"Stross, Charles - Examination Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)
Charles Stross
Midsummer night, and a thin haze of mist rose from the gutters. Vendors and peddlars hawked their wares by the light of guttering oil lamps, long after most would normally have been abed. A strange bustle of business kept them busy, tradesmen and fishwives and dragoons and whores strutting and shrieking and haggling with forced vehemence beneath the posies hanging from the eaves of taverns and shops; meanwhile balls and soirees ran on late into the night among the scented gardens of the rich.
There was a dark undertow of fear among the revellers in the streets, and some of them muttered prayers and cast out the evil eye with fetishistic regularity. It was a custom of the city that on solstice night one must not sleep; for according to the legend anyone who closed their eyes between sunset and sunrise would awaken to find themselves in the abyss. Midsummer night was a time when the slings and arrows of fate were supplemented by the guided missiles of demonic malice, for the University held it s graduation exams this evening. It would therefore have been quite inexplicable to the ordinary town-dwellers to see Sebastian wending his way through the alleys and smokey tavernae of the Lower City on the dog-watch of this festival of grimness. Nevertheless, there was an entirely reasonable explanation: for he would not be graduating tonight. Sebastian had decided to refuse his baccalaureate, and having reached the limit of his tenure he would inevitably be sent down.
"Pissed as a newt," he sang tunelessly, wobbling from side to side in the narrow Shambles, narrowly avoiding the dungheap in front of old Vladislaw's tannery: "Pissed as a salamander of the eleventh order of syrinexae! Stoned as a basilisk's boy-friend! Drunk as a student, for tomorrow they will send me down! Hic." He leaned against the wall, flask in hand, and took a mighty swig from it. Frowning, he up-ended the vessel over the cobbles; what remained of its contents dripped across the stones, glittering like blood in the light from the leaded windows of the tavern opposite. "Fuck me, I must be mad! Worms on the brain. A bit more balls and I could have – could be –" He looked up at the swirling clouds overhead, saw complex shapes forming and dissolving among them with unearthly speed, and shuddered. "Bastards." He spat the word venomously then heaved himself up and, dusting down his tunic, stumbled over to the tavern door and banged hard upon it.
The door swung open, and Sebastian squinted at the gnomish shape of the bouncer, Old Flog. "Loadsa dosh," he sang, waving his limp purse; "More wine, and faster!"
"So you think the master's going to let you back in here again after what you and your catamite did to the cobbler's daughter last month?" Flog sneered at him. "Think again, you swiving whoreson bastard nebbish offspring of a scholar's quill by a goose's bum! I'll give you a sodding drink! Unless you can pay for the table and the pickled lampreys." He thrust out an upturmed hand, yellow nails clicking impatiently. "Give me the purse, shit-face. Now!"
"There's three groats and a copper bit in there," said Sebastian, dropping the purse in the bouncer's palm; "I want to stay drunk all night. Why don't you –"
Flog wasn't listening. He pawed his way through Sebastian's lucre like a miser searching his ledgers for a bad debt, then shook his head. "You've got enough here, right enough. Seeing you've got the money to pay for your past sins, I can't keep you out; but I can –" a sharp-nailed claw jabbed hard at Sebastian's cod-piece –"promise you a rough ride if you throw up on the cat again! Comprendez?"
Sebastian belched. "Of course; just show me to the bar and I'll be good." The gnome nodded grimly and stood aside to let him enter. He stepped indoors without so much as a nod at the bouncer, and the heat washed over him like a monsoon shower.
The Gibbet and Felon was not the lowest dive that the grand city of Rask could offer, but it could certainly pass for such in refined company. It was distinctly unwise to enter and linger there should one be a stranger to these parts; Sebastian, however, was safe. Students of the Academy were recognised in this tavern, and although tempers ran high on Examination Night no-one would ever dream of waylaying him. Scholarly pranks could be vicious to the point of malice, and the prospect of waking up in the arms of a century-old corpse one morning – or worse, of waking up as a century-old corpse – could do wonders for those of even the most villainous disposition. So it was that when Sebastian marched right up to the bar, wobbled ever so slightly, crowed "a pint of sack! a pint of sack!" at the landlord, and subsequently collapsed across the rough-hewn timbers of the bar, all but one of the clientele knew enough to ignore him.
"What do you mean by a pint of sack?" asked a fluting voice from the vicinity of his left shoulder. It spoke with an outlandish accent, curiously musical and unsettling to Sebastian's ears. He blinked and stopped tittering. Gonna throw up, he realised: the thought was instantly sobering.
