"Troy Denning - Pages of Pain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Denning Troy)

Pages of Pain
Troy Denning
Pains Of The Mind

Black hair and ebony eyes, a cleft chin and sun-bronzed skin, he is no denizen of mine. He
shoves his way through the teeming lanes of the Lower Ward, both arms wrapped around that enormous
amphora he carries and no hand free for his sword. He wears the bronze armor of Thrassos, with no
cape to protect against the acid haze that always hangs in this part of the city. From his belt dangles a
purse, fat and naked, just daring some fingersmith to ply his trade. The gray-swaddled crowd swirls
around him with scarcely a stare; with Abyssal fiends and celestial seraphim walking the streets, they
have better things to heed than wide-eyed pilgrims too naive to hide their coin.
A clever disguise, but I know that Thrasson for a Hunter. Those ebony eyes can see through my
thickest granite walls, and that long aquiline nose can smell a drop of blood at a hundred paces. Those
ears-small and shaped like shells, in the human fashion - those ugly little ears can hear a hiss of pain in the
next ward. He has one of those long forked tongues that can taste the fear of those who have. looked
upon my face. And if the Thrasson presses his hands to the cobblestones, he can feel the coldness of my
passing. I know he can.
In Sigil, the Lady of Pain always knows. I hear all the lies whispered into all the tepid ears in the
dark bedchambers of all the great manors. I see every hand that slips into an open pocket on every
bustling street, and I feel the dagger that bums in the belly of every trusting fool who ever followed a
glitter girl into a dark alley. No longer can I tell where Sigil begins and I end; no longer can I separate
what I perceive from what the city is. I am Sigil.
(In a dreary room where sick men slake their secret fevers, a yellow-bruised girl climbs naked
from the zombie pit. She opens her palm and walks the aisles and does not cringe when the hot hands
caress her thighs. She lives the best way she can; in Sigil, the noblest act is to survive.)
I open my eyes, and the Lady of Pain is thereтАФnot just watching, but stalking the Hunter up the
teeming street, with the clamor of forge hammers ringing in my ears and the stink of hot slag scorching my
nostrils. She is tall and serene, a statuesque beauty of classic features, with sulfurous eyes and a cold,
callous air. A halo of many-styled blades surrounds her head, some notched and pitted, others silver and
gleaming, but all keen-edged and tainted with blood. The hem of her brocaded gown sweeps along the
grimy cobblestones, but never soils.
My gray-swaddled denizens bustle by, blissfully unaware that she - no, I - that I walk among
them. Only if my feet break touch with the ground will they notice me, and I am careful to keep my shoes
on the street. Better for them to see the Lady of Pain when they have offended me, when they feel the
fear eating their .bellies and hear the death gods calling their names.
Whenever my denizens brush against me, tiny white welts rise on their skin. Before my eyes,
these blisters swell into thumb-shaped pods. They begin to grow more slowly, then sprout dozens of
hooked spines. As the crowd mills about, the barbs catch hold of anything they touch, and the husks pass
to fresh carriers. They continue to enlarge and soon latch onto someone new, then someone else after
that, and it is not long before a sea of bulging pods is spreading steadily outward around me.
My denizens continue to bustle about their business. They cannot see the pods, nor feel the extra
weight, nor even smell the fetid reek that clings to their bodies. Only I perceive the husks, slowly swelling
and turning emerald and gold and ruby and jet; only I see them oozing yellow ichor and starting to throb
like hearts.
Thus are the four Pains spread through the multiverseтАФ agony, anguish, misery, and despairтАФto
ripen and burst and bring low the mighty and the meek alike. From whence they come, I do not
remember. It may be that I create them myself, or that they rise from some hidden place deeper and
blacker than the bottom layer of the Abyss, where smoke hangs thick as rock and death is the sweetest
memory. I can only say there is a void in my chest where I once had a heart, and from this emptiness
springs all the suffering in the multiverse.