Готовый перевод Нова Проспект / Nova Prospect: Hubnester Inferno (Эредин)

Hubnester Inferno (Eredin)

* * *

Not far from Red Bank

Eredin felt as if he had been reborn-so wonderful was the absence of mind-numbing pain. Whatever device had been implanted in his skin, Zireael's teleportation had been fatal to it. The way Namir's fist shimmered as it touched the green haze was no accident.

The pain no longer confused his thoughts, and Eredin was able to dive into the magical flows after Zireael, catching the girl by the scruff of the neck and throwing her out of the Interworld back to the ground. The outcome of the fight was predetermined before it even began. It would take her a couple of centuries to become a worthy opponent for Eredin. Only devilish, unnatural luck had allowed her to elude him again and again.

Nothing lasts forever. Eredin looked at the girl's body sprawled on the muddy ground. He carried Zireael down to the seashore, hiding her from view behind a rocky cliff.

Eredin clenched his teeth at the realization that it would be suicide to go back and fight those who had done his people so much harm, with a broken wrist and no armor. But valor, in this case, would border on idiocy. He would have to swallow the bitter pill and let Namir and his mutts live. For now.

The only consolation was that neither divine intervention, unicorns, nor any other unbelievable coincidence could save Zireael now. The only thing that spoiled the taste of victory was the thought that the Red Riders were still in the clutches of the sadists.

He would be damned if he condemned his warriors to certain death. Not to mention the fact traveling the Spiral without the Navigator could lead to oblivion in the labyrinth of worlds.

But even with reinforcements, trying to take over a building teeming with soldiers without fully understanding their weapons and technology would be a mistake he wouldn't make twice.

Thank Providence, Eredin didn't need the whole building. He knew its inner workings. It was foolish not to blindfold the captive. There were few soldiers in the laboratories where the Riders were kept unless you counted mechanical servants. If you cut off a floor with Geas Garadh, a Barrier spell, blocking entrances and exits, openings through which poison could seep...

Rescuing the riders is possible. Even if it is a plan of escape, not retribution. In parting, the Aen Elle will leave a gaping wound that the dh'oine will be unable to heal. Were they interested in magic? Let them suffocate in it as in the blood they spilled.

Eredin mentally called out to the Council, just as he had once called to the cursed world the Red Riders. Silence was his answer. It troubled Eredin greatly: the Council had expected the call three days ago. They must surely suspect the worst now.

A stray thought flashed through his mind: had there been a power shift in his absence? It had long seemed to Eredin that Ge'els was more poisoned than anyone else by suspicions of Auberon's violent death.

Disturbing thoughts were interrupted by a pitiful moan.

Eredin turned his gaze to Zireael, dead pale and shivering with cold. It was as if she, too, had been kept in torture chambers: blood soaked through her tight-fitting suit, and brown dirt under her fingernails.

The girl would have to be washed in three waters before she could be laid with. Maybe then Aen Hen Ichaer, the heiress of Shiadal and Lara Dorren, could be seen in her.

It took some fiddling with the clasps before Eredin was able to pull the suit down to his waist and examine the wound on his side, where the ribs protruded beneath the skin. It was nothing: the projectile had left a deep but not fatal cut. What do the dh'oine say? It'll heal before the wedding.

Not that Eredin was going to tie himself to her in any way. An illegitimate offspring would suit him just fine.

He washed the wound diligently with salt water. Zireael looked more like an elf than a dh'oine, her leanness emphasizing her lean muscles, her small breasts harmonizing with her narrow hips. She could only hope that the resemblance ended there and she got pregnant faster than the women of Aen Elle.

And yet why the hell would Zireael try to attack Namir? She could have slipped away unnoticed. Whatever the impulse, Zireael had done him an invaluable favor.

But until she arrives in Tyr na Lia, she had better remain in a lethargic sleep.

//"My King," a voice as clear and deep as the singing of a harp rang through Eredin's mind.

He closed his eyes and saw the most beautiful face he'd seen in a while. Deirdre. Caranthir's apprentice was nicknamed Willow because of her red, almost orange hair. Deirdre's ardor bordered on cruelty, but she never stooped to it. Unlike the iron creature, the sorceress had never soiled her snow-white boots with another's blood.

