Текст книги "Hastrom City Rising (The Adventures of Letho Ferron Book 2)"

Alaric’s lungs burn cold blue as he struggles to catch his breath. The air continues to grow colder and thinner as he ascends the mountain. He has been climbing for hours, and the numbness in his legs threatens to overtake the burn in his chest. His destination is a cut in the skin of the god mountain that he can see, far above, a crooked smile that mocks his weakness. He fears his legs will give out under the strain of traversing the waist-deep snow, but he will not allow himself to falter. No. He will not give the others that satisfaction.

Farther up the mountain’s unkind slope, a group of men garbed head to toe in thick animal pelts glide atop the snow on wide shoes crafted from strips of leather and tree branches. The largest one, called Hrogar, calls out:

“Little girl! Little girl? Are you lost in this forest?” His tone is playfully mocking, and he speaks in the clipped syllables of their native tongue.

Other men join him in abrupt laughter that falls somewhere between scornful and good-natured. Their voices tumble down the mountainside, and the trees groan, crying out to be relieved of their snowy burden. Alaric knows it is part of the test. He knows that his tribesmen are at once measuring his fortitude and his ability to withstand the barbs they fling at him. To be a swordbrother, one must have a thick hide and a swift and strong arm, for he who cannot share laughter with his brothers is not permitted to die with them.

“Hrogar, you are lucky that I am not allowed my snowshoes, otherwise I would come up there and clout your head so hard your eyes would go crossed,” Alaric shouts.

The other men whistle at Alaric’s retort, buffeting Hrogar about the shoulders.

“Ooh, a feisty one,” Hrogar calls back.

“We’ll see how bold your words are once I emerge from the cave of proving,” Alaric shouts to the men, with an air of bravado he does not feel.

If I emerge from the cave.

Hrogar slows a bit to walk alongside Alaric. They share idle conversation and a few crude jokes, for which Alaric is deeply thankful. Hrogar can always be counted on to lighten the mood, even in the darkest times. Alaric looks at his friend’s face and sees the boy he grew up with, although that boy is now barely visible within the hard flesh of the man Hrogar has become.

“What do you think that I will find, Hrogar?” Alaric asks, nodding his head at the cave entrance above them.

Hrogar’s face turns white, and he casts his eyes to his feet.

“Alaric, you know it is forbidden to speak of such things.”

“I am sorry. But all the same, I would be much less fearful if I knew what to expect.”

“Even if I told you, it wouldn’t matter. The trial is different for every man,” Hrogar says, and his eyes cloud for a moment. Alaric imagines that Hrogar is remembering his own trial. He doesn’t like what he sees in his friend’s expression.

“Is it real? Is there truly magic in the cave?”

The other men have slowed a bit, and are now within earshot of Alaric and Hrogar’s conversation; the Elder casts Hrogar a disapproving look.

“Enough!” Hrogar says in a harsh whisper.

“Forgive me, old friend,” Alaric says, placing his hand on Hrogar’s shoulder. One of the men above them says something crude about Hrogar’s mother, and the boy Alaric once knew quickens his pace to join his fellow swordbrothers.

Alaric continues his upward climb. He sees the entrance to the cave just above, an opening so dark as to appear anomalous. His chest burns, but no longer from exertion. Fear begins to fill his chest, limbs, and arms; his breath comes hard and fast, punctuating the arid cold. He tries to hide his rising terror from the men above, attempts to downplay the jitter in his limbs. Thoughts of flight fill his mind, but there is no turning back.

To run is death. I must face my fear. I will become a swordbrother.

The gap in the mountain grows ever larger, a malevolent god’s crooked smile. Alaric focuses on each step, though his feet want to turn and run in the opposite direction. He feels the wetness in his moccasins, the cold air searing his raw nostrils. The sound of crunching snow underfoot somehow reaches his ears over the thrum of his heartbeat, and then he is standing among the older men.

Alaric is aware that Edulf is speaking. He sees the old one’s mouth moving, feels the flint-hardness of the man’s cerulean eyes upon him, but he is still drowning in the deafening roar of his own heart and lungs. Edulf, the old one. Bent by time but not broken. Arms still strong enough to wield his great axe.

“Boy, do you hear me?” Edulf says.