"You needn't trouble to answer right away," added the owner of the voice; "you appear to be a little intoxicated and I would be most displeased if your reply came in the form of a regurgitation across my boots."
Bloody foreigners, he though resentfully. It somehow slipped his befuddled brain that he himself had been a foreigner no less than four years ago, and would shortly be one again. He mustered a reply: "Sack, sirrah, is the fermented juice of the vine, blended and ice-cast from the barrel. It's called sack because that's what they did to the city it came from, y'see. Now are you ready to defend yourself or must I see my stomach and my honour slighted by a coward?" He straightened up agressively, turned round, and stopped dead in his tracks.
"You are mistaken: I offer slight to neither organ," said the stranger. She smiled faintly and a shock of electric recognition flew threw him: a wandering wysard! He breathed in sharply and muttered a quick incantation for a lesser ward, but she merely shook her head. "Really, as if that would do you any good, you scoundrel! Mind you don't spew over my cape, though. And when you finish purging your bilious humours if you'd be so good as to order me a drink... I shouldn't take it amiss, I warrant you."
Her presumption upon his familiarity was so great that Sebastian would have laughed at her had he not first glanced into her eyes, and seen there a certain steadiness of gaze. "Two pints of sack," he called to the barman, surprising himself. Then: "and get me a bucket," he added, gulping. "I'm going to be –"
How the door came to be open, and how he came to be doubled over beneath the lintel with his stomach spraying the street and the rain spattering his hair, was a complete mystery to Sebastian. How the woman came to be holding him by the shoulders was another mystery. When he was done he straightened up, wiping his lips. Inebriation and water conspired to bedraggle him so that he presented only a palid shadow of the infamous student ruffian Sebastian de l'Amoque when he turned to address the woman. "I t hink I would appreciate your company more if you had introduced yourself to me in the traditional manner. What do you want of me, and why?"
She stepped back into the tavern, one hand resting lightly on the pommel of her sword. Her lips quirked, so that if he ignored her eyes he could almost convince himself that she was smiling like a coquette. "I am Anya of Tigre, and you are the Sieur de l'Amoque of the Academy, lately apprenticed to the High Lord Wysard Vargas Escobar," she said, still smiling that curious smile. "If this is so I am pleased to meet you, for I have been searching this metropolitan midden for you for some time. But now would you care to drink at my expense, and let me trouble you for the answer to some minor trivia; or would you rather satisfy me with respect to the insult you rendered to my honour?"
Sebastian cleared his throat and spat in the gutter. A flash of sudden sobriety showed him the gravity of his situation. "No offense was intended, madame, and it is my sincerest hope that none should be taken at my earlier incoherence. If you would care to share a table with me, the landlord will see to our provision while we discuss those matters you would quiz me upon. However, I think it would be best if you waited for a while before you tax my head overmuch; it's ringing like a bell and my hands are still shaking."
Anya nodded, then turned and retreated to a shadowy table in a nook at the very back of the tavern. Sebastian followed her, still shaky, beginning to wonder just what this maid – no, this un-woman killer bitch of Tigre – wanted. Oh yes. He'd heard about wandering women and what they did to men who crossed them any way but one. He thought fuzzily: it's a tough life being a wife and mother, but that's no excuse for brigandage.
The table Anya selected was strangely empty, and the bag of possessions she had left there was still untouched despite the raucous congregation of orc-browed night-soil attendants who hooted and gambled with manic intensity at the next table. She sat down beside her baggage and smiled gratefully as the cobbler's daughter planted a jug of wine and two tankards on the table. The barmaid looked round, saw Sebastian coming, and her eyes widened: her ears flushed a hot coral pink as she picked up her skirts and fled for the sanctuary of the cellar. Sebastian sat down and shook his head in disappointment, charting her progress with resentful eyes. Whorespawn bitch-cow ballock-ripper ... "I didn't mean it but for fun," he said unconsciously, "how was I to know the silly strumpet was still a maiden?"
"You should be more prudent." Anya's expression was neutral as she poured the dark wine into each tankard and pushed one towards him. Her sobriety was nevertheless clear: she didn't spill a drop. "If you dishonour her further in the eyes of her family, you might find more than just a debt of dowry to restore this time. Someday you will meet a victim with teeth, young fox; then where will you be, eh?"
He looked up and met her gaze. There was no mistaking what he saw in it. "What do you want of me?" he asked, his throat suddenly as dry as any desert. "I'm just a humble student, about to be sent down by his betters for refusing to take the baccalaureate. How can I serve you, and in what way can I offer the hospitality of my lord Vargas to your honour?"