Deirdre stood between two marble columns decorated with deciduous acanthus, and the light of two suns fell through the tracery of the windows on the delicate features of her face. How quickly the eye grows accustomed to rectangular shapes and rough lines, and how dazzling the newly seen beauty.

//"I'm glad to see you in good health," Deirdre continued, politely not paying attention to his less-than-presentable appearance. - We suspected the worst. Ge'els is convening a war council."

Eredin appreciated the urgency - it had been three days since their disappearance, and Ge'els had not yet sorted out the bureaucracy. The council would need a couple of weeks for a verdict, and by then the problem of the king's absence would have resolved itself.

//"I wouldn't call it good, Deirdre, but I'm alive. The others will suffer a different fate if..."

//" Are they alive?" Deirdre hastily interrupted him. Eredin frowned — inappropriate cavalierness for an elf.

//...If we don't hurry," he continued calmly, forgiving the slip-up graciously. - I need your help, Deirdre, and the other mages," he paused before adding dryly, "Unless they'd rather huddle in a corner and wait out the storm, as they've done for centuries.

Deirdre averted her eyes. The only ones capable of making quick decisions in the Aen Elle world were himself and perhaps Carantir. Only imminent danger could bring the others out of their somnambulistic state.

Aen Elle weren't small children to scare each other with scary pictures, but if there was no other way to convince them let the entire Council see what had happened to the Red Riders. Except for the one memory that had been poisoned under his skin.

Deirdre's sharply contoured lips curled in horror when she saw what had happened in the lab. Now Eredin understood the impulse - the sorceress was worried about the man who had shared the bed with her. Imlerich.

//"En... enough," she squeezed out, "Beasts. Wild, brutal beasts. They are not worthy of pity."

If anyone even stammers for mercy, they will fly from the Spiral to feed on the creatures, regardless of gender or title.

//"Eredin," came another voice he wanted to hear far less. Ge'els bowed respectfully, "Congratulations on your precious booty.

The advisor's face was unmoving and indifferent. Eredin cast a glance at the proverbial trophy and shrugged. It was too early for congratulations.

//"The Red Riders are in enemy hands. We must recover them."

//"With all due respect..." Ge'els cocked a thin eyebrow, "We cannot afford another reckless attack. I insist on a council of war before we take further action."

Aen Elle has failed, and that cannot be undone. But every defeat reveals a flaw in tactics. Magic, not sword. Strike at the back, not the chest.

//"You are either stupid, Ge'els, or cruel," Eredin replied, "Do you have any idea how long it will take? My warriors would be long dead by then."

More and more Aen Elle joined their conversation - the Council was awakening to the king's call. And despite the regalia, Eredin felt as if he were in court - everything he said would be weighed, measured, and debated. The ghostly silhouettes reminded him of the shadows on the walls that had once watched his torture.

//"You brought them to a foreign and hostile world of which you did not know, Eredin," Ge'els continued his accusatory speech. - If the Riders are destined to die, their deaths are a sacrifice on the altar of your ego."

For a court advisor, such a decision is a rare coincidence: with the death of those close to him, the pillars of the king's rule will also be shaken. He couldn't be the only one who saw that implication in Ge'els's speech.

The next to speak was the one Eredin least expected to hear, Alberich, who had seen the smokes of Saovina more than five hundred times. A once mighty sorcerer whose greatness is remembered only in the yellowed pages of chronicles and tales. Eredin had no idea that Alberich was interested in anything other than birdwatching.

//"Have you not forgotten who the king is here, Ge'eles? - Have you forgotten that we are not billions to condemn the best of Aen Elle to a painful death? Eredin offers not war - though in hundreds of years I have not seen a greater plague than dh'oine - but the release of the captives."

In Aen Elle culture, old age, and tradition are respected without question. That is why Eredin would never kill Auberon. Everyone has learned from their mothers that the customs of their people are as unshakable and sacred as the shaky and corrupted customs of others.

The council fell silent.

A flying machine flew over Eredin's head. He had to hurry before the dh'oine messengers got word of what had happened.

//"We have no time to waste," Eredin summarized. - I'll show you where they're holding the Riders."

They nodded, measured and dignified, disappearing one by one.