“Yes, Sundin, I hear you,” Alaric wheezes.

Edulf pauses for a moment to allow Alaric to catch his breath.

“Alaric, son of Hastim, today is the day of your second birth. You will face the trial of manhood, as did you father before you, and his father before him. You must enter the cave of Tar-Sun, where you will fast for one sun and one moon, to face whatever the gods bring to you. Should you weather this trial with your mind and body intact, you shall become a swordbrother.”

Edulf hands Alaric a pitiful sword, dull and notched from hard use.

“I thank you, my liege-lord. I will prove myself worthy to bear your shield and your mark.”

The men nod, grunting deep from their chests. Alaric takes one last look at them. Edulf greets Alaric with a smile, but Alaric can see indifference in the old one’s eyes. There are stronger, braver men waiting to take the test should Alaric fail.

As he surveys the men around the Sundin, Alaric wonders if he will be welcomed warmly even if he does survive his ordeal. He studies their stout chests, their legs like tree trunks, and then he looks down at his own birdlike chest and pale, gaunt arms.He wonders why Edulf is allowing him to take the test in the first place. A favor to Alaric’s father? No, of course not. Men do not do favors for the dead.

Alaric pushes the turmoil from his mind, clearing it. He thinks of the reason why he has climbed the mountain today. Shena, the girl with the red hair and blue eyes.

I shall marry her, once I have become a swordbrother.

“Get on with it, Alaric. I have a woman to bed and ale to drink,” says Edun, Edulf’s oldest son. The men laugh, at Alaric’s expense. Alaric looks to Hrogar, who tries to hide his emotion by running his fingers through his beard. His hands tremble as he tugs at his reddish-brown mustache, straightening it. In the end he joins his swordbrothers in laughter to mask his emotions, each peal of laughter a lash against Alaric’s back.

Alaric places a hand on Hrogar’s shoulder, then turns to those who would be his swordbrothers and attempts to form what might be his final words. No words come.

Lowering his head, he makes his way into the mouth of the cavern.

****

The cave is dressed in midnight and palpably humid. Shards of light knife down from fissures in the ceiling, but it’s not quite enough; it will take some time for Alaric’s eyes to adjust. He steels himself and pauses to take in the cave around him. Nothing stirs. He can hear the men outside laughing, exchanging tales of bravery and battle. In his heart he knows they do not believe that he will survive the test. Even his good friend Hrogar appears to have little faith; he had seemed one breath away from bursting into tears as Alaric took his first steps through the cave entrance.

I sense no power here. The trial is a lie, just as I suspected.

Alaric is overcome with an urge to run from the cave, to return and run down the streets of his village, shouting the truth at the top of his lungs:

There is no draga in the mountain. It is all a lie!

Then he senses it. A force traces across his skin, sensing him even as he senses it. Suddenly Alaric’s intellect is at the mercy of innate fear and superstition. There is something here, after all, and it causes Alaric’s arrogance to fade.

As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he scans his surroundings. The cave floor is littered with discarded bones and broken skulls. Most of them are from small animals. Alaric spots a skull that is human, and his stomach lurches.

A gravelly roar erupts deeper in the cave. It echoes off the stone, which makes it difficult to gauge its distance or direction. Alaric feels a tingle course up and down his spine as fireside legends become reality, the stories of a great cave-beast and worse playing out across the fertile canvas of his fearful mind. Warmth spills down his front and the insides of his thighs. He draws his meager sword and takes his first step toward where he believes the roar originated.

As he moves forward, the roar is replaced by snorting and shuffling sounds. Another low grunt, this one percussive and so close that Alaric believes he can feel displaced air on his cheek. The beast could very well be in the next chamber, he thinks.

It is.

He sees the beast, and the beast sees him. It is an old she-bear, one of the offspring of the legendary Tar-Sun, the oldest and most feared of the cave bears, once worshipped as a god by his people. Alaric knows the creature before him is just an animal, made of blood and bone, but that does nothing to alleviate the fear sapping the strength from his legs. As the clerics have taught him, Alaric speaks the words to summon G’ner, the fire spirit, and G’lumn, the master of earth.

Nothing happens, and he is not surprised.

