"Van Lustbader, Eric - Pearl 01 The Ring of Five Dragons(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

Eleusis Ashera smiled. "Like the threat of your strong arm, Kinnnus, portents do exist. Giyan has shown me this. And these portents speak of great changes."
Kinnnus Morcha grunted. The regent seemed to the Line-General to be almost eerily calm. He felt, unexpectedly, a welling up of affection. "You will forgive an old Khagggun his grumblings, regent. I meant no offense."
"I took no offense, my friend. But I fear that unless we are extremely vigilant, we are doomed to repeat our most grievous mistakes." There was a small, uncomfortable silence.
"I mention the portents because I want you to be on your guard to—"
Eleusis broke off, his body suddenly tense. His okummmon had begun to hum with a sound beyond description—a song/no-song that lapped at the very edge of audibility like the ocean at the foundation of a seawall. The atmosphere grew preternaturally still and preternat-urally hot. A bead of sweat bloomed like a nocturnal flower on Kinnnus Morcha's skull, ran down the deep crease.
Eleusis turned abruptly. "Kinnnus, you will have to excuse me."
"N'Luuura, it is the Summoning." Kinnnus Morcha gulped the last of the cloudy rakkis and with a clink! that rang through the garden set his goblet atop the balustrade. "I will escort you myself to the Temple of Mnemonics, regent."
Eleusis gave a curt, almost absentminded nod. The two men returned silently through the doorway to the antechamber, past guards of the Haaar-kyut, past handmaidens and servants, past members of the regent's staff. All inclined their heads to the left in deference to him. Their footfalls echoed on the marble; their shadows chased themselves along the corridors, into chambers large and small, through pools of mellowing sunlight, patches of shade made pale by veinless white marble, at length out through the high, magnificent sea-green-shanstone and gold-jade gates.
Kinnnus Morcha was relieved to be out of that alien place that so profoundly disturbed him. Not that he would admit this to anyone, but he felt the silence there—what the regent spoke of as peacefulness—like a weight upon his shoulders, like sets of alien eyes watching him, judging his moves, weighing his fate in some unseen court of alien law he could not begin to fathom. A late-afternoon breeze broke like surf against his hairless skull. They mounted single-seat hoverpods, punched in their destination, and sped across the city at a height of twenty-three meters.
When the V'ornn had first taken Axis Tyr, the Gyrgon had installed themselves in a complex of buildings that had housed the Abbey of Listening Bone, the Ramahan's main religious sanctuary. Its occupation was a stunning and dispiriting blow to the Kundalan—one that, in Eleusis' opinion, at least, had been calculated down to the last decimal point. But then the Gyrgon were masters at inflicting humiliation and pain both physical and psychological.
"I do not know how you do it," Kinnnus Morcha said when they had set down in front of the Temple. "Were it I—were I Summoned before the Gyrgon—my tender parts would be shrunken like an old V'ornn's."
The regent had to smile. "This from the valorous Khagggun who fought in the First Wave at Argggedus 3, who slew nineteen Krael at the battle of Yesssus, who defended for twenty-four sidereal cycles the Gyrgon enclave on Phareseius Prime, who has, it is rumored, come face-to-face with the Centophennni?"
"It is instinctive, regent. Every time the Gyrgon speak my blood freezes."
"I always said you had good instincts, Kinnnus." With that, the regent Eleusis swept through the arched portals of the former Abbey of Listening Bone.
The V'ornn Temple of Mnemonics sat atop the only hill within the precincts of the city. It was in the Western Quarter. Up until the coming of the V'ornn it had been an area housing the most influential Kundalan families. Strangely, however, the V'ornn found these houses no larger than those in other parts of the city. This perfect symmetry went against V'ornn notions of hierarchy and status. After the Kundalan were killed or displaced, the most wealthy of the Bashkir moved in, enlarging and renovating the houses as befit their status in V'ornn society.
This essential change in the fascinating, alien structure of the city did not please Eleusis, for he had come to see the Kundalan in an altogether different light than did his fellow V'ornn. But then in so many ways he seemed not to fit into the rather monolithic V'ornn mold. It was a constant source of wonder to him that the Gyrgon had chosen him to be regent. Stogggul would have been the obvious, the expected choice. But then, he reminded himself, the Gyrgon rarely did the expected. Not that he, Eleusis Ashera, was ill suited to be regent. Quite the opposite, in fact. But that the Gyrgon tolerated—even at times condoned—his unconventional ideas was a mystery he doubted he would ever solve.
As soon as he stepped through the gates, he was inside the Portal. A misty greyness, luminous as the shell of a sea-snail, engulfed him. He had been here often enough that he knew what to do. Even so, a part of his mind still quailed, wanted to run screaming back out into the last of the sunshine, where Kinnnus Morcha was patiently waiting. Eleusis forced his legs to move, walking forward, looking neither to the left nor to the right. A great moaning arose, as of a violent tempest, gaining in volume. Still, he moved forward, not only because it was his duty as regent but also because he knew it was a test. The Portal never looked or felt the same as it had on previous visits. Each time he was Summoned, there was a different sort of fright awaiting him. The Gyrgon enjoy observing you, he told himself. The Gyrgon distill my fears, brew them up like vintage numaaadis. It is some form of twisted game they enjoy playing, perhaps to engrave their superiority upon me, so that I will never forget my place, never overstep the boundaries they have set up.