The last thing Eredin felt was ready for a fight. Everything blurred before his eyes, his throat dry. Elves could go a long time without proper food and rest, but when hunger was accompanied by torture, even they began to lose strength.

Eredin could hate resorting to such measures all he wanted, but he would have to take a pinch of dust to avoid becoming a liability to his warriors. No enemy is so terrible as his weakness.

Dark water licked the feet, bringing to shore a packet with the coat of arms of the very building that held the riders. A cross and drops around it. Eredin looked up at the sky and thought he was looking through the dirty dark glass. It smelled rotten.

The Iron World began to be destroyed long before him. To kill a dying one is nothing short of mercy.

* * *

Tai Yun Medical, labs, about an hour later.

//"On your command, my king."

The Council had given him all of Carantir's apprentices at his disposal - and unlike their predecessors, they knew how the warp of space and time destroyed machinery. The remaining Riders were ready to depart as soon as Deirdre led them through the worlds. Let fresh blood unleash its wrath on the executioners: all the warlord needed to do was channel their hatred.

A few moments before entering the portal, Eredin watched what was happening on the other side. An ugly dwarf was leaning over a couch, explaining something to a russet-haired girl in a white robe.

Eredin had seen this room before, a frightening symbiosis of the hospital room and torture chamber.

"Что бы ни говорил Доктор Зюсс, Катерина," said the dwarf, raising the flask of white mass to the light, "несмотря на разницу в теменной доле, я все равно настаиваю на том, чтобы их классифицировали как хомо сапиенс сильванус," (No matter what Dr. Zeuss says, Catherine, and despite the difference in parietal lobe I insist on classifying them as Homo Sapiens Silvanus)

Caranthir, lying on a nearby couch, looked more like he belonged to the world of the dead than the world of the living. The flesh had rejected the iron arm, scarring and turning a frightening blue. Once they'd freed him from his shackles, the prosthetic had better be cut off before the shoulder was dead.

The girl was the first to see the portals cutting through the void. Her mentor, whose face had suddenly turned gray, couldn't even turn around, clutching his heart and frantically trying to breathe. The flask fell and rolled across the tiled floor. Death by fright? With needles and syringes, the dwarf seemed much more formidable.

When Eredin saw who the man was discussing with his apprentice, he regretted letting him leave so quickly and painlessly. Imlerich's head was ringed by a thin surgical incision. The skull had been opened. What should have been inside was in that damned flask.

Deirdre's face contorted, a terrible scream escaping through clenched teeth. Eredin put his hand on her fragile shoulder, squeezing it lightly. He shared her pain: a great warrior who had slain thousands deserved to fall only in battle, not by scalpel.

Imlerich will be buried in his native land, under the shade of weeping willows. It was a pity he could not have done more for his old comrade-in-arms.

//"Pull yourself together, Deirdre," Caranthir said - transmitting thoughts was easier for him than speaking. - You're needed alive, not dead."

The mage's voice was weak and distant, like the sound of the sea in a seashell, but in it resounded the darkness that had once frightened Avallac'h.

The riders who had entered through the portal held their swords at the ready. The gaping eye sockets of their helmets burned with bluish fire. There were shouts from beyond the walls - it wasn't just this room where the gateway through the worlds was opening.

"Профессор Сучонг…" Dazed from shock, the girl leaned over the collapsed body, not attempting to run away or defend herself, "Пожалуйста, кто-нибудь." (Professor Suchong... Please, somebody…)

Eredin didn't have the telepathy to understand her - and she didn't have time to speak before the enchantress's icy blow knocked the air out of her lungs. Deirdre was blazing with her famous rage - anger in such moments is little distinguishable from short-lived madness. Compared to the tall elf, the dh'oine seemed to Eredin as dwarfed as her deceased mentor.

Eredin stopped Deirdre with a gesture. She would have someone to take her anger out on. Those of us who know the sciences are best left for interrogation. Deirdre obeyed grudgingly, her thin lips pressed together, and she shattered Carantir's restraints, helping her mentor up from the monstrous bed.

Eredin put Zireael in his place, fighting the temptation for a few moments to bring the girl to her senses and make her admire what her kin had done.

Eredin made one promise that he intended to fulfill with his own hand.