The bear is at least eight feet tall, her ragged coat thick like the snowdrifts that armor the mountain above and all around him. The fur is caked in layers of dried gray earth, as though the creature has been wallowing in it. Alaric can see that the top of her broad, flat head is bald, the scalp pox-ridden and scaly. The eyes are rheumy but filled with focused hatred.

This descendant of Tar-Sun rises to her full height and cuts loose a bowel-rattling roar, her black lips pulling back from sore-covered gums to reveal yellow tusks wreathed in froth. She drops to all fours and lumbers toward Alaric.

And that’s when everything becomes a drama in which he is but a spectator.

This isn’t happening to me.

Yet the the bear lumbers closer in slow-ticking frames. Alaric can see himself reflected in her eyes now, and for some reason this image snaps him out of his stupor. He begins to backpedal, stumbling over a skull and falling onto his backside. He scrabbles backward on his hands like a crab, but doesn’t get very far before she is on him. Her jaws clamp down on his calf, and he feels muscle tearing and bones grinding together. He lets loose a pathetic howl. It is a primitive roar, shapeless and hoarse, springing forth from deep within the very core of his being. The cave bear jerks her head up and back, and Alaric feels his body become weightless, pivoting on the fulcrum of his leg in her jaws. He feels more tearing pain, and then he is flying through the air, arms pinwheeling. He hits the ground hard, and the air in his lungs explodes out of him.

He is on the verge of blacking out, but the pain in his leg keeps him from losing consciousness. He tries to get back to his feet, but his leg won’t support his weight. Then she is on him again. Massive arms wrap around him, and he feels her claws punch through his thick hide shirt. She lifts him off his feet, and her jaws close on his head.

All he can hear is the horrid sound of her fangs shredding his scalp and raking across the bare bone of his skull. Her jaws loosen, and Alaric feels momentary relief in the thought that maybe she is going to stop, that she has lost interest in him. But she merely repositions her teeth—and this time he feels her fangs puncture his skull. There is no longer pain, just eerie detachment—and a heightened sense of the sights and sounds around him.

It is at this moment that he knows that he is going to die, and he prepares himself. He has disgraced his family, his tribe. He will not be a swordbrother. He thinks about Shena. At least he will not have to see the disappointment in her eyes, nor those of his tribesmen.

YOUR SWORD. HER EYE. DO IT NOW!

A voice in his head. Could it be one of the gods? With a jolt of improbable strength,Alaric raises his arm and plunges the small blade into the bear’s eye. The beast rears back and claps both paws to its wounded eye, gummy fluid running down the fur on her cheek. Alaric falls to the floor in a heap, the gashes in his back screaming as his weight grinds them into the stone beneath him.

GET UP. MOVE TOWARD THE SOUND OF MY VOICE.

How can I move toward a voice that’s inside my head?

Alaric’s mind reels. He feels the urge to just lie there, to give up. The pain has subsided—replaced by a calming haze that descends upon his consciousness. Tendrils of numbness begin to spread through his body, and the instinct to survive begins to disappear beneath a sea of tranquil black.

The dying sleep. It comes for me.

NO. GET UP. MOVE, NOW!

An unseen hand lifts Alaric from the ground, and for the first time in his life he believes that forces beyond the reach of his relatively limited reasoning capabilities do exist. The bear is still in the throes of agony, pawing at the blade that is still lodged in her eye. Alaric attempts to step forward, and he does not fall. The unseen force tightens around his leg, and he gasps as the pain comes rushing back in a flood, more agonizing than ever.

It tries to kill me!

But when he looks down, he sees that this gesture is benign; it has stopped the bleeding. He hobbles forward, deeper into the cavern, his strength and resolve returning with each step. He can hear the bear roaring behind him, the sound of her leathery feet slapping against the cave floor. He no longer cares. Brute survival instinct and the unseen hand guide him forward. There is no light this far down in the belly of the mountain. He has never experienced such all-encompassing darkness; he can taste it in his mouth and feel it pressing down on him with the full weight of the mountain.

He travels through the darkness for what seems like an eternity, having lost any way to measure time except by the beating of his heart. All is silent. Even his footfalls are muted as the force carries him through the void.

As he presses forward, the light begins to return. Shapes manifest in the darkness, and soon he can make out the stalactites and stalagmites around him, the blessed light glinting off the moisture that coats them.

NOT MUCH FARTHER NOW.

Who are you?

YOUR QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED. KEEP MOVING.

I am in the thrall of a draga, Alaric thinks.

AH. SO QUICK TO LABEL THAT WHICH YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

“What is label?” Alaric asks aloud.

He receives no answer.

Another yawning crack in the skin of the mountain materializes before him, washing his body in holy light. It is a baptism, a rebirth, his body anointed with the warm kiss of the sun.

This place is not known to his people. If Edulf or any of his arrogant ilk had ever ventured this far, surely they would have boasted of it. Pride surges in Alaric’s chest. The force squeezes his ruined calf.

WITH MY HELP, ALARIC. REMEMBER THAT.

How do you know my name?

The voice offers no answer.

The crevice opens onto a flat area between the mountain’s peaks. Charred pine stumps protrude from the mountainside like the remnants of an enormous ribcage. In the center of this sore in the mountain’s hide sits a giant thing that Alaric cannot comprehend. Nothing in his experience on the planet Eursus provides him with the ability to know what lies broken before him in the clearing. He turns to flee, for even the she-bear terrifies him less than the irreconcilable thing before him. But the unseen force holds him in place.

Boat. Fish. These are the only terms that his brain can align with the construct before him. It is so large that Alaric cannot see it at all once without turning his head. It protrudes from the blackened ground like an arrow sunk deep into the mountainside. Vines as thick as Alaric’s legs entwine the construct, so densely packed that he can barely see its hide beneath them. A black, leafless tree made up of twisted limbs emerges from the top through a visible tear in the structure’s hide.

As Alaric draws closer he can see the fish boat’s obsidian surface glistening from between the vines. It is made of a material that resembles the stuff the blacksmith pounds into swords and shields.

Hollow silver cups as big as huts line the flattened backside of the construct. Alaric cannot even begin to discern their purpose. He dares not take a step closer, but then he hears the bear crashing into the clearing behind him.

He chooses the unknown threat before him over the known terror behind him as the unseen hand guides him closer to the giant old thing, under its crushing shadow. As Alaric draws closer, he sees what he presumes is a door. It opens with a hiss, and the force draws him toward it.

He takes a moment to look back. The bear is standing on her hind legs, her head cocked, watching events unfold with what Alaric imagines is absolute bafflement. Perhaps the very force that guides him on is holding her in place. Or maybe she has some primal notion that she will only find fear and death inside the belly of the fearsome thing atop the mountain.

Once inside, Alaric surmises that the giant thing is some sort of house. He sees doors that open onto dark hallways choked with dirt and underbrush. Shadowy things with bright eyes and bristly legs scramble and skitter. He sees the eyes of a large mountain cat peering at him from a walkway above, emerald light glimmering in its eyes. A strange fire glows from torches that line the walls and ceiling of the structure. The firelights, as he names them, do not flicker like flames, but blink intermittently in shades of red, blue, and yellow.

He does not understand all of what he is seeing, but he guesses.

These small pieces of ground (stairs) are for climbing above this path and going to the next.

These glowing eyes (screens) allow the god to see me.

These are the veins through which the god’s blood travels (wires).

The unseen hand moves him farther into the hut to a final doorway. Inside he can see the base of the black tree, and rays of light filter in from the gaping hole in the roof through which the tree has grown. The invisible hand presses him between the shoulders gently, and he steps over the threshold.

The black tree has grown up from the floor of the room. The root section is a tangled mess of ropy vines, and there he sees a pair of eyes gazing back at him. At first he cannot reconcile what he is seeing. How can a tree have eyes? But then he begins to make out the shapes around the eyes. The eyes are set in the face of some sort of animal; the face ends in a toothy snout that is contorted with rage, or maybe pain—Alaric cannot tell which. He cannot fathom how a creature came to be trapped inside the flesh of a tree.

“Alaric. At last you have come,” the thing says, at last aloud, though its mouth doesn’t move. Alaric is not sure which is more absurd, the voice existing only in his head, or coming from a strange beast trapped in a tree.

“Draga, you have brought me to your lair. I am at your mercy,” Alaric says.

“I am no demon, Eursan. And I mean you no harm.”

“How do you know my name?” Alaric asks.

