as the inscriptions around the circle of
power pulsed bloody red for an instant: then she lay still within the circle, and Sebastian saw
with a sense of visceral awe that her skin was shimmering with the heat haze of an
unconstrained furnace.
"Speak! I command you!" snapped the wizard. The assembled conclave incanted a
verse in an ancient tongue, words that spoke of binding and despair and the iron will of the
magus. "You are Aharseus, and Zycor, and Ixtal, the three-in-one. Answer me!"
The sacrifice turned her head and grimaced at him, her face writhing in a ghastly
parody of allure. "I am the ones whom you summoned," said the daemon, voice like the rattle
of breaking stones. "What would you have me do, human? I can only obey you, after all. We