He left the mages to weave a protective barrier, secluded in the restroom. One of the riders handed him a silk pouch - the dust served as both anesthetic and stimulant in battle.

Eredin inhaled the powder from his index finger. His mucous membranes burned, but hunger and fatigue faded into the background and his eyes began to clear. It's incredibly strong stuff.

Bruised and bloody, Eredin turned away from his reflection. More than anything, he wished he could put his helmet back on, and hide his face behind the visor. The frame of the mirror cracked, coating itself with ice, and the glass shattered into a million shards.

He had to act before the creature responsible for their torment fled. Eredin closed his eyes, imagining the luxurious mansion he had once seen. The hilt of the light sword he'd borrowed from Zireael fit in his hand.

//"That dh'oine," Caranthir's voice rang out, "don't kill her. We'll have something to talk to her about in Tir na Lia."

//He wasn't going to let her escape to the world of the dead that easily.

The noblewoman stood in front of the huge screen, gripping the white stone table. The knuckles of her long white fingers were pale, her fan-shaped collar covered her neck, and her hair was tightly tied at the back of her head. The guards at the door held their weapons at the ready.

"Мисс Юньджу, у нас чрезвычайное… (Ms. Yunzhu, we have an emergency…)" The speech of one of them was interrupted by a portal opening in the room.

Eredin appeared exactly behind the woman. Now, if her soldiers decided to shoot, they would kill their mistress. He saw a familiar face on the screen if it could be called that.

"...Только что подняли сеть.." continued Namir, too slow to react to what was happening. "Нас взломали и поджарили, и не только Джен…" (… just got the network up. We got fried and hacked here. It’s not just Jen…)

The noblewoman wriggled as if struck by lightning and fell to her knees. Eredin yanked her up by the collar and pulled her against him, shielding her from the soldiers like a human shield. She managed to sink her sharp heel into his shin, but with the dust, the pain was no more than an illusion.

"ТЫ МЕРТВ," Namir's face rippled. His voice doubled as a snake hissed: "СУКА ОСТРОУХАЯ, ТЫ, БЛЯДЬ…" (YOU'RE DEAD, YOU POINTY-EARED BITCH, YOU FUCKING...).

The noblewoman squealed not at all aristocratically. Only her voice seemed to obey her. She hung in his grip as if undead. Eredin pressed his blade against her throat, the sharply sharpened steel leaving a bloody mark on her skin. Where had Zireael gotten this sword from? For a people who preferred to shoot, the dh'oine were proficient in blacksmithing.

"Эредин…" she wheezed with the last of her strength, suddenly deciding to remember that he had a name. "Мы можем… Поговорить..." (Eredin... We can... Talk...)

As much as he savored her humiliation, it was too dangerous to play with fire. One of the guards drew his weapon aiming somewhere to the side, but before he could fire Eredin had already slipped into interspace.

When he threw the noblewoman to the floor of the laboratory, not far from the very couch where the elf she had killed had been lying, the small shivers in her body were replaced by full-blown convulsions. The woman was shaking as if in a seizure.

Eredin looked down at her, enjoying an almost forgotten sense of superiority.

"то… что здесь происходит? (What… What is happening here?)" She asked when she saw the other prisoners. Whatever the question meant, it was filled with horror.

Eredin looked around the room. The order to take anyone of value hostage had been misunderstood. They meant those who could explain the technology and the workings of the world, but the riders had seen fit to bring only pretty girls.

They'd have to temper their appetites and thin out their selections - they couldn't get that many prisoners through the portal. And if he had to choose, he'd rather have a decent burial for his riders than a couple of extra slave girls.

No one answered the noblewoman. Her aides were not foolish enough to think he would encourage conversation in an unfamiliar language.

He promised himself he would break the porcelain mask. What can be said of a folk whose king does not keep his promises? Eredin felt the cold in his fingers and imagined the ice penetrating the thin, smooth skin of a young girl. How the soft tissues tanned, deadened, how the face took on a marble hue.

For the first couple of moments, the woman didn't even realize what was happening, and only screamed when deep cracks appeared in her skin and blood ran down her face, mixing with her makeup. Eredin thought the mask was often prettier than the face hiding beneath it.

"You used to be more fond of human women, my king."