You must never speak to the draga. Their words are poison and their trickery is boundless, says the voice of the holy man from his village, inside Alaric’s mind. Alaric senses the creature’s potent intellect and the raw press of its desire all around him.

“I know your name, young one, because I can see into your mind. It is also how I can speak your native tongue. But we have greater things to discuss.”

“I will hear your words, wise one,” Alaric says. The creature laughs. It sounds like thunderclaps echoing off the stone face of the mountain. It is the most beautiful sound Alaric has ever heard.

“Very well, Eursan. I have watched your people from afar for a span of time you cannot imagine. I have seen your race rise up from the lesser beasts and claim dominion over the land. I have waited long for one of your race to discover this place so that I might bestow a great gift upon him. Many have come to the cave, and I have spoken to them. But you are the first to make it to my lair, as you called it. “

Alaric does not understand the meaning of all the draga’s words, but the creature is feeding him meaning and imagery, tilling the soil of Alaric’s fertile mind and planting seeds there.

“What is this gift you speak of? Why me? Why not Edulf? Hrogar?”

Peals of laughter again.

“Those fools? Their minds would shatter under the weight of the gift. They are weak here.” Alaric feels an invisible finger tapping on his forehead. “You know you are something different, set apart from them. It is your mind, young one, that has allowed me to bring you to this very place.”

Imagery as clear and brilliant as shards of lightning gashing the sky.

“The strength of your intellect allowed me to maintain the bond between our minds long enough to bring you here alive. But you will not remain so for long. Once I release you from my grip, your wounds will begin to bleed anew. Even if you make it out of my lair alive, the bear outside will surely finish you.”

Only the draga doesn’t say lair. He uses the words of Alaric’s tongue for star and boat. Alaric understands. He has all but decided to give himself to the creature. What other choice does he have?

“What would you have me do?” Alaric asks.

“I answer your question with another. What would you have me do? What do you want, Alaric? Power? Riches? Glory? Is there a woman whose love you desire? Or a man’s? I can give you all that you desire, and more. Power that your mind cannot yet comprehend.”

…must never speak to the draga their words are poison…

Alaric knows the creature speaks the truth. He can feel the severity of his wounds. He knows that he is only alive because the creature wishes it to be so. He believes that the draga can end his life if it so chooses.

He makes his choice.

“My only wish is to not die on this day. In this place.”

“That is all? I can grant this and so much more. Accept my gift, and fear no death or shadow.”

“I accept your gift.”

“My name is Abraxas, and I have come across a vast ocean of stars to find you, Alaric. Swear fealty to me, take me as your master, and I will take you as my own hand, the executor of my will.”

“I swear fealty to you, Abraxas. I claim you as my new Sundin.”

Alaric falls to one knee. The firelight glows white, surrounding him in a circle of suffused light. There are markings embedded in the light ring that he cannot understand. Then his attention is drawn by a rustling among the vines of the obsidian tree. A strange serpent slides from Abraxas’s maw and slips down along the side of the tree and onto the floor, then begins to slither toward Alaric. Yet Alaric feels no fear, even as the thing unfurls into barbed tentacles that crawl up his arms, cold and slick. He feels the barbs embed themselves in his neck and chest. The tentacles being to pulse, and Alaric feels a disorienting sensation as Abraxas begins pumping something cold into his body.

As his consciousness begins to fade, the voice of the old god Abraxas whispers in his ear, telling him to have no fear.

****

Alaric awakens in warm blackness. To his joy he feels whole, unblemished. He attempts to twist his body and feels fleshy resistance all around him. He tries to push with his feet, and his head presses against a skin-like wall of something. He feels it give. Light begins to invade the dark place.

He presses again, and blinding white light obliterates the darkness as an opening appears. The fleshy material surrounding him begins to tear as he struggles. He wriggles from side to side, and the mucus that covers him helps his upper body to slide free, unpinning his arms. He uses his arms to tear the cocoon wide open, and his body flops onto the floor like a fish.

He slips across the metal floor in the strange cave, and he knows nothing, save for the cold. The brightness. The roar of sound where formerly there was only silence. When he cries out, he hears the voice of a stranger, much deeper and richer than the voice he remembers. He looks behind to see the vehicle of his metamorphosis. But it is gone, wilted to sad little tangles of vines and desiccated organic matter.

