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

"What do you want me to do?" Sebastian asked tensely.
"Your predecessors," she said. "You know why I want them. Why I started by looking for you: to ensure first that the Dark Pretender who has so evilly started this program of ritual sacrifice is not one of the adepts trained by this very college. You know what I want. Go away, find your predecessor – what was he called? Zevon? And bring him to me."
"At once," added Vargas.
Sebastian nodded. Not trusting his traitor tongue – not a single word – he turned and left the room. Half way down the stairs he caught at the bannister, discovering to his shame that his hand was trembling with fury. Damn them! he thought furiously.. Damn the Ministry of Lost Souls and their catspaw Invigilators! Who would forever hold down honest scholarship in the name of caution, and seek everywhere for seeds of imaginary evil! But, truth be told, it was not principally the Invigilator he was most afraid of right now. Anya had told him to bring Zevon to her: and Sebastian was extremely worried by this. He could well imagine Zevon's response to being summoned by the Invigilation, and it would not be pleasant. Nevertheless – he reached the bottom of the stairs and paused, indecisively – the oath she held over him was too powerful. He would have to at least try. Shaking his head, he walked out into the road and turned for home: where, probably, Zevon would be already waiting for him. In bed.

Anya of Tigre poured herself another drink. It was not alcohol she sipped, but an elixir the formula of which was a tight-held secret of the University. "You don't think he's guilty?" she asked interestedly.
Vargas shuffled over to his throne and sat down. "No, if you mean is he guilty of enacting a forbidden ritual. Nevertheless, I would hardly go so far as to say he's innocent." He spoke with such heavy irony that for a moment Anya thought he was contradicting himself.
"How so?"
"Because I've seen his type before," grumped Vargas. "His predecessor Zevon: now he had balls. That's why I had him sent down, you see. It was a forgone conclusion that if he stayed he'd try something silly. But Sebastian is a lilly-livered weakling if ever I've seen one. A nasty piece of work, but too scared of shadows to kill his elder brother and take his father's castle by force: he'll probably end up as privy councillor to some scheming duke, or wind up gracing some dungeon, I don't doubt. But he isn't a conqueror: he doesn't have the cast-iron gall for it. Not like most of the lunatics and villains who come to me for teaching!"
"Your students sound a marvelous bunch," commented Anya. "With lieges like that, who needs enemies?"
"I do!" said Vargas, grinning humourlessly. "If I didn't I'd go soft in the head. At least it keeps me in on my toes. Your predecessors didn't have so much trouble, and look where they wound up!"
"The predecessors of my order," she corrected. "Things are very different now. I was a babe in arms when the Dark Pretender took to the field and the clouds rained blood for a week. Do you remember? The crows were too fat to fly, and the stench ... afterwards I had only to look at my father's face to see what that did to people."
"We can't all have parents like that." Vargas hiccuped violently and frowned. "I well remember his service. But tell me, what brought you hence today? We had barely realised that there was a Pretender to the dark powers commencing the rite of binding when you arrived –"
"There's synchronicity in all things," said Anya. "Word came to us from afar, you realise. Three innocents died to put me here, five hundred leagues in an eye-blink. We judged it sufficiently important."
Vargas turned pale. "You don't mean ..?"
She nodded. For the first time this evening she looked her age: the final battle of the war she had been born in was a good four decades past. "'In the defense of good, it is sometimes necessary to use the tools of evil,'" she quoted. "If our ancestors had not been so high-minded, things would never have reached the point of war. If the Invigilation had been set up earlier ..."
"Hindsight is easy," said Vargas. "In those days we didn't have the same sense of urgency, you understand. It had been centuries." He picked up and drained his wine glass. Then he hiccuped again. "I hate this age," he said gloomily. "To be compelled to brutality against one's better nature –"
"Is that the only reason you consort with devils?" demanded Anya: "ask yourself, is it really?"
Vargas nodded, then reached for a walnut. Picking up his brass callipers, he remarked: "Not all of us are mad, you see. But I suppose it's easier for those who are to succeed at this unfortunate profession. Of the past seven students I have taught only two have graduated with honour. And of the past eleven, two have died insane. I don't hold myself to blame; if the other five had only been pure of mind ..."
The walnut disintegrated in shards of black corruption.
"They all concealed a rotten heart, and that led to their downfall."
"I see," Anya said drily as she stared at the wormy mass. Why are they always optimists? Even in the most unlikely guise? "I see that it's been a full two bells since I sent that student of yours to pry out his crony. Do you suppose I should go and find out what's happened to him?" She stared at Vargas with such intensity that he blinked and looked away.
"I think so," he said. "I really think so. That catamite of his was a nasty piece of work."
Anya stood up. "What catamite?"
Vargas blinked again. "Didn't you know?" His face sagged, as if all the muscles supporting it had been severed. "I thought you must! The way you sent him – Sebastian and Zevon are notorious. They live together openly, you see, although it's a crime hereabouts; the men of the city watch refuse to detain scholars of the art. They've been scandalising the burghers ever since –"
He didn't finish the sentence. Anya was no longer around to hear it, and there wasn't any point. "I hope she succeeds," he said quietly to the swinging door; "I hope she finds him before it's too late."

Sebastian stumbled into the streets and wandered down the hill in a self-absorbed trance. It had stopped raining and a thin fog was rising from the open sewers; it bore with it the stench of spent dinners. The damp cobblestones offered treacherous footing, and he found that he was tired and headsore from the events of the past hour. I need to think he decided, although his circumstances were not altogether suited to this activity.
For one thing there wasn't enough time, he realised, as his unwilling feet carried him home. Damn and blast the bitch, he thought angrily. Why Zevon? He wouldn't do a thing like that – would he? To try to become a Dark Pretender by the ritual of Mummu – he tried to recall the details by which an adept might bind the forces of the abyss to obey their naked will without treachery and malice. Certainly a vital preliminary step for any who would aspire to true mastery of the diabolic arts – and totally forbidden by the Invigilation ever since the last Last Battle. Something about there being seven sacrifices; one of them arbitrary, the rest subtly structured ...
The area where Sebastian lived was particularly rough, adjoining the district where the mercantile warehouses hulked along the banks of the river. Many of the poorer students lived there, scattered among the struggling tradespeople and ne'er-do-well's of the lower city. The houses overhung the narrow alleys and little light reached the ground to guide the intrepid traveller past piles of muck and the verminous hovels of the poor. He traced his way to his home and unlocked the door with a three-fingered gesture and a strange word. Of burglars he had no fear; students of the Art had more serious causes for concern than human intrusion upon their property.
It was a small studio, beams blackened by the resinous smoke of a thousand candles. His possessions were strewn all about, mingled promiscuously with those of Zevon; here an oak chest full of cloth, there a sack full of potatoes. A grimoire, possibly stolen, lay open atop the odd-legged desk that Zev had filched from the office of the richest merchant prince of the city whilst under a spell of deception. "Zev?" Sebastian called quietly. "Are you awake?"
He realised as soon as he'd said it that this was a mistake. Bat-shadows fluttered against the diamond-leaded window panes, blue-spark silhouettes illuminating the floorboards: "Not now!" Zevon snapped in a voice as brittle as glass. "Come not in that form!" he chanted, in a tone that made Sebastian's hair stand on end and his teeth rattle in their sockets. "I command thee! Come not in that form! Quick, oaf – into the sanctum! Your life depends on it!"
Sebastian, who was not so slow-witted as to remain confused for long, jumped to obey as Zevon plucked a handful of ivory-tinted powder and cast it into the glowing crucible on the stove. "What in the seven names of hell do you think you're –" he began..
"Come not in that form!" Zevon screamed. There was a bang not unlike thunder and the crucible shattered. "Fuck! Now look what you've done, Seb! Zycor, Aharseus, Ixtal, I dismiss thee! In the name of Septuat, begone!" Of a sudden the atmosphere in the room lightened. Nevertheless, the smell lingered: burning brimstone mingled with a hint of old, dried blood.
"Is it safe?" Sebastian looked down at the powdery circle of chalk that ringed his trembling feet. The line was unbroken: if his jump had been miscalculated he would not now be alive enough to understand what had befallen him.
"It is, now." Zevon stood up, stepped out of his warding circle, and slammed the cover of the grimoire shut angrily. Dust spurted from the spine of the book as he turned to stare at Sebastian. "You really screwed that up! Another second –"
"You were Coercing." Sebastian's throat was peculiarly dry, and there was a strange ringing in his ears. "Why, Zev? What do you think you're doing?"
Zevon laughed. "Don't be a fucking moron. It's examination night tonight, isn't it? And you know who else is paying attention?" He was wearing a dark robe, Sebastian noticed, the gown of a wizardly scholar. The sign of rank that he had been stripped of three years ago by Vargas di Escobar. There were sweat-rings under his armpits and the hem was ragged and grey, as if scorched by a terrible heat.
Sebastian sat down heavily on the bed. "You never told me," he said, as quietly and evenly as he could manage. "You've been following a forbidden ritual, and all the while I've been terrified to study –"
"More fool you." Zevon walked over to the battered cupboard next to the bed and pulled out a dusty bottle of wine. "You'll be needing some of this, I warrant. Here, have a glass." His manner was quiet again, but the temperature in the room dropped several degrees when Sebastian reached out and took hold of his wrist.
"I want an explanation," Sebastian said. "Why are you following the rite of Mummu? Why you want to mess everything up by going for the big one! It's too soon and too dangerous! Don't you know they're still watching and waiting for any who should try their luck?"
Zevon tugged his arm away impatiently. "It's only seven sacrifices. One arbitrary, the others sensory. And only two to go before the night is out, Sebastian, I'm nearly there. Here: drink." He filled a chipped tumber from the dusty bottle and thrust it at Sebastian.
"That's not the point," said Sebastian. "So you think you can do it? Fine. See if I care! But the Ministry of Lost Souls – they are watching. The Invigilation. They haven't slept since the Dark Pretender claimed two gross of thousand lives. Maybe in ten, twenty years ..."
"You're only young once," said Zevon. It was as near to an apology as Sebastian had ever heard from him. He raised the bottle to his lips: "Cheers!"
Sebastian took a mouthful from the cup. The wine was full-bodied and fruity. "If you love me, tell me you'll give up this folly for the time being?"
"No."
Sebastian sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that." He took another mouthful. "The Invigilator found me."
When Zevon stopped spluttering, he put the bottle down with exaggerated care and sat next to Sebastian. He put one arm round his shoulders. "Would you care to repeat that?"
Sebastian shut his eyes. Relax. Remember what you've shared – everything – "Vargas summoned her. It was the ritual nature of the killings that attracted attention. Now they know I'm not the guilty party so they use me as their pawn. I was cheap, you see. I'm still an enrolled schollar, for tonight, and you remember the oath –"
"Would you foreswear yourself for me?" asked Zevon, lightly touching his cheek. "You know I can do it, don't you? After this night I'll have total mastery of the dark forces, as great as any prince of the night. Even those bumbling ruthless do-gooders will be unable to touch me. I'll protect you! But will you break your oath for me? First?"