"Russell,.Sean.-.Darkness.1.-.Beneath.the.Vaunted.Hills.e-txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russo Richard Paul)

Sean Russell




Beneath the Vaunted Hills




Prologue
HE sat before a window that stood slightly ajar and read by starlight. There had been a time when he'd preferred the warm light of day, but in the decades since the passing of his centenary, he'd become more inclined toward the cool illumination of the stars or even the moon. He studied the stars, of course, and one could hardly do that by daylight, but even so, he found the pale light so much more restful. Or perhaps he had just seen enough of the world.
Recently there had been a particular wandering star that he'd been observing nightly, using his improved telescope-an invention of Skye's, ironically. This star had a strange halo about it and a fiery tail. Things even the ancients did not know.
But more than anything he felt its passing. Felt it pull on all the heavenly bodies and, in turn, the effect this had elsewhere. Here, in the house of Eldrich, for instance.
The mage marked his place with a feather and closed the ancient book with care, placing it on a small table. He rose and walked out onto the terrace, looking up at the heavens. Eldrich had been reading Lucklow's treatise on augury-its practice and its perils. Especially its perils. The chapter on interpretation particularly fascinated him. Interpretation was the key, and it was the least certain aspect of the art.
The wandering star, for instance. It meant something-he was utterly sure of that-but try as he might, he could not understand what. And there was no one else whom he might ask.
"Do I feel lonely, being the last?" he asked the stars. He waited a moment and then decided that they could not reply. Only he knew . . . and would not say.
From beyond the garden wall he heard a wolf raise up its voice, the howl reverberating in his own breast. His familiar, off in the hills and wood, hunting as it must.
A spring night . . . still, awaiting the voices of the frogs and insects. Only the choral stars singing their ancient melodies.
He looked up and found the wandering star. "Perhaps we have roamed long enough," he whispered.
Augury tempted him. He could feel it. Perhaps this time he would have a vision that was absolutely clear, and his course of action would be obvious. Obvious beyond all doubt.
"A fool's hope," he said aloud. Certainly he was too old for those.
The world was in motion. There was no doubt of that. Everyone poised to play their part, to make their sacrifice, if that was what was required. After all these many years he could not have a mistake. Not the smallest error.
Eldrich tilted back his head and gazed at the stars, wondering again if he had calculated correctly. If he could make an end of it soon.

Chapter One

It is, perhaps, less than true to say it all began in a brothel, but I found Samual Hayes hiding in such an establishment and this marked the turning point if not an actual beginning. How Samual Hayes had become misfortune's whipping boy, I will never understand.
-The journal of Erasmus Flattery

Hayes thought it particularly appropriate that the streets of the poor lacked public lighting of any kind. One passed out of the light of the better areas into near darkness, only dull candlelight filtering through dirty panes and casting faint shimmering rectangles on the cobbles. At night one often saw dark feet and legs passing through these rectangles of light, or if the passerby walked closer to the window, one would see a silhouetted head and shoulders floating oddly above the street. Hayes had sat in his window often enough to mark this strange anatomical parade passing by-incomplete men and women flitting into existence before each dull little window, then ceasing to be, then coming to meager life again.
Paradise Street-he wondered if the man who named it had foreseen its future-lay near the boundary between the light and darkness, an area of perpetual twilight, perhaps. Almost a border town where few seemed to make their homes permanently. Most were on their way into darkness-a handful were moving toward the light. It was a place where a young man might end up if his family had sacrificed their fortune to foolishness and keeping up appearances, as was the case with Samual Hayes.
For him Paradise Street was also a place to hide from one's creditors, as astonishing as that seemed to him-a young man who, for most of his life, had never given money a second thought.
He passed through a candlelit square of light and looked down at his hands. There he was, not gone yet. Still more or less substantial. Perhaps there was hope.
"His High and Mightiness is still among us, I see," came an old man's voice out of the shadows. Hayes stiffened, but walked on, feeling his resolve harden as well.
He would have thought his fall from grace into this world would have made him one of them, perhaps even engendered some sympathy, but for some few it made him an object of enormous disdain. How could anyone born to privilege have fallen so far as to land in Paradise Street? That is what they thought. Only a fool or a weakling could take such a fall. And there were moments when Hayes feared they were right. It made him all the more grateful for the kind treatment he received from some of his other neighbors.
As he came up to his rooming house, he realized that there were perhaps a dozen people gathered in the shadows across the street, but they were uncommonly quiet.
"Mr. Hayes!" said a woman who was one of the local busybodies. "There's men taking your rooms apart. Look, sir." She pointed up at his windows.
Shadows were moving in his room, though Hayes knew he'd left no lamp burning.
"Flames!" he heard himself say. He realized that everyone stood looking up, but no one made a move to interfere.
Someone laid a hand on his arm as he went to run for his door. It was an old soldier who lived down the street. "Them's navy men, Mr. Hayes," he said with distaste. "Mark my words. Navy men, whether they wear their fine uniforms or no. You'd be best to give them a wide berth, sir. That's my advice, for what it's worth."
"Navy men?" Hayes' rally to save his possessions was stopped short. "Agents of the Admiralty?" There was clearly some mistake.
"And they aren't the only ones, Mr. Hayes," the woman said. "When they arrived, they surprised others already in your rooms. Those'ns jumped out the window. My Tom saw 'em, didn't you, Tom?" she said to a boy who clutched her hand.
The boy nodded and took his fingers from his mouth. "They floated down, landin' soft as pigeons, if you please. Soft as birdies." The woman looked back to Hayes, as though awaiting an explanation.
"But who were they?" Hayes said, asking a question instead. "Robbers? I-I have so little to steal."
"If they were robbers, Mr. Hayes, they were uncommonly well-dressed ones. 'Gentlemen,' Tom said, and the old blacksmith saw them, too. 'Gentlemen,' he said as well. I don't know what you've been up to, Mr. Hayes, but there are men around asking after you-navy men. You'd best be on your way before someone turns you in for the few coins they'll get. There are enough around that would do it, too, I'm sorry to say."
"I'll talk to them. There's some explanation, I'm sure . . ."
The old soldier touched his arm again. "I'm sure you didn't do whatever it was they think you done, sir, but you'd best go. When authorities come bustin' down your door, they don't want to hear no explanations. The gaol is no place for the likes of you, Mr. Hayes. Find the most well-placed friend you have, sir, and go to him. That's your best hope-that and a good barrister. Be off now, before some'un turns you in, as Mrs. Osbourn said. Good luck to you, Mr. Hayes."
A group of burly men appeared around the nearby corner and in the light from a window Hayes saw someone pointing toward him, and he was sure the men he was leading weren't residents of Paradise Street.