Готовый перевод Ойкумена / Oikumena: Пролог

Prologue

The Spider.

The Hungry.

The Octopus.

The Stinger.

The Beast.

Chained.

A man in a long, church-like robe sat on his knees right in the middle of a circular cell-crypt. Hidden deep underground in the rock mass, as far away from any emanations or magical vibrations as possible. His face was concealed beneath a hooded hood, and only the tips of his fingers, not wearing rings or rings, peeped out from the wide sleeves. Despite the baggy garb, a stack of unusual cards fluttered about in his skillful hands, as if in a gambling house, where a cheat was ready to let another easy victim go to waste.

Over and over again, the adept carefully shuffled the deck, drawing the six cards one by one. And over and over again, the same pattern was repeated. For each card of the dark essence, the worst of all possible signs fell out. The last, seventh card remained to be drawn, but the adept's slender fingers blended the layout, shuffled the deck, and again drew one by one the round, dense cards of matted bone. Which are stronger than steel and lighter than fluff.

The Church condemns divination not derived from the venerable science of astrology and knowledge of the course of the stars in the sky. So the possessor of enchanted objects runs the risk of attracting the attention of the servants of Pantocrator, and, with special bad luck, of meeting the Demiurges, who multiply the knowledge useful and cut off the harmful. But everyone wants to know the future, everyone wants to discover their destiny. So there is little to stop the risk. And so the 'enchanted' decks of Dark Jotish are a good, marketable commodity, they are taken with great alacrity everywhere, from small fairs to the salons of the Kingdoms.

But true masters know that there is no such thing as 'enchantment'. You can create a reading with anything, even greasy cards from the lowest-rated tavern. Even simple scraps of parchment with charcoal marks. True divination lies in the soul of the reader, in his abilities, refined by years of training. The cards are merely the instrument by which the diviner's vague visions are objectified. A mediator between the astral and the elemental. A translator from the unknowable language of the supernatural. And the material is only a matter of prestige and aesthetics. But now the fortuneteller wanted to change the deck in the blind hope of deceiving the universe.

The adept sighed, stirring the cards again. His fingers trembled slightly. It wasn't good. Weakness was always bad. And especially so when you have to peer into the darkness of what was to come, through a web of uncertainty and a thousand mirrors reflecting probabilities many times over. The thin round plates rustled softly in his hands. Suddenly the fortune-teller changed his mind, and the cards went into a bronze box made to their exact size. And in the light of a large oil lamp, a silk pouch was brought out, in which small wooden strips, no bigger than a little finger, were tapped.

Before finishing the ritual, the fortune-teller sat motionless for a while. He firmly decided for himself that this ritual would be brought to an end and would be the last. Fate should be met with an open face and a clear look. And it took a few minutes of meditation to calm the spirit.

The interpreter's gaze slid thoughtlessly over the stone walls draped with discreet but expensive curtains. Over a small round table with a half-dismantled 'lunar' astrolabe. Finally by the closet, which looked plain and simple but had some smartly hidden drawers which couldn't be opened without knowing the secrets. There was nothing else in the cell worthy of attention, not even books or scrolls. The owner regarded his private crypt as purely utilitarian, keeping only the bare necessities. There was a separate laboratory for alchemical experiments and a tower outside the city for making horoscopes. Every important occupation had to have its instruments.

The adept took a deep breath, trying to capture the tiniest nuances of the scent of the rose oil the lamp was filled with. It was the scent that was believed to promote peace and concentration. On the second breath, the man imagined the cold air entering his body through his nose, washing his chest, descending to his feet, and tingling his fingertips, chilling out the trembling. On the third, a chill trickled down his heart, moderating its nervous pounding. It helped, unexpectedly quickly.

In the light of the lamp, the red silk of the pouch looked crimson. The lace unraveled instantly as if the pouch itself longed to release its contents as quickly as possible. The man disliked divination by the signs of the Old Tongue and didn't want to remember a time when he could only afford stolen wood chips with the symbols of Jotish scratched on them with a nail. But today a simple, reliable tool seemed most suitable for the arduous task at hand.

The cell, of course, had no windows. The air came in through a long cranked duct, reliably silencing all sound and light. But the man knew that now the moon was at its zenith, and its rays penetrated everything, shaking the materiality of this world, opening the way to the impossible.

The best hour to his work.

The owner carefully shook the pouch by gripping the neck. And then, with his long fingernails, he pulled out the first piece of wood, a little smaller than his little finger. It had a long vertical line scratched out across the entire length of the piece, and eight short ones, perpendicular to the long one, four in each direction. It was nothing like the most beautiful seven-color image of an eight-legged monster on a map of the finest bone. But the essence is the same.

The Spider.

The next piece of wood. A few dashes, shallow and thin, depict a human figure without a head.

The Hungry.

And four more, one after the other. The same invariable arrangement, three signs of the essence, and three states. Not a single sign of substance, that is to say, element.

What remained to be done was what the fortuneteller avoided: open the seventh. The fingernail creaked on the wood like a harpy's claw. If the adept had believed in the Creator, he would have prayed more fervently now than the most faithful churchman. But he had no faith, so he gritted his teeth and took out the seventh splinter, knowing for certain that it would be Death or the Thirteenth. The steady light of the lamp jumped, casting a crooked, ominous shadow over the curtains. The pouch fell out of his palm, the remaining wood spilled out in a small heap with a quiet clatter. And for a moment the man thought it was the clatter of bone phalanges on the skeleton's fingers.

The card would have been painted plain black. There was nothing on the splinter, just the smoothed over time, barely visible mark from the teeth saw that had once snatched a piece from the board.

For a few minutes, the adept sat silent and motionless, as if the result of the divination had turned him to stone. Then he gathered up the signs one by one and tightened the cord as if he wanted to hide all the evil of the world inside, not letting it escape. He pulled back the hood with determination and dropped the robe from his shoulders, as if the cloth were suffocating, enveloping him in a heavy weight.

In the light of the lamp, the adept's skin appeared ash-gray, slightly darker than its true color. Her hair, trimmed just above her shoulders, was, on the contrary, lighter. So from the outside, it might have looked like a statue of precious gray marble, rather than a young woman with skin of an unusual grayish hue. The impression was reinforced by the inhuman sculptural perfection and symmetry of the face. Just looking at it brought to mind the paintings of the old masters of the Empire, who had mastered the secret of the diamond section and the proportions of the figure. This face was so perfect that it did not even appear beautiful. Rather sinister, because the mortal world is incapable of producing something so complete. The thin, pale lips, almost a match to the skin, moved silently, as if reciting a prayer, but it wasn't a prayer.

The face glowed with the beauty of a demon. By contrast, the gesture the woman made when she stroked her temples was human and understandable. It was the movement of a tired man trying to tidy his thoughts and intercept a nascent headache. In the shadow of her palms, the diviner's eyes flashed a soft, pearly light, without pupils. She lifted her head, looked up at the low ceiling of the cave, dry and carefully cleaned of the old drawings that had once been left behind by the first servants of the Paraclete of Solace.

"Welcome, Spark," whispered the ash-skinned magician with pearl-colored eyes.

"Welcome..."

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Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/83056/517315

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP