"Daley, Brian - Coramonde 01 - The Doomfarers of Coramande UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daley Brian)

THE DOOMFARERS OF CORAMONDE
"Edward, you seeЧor, will seeЧcomes from another reality than ours. 'It's simple, Andre,' he told me once, 'I just hail from different probabilities than you.' Don't let that sour look fool you; he must have his little jests, that one.
"At any pass, Edward's learned a good portion of sorcery from Gabrielle and me since he came here and contacted us. He has a peculiar, sideways aptitude for it. He says that there are, in the world he left behind, machines of war that could slay even Chaffinch. One such is a thing all of metal in which men ride, driven by some internal motive arrangement, mounting weapons like Van Duyn's but far larger. What he proposes is to conjure one of these machines hereЧand gods know, the spell will be nearly as dangerous as the jeopardy in which we find ourselves now. Yes, but it's either that or die under Chaffinch's flaming breath."
Andre got up, wiping fingers on thighs. He checked the sun's declination and said, "Come with me; it's nigh time."
They set off together, entering the once-respectable main hall to climb a winding, spiderwebbed staircase and walk down a dusty corridor. They came to a musty suite of rooms uppermost in the castle. There, a hasty sanctum had been set up.
Van Duyn and Gabrielle were already there, and when the other two entered, they both looked strangely at the Prince, and Springbuck had the impression that they'd been arguing.
He perched on a stool while Andre drew obscure diagrams on the floor over a pentagrammic inscription and Gabrielle read in an infiectionless tongue from a codex of unguessable origin.
Van Duyn was charging the braziers which were placed in each comer of the room; seeing the Prince, he asked, "Well, boy, do you want to stay on with us? I intend to see Yardiff Bey thrown down. I owe hull that."
Springbuck answered haughtily, not liking Van Duyn or his tone of address. "I willЧaccept your aid in regaining my throne, if that is what you're offering."
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Gabrielle laughed again, but this time the outlander was the butt of it and he colored with fury.
"Stupid brat! The days of throne and crowns are over here! D'you think we're toppling your brainless brother just to replace him with you, you spineless coward?"
Springbuck restrained himself no longer. He lurched forward and grabbed a fistful of the scholar's shirt with his left hand, preparatory to striking him; but before he could, the man seized his left wrist with surprising strength and in some clever, rapid manner twisted it so that Surehand's son was forced to his knees, wrist painfully doubled over and in real danger of breaking. The Prince cried aloud in shock.
The deCourteneys were both watching now. "You must be quiet," Andre reproved. "We dare weighty things here; we must concentrate to the fullest. Edward, please take your place."
The outlander unwillingly released the Prince, who locked eyes with him in mutual agreement that the issue wasn't settled and resisted the impulse to cut him down on the spot. The scholar and the deCourteneys stepped to various prearranged locations among the occult designs on the floor.
Springbuck held his throbbing wrist to his chest and flushed with shame. He was sure that he had lost face among them irredeemably, and regretted most that Gabrielle had seen it. Then his gaze met with hers, and he read a rare message there, a soft and feminine one of sorrow that he had been hurt and worsted. He tried to fit this with what he knew of her already and made his first dim start at understanding the enigma that was Gabrielle deCourteney.
"Your Grace," she said softly, "please stand thereЧ yes, there in that circle of protection, that any powers liberated here work no harm upon you."
He stepped into it, a small circle picked out in dust that looked like crushed emerald. Flexing his fingers, he decided that his wrist had not been badly sprained. Van Duyn, white-faced, set the braziers to burning.
Springbuck noticed with curiosity the contrast be-
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THE DOOM F ARE RS OF CORA MONDE
tween Andre and his sister: he with broad torso, bowed legs and fat, jiggling belly and buttocks and she mystically lovely. She posed unconsciously, weight on one firm leg, the firelight sending ruby combers breaking across her hair. Springbuck felt a desire rising in him, one he'd not wished to acknowledge.
Old Van Duyn, now, was an angular sort of fellow whose muscles had begun to show the slack of age, but with considerable sinew about him, as the Prince now knew to his discomfort, and moved with the ease of fitness.
As the unusual trioЧunusual foursome, he amended, for surely he was as oddly met as theyЧmoved to their tasks, Andre took the lavaliere from his neck and took his sword from its scabbard. Unscrewing the pommel knob, he dropped the chain and Calundronius into the hollow there, then replaced the cap.
"Within this container Calundronius is itself nullified for a time," he explained, laying the sword in a corner.
He took his place again and he, Gabrielle and Van Duyn began a unified chanting in some monotonous language, unlike that of the codex and somehow much more disquieting.
The windows were curtained, but some daylight had penetrated prior to the incantation. Now, though, it was as if all light was forced from the room save the glow in the braziers and a single candle in the center of the pen-tacle. They were in darkest night and a bone chill had taken over; Springbuck couldn't supress the conviction that they had somehow left the room and arrived elsewhere, in a place where it was beyond his ability to orient himself or apprehend reality.
Gabrielle threw her hands over her head and her entire body began to glow with a blue light that pulsed and flickered.
An amorphous shadow rose amid the runes, expanding from the floor in a manner which struck the Prince as unwilling. He had the distinct impression that it was listening to the chanting, that it scrutinized him briefly and then ignored him, and that it received instructions with a hateful resentment.
Gabrielle and the scholar were silent now, though the
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woman still radiated the eerie aura and gave the appearance of being in a trance. Andre changed his tone from a chant to a steady, placid mode of speech. Springbuck thought that he assumed the attitude of a schoolmaster assigning a complex task to a defiant and not-terribly-bright student.
Without warning the darkness rolling within the pen-tacle was throwing itself from one side of its invisible confinement to the other, straining to break free qnd destroy the mortals in the room. Andre spoke a syllable of duress in a voice fearsome and completely unlike anything Springbuck had heard from him before. The thing within the pentacle was instantly quiet.
Andre issued a last instruction and, with an almost vocal snarl, the being was gone. Light and warmth returned to the chamber.
Andre stepped from his spot to recover Calundronius vand Springbuck noticed that he was bathed in sweat and that his pudgy hands trembled badly.
"Well," asked the Prince as Gabrielle began to reorder the room, "where is our defender? Where is this fabulous metal war machine?"
Van Duyn, extinguishing a brazier, replied, "Our . . . unwilling benefactor has gone to arrange for its transportation here. It wouldn't do to have the contraption materialize in this room, so Andre specified that it be brought to the meadow outside the castle. If it's moving when- it arrives here, it could do damage within the confines of a room or the bailey."
The scholar and the wizard hurried off together to watch for the fruit of their handiwork, chattering importantly in the way of experimenters everywhere. Springbuck shifted his attention to Gabrielle as she bound up her hair with rawhide throngs.
She came to him where he stood nursing his wrist and there was much, much in the glances they exchanged.
"IЧI knew that you and Edward would come to conflict, knew it in my heart when I first saw you," she told him, her eyes still holding his. She took his injured wrist between cool, elegant hands.
"Not hurt seriously," she decided after exploring it gently with her fingertips. "The pain will leave it soon."
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THE DOOMFARERS OF CORAMONDE
They stood quite motionless so, for a moment.
His gaze was first to fall away.
"I suppose we should be on the ramparts with the others," he murmured,
Her hands left his and he was immediately sorry he had spoken. He would have continued, for there were more words that he wished to say to her, but he was forestalled by a staccato blast from the distant meadow.
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