Who am I? Where am I?

He is completely naked. His skin has paled from nut-brown to fish-belly white. He stares at his hands, which seem to have grown larger. His arms ripple with sinew and sensuous mass.

“Rise, Alastor. You have at last become what you were always meant to be.”

Yes. Alastor. It is my name.

He worries these new syllables inside his mind. They do not ring true, but he cannot quite grasp why. Some piece of mind, something integral to his very being, has been taken and replaced. It dances in the shadows, just beyond the glow of his consciousness. And then it is gone, a dead man’s whisper carried away by spring’s last wind.

Alastor rises to his feet. He runs his hands across his chest, collecting translucent mucus and flinging it to the floor, his pectoral muscles rippling. He smiles as he surveys biceps the size of the eggs laid by the man-sized birds that dwell among the plains in the shadow of the mountain.

“What am I?” he asks.

Something stirs inside him. All around him. An ageless intelligence rouses itself. He looks up and sees the draga’s broken body, trapped inside the tree that seems to have grown up around him, swallowing him whole.

He remembers.

“You are the first. You are my son,” the voice says.

“Son? My father is…”

A flurry of muddled images. He sees a man with a kind face and large hands. On the man’s lap is a boy, small for his age. The boy’s eyes, his eyes, burn red.

No. Something is wrong. I am…

“Say it,” the dragon commands from within his prison, but also from without. Inside Alastor’s head.

“My father is…” He pauses. “Abraxas.”

“I am proud of you, my son. You are truly a sight to behold. A man with the body of a god! Look upon yourself now. See what I have given you.”

Forgotten machines, ancient yet infinitely complex, clatter to life. Glowing orbs descend from the ceiling above, raining flakes of rust and other detritus down on Alastor’s shoulders.

REAL-3D holographic projectors, he tells himself.

“A quick study. Good,” Abraxas says.

Red beams of light scan his body, tracing its contours, slicing through the motes of dust that dance in the air. Before long another Alastor—this one composed solely of light—materializes before his very eyes.

He is alarmed at how unalarmed he is in the presence of such magic.

Not magic. Machines. Crafted, just like the swords and shields my people wear. But made of many small parts with tiny fires inside that give them life.

“Yes. That is right. Not magic. But power, nonetheless.”

Alastor surveys the copy of himself. He appears to have grown two heads taller, and his chest is broad and thick. His arms are thick like bundled firewood.

“What would you have me do?” he asks.

“I have a plan that will take us to the farthest ends of the galaxy. You do not know this word, but it means that we will be traveling far beyond the star maps your people scratch in the dirt outside your hovels. But you must first tend to the beast outside so that you can return to your people.”

“Master? You want me to leave you? I do not understand.”

“Go back to them, Alastor, and claim your birthright. You will become the new Sundin. You will lead your people to glory they can only glimpse in their dreams.”

“Edulf. He will never give up his throne. How can I take it from him?”

“Are you so dense, my son? Perhaps I should choose another. Hrogar, perhaps. He shows great promise…”

“No. I know what must be done.”

****

The she-bear is waiting. She has at last wrenched the blade from her eye socket; the ragged skin around her ruined eye tells the tale. She roars, her cry full of fear and madness, brought on by pain and the reek of death coming off her body.

Alastor roars back at her, and as he does, he feels a strange sensation in the back of his throat. His jawbone cracks as his mouth attempts to open like a viper’s. He feels some strange thing stirring in his gut, something he knows is connected to his belly and the hunger that smolders there.

NO. NOT THIS ONE. KILL HER, BUT DO NOT FEED UPON HER.

The thought of eating the bear hadn’t crossed Alastor’s mind, but there is no time to ponder this—his body seems to have succumbed to its own will, moving at the whim of hideous instinct. He charges the bear.

Something horrid and slimy flicks past his face. Was it some strange creature, some base cave-dwelling worm attacking him? Revulsion fills him as he realizes that there are many of them, and they are coming from inside his mouth. He regains some semblance of control and beckons them back inside.

The bear attempts to swat him with a paw the size of a boulder, but he catches the creature’s forearm and feels the bones snap as he squeezes and pulls. Snarling, he shoves the bear’s paw deep into its own stomach. The bear falls onto its back, bawling.