"Factotum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cornish D M)

9

petchinin(s) monster-lords most concerned in their own immediate needs and their own schemes, neither attacking nor defending everymen except as circumstances might dictate or if said everymen are encroaching upon a petchinin's patch or plans. As such they are scorned-or at the very least, mistrusted-by both urchins and wretchins. ROSSAMUND roused ears-first to the sound of wild spinet music resonating as if down a tunnel, the notes clear-almost close-astringent at one turn, melancholy the next. It was a version of the melody he was sure he had encountered before but could not summon where… Huh, he said to himself with sluggish complaisance, wrapped in a cozying peace, I did not know Miss Europe played the spinet… He sighed sleepily. Rouse out, sleepyhead, time to make treacle.

Creeping eyes open against the drowsy crust congealed in their corners, Rossamund was puzzled to find the ceiling a spotted roof of roots and compacted brown earth. In the soft light of glowing slimes and many thin, sunny beams of morning emitted through ingenious gaps in wood and soil, Rossamund could see that some openings were windowed with alabaster marble so fine as to be translucent, the delicate effulgence carved into figures of hopping, dancing hares.

This was not Cloche Arde at all!

Recollection crashed like the dropping of a full-laden barrel. He had been taken by the Lapinduce and kept the night on a downy bed of moss in the den of that murderous monster-lord, trapped alone with no notion of any path or method of escape in some sunken warren. For a breath, terrible stories of weak souls carried away to a nicker's den to be feasted on slowly came unhelpfully to mind.Yet wherever here was, in the threwd that waxed and waned with the pulse of the music, there was no threat, no lurking promise of violence. All Rossamund could collect was calm and self-sufficiency and the merest notion of more subdued affections.

He sat up, clouting his head upon the curve of the earthen wall into which his mossy cot was cut. A pile of what he first disgustedly thought was forest sweepings fell off him. He quickly realized it was a jumble of leaves in autumn shades, still supple, cunningly woven together to make a remarkably soft coverlet.

Curling fingers, flexing toes, Rossamund felt no pains but the fresh bump upon his head. By all evidence the Lapinduce had not harmed him. Quite the contrary; even the dandi-dressed wit's dastardly work seemed cured. Rossamund felt as hale and clear-headed as he ever had.

He looked about, blinking. At his left an entrance gaped in the white-daubed wall, a tall misshapen oval opening through roots. He sat listening; no movement beyond the opening, just the spinet-song and beneath it the strangely compressed quiet of the underground… and tingling, self-possessed threwd.

Untwisting himself from the rucked constriction of his sleep-knotted frock coat, the young factotum stood slowly to discover that his feet were bootless and-after a needless pat on his crown-that his head was hatless.

He rolled his eyes and cast about for these items. A lingering, subterranean mist hung thinly mere inches above the smooth cold ground-tiled in a fine mosaic fashioned in the image of frolicking rabbits in fields of lush grasses and bending trees-but no boots and no thrice-high.

Even through his harness he could feel a gnawing cold, a marrow chill of buried places. Wrapping the leafy blanket about him, he stepped gingerly from the cell to find a high arching tunnel heeling away on either hand. Lit by effulgent fungus, its walls were densely entwined with every girth of root, permitting no sight of the dirt behind. Little drifts of blossom and old leaves gathered in nooks between burrow wall and tessellated floor.

A glissando of sharp spinet notes rang down the passage from the lighter end. Creeping toward the melody, Rossamund recognized it as a close variation on that which he had heard only three days before, driving past the Moldwood with Mister Carp on the way to the knavery. As he stole forward, small skitterings whispered from the twilight behind. He became utterly still, but the florid playing only waxed louder, drowning any creeping noises. Rossamund hurried from the dark and about a curve spied a line of three hand-carved archways a dozen yards ahead. Feet clad in soft trews, the young factotum noiselessly approached the first arch and squeezed a peek past its inward pilaster.

Beyond he found the deep cleared cellar of a completely floorless high-house, a square shell of a tower open to the heavens, lighter bands of brickwork among the gray stone and thin, many-mullioned windows evidence of missing stories. Rossamund squinted up into the roofless height dappled with layered leaves and pastel morning sky. A venerable walnut tree grew bent and broad in its midst, much of its trunk and lower branches wound with creeping glory vine. There was no rubble or ruin about it; rather it grew from a paved square of black-and-white marble laid around the walnut's wide-spreading roots. And here, under its shade, sat the Lapinduce astride a stool fashioned of branches writhen together, playing at a spinet of lustrous caffene-colored wood. Clothed now in a heavy high-collared frock coat of shimmering midnight purple stitched with playful rabbits, the mighty beast's back was turned to Rossamund as it hammered away in impassioned throes. Shuddering under this artful assault, the spinet glistened in the variegated light, every panel and plane of the instrument inlaid with traceries of ivory and gold.

The metallic fugue unraveled to a pounding, beautiful acme when, one note short of the final satisfaction, the Lapinduce hesitated, blunt-clawed hands hovering taut with potential by its great rabbit ears. Thus the monster-lord remained, motionless, head turned. Rossamund stared in dread wonderment at the trace of its severe sky-gray eye, heedless of him, of the elderly tree, of the gutted shell of its musical well, of its playing. The young factotum could see subtle movements in the creature's mouth, a voiceless monologue as it stared into the air, into the fathomless sinks of history and memory beyond human record.

