"SHORT FICTIONS AND WONDERS" - читать интересную книгу автора (THINGS FRAGILE)

V.

“I am endeavoring,” said the young man to the chambermaid, “to write a novel that reflects life as it is, mirrors it down to the finest degree. Yet as I write it turns to dross and gross mockery. What should I do? Eh, Ethel? What should I do?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir,” said the chambermaid, who was pretty and young, and had come to the great house in mysterious circumstances several weeks earlier. She gave the bellows several more squeezes, making the heart of the fire glow an orange-white. “Will that be all?”

“Yes. No. Yes,” he said. “You may go, Ethel.”

The girl picked up the now empty coal scuttle and walked at a steady pace across the drawing room.

The young man made no move to return to his writing-desk; instead he stood in thought by the fireplace, staring at the human skull on the mantel, at the twin crossed swords that hung above it upon the wall. The fire crackled and spat as a lump of coal broke in half.

Footsteps, close behind him. The young man turned. “You?”

The man facing him was almost his double-the white streak in the auburn hair proclaimed them of the same blood, if any proof were needed. The stranger’s eyes were dark and wild, his mouth petulant yet oddly firm.

“Yes-I! I, your elder brother, whom you thought dead these many years. But I am not dead-or, perhaps, I am no longer dead-and I have come back-aye, come back from ways that are best left untraveled-to claim what is truly mine.”

The young man’s eyebrows raised. “I see. Well, obviously all this is yours-if you can prove that you are who you say you are.”

“Proof? I need no proof. I claim birth-right, and blood-right-and death-right!” So saying, he pulled both the swords down from above the fireplace, and passed one, hilt first, to his younger brother. “Now guard you, my brother-and may the best man win.”

Steel flashed in the firelight and kissed and clashed and kissed again in an intricate dance of thrust and parry. At times it seemed no more than a dainty minuet, or a courtly and deliberate ritual, while at other times it seemed pure savagery, a wildness that moved faster than the eye could easily follow. Around and around the room they went, and up the steps to the mezzanine, and down the steps to the main hall. They swung from drapes and from chandeliers. They leapt up on tables and down again.

The older brother obviously was more experienced, and, perhaps, was a better swordsman, but the younger man was fresher and he fought like a man possessed, forcing his opponent back and back and back to the roaring fire itself. The older brother reached out with his left hand and grasped the poker. He swung it wildly at the younger, who ducked, and, in one elegant motion, ran his brother through.

“I am done for. I am a dead man.”

The younger brother nodded his ink-stained face.

“Perhaps it is better this way. Truly, I did not want the house, or the lands. All I wanted, I think, was peace.” He lay there, bleeding crimson onto the gray flagstone. “Brother? Take my hand.”

The young man knelt, and clasped a hand that already, it seemed to him, was becoming cold.

“Before I go into that night where none can follow, there are things I must tell you. Firstly, with my death, I truly believe the curse is lifted from our line. The second…” His breath now came in a bubbling wheeze, and he was having difficulty speaking. “The second…is…the…the thing in the abyss…beware the cellars…the rats…the-it follows!”

And with this his head lolled on the stone, and his eyes rolled back and saw nothing, ever again.

Outside the house, the raven cawed thrice. Inside, strange music had begun to skirl up from the crypt, signifying that, for some, the wake had already started.

The younger brother, once more, he hoped, the rightful possessor of his title, picked up a bell and rang for a servant. Toombes the butler was there in the doorway before the last ring had died away.

“Remove this,” said the young man. “But treat it well. He died to redeem himself. Perhaps to redeem us both.”

Toombes said nothing, merely nodded to show that he had understood.

The young man walked out of the drawing room. He entered the Hall of Mirrors-a hall from which all the mirrors had carefully been removed, leaving irregularly shaped patches on the paneled walls-and, believing himself alone, he began to muse aloud.

“This is precisely what I was talking about,” he said. “Had such a thing happened in one of my tales-and such things happen all the time-I would have felt myself constrained to guy it unmercifully.” He slammed a fist against a wall, where once a hexagonal mirror had hung. “What is wrong with me? Wherefore this flaw?”

Strange scuttling things gibbered and cheetled in the black drapes at the end of the room, and high in the gloomy oak beams, and behind the wainscoting, but they made no answer. He had expected none.

He walked up the grand staircase and along a darkened hall, to enter his study. Someone, he suspected, had been tampering with his papers. He suspected that he would find out who later that evening, after the Gathering.

He sat down at his desk, dipped his quill pen once more, and continued to write.