Eredin glanced at the rider guarding the captives. The insolent one had deliberately veiled the ambiguity in the phrase, alluding more to the half-naked Zireael on the couch than to the woman he had mutilated.

"I did," Eredin said briefly. "But now I am closer to the idea of equality. Progress, as you can see for yourself, does not stand still."

Did he think Zireael was naked and covered in blood because of the abuse done to her? Eredin had never stooped to such a thing, and Zireael would be no exception. And why should he? On his last visit, the girl had shot her eyes left and right like a hungry beast - an omnivorous beast that was no less interested in girls than men.

Not to mention how Zireael tried diligently, albeit ineffectively, to seduce Auberon. For many weeks afterward, the evil tongues were still buzzing about the pleasure with which she had worn the lacy negligee and rubbed herself with oils.

And the hopeful look Zireael had cast at him in that gazebo... Eredin chuckled.

A muffled explosion was heard somewhere. He ducked instinctively, trying to see where it was coming from.

//"We need the Elder Blood," Caranthir said after a few moments. - Deirdre won't be able to hold the barrier for long."

Eredin wrapped one arm around Zireael's waist, pulled her close to him, and strode down the long hallway.

Deirdre stood in one of the rooms, arms raised high. A trickle of sweat ran down her face. Eredin could directly feel the power pulsing through the sorceress's body. Every time the enemies tried to break the Barrier spell, they struck Deirdre directly, and with each blow, she shuddered in spasm. The wet dress clung to her slim frame.

//"I'm glad you haven't lost interest in women," Caranthir said, once Eredin's gaze lingered on the smooth lines. - But please hurry."

A trail of bodies led to the mage. Eredin stepped over a soldier lying on his stomach, the metal plate on his back frozen before his sword could penetrate it. The soldiers here had more solid armor than the ones that had attacked them in the tower. A couple of feet away is the frostbitten corpse of a girl. Apparently, she wasn't pretty enough.

There were no innocents in the building, whether women or men - only mute accomplices to the brutal experiments.

//"Half the riders are dead," Caranthir reported dryly on the fate of the first squad. - The other half are incapable of fighting." So about fifteen Aen Elle had given their lives for trying to tame the Elder Blood. Eredin doubted very much that the sacrifices were worth it.

Eredin found Caranthir surrounded by his apprentices in a spacious hall with a panoramic view of a city of gray towers and streets stretching into the horizon.

The few guards unlucky enough to be on the floor were frozen in midair, at the ceiling, forming a perfect heptagon. To the uninitiated, it might have looked as if they were levitating, but Eredin could see the thin ropes cut into their flesh - neck, wrist, and ankles. Blood dripped measuredly to the floor. They balanced between life and death, each moment moving closer to the second.

The sight mesmerized Уredin: a martyred, subtly tragic beauty in the suspended figures. Souls trying to ascend to the heavens are doomed to be trapped between worlds.

He couldn't even remember the last time Caranthir had resorted to sacrifice. But a mage's anger is righteous, and righteous anger has put more people in the grave than ambition or rigidity.

If elves had been hanging instead of dh'oine, Caranthir would have been branded an infernalist and executed. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Ge'els wouldn't need to know what had happened anyway.

Karantir asked to place Zireael on the floor, in the middle of the makeshift heptagon. The walls shuddered again. There was no way they were going to be buried alive under a collapsed dh'oine building. One of the young mages, who had not seen a hundred winters, did not hold back the impulse of cowardice:

"With all due respect, Caranthir, what's the point? The mages will close the portal as soon as we leave. And we'd lose time and energy."

No one bothered to explain to him where he was wrong.

As soon as the first words of the ritual sounded, Eredin felt as if the very foundation of the earth had been shaken.

What Caranthir is trying to do is nothing more than an imitation of the Conjugation of the Spheres. But, unlike the original, the magic ritual does not connect, but breaks the thin matter between the worlds, and darkness oozes through it like blood from a wound.

A criminal weapon, leading not to the death of its inhabitants, but to the death of the world itself. But, as history teaches, a crime is only a crime if the judges survive.

Eredin walked over to a window occupying an entire wall covered in the frost of the Barrier.