Darkness, and an intense sense of vertigo. Eleusis was deathly afraid of falling. As a child of four, he had fallen from a window ledge while his mother had been painting. His father had been so furious that he had banished her from every hingatta on the planet. Eleusis had never seen her again; he had been raised by his father's lover, a Tuskugggun who had kept him on a short tether and never let him climb upon a windowsill.
Wind howled and when he made the mistake of looking down, he saw the floor far below him. At once, he broke out into a cold sweat. It is only a dream, he told himself sternly. Only a vision from your own nightmare. But he could not stop sweating. His hearts hammered in his chest, he felt the urge to spit, and his pulse rate was erratic. He paused on his path, took three deep breaths. The urge to turn and run was a terrible weight upon him. I am that I am, he said silently. I am on Kundala, in the Western District of Axis Tyr, in the Portal of the Temple of Mnemonics. The Gyrgon may have control of my senses but they do not have control of my mind.
He wiped his wet palms down his trousers and moved on. His mind screamed in protest, certain that he was going to fall to the floor below. He walked stiffly, carefully, deviating neither to the left nor to the right. And with each step, his fears lessened. He did not fall. Thank Enlil, he did not fall!
Stars came out, and a cold blue moon the size of Kundala's spotted sun appeared high in the sky. Eleusis, traversing quartz-flecked sand dunes, recognized that moon. It was the moon hanging in the night sky of Corpius Segundus. Ahead of him loomed the gargantuan sloping gates to the underworlds.
Enter, a voice commanded in his skull. At least, it seemed to be in his skull even though he knew that it actually emanated from his okum-mmon. The time of Summoning is at hand.
If this were, indeed, Corpius Segundus he knew what would be waiting for him. There was a scar on his left shoulder—a deep, livid indentation scooped out of his flesh. The underworlds were habited by thirteen species of raptor—at least, that was the number the V'ornn had cataloged—each more deadly than the previous one. It had been no mean feat to bring back a thorn-gem, and he had paid the price. The eight-legged razor-raptor had taken its pound of flesh even through his battle armor.
The sloping Portal blotted out the stars, then the moon. A remembered stink assaulted his nostrils, making his stomachs grind and heave. It was an evil place, the underworlds.
"Why did the V'ornn come here, regent?"
He stopped, peered through the dim light, ruddy with the fine, choking dust of the caverns.
"What was your purpose?"
An ill-defined shape loomed before him.
"You could not defeat the denizens of these underworlds; the thorn-gems herein were of no practical use to you."
An evil-smelling razor-raptor lounged against an outcropping of rock. It leered at him with a smile bristling with triangular teeth made expressly for ripping and tearing flesh from bone.
"And yet you came. Why was that, Ashera Eleusis?"
This was no Corpius Segundus razor-raptor, Eleusis knew. Indeed, it was no raptor of any kind. Only the Gyrgon used the ancient form of address that put the family name first. "Because it was there," he said.
The creature before him repeated his answer, drawing out each word as if to savor its meaning. "Yes. Very good. I believe you are correct." And immediately thereafter, the razor-raptor dissolved like smoke. In its place stood a Gyrgon.
"Summoned, I am come to you, to hear and to serve," Eleusis said in the ritual greeting.
Instead of completing the ritual, the Gyrgon detached himself from the cavern wall. "Do you know me, regent?"
Eleusis peered through the artificially manufactured haze. "I believe you are Nith Sahor. I was before you at the previous Summoning."
"That is correct."
"I have never been Summoned by the same Gyrgon twice."
"Do you know that for a fact, regent? We can change our shapes, you know."
Eleusis licked his lips. "I had heard something to that effect." Nith Sahor stood unnervingly still. He was perhaps a full meter taller than Eleusis. He was clad all in black, wrapped in a tasseled greatcoat. His eyes had pupils like star sapphires; they seemed to follow you without him having to turn his head. And what a head he had! His skull was the color of pale amber. From the edge of the occipital ridge to the base of his massive neck a visible latticework of tertium and germanium circuits was embedded in the skin. No one knew whether the Gyrgon were born this way or whether they came by it in some horrific postnatal operation.
"Tell me something, regent, do you serve the Gyrgon?"
"Yes, Nith Sahor. In everything, I serve their wants and needs."
"Indeed."
"Do you disbelieve me?"
"Yes, regent, I do. You have taken a Kundalan female to your bed. You allow her to worship this Goddess of theirs, to make her potions and her poultices, to whisper in your ear when darkness is absolute and the formal business of state is at an end." Nith Sahor's expression was entirely unreadable. "In addition, you conspire secretly with the Pack-Commander Rekkk Hacilar to keep the Kundalan resistance warned of our hunting parties." He crossed his massive arms across his equally massive chest. "Do you deny any of this, regent?"
"Who speaks against me? Prime Factor Stogggul?"
"You will answer my question, regent!"
Nith Sahor did not raise his voice, did not move a muscle. Nevertheless, Eleusis jumped as the bite of hyperexcited electrons was transmitted through his okummmon into the nerves in his arm.
"I deny nothing," he said calmly. This was yet another test; it must be. "What you say is truth."
"And in these matters do you discern the will of the Gyrgon?"