"Baker,_Kage_-_The_Fourth_Branch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Kage)

"Politics!" snarled the Prince. "I had my own plan for furthering our kin. Why not creep out to the big women as they sleep? Why shouldn't they bear and raise our half-breeds? Why shouldn't we live in the sunlight like you? But Mother wouldn't hear of it, and I wouldn't stop, and so here I am."
"How sad for you. Well, this has all been very interesting, but I think I'll leave now," Lewis told him airily. I looked at him, astonished at his nerve. "I have no intention of letting anyone take me apart, thank you very much. Shall we go, Eogan?"
"How?" The Prince gave an incredulous grin. "Have you noticed there's no handle on the inside of this door, and it's flush with the wall?"
Lewis ignored him. "Eogan, feel in the lapel of my cloak. You ought to find a long rod of metal, very thin and fine. Take it out." I did as he asked and found it, sewn into the lining. A moment's work with my penknife and I had it in my hand.
"Now, bend the end into a hook."
"What can you hope to accomplish?" the Prince demanded. "There's no lock you can pick, either!"
"Now, slide the hook end under the door and pull it inward." I obeyed him. The Prince started up in his chains, staring in horror as the simplicity of the solution occurred to him.
"Those idiots -- !! But you, my fine machine, you're broken now. You think this big oaf can repair you? You're helpless and they'll come after you, my uncles will, if it takes them years! They'll get you back no matter where you hide, and then -- "
"Not at all! You see, when my primary system failed my emergency backup system began broadcasting a distress signal," Lewis taunted him. "My Masters are already on their way to rescue me. I'll be repaired. Pull open the door, Eogan."
"Ha! What you have failed to realize is that this whole Mound is shielded with lead," shrieked the Prince triumphantly. "Your signal hasn't reached anyone!"
Lewis' grin faltered for just a second, but he turned it into a sneer of defiance. "Well -- as soon as I'm clear of this mound, my signal will be heard. And then my Masters will come after _you_! See how you like -- "
"If you've finished threatening each other," I said, being the only man in the room who could actually move, "the hallway's clear." I looked out into the stinking half-lit way.
"Then I'm on my way, short circuit or no short circuit!" Lewis crowed. Bracing the open door with my body, I got hold of him by one arm and dragged him out with me.
"I'll raise the alarm!" cried the Prince, but as the door swung slowly shut on its counterweight I heard him subside and mutter: "On the other hand, would anyone thank me in the least? Why _bother_?"
"I'll have to carry you again," I said, taking Lewis' other arm to hoist him up; but he got a distracted look in his eyes.
"Listen!" he said. "Do you hear it? There's somebody else. Someone's weeping."
I listened. "I can't hear anything!"
"There's another mortal," Lewis told me. "Brother Crimthann? We've still got to rescue him!" Which shamed me, because my earnest desire was to run from there without looking back, Christian as I was and him no more than a pagan, or perhaps less.
But I pulled him with me deeper into the hill and we found another door, ten paces on. Even I could hear the weeping then; and when we pushed it open Brother Crimthann screamed and cowered back in his chains.
"Hush! It's you we've come for, man!" I told him. He mastered his terror enough to be silent, pressing his hands over his mouth even as tears ran down his face. He smelled of shameful things. I left Lewis in the doorway and knelt beside Crimthann, turning his manacles this way and that to look for a keyhole, a seam, anything that I might force to open them. Nothing there! The rings were smooth and featureless, neither iron nor bronze. I pulled so that Crimthann flinched and whimpered, but they held fast.
"I can't break his bonds!" I told Lewis. He groaned.
"Let me see them," he said, so I pulled him in and wedged the door with my foot, painfully. He studied the manacles a moment as I strained to hold him up, and Crimthann blinked back his tears in confusion.
"I was afraid of this," said Lewis. "I can disable them, but it'll drain my backup system. Can't be helped. Listen, Eogan! This may well finish me. Don't leave my body here! If you can carry it out, my Company will be able to locate me, and they'll come. Now, take my hand and set it on that panel, there, above his head."
I looked up at the little square of blinking lights, bright unnatural colors. "Do you mean this will kill you?" I asked, appalled.
"Oh, no, we don't die. I'm sure they can repair me. But the charge will probably erase -- I wonder if it'll erase my _mind_?" I saw his pupils go wide as the possibilities sank in. "My -- what if all my memories are gone?"
"Then Christ have mercy on you," I replied, for even then I still believed. I lifted his hand as he bid me and laid it against the panel. He sighed once; I felt a stinging shock go through Lewis' body, then, and he made a terrible sound. The panel hissed and spat like a demon unmasked, but the manacles fell away from Crimthann's wrists.
