"Cook, Glen - Dread Empire 01 - Shadow Of All Night Falling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

That evening, while people enjoyed a pleasant winter's evening in cities like Itaskia, Dunno Scuttari, and Hellin Daimiel, Iwa Skolovda's tributary Dvar groaned under the attentions of an unnatural storm. All night it raged and, when it passed on, Dvar lay under fifteen feet of snow. As her savaged people dug out, the Storm Kings rode north toward Ravenkrak.


THREE: Out of the Mouth of a Fool

A man called Saltimbanco, better known as Mocker elsewhere, sat by Prost Kamenets's Dragon Gate, his plot of muddy earth besieged by unwashed, half-clad children. They all giggled at him, or demanded a trick. The obese pseudo-philosopher, pretend-wizard, despairing of driving them away, tried to shout over their clamor while mopping floods of sweat from his dark face.

"Hai, Great Lord," he called to a passing traveler, "have your future told! Fare not forth from glorious Prost Kamenets without hearing what Fates hold in store. This unworthy obesity is known as great necromancer, your future to foretell. But a single korona only, Lord, and potent cantrips enfold your person. A single korona and your worthy self is made proof against every evil spell."

The traveler spat in the general direction of the fat man and passed on, out the Dragon Gate. His gaudy chariot rolled beneath smoking, putrid braziers of incense, past statues of winged lions and ugly gargoyles, between the two titanic green stone dragons, Fire-Eyes and Flame-Tongue.

Saltimbanco, casting his voice, cursed the traveler through the teeth of one of his collection of skulls. Ignoring his language, the children squealed with delight. They called their friends. The fat man continued, directing invective at himself for having attracted more of the rowdy brats. His large brown eyes, squinting angrily, were as baleful as those of Fire-Eyes at the gate.

He began a lengthy black invocation calling for thunder, lightning, fire from the sky to fall on the precocious urchins. Nothing happened. His magic was false, though impressive-and the children knew him a fraud.

"Pshaw!" Saltimbanco snorted, fat lips tight in a brown face as round as a melon, "pshaw!" Speaking to himself, he muttered, "Mighty, generous, wealthy Prost Kamenets, my mother's prize carbuncle! Three cold, miserable, rainy days sitting by famous Dragon Gate, and no shekels. Not even one little, very corroded copper cast this humble, helpful soul. What kind of strange city this? No profit here, unless spittle and dung be measured in shekels and talents. Saltimbanco, O closest and flabby, friendliest friend of my heart, time comes to travel on, to seek great greener pasture on other side horizon. Maybe more superstitious realm where people believe in gods and ghosts and powers of mighty necromancer. Self, would travel to fabled kingdom of Iwa Skolovda.

"Woe!" cried the fraudulent wizard, his belly shaking as he answered himself. "So far! This corpulence is in no wise able to walk so far! Large, well-fed student philosophic should perish of over-exertion before marching of twentieth weary mile!"

Seeing his lazy nature would want convincing, his adventurous half marshalled its most potent-and least truthful-argument. "And, obese one, what dread future transpires should harridan wife of self discover recalcitrant husband returned to ungrateful Prost Kamenets? Reddest murder right in heart of filthy streets!" He paused for a moment of contemplation. Beneath his brows, he examined the watching children. They had fallen silent, hung on his words. They were ready.

"Moreover," said he to himself, "man of tender feet, it is not meant that self should walk many miles on long path to Iwa Skolovda. Cannot we, being of many talents and supported by this loyal band of younglings, perchance purloin some worthy transport?"

His face brightened at the suggestion of theft. He answered himself, "Hai! When stared in face by fangy-toothed necessity, this obesity is capable of all things. Wife? Hai! What a horrible thought!" He was silent for a long moment, then looked up, selected a half-dozen youngsters, motioned them closer.

Loungers by the Dragon Gate, of which there were ever hosts ready to fleece unwary travelers, were treated to an unusual spectacle the following morning. A fat brown man in an ornate racing chariot, emblazoned with the arms of a powerful noble family, hastily fled the city. Behind the chariot ran a pack of laughing, ragged children. Behind these, hotly pursuing the vehicle but hampered by the youngsters, were a dozen pikemen of the city watch. Then came a band of professional thief-takers, anticipating a considerable reward from the chariot's owner. Lastly, too late to have hopes of being in at the kill, came an aging beauty wailing like a Harpy deprived of prey (Mocker, too, had wailed at her price for playing his mythical wife).

The cavalcade thundered through the gate and north, the fat man laughing madly.

Presently, having lost the thief, the disgruntled pursuers returned. Out in the countryside, a laughing fat scoundrel trotted his new chariot up the road to Iwa Skolovda.

As soon as safety was apparent, Saltimbanco began vacillating. Each wayside spring was an excuse for loitering. The first inn he encountered had the pleasure of his windy custom for much of a week-till the landlord suspected deviltry and threw him out. He didn't really want to go to Iwa Skolovda, though he wasn't consciously aware of it.

Later, Saltimbanco stopped in for a talk with the owner of a prosperous farm. The farmer thought him feeble-minded, but considered that an advantage in the business of horse-trading. He got Saltimbanco's chariot and horses for three pieces of silver and a bony, pathetically comic little donkey. This beast appeared ridiculous beneath Saltimbanco's hugeness, but seemed not to notice the load. He plodded stolidly northward, unconcerned with his new master's foibles.

The farmer left the trade laughing behind his hand, but so did Saltimbanco. He had back the money spent in Prost Kamenets, and a donkey besides. And the donkey would be half what he needed to make his Iwa Skolovdan entrance both noteworthy and innocent. Looking the part, he began building a reputation as a mad, windy, harmless fool.

He started by giving scores of moronic answers to questions asked him in the villages he passed, then demanded payment for his advice. He became righteously indignant if that payment were not forthcoming. The common people of the valley of the Silverbind loved him. They paid just for the entertainment. He laughed often, to himself, as Iwa Skolovda drew nearer and nearer.

His movement north was so slow that his fame advanced before him-which was what he had in mind. Soon each village prepared improbable questions against his coming. (Usually dealing with cosmogony and cosmology: the Prime Cause, shape of the earth, nature of the sun, moon, and planets. Sometimes, though, serious requests for advice came, and those he answered more than usually madly.) When, almost two months after leaving Prost Kamenets, he at last passed Iwa Skolovda's South Gate, his reputation was made. Few thought him anything but the lunatic he pretended-and this was the foundation of his plan. Without it he couldn't succeed, would never see the pay for the job he had been hired to do.

A week after his auspicious and feted arrival, after he had taken suitably odd lodgings in a poor quarter of the town and had converted them into a weird temple, the fat man said to himself, "Self, should begin work." On a cold, blustery morning he entered Market Square on his donkey, searched the stalls till he found one belonging to a farmer met in the country. "Self," he said to the peasant, "would borrow empty box."

"Box?" the mystified farmer asked.

"Box, yes, for pulpit." He said it deadpan, but with enough intensity to convince the peasant some high madness was involved. The farmer grinned. Saltimbanco smiled back-secretly congratulating himself.

"Will this do?"