Conqueror’s Moon: Part One of the Boreal Moon Tale. Julian May
Читать онлайн книгу.
The first spunkies, like infinitesimal earthbound stars, began to sparkle in a patch of marshy waste ground below the castle’s knoll. He heard a dog bark. Someone down in the inner ward cursed a squealing horse. The shrill laughter of women came from the covered colonnade around the castle spring.
Snudge clapped hands over his ears, shut his eyes, and let the wind bear him away.
And immediately found watchers. Not one, but two!
Then came the difficult part. He felt himself sinking to his knees, finally flopping prone as the strength drained from his body and empowered his mind. He followed the thread of the first watcher, whose windsign he recognized too well, for hundreds of leagues northward.
The scene seemed hazy, as though obscured by thin gauze, since he viewed it at such a great distance; but the details were clear enough. Snudge seemed to soar over flats of black quicksand exposed at low tide toward a ramshackle castle nestled between crags above a misty estuary. The place was Royal Fenguard, seat of the rulers of Moss. This time there was no blocking cover-spell at the terminus of the trace, as had invariably been the case when he attempted to spy on her previously. Invisible as the wind, he seemed to pass through the bubbly glass of an illuminated window in the tall south tower.
And saw her: Ullanoth sha Linndal, daughter of the Conjure-King, only eighteen years of age but having the imposing presence of one much older. She was standing motionless in the middle of a room crowded with books, alchymical apparatus, and arcane objects of unknown function. On one side of her stood a tall candlestick, but the indistinct object it held was not a candle, although it glowed weakly.
The sorceress wore a flowing gown of leaf-green satin, the skirt and sleeve drapes gold-embroidered in an elaborate pattern of bulrushes. Her long unbound hair, almost luminous in the candlelight, was a strange pale hue — silvery with the kind of faint rosy undertone found in the lining of certain seashells. The narrow face had prominent cheekbones, an elegant long nose, and milk-white skin. Her eyelids were closed to enhance her oversight of Castle Vanguard, their thick dark lashes resting upon her cheeks.
After a time her thread of watching snapped and she opened her eyes. They were large as a doe’s and at first appeared to be green, but almost immediately their color changed as the sea does in late evening, becoming slate-grey, and then turning to an uncanny black. She smiled and refreshed herself with a drink from a golden cup, then took down a long cloak of midnight blue that hung from a wall peg. Donning it, she pulled its hood closely over her bright hair. Finally, she pulled something from the bosom of her gown — a small pendant on a chain that shone with the same faint radiance as the object on the candlestick.
At one wall of the room was a peculiar piece of padded furniture that resembled a narrow couch raised on end by means of a frame. It was tilted at a sharp angle and had rails at the side and a footrest to keep one from slipping off. Ullanoth arranged herself upon this and gripped the neck pendant tightly. Her mouth moved in soundless speech as she pronounced some elaborate spell, and even though Snudge could read lips, the words were incomprehensible to him.
He watched in awe. The small pendant in her hand blazed up like some miniature greenish lamp. Its nature was impossible to discern. The princess uttered a deep groan of pain. Her body seemed to shimmer, expand … and become two identical cloaked forms: a true body and a Sending, floating in mid-air beside the slanted couch. It was a rare magical talent, far beyond the abilities of the Brothers of Zeth, and Snudge knew of it only through reading occult books that he regularly borrowed — without permission — from the library of the Royal Alchymist back at Cala Palace.
The Sending drifted down until it stood upright, looking perfectly natural. The body on the couch, on the other hand, lay as motionless and pallid as a corpse. After glancing about the chamber, the Sending frowned as if it had forgotten something, then gestured at the tall candlestick with the faintly glowing object atop it. There was a brilliant emerald flash. The interior of Ullanoth’s tower vanished from Snudge’s oversight, as impenetrable to his scrying as it had always been before this night.
He knew, without knowing how, that the Sending was no longer inside the tower. It was flying on the wind directly toward him like some unseen wraith. But how had she managed to windwatch him when no one else could? He braced himself, too astounded even for terror, expecting her to materialize in front of him there on the roof.
Expecting quick death from a sorceress furious that he had spied on her …
But no. She had not been coming at him after all!
He smothered an oath as the Sending soared down into the great hall of Castle Vanguard and disappeared into the heavy shadows at the rear of the musicians’ gallery. An instant later Prince Conrig slipped out of the secret passage and began his scrutiny of the diners below him, not knowing Princess Ullanoth was there.
Snudge had windwatched her with Conrig twice before, when she came to Brent Lodge and conversed with the prince and Stergos. The boy had not realized then that her body was a magical simulacrum until she herself spoke casually of the miracle in her conversation with the brothers. After each visit, the double had returned to Fenguard, where it disappeared behind a shielding spell infinitely stronger than the puny sort Snudge himself was capable of spinning. He had never before been able to oversee the Mosslander princess in her home because of that spell.
With the subjects of his viewing now close by, Snudge watched with less effort as the prince was accosted by the cloaked woman. He read his master’s lips easily during the ensuing colloquy, and wished he could know what the shrouded witch said about Vra-Stergos that caused the prince to blanch in dismay. But all too soon the Sending withdrew and returned to its gloomy castle above the Darkling Sands. There the familiar strong spell of couverture shut him out.
The second watching presence remained.
Its aim was more expertly focused than that of Ullanoth, less obvious to a searcher, and concentrated upon the solar chamber where the council of war was to take place. With the greatest caution, Snudge traced the thread of oversight backwards through the wind, only to discover that its source lay within Castle Vanguard itself — somewhere in the vicinity of the stables, directly across the inner ward from the repository tower.
It was impossible for him to oversee this scryer. To his astonishment, he was blocked by another sort of covering spell quite different from the shield at Fenguard, very compact and well-constructed, rendering the watcher invisible. But this was impossible! The person was windwatching, and no magical practitioner could perform more than one arcane task at a time —
‘Deveron! Where are you?’ It was the voice of Vra-Stergos, down in the accounts room.
Cursing under his breath, the boy thought for a split second to use his talent to hide. But his ability to conceal himself from normal folk and minor talents wouldn’t faze an ordained Brother of Zeth. Stergos would scry him out eventually and be all the more furious. Best to take his medicine.
He scrambled to his feet, left the roof, passed through the guardroom, and came down to stand sheepishly before the Doctor Arcanorum. The tall redheaded armiger Mero was there as well, with folded arms and an expression of malicious glee.
‘There! I told you, my lord doctor. The knave picked the lock and went up to snoop in the guardroom, maybe thinking to steal something. He deserves a good whipping! Shall I—’
‘Go down and join your mates,’ Stergos told the young man, with a grimace of distaste. ‘You, Deveron, come into my cubicle.’
When Mero was gone, clearly disappointed at not being able to witness Snudge’s punishment, Stergos said, ‘Sit there, then tell me truthfully what you were about.’ The partially walled recess had a small window, through which the fading crimson sky was visible. A clerk’s desk had been appropriated by the alchymist for his own books, and he now seated himself at it and gestured for the boy to take a stool.
Snudge had no intention of lying. ‘My lord, I was exercising my talent. Out on the roof.’
‘I knew it! Oh, Deveron, you gave your word you wouldn’t spy on the council of war—’
‘Nor did