All sensible people held that such a creature was an impossibility, a dreadful rumor, a beautiful fiction.Yet here the impossible dwelt, in the very heart of a powerful city filled to its outer curtains with vigilantly invidical folk.

Without the music a great threwdish hush dwelt here; not even the baritone grumble of Brandentown's daily routine carried on the woody, bug-buzzing breath of the day's start. Kindly breezes whispered in the green above, branches barely squeaking as a gentle rain of blossoms and seedling puffs settled like clumsy snow. High to his left, water was dribbling from a circular grate a few feet up the sunken wall, its bubbling caught in a mossy runnel muttering down a marble drain by the arches where Rossamund hid. A puff of forenoon breeze dropped from the cerulean gap above, bringing on its breath the smell of the great creature-an oily, spicy, bestial stink touched with rich spring blossom. Something wheedling within this scent worked to put the young factotum at ease.

In a tiny looping dash, Darter Brown flew down the chute of the gutted building to alight on a walnut branch reaching toward Rossamund over the runnel.

Crouching, the young factotum smiled up furtively at his sparrow friend.

The bird, swallowing some twitching bug it had caught on the wing, twisted his petite black-hooded head to one side and then the other and voiced a brief twitter of greeting.

"So, rossamunderling," the Lapinduce declared suddenly into the hush, its back still turned, "you wish still to be an everyman?"

Nearly toppling back, Rossamund grabbed at the frame of the arch, righting himself. Feeling suddenly nude among the shadows he cast about wildly, looking to flee-but to where?

"Come out from the shadows, little ouranin," the urchin-lord persisted, relaxing his dramatic pose, "and let me greet you a'right."

Reluctantly Rossamund stepped into the mottled light of the open arch, halting cautiously on the bank of the runnel. "Uh-h… Hello, sir…," he stammered. "H-how…"

The mighty urchin pivoted upon its stool, arching about to fix him directly. Black fur bristling, head hunched low between tall collars, its great ears laid flat behind its head and out along its back, the Lapinduce barked, "How? How do I know? Know that you are there or know that you are a rossamunderling? An ouranin? A manikin? A hinderling? A pink-lips? A fake-foe?"

"Uh… b-both, sir," the young factotum squeaked.

In the elucidating light of day the creature's visage was clear: a dark, triangular face covered in a lustrous pelt like rich black velvet, with pale fur ringed about equally pallid eyes; shadowy stripes ran from beneath each lower lid, down and across each high cheek.

Its gaze narrowed.

Alarmed as he was, Rossamund was awed by something eccentrically and inexpressibly handsome in this imposing monster-lord, its face appearing less like a rabbit to him now, more like that of some hunting cat such as he had read about in the scant count of natural philosophy books at Madam Opera's.

The damp black rabbit's nose-oddly endearing and bestial beneath such a humanly astute and judicious regard-twitched, testing the air. "I know because I was there, little ouranin," the urchin murmured, voice still carrying. "I was there when the fresh land sang with threwd so sweet and new as to reach an accord with the pure ringing of the very stars themselves."

A frown darkened its brow.

"I was there when the alosudne, perfidious and haughty-those whom men now call the false-gods-rose up from the waters in their conceit to drive the gentle naeroe away as they sought to seize all three of the middling grounds as their own. I was there when my landling frair and I joined to beat the false-hearted alosudne back to the utter deeps to slumber uselessly evermore."

The Lapinduce became quieter now, speaking rapidly in its passion. "I was there to watch men arrive-born of mud as we-to flourish and, finally, full of the pride of life, set to building tiny empires of their own, whelming and shackling each other, snatching at things once freely given as if they were their own. I was there when they sought to wrest the living sod from us and slew their first urchin by deeds of great and corporate treachery."

Sitting tall and manlike, the beast paused, smoothed its coat hems and continued in a more even tone. "I was there when one whole third of the theriphim declared their hatred of men and compacted to ever thwart them." It stood, reaching thick-sleeved arms out and up, pressing its overlong hands against a heavy walnut bough. At the crown of its swarthy head it would have exceeded eight feet; with its ears it gained another yard of height.Yet, in the lucidity of day's glow it did not appear quite as massive, and its coat lent the monster-lord a regal, almost human, aspect. "Long years have I ruled here till every particle about me has become my own, yet never once have I been greatly troubled by the too-brief souls about me." It took a breath. "All of this, little rossamunderling, is how I know."

Rossamund waited, and though bursting with a swarm of questions provoked by this riddling sermon, he did not speak.

The pause stretched into a weighty silence.

Rossamund blinked.

"Will you give me answer, ouranin?" insisted the monster-lord, breaking the stifling hush. It stepped toward him, a jaunting tip-of-toe stride, its legs elongated like a rabbit's. Unlike the close-cut claws of its hands, the claws on its large coney feet, clicking on the paving, were wicked long and wicked sharp.

Stoutly Rossamund opened his mouth once, twice, but even on the third no more than an astounded gurgle came out of him.

Chirruping urgently, Darter Brown danced winging loops about the Duke of Rabbits' ears.