soldelena: переводы

→I hardly felt like royalty, shuffling down that long road upon my aching feet. At the moment all I wanted was a place to rest and a pitcher of water to wash the smell of death from me. Wash away the soot, and the grime, and the bitter memory of betrayal.

→“Don’t even think of the inn!” she insisted, her face flushing with pride. “You must stay with my sister and me! It’s my father’s cottage, but he’s off at sea most of the time. And you mustn’t worry about the bairn. The Goddess will provide. Especially if you decide you want to be high priestess of the new coven. Of course, the others must agree, but how could they not see your power? The whole village of Druinden knows of the dark wave. I’ll wager everyone from here to Londinium knows. That spell has made you the high priestess of the Highlands.”

→“I suppose, if I can get a room at the inn there.” I felt awkward revealing myself to Aislinn, yet I suspected she knew my entire story already. “I’ve not only been banished from the coven, but also from the cottage. And. you probably know, I’m with child.”

→“Really?” I felt bolstered by this news. Perhaps I had not been abandoned as I’d thought. Perhaps it was Síle who was wrong. Perhaps she had been denying the ways of the Goddess, and that was why I was here traveling down this unknown road with barely a stitch to my name.

→“Síle is a foolish woman,” Aislinn said. “She has no vision, no courage. Did you know that many of us had already abandoned her coven, long before last night? Coveners were tiring of Síle’s failure to take action. We’ve begun to have our own circle in the woods east of here, near a village called Druinden. Though sometimes we flounder. We haven’t really found a high priestess with the power to summon the Goddess.”

→“Well, then I am proud on your behalf,” Aislinn said. “Your dark wave of a spell has put an end to our persecution. You have altered our fate, Rose. Nevermore will we be downtrodden, nevermore the outcasts.”

→“I can’t say that I am,” I admitted, wishing that I could summon some emotion.

→“You must be filled with wonder at what you’ve accomplished.”

→I rocked back on my heels, weary but relieved that Aislinn understood.

→“Rose! Rose! It was you, wasn’t it? Did you see the ruin?” Her face was lit with a predatory smile. “Your spell wiped them out, the whole lot of them! By the Goddess, we really showed them! It will be a long time before anyone else crosses a Wodebayne.”

→I came to a fork in the road and decided to continue east, to the place where the sun rose. Just beyond the fork someone called my name. I turned to find Aislinn waving at me, her red hair flying as she ran to catch up with me. Her energy seemed jarring in the silent woods, the site of so much recent destruction.

→Instead of heading back to my own village, I kept going east, past the burned bog and heather that had surrounded Siobhan’s house. I paid no homage to the smoking remains there as I walked past, my sights set on a distant village where I might find lodging at an inn.

→The babe gave a hearty kick, and I lowered my gown. ’Twas time to rest, but I could not find comfort here in this landscape of charred ruin. I tucked the ring into a satchel on my belt and moved on.

→“ ’Tis your heritage,” I told my child. “The inverted pentagram, the dark spell, the dark wave, the origin of our redemption. This will be the spell I pass on to you to protect you and yours for all time.”

→I pressed Diarmuid’s ring against my own inverted marking. Somehow it brought me a dark pleasure, and I was glad to feel something even if it was a bitter end.

→I laughed, realizing that Diarmuid no longer had any power in this life. Lifting my gown, I gazed upon the marking that I had branded on my belly. The pentagram was there, inverted. I blinked in awe. I had branded it so that I could look down and see it—but that meant the star shape was actually upside down upon my belly. An inverted pentagram was a legendary symbol for the harnessing of evil, though I’d never before used it.

→I reached down and snapped the ring off Diarmuid’s charred finger bone. I would save it for my child. “I won’t tell your daughter the truth about you,” I told him, then thought better of it. How many years had I tried to pry the truth about Da from Ma? “Or mayhap I’ll tell her everything. every sordid detail of your weak and cowardly character.”

→I climbed over the ashes to study the skeletons. A gold ring was still wrapped around one of the charred finger bones—Diarmuid’s ring. I pressed my lips together, feeling a sting as I understood that the burned girl was Siobhan.

→The ash below my shoe crunched apart, lowering me into a burning ember. I stomped out the heat, then noticed two skeletons, their charred limbs entwined.

→I walked into a tangle of smoking embers that I thought to be Diarmuid’s cottage. Kicking at a gray ashen stump, I thought of the hungry look in Diarmuid’s eyes the night before. His denial of our love, his retreat from the Goddess’s plan. Goddess, please grant me that my child will not have those eyes, those lustful, glittery eyes.