Ymnik: переводы

→Chapter 3

→"You've just tripped into absurdity, brother. The price goes down from now on."

→"E...what?" The runaway freight train just piled into a brick wall.

→"Five?!" the man asked, his face transforming spectacularly from oily accommodation to outrage. "How could you ask me to part with a family heirloom for a mere five coins, scaly sir? It's worth at least forty!"

→"I sure do," I said. "Five gold pieces, and not a copper more."

→"Ah, good...sir," the Ittschalkian said, turning his mass of braided fur my way. He eyed me nervously, but he wasn't about to drive away a potential sale. He peered at the weather-beaten tube of leather in my hand. I kept my fingers wrapped tightly around the hilt. "I see you have chosen one of my favorite artifacts. I am sure you appreciate its value."

→I observed just then that more people than I had taken notice of the transformation of the flea-market sword from letter opener to museum piece. I gave them a good glare and showed my teeth. They backed away, careful to keep their hands and feet far away from my mouth. I shoved the sword back into its shabby sheath and dragged it carelessly over through the dirt to the being who owned the stall.

→"I will tell you my story, if only you will remove me from this locale. I fear that danger may lurk about us soon."

→"In case you didn't know it, Skinny, you're a sword. Where are you going to get the money?"

→"Tenfold, eh?" Well, that was a pretty good return on an outlay. Still, I didn't have amniotic fluid clinging to me anywhere.

→The eyes closed briefly as if the unseen being was bowing its head in apology. "As you will. Your people have attained a higher status, then, than they had when last I saw Perv. Pray, friend, buy me, and hastily. I would be away from this place. I will see to it that you will be reimbursed tenfold."

→Scaring the pair of arachnoids next to me into dropping their egg sacs prematurely, I swept the sword up over my head and knocked the blade on the ground. It hummed. The corrosion just exploded off it. I covered my eyes to protect them from flying rust. When the dust storm ended, I found I was clasping a gleaming brand with a blade of white-hot silver and a hilt of chased gold studded with cabochon gems of the pure colors of ruby, amethyst, emerald and sapphire that made my palms itch with unrealized profits.

→The eyes, now free of the film that had veiled them, were sharper than ever. I had seen eyes like that while playing Dragon Poker, over the top of a hand of cards, as my opponent wondered if I really held an Elf-high flush, or if I was bluffing. These made an intelligent search of my person from head to feet.

→I don't carry weapons. Pervects like myself are well furnished by nature with defensive armaments, such as hide tough enough to turn a fairly sharp blade, yellow claws that could as readily disembowel an opponent as poke open a can of beer, and four-inch, pointed teeth capable of ripping into anything including the cheap steaks at a truck stop. Still, I know how they're used.

→I looked down. An eye peered up at me. It was reflected in the inch or so of dull silver blade protruding from the worn leather scabbard on the table. I glanced up. There was no one nearby from whom it could be reflected. Intrigued, I grasped the darkened brass hilt and pulled the sword out a few more inches. A second eye appeared reflected in the blade. They were long, steel-blue orbs outlined in black, keen and summing. I glanced up to see if it was the black-braided merchant casting a spell on the blade to make it more appealing to pass-ersby, but he was at the end, talking to an old lady covered by long, silver hair about a flowered china chamber pot.

→Off to one side the hairy denizens were trying their luck at shying coconuts, trying to hit inflated colored bladders with darts, or attempting to knock down a pyramid of amphorae with a stuffed cloth ball. Pretty primitive games, to my sophisticated Pervish eye, but the locals seemed to be having fun trying their luck. I wasn't sucker enough to throw away my coppers on the games, which were always rigged, at every fair in every dimension, or, from what I could see, on the merchandise set out for sale on rackety tables arranged under the hot sun for my delectation. I surveyed it all with a phlegmatic eye. Most of the stuff for sale was unmitigated junk, but I was enjoying a look anyway before checking out the quality of the local brew in the hostelry across the way. Enough of the patrons were staggering out to give me a good feeling about the place.

→The Prounvip Annual Village Fair was a forest of tents set up in a wide-open square, amid the few scattered buildings on the dusty prairie plain. An oom-pa-pa band was tuning up under a conical, blue tent in the middle of the clearing. The savory smell of frying sausages and bubbling pots of spicy chili drew my nose's attention to the stringy-haired cooks laboring over pit stoves under an adjacent pavilion. Kids were having their long locks plaited into tiny dreads and tipped off with colored beads by nimble-fingered hairdressers, or sprayed in undulating patterns with glitter that their mothers were undoubtedly hoping would wash out easily later on.

→For the first time in years I wasn't dependent on anyone else for a ride to the next dimension — thanks to a gift from a friend. I was enjoying the novelty of being able to travel in my own company, staying as long as I pleased, where I pleased. If I felt like having a weeklong drunk in Pookipsie with the Pookas, I could do it. If I discovered the annual Broaching of the Casks festival in Harv was a bust, I could book out of there without having to wait around for a magician to give me a boost. liberty was more of a kick than any champagne I'd ever drunk.

→I was browsing one of the myriad jumble sales that beckoned to me, not in the Bazaar, where the voice was probably that of the innocent-looking Deveel vendor behind the table, but on market day in the town square, in a dimension called Ittschalk. I'd stopped off on a tour of the provinces just for the hell of it, where the people were covered by masses of long, wavy hair like Rastafarians and the wide-open skies were greenish.