Anya took a long draught of sack and smacked her lips in a most un-ladylike manner, then placed her tankard on the table and carefully scanned the tavern. "If I choose to bind you to my purposes, you will stand as little chance as an imp-spawn before your master's wrath. But it's not proper that an agent of those I serve should behave in such a manner, so –" she made a small gesture of irritation, flicking imaginary reins away from herself, and Sebastian shivered. Then she pushed the lace cuff of her left sleeve up her arm, brazenly presenting the back of her wrist to him. "Consider yourself honoured," she said drily. "The Invigilation rarely concerns itself with those who merely study the daemonic."
But Sebastian was unable to control himself; he nearly bit his tongue as he stuttered in dismay, "But why? Why now? Why me? What's wrong! What have we done to offend your honour ..."
"Nothing: at least not as yet," she said. "But the hour has arrived and I am here on an official investigation decreed by the Ministry of Lost Souls. If you do not help in my investigations it will be necessary to compel you. So talk, young man. Time is short, and the Invigilation requires your cooperation in its enquiries."
Mopping the cold sweat from his brow, Sebastian cleared his throat and began to recite his tale. The story was a lengthy one and full of digressions, but Anya made no attempt 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 both know the rules ..." the body the daemon wore drooled and rolled its eyes, still grinning like a lunatic.
"I know this for the truth." Kerein seemed taken aback by the mildness of the daemon's repose. "But why are you so placid, breaker of mountains and bringer of hurricanes? Answer me, I command you! You who writhe and thunder at the touch of flesh yet quietly smile from within that cage of bone, what is the meaning of your current behaviour?"
Cold sweat prickled on Sebastian's brow. He's tempting fate, he noted carefully. Holding a dialogue rather than demanding answers to simple questions! He's too bloody confident tonight, is Lord Kerein.
The daemon shrugged amidst a rattle of chains; the runes around the altar flared ruby-bright then faded again. "Your time is come," it rumbled softly; "of that I am assured."
"Who told you of that?" demanded the mage. "I forbid it! Speak, Aharseus! I command you! Who has promised you –"
The daemon smiled frightfully. The flesh on its stolen face rippled and distorted, tore away from itself with a dreadful noise; bones cracked beneath the skin. "One among you mislikes your kind," it creaked, in a voice like trees breaking before a gale.. "You will know them again by their ways and by their whiles, when the candles of flesh burn low and the sands of night expire! Now forgive me, mortal, for I tire of this conversation and I'm still hungry –"
Lightning flashed outside, and the runes glowed black and hissed. There was an astouding clap of thunder that smashed the windows from their frames, and the daemon vanished from the altar with its unfortunate host. Sebastian blinked and someone screamed in agony. He started and peered through the holes in the filigree screen. Where the magus Kerein had been there stood a lumpy parody of humanity that appeared to be sculpted from grey blebs of cauliflower. It staggered briefly and screamed once more, tearing at its robes with clawed hands. Then it stood shivering for a moment as if racked by the most exquisite agony, and fell backward across the altar. Spreading rings of dark blood began to seep through the front of its robes, dripping from the warty blebs that covered its naked skin.
There was a rising hubbub of voices from the students, then one cry which rose above the others: "It's the work of the daemon! That's Lord Kerein – he's been afflicted unto death by tumours of brain!" The move to evacuate the chapel was fast, not to say unseemly. Nevertheless, by the time the mass of panicking students reached the door Sebastian was already outside the building, retching upon the cold stones of the courtyard.
Suspicion fell upon the magi first and upon the student body second. Panic of a most ugly and undignified kind took root in the hallowed corridors of the academy; it was accompanied by a kind of feverish determination not to be intimidated by the traitor, not to let one's activities be circumscribed by the unseen hand of the malign practitioner who was undoubtedly responsible for the distortion of the recent conjourations. That this invisible presence was also responsible for the death of Frankenburg an d the abominable accidents that had recently befallen the student corpus was not in doubt, for it was unthinkable that two such curses should descend upon the academy in a single month. The daemon's description served to sow more confusion than it dispelled. Nevertheless, everybody took precautions; and in some cases this reached the stage of refraining entirely from certain dangerous activities or questionable pursuits...
Sebastian drained his tankard of wine and was about to refill it when Anya reached out and placed her hand across the mouth of the jug. "Repeat once more for my ears, what was the purpose of the ritual at which Lord Kerein was so misfortunately cursed? That you failed to tell me. What was his incentive for indulging in such a fatal conjuration?"
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