Crimthann needed no urging, he fell forward and crawled at once for the door. Lewis' eyes were blank and blind now, I thought he must surely be dead; but I kept faith and bore him with me out of that cell. We ran for our lives through the tunnel, Crimthann and I, and when I saw the black grate set in the floor I sprang across it with the Salmon-Leap of the old heroes I so admired. No lightning struck me as I hurtled free of the dangerous place: falling fair, I kept running with Lewis, and did not stop until we came out into clean air.
I fell and rolled on the cold hillside and it was gray dawn, the sun not yet risen on Beltane morning, with the clouds in the East all underlit red. Behind me, Brother Crimthann staggered out and fell on his face, to lie shivering and sobbing.
I rose on my knees at once and turned Lewis over. "?enogeraseiromemymllafitahW" he babbled, blinking rapidly, and his spine arched back until I thought it would surely snap. Then he went limp again. He opened his eyes and looked around.
"Well," he whispered, "Lucky me. Even my backup system has a backup." He paused for a moment, as if listening to himself, and his face grew sad. "Oh. Not for long, though. It's just transmitting my location. My organic parts seem to be shutting down." He raised desperate eyes to my face. "Remember, Eogan! The _Codex Druidae, _you must bury it under the floor! And you won't tell what I confessed to you, about what I am -- Oh, God, is this it? Is this what happens to you?"
There was only one thing I could do for him. "What kind of child were you created from?" I asked him. "Had it ever received Christ's grace?"
"What?" He searched my face, bewildered. "No! I was abandoned in the temple at Aquae Sulis!" He gave a hysterical giggle. "Some Roman matron's holiday indiscretion, I've no doubt, left behind at the spa, a little unwanted souvenir..."
"You won't die," I told him confidently; and I swept my hands through the grass that was pearled with the dew of Beltane morning, and I washed that high fine brow of his with it. "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."
I think I expected a vision of Christ then, or a blare of heavenly trumpets at least; but nothing of the sort happened. Lewis endured the sacrament patiently, and smiled a small polite smile.
"Why, how nice. You've given me a soul." His smile widened in ironical amusement. "Now I'll live forever, won't I?"
But the color was going out of his face, and then it left his eyes, and they closed and he was no more than a waxen doll on the hillside. I rose to my feet and looked full into the rising sun. All the birds were singing.
* * * *
And even then I had not lost my faith. I carried Lewis down from Dun Govaun, with Brother Crimthann silent beside me, and we returned to the community and the Abbess was moved to tears, that the brave pagan had given his life to rescue our brother. Yet everyone agreed the story had a happy ending: for hadn't he accepted Christ's grace and gained an immortal soul? And his body was laid on a bier in our little church, and we celebrated a grand funeral Mass for him; and that night I kept the dead watch for my friend, alone with the tall candles around his body and my sorrow and exhaustion.
At some hour in the night I opened my eyes and they were there, the two strangers. One was a knave in oil-stained clothes; the other wore the fine garments of a gentleman. They were standing at the bier and the knave had his hand on Lewis' face, prizing open one eye with his dirty thumb. I leapt to my feet.
The gentleman turned coolly to face me. "I suppose you're the one we have to thank." He gave a brief bow. "My name is Aegeus. We've come to collect our friend, here."
"Can you make him live again?" I asked.
"That's what we're determining now." He nodded at the knave, who had pulled open Lewis' mouth and was examining his teeth. I didn't like to see him handled so disrespectfully. "What do you think, Barry?"
"Maybe," the knave gave Lewis' hair a casual tousle. "Most of the organs have died. He'll be in a Regeneration vat for a few years, but he might be all right."
"What about his memories?" I begged them. "The things he knows! All those stories!"
"Probably wiped out," the knave yawned. "Maybe retrievable. We won't be able to tell for a while."
This so broke the heart in me that I knelt down, with tears brimming in my eyes. The one who called himself Aegeus paced close and stood over me.
"But let's talk about you, my friend. You've seen a lot more than you ought to have seen. What are we going to do about you, eh?" I looked up at him sharply. He was smiling a hard smile.
"I took a vow," I told him in indignation. "To bury that damned silly book and keep silent about what he had to tell me. I don't break vows!" It was true, then.
"That's right; The Silence of The Confessional!" he reflected, and his face became much friendlier. "Well then. Perhaps we can do business, after all. A mortal who can keep his mouth shut can benefit from being our friend, you know. What do you want in life, anyway? Land? Cattle? Or, wait, you're a monk. Something pretty for your church, here?" He waved a hand and looked around.
"Only heal him," I nodded at Lewis. "Only save his mind, if you can!" I thought of all the stories of enchantment Lewis knew, all the remarkable people he must have known, the things he must have seen: Rome in its decline, perhaps the Blessed Patrick, perhaps even the old heroes when they breathed mortal air and hunted the red deer.