A crowd like a river flowed through the stone-paved square, the only flat piece of land in the midst of the dishonorable towers. Whether it was the dust or whether it was the first time Eredin had noticed something aesthetically pleasing in the dh'oine's architecture, he particularly liked the marble fountain of crossed orbits with a sphere in the middle.

It took too long for people to notice the black-as-pitch hole in the ground, no more than a foot in diameter. Their eyes were fixed on the rectangles in their hands. Slaves of their tools.

The darkness that wraps the Spiral has more names than memory can hold. In Ovo. Todesh. The horror that frightened elven children, separated from the physical world by the thinnest membrane, a place where the usual laws do not apply. Where the creatures that the people of the Continent fear so much come from. The world without mages is both cursed and blessed: no one can destroy the boundary between the worlds, but no one can mend it either.

Zireael groaned in her sleep, and her body convulsed in a painful spasm. Caranthir had better not overuse the Source.

"She must survive," Eredin warned.

"She'll survive," Caranthir replied mentally. - She's always been great at it. As for her kin...

The gateway to the Spiral opened wider and wider as the monotonous rhythm of the spell lulled Eredin to sleep like a lullaby heard as a child.

Chaotic images flashed before his eyes, one of the less pleasant side effects of the dust. All that remained of the worlds that Aen Elle had conquered - chains of corpses hundreds of versts long, pyramids of bones: tibia, pelvis, ribs...

"... They will have to try very hard to survive," Caranthir finished.

The panic in the square began abruptly and, like any element, violently and destructively. The maddened people ran scattering, not seeing the way, falling and pushing each other away with their hands. The sickly ones who froze in place, pointing their rectangles at what was happening as a kind of shield, were thrown to the ground by the crowd. They were tamped down like masonry.

Natural selection in all its ruthless beauty.

They could not hear the screams, so they had to imagine them, as in a silent theater, by the expressions on their faces. It was a shame that Eredin wouldn't catch the moment Namir and his mutts arrived at the inferno.

//"That's enough," Caranthir said. - Let's go."

The rift would grow further - slowly but surely - already without their efforts. The suspended bodies collapsed to the floor.

Blood flowed from his eye sockets and nostrils. Pale as a sheet, he looked like a dead wizard, a lich from ancient lore. The gift of power always comes at a price: magic is ruthless and destructive, including to the one who uses it.

But Caranthir is right. It's time to go. While he creates the portal, Eredin can still enjoy the spectacle - at least until the first creature crawls out of the Spiral.

A projectile cut through the ice on the window. If it hadn't been for the Barrier Spell, it would have hit Eredin right between the eye sockets. The elf jerked back, instinctively thrusting his arm forward. Despite his hawk vision, he couldn't see the dh'oine who had shot him.

Pest. Another shell, right next to the previous one. The ice cracked thinly. Eredin cast a quick glance at Caranthir. A portal in the shape of a shimmering black sphere was already gaping in front of him. An icy wind rose in the room.

//"Almost," the mage replied to the mute question.

Out of the corner of his eye, Eredin saw the gap widen into a zigzag crack, and dense smoke billowed from it. The sky darkened as if a storm front were closing in on the city.

It shouldn't be growing at this rate. They wouldn't even be able to escape before the crack reached the building. In Eredin's memory, Caranthir had never made such a mistake.

Eredin turned around. The sphere was sparkling, its shape shaking, not wanting to turn into a perfect circle. Instead of the towers of Tir na Lia, it was a shimmer of multicolored flashes.

//"Diable," he heard the colorless voice of the mage, "The portal is unstable. I can't figure out what's causing it..."

Caranthir must have thought Zireael was trapped in the world because of the poison the healer had let coursing through her veins, that she was too exhausted and debilitated to escape through the Spiral. Some mistakes cost too much.

//"We can't leave this world until we realize what is preventing us," the mage confirmed Eredin's worst fears.

The swallow isn't the only bird that can be locked in a cage. They are cut off from the bloodthirsty nine billion hordes only by the Barrier, which they can't maintain for too long without water and provisions, with wounded on their hands - it's hard to imagine the phrase "stalemate" better. The captives captured by the elves will not be a bargaining chip - the souls of a few do not care a countless number.

//"No," Caranthir intruded on his thoughts. - The situation is more desperate than that when the world is being devoured by a darkness you can't stop.

* * *

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Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/86809/569226

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP