Roger Zelazny - Wizard World 01 - Changeling

VIP免费
2024-12-20 2 0 265.91KB 98 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
CHANGELING
By Roger Zelazny
I
When he saw old Mor limp to the van of the besiegers' main party, the Lord of
Rondoval realized that his reign was about over.
The day was fading fast behind storm clouds, a steady drizzle of cold rain
descended and the thunder rolled nearer with each beat, with each dazzling
stroke of light. But Det Morson, there on the main balcony of the Keep of
Rondoval, was not yet ready to withdraw. He patted his face with his black
scarf and ran a hand through his hair--frost-white and sparkling now, save for
the wide black band that passed from his forehead to the nape of his neck.
He withdrew the finely wrought scepter from his sash and held it with both
hands, slightly above eye-level, at arm's distance before him. He breathed
deeply and spoke softly. The dragon-shaped birthmark on the inside of his
right wrist throbbed.
Below, a line of light crossed the path of the attackers, and flames grew
upward from it to wave before them. The men fell back, but the centaur archers
stood their ground and unleashed a flight of arrows in his direction. Det
laughed as the winds beat them aside. He sang his battle-song to the scepter,
and on the ground, in the air and under the earth, his griffins, basilisks,
demons and dragons prepared themselves for the final assault.
Yet, old Mor had raised his staff and the flames were already falling. Det
shook his head, reflecting on the waste of talent.
Det raised his voice and the ground shuddered. Basilisks emerged from their
lairs and moved to stare upon his enemies. Harpies dove at them, screaming and
defecating, their claws slashing. Werewolves moved in upon their flanks. On
the cliffs high above, the dragons heard him and spread their wings....
But, as the flames died and the harpies were pierced by the centaurs' shafts,
as the basilisks--bathed in the pure light which now shone from Mor's
staff--rolled over and died, eyes tightly shut; as the dragons--the most
intelligent of all--took their time in descending from the heights and then
avoided a direct confrontation with the horde, which was even now resuming its
advance, Det knew that the tide had turned, his vultures had come home to
roost and history had surprised him in the outhouse, so to speak. There was no
way to employ his powers for deliverance with old Mor out there monitoring
every magical avenue of egress; and as for Rondoval's physical exits, they
were already blocked by the besiegers.
He shook his head and lowered the scepter. There would be no parlaying, no
opportunity for an honorable surrender--or even one of the other kind. It was
his blood that they wanted, and he had a sudden premonition of acute anemia.
With a final curse and a last glance at the attackers, he withdrew from the
balcony. There was still a little time in which to put a few affairs into
order and to prepare for the final moment. He dismissed the notion of cheating
his enemies by means of suicide. Too effete for his tastes. Better to take a
few of them along with him.
He shook the rain from his cloak and hurried down the hallway. He would meet
them on the ground floor.
The thunder sounded almost directly overhead now. There were bright flashes
beyond every window that he passed.
Lady Lydia of Rondoval, dark hair undone behind her, turned the corner and saw
the shadow slide into the doorway niche. Uttering a general banishing spell,
appropriate to most unhuman wights likely to be wandering these halls, she
made her way up the corridor.
As she passed the opening, she glanced within and realized immediately why the
spell had been somewhat less than efficacious. She confronted Mouseglove the
thief--a small, dark man, clad in blackcloth and leather--whom she had, until
that moment, thought safely confined to a cell beneath the castle. He regained
his composure quickly and bowed, smiling.
"Charmed," he said, "to meet m'lady in passage."
"How did you get out?" she asked.
"With difficulty," he replied. "They make tricky locks in these parts."
She sighed, clutching her small parcel more closely.
"It appears," she said, "that you have managed the feat just in time for it to
prove your undoing. Our enemies are already battering at the main gate. They
may even be through it by now."
"So that is what the noise is all about," he said. "In that case, could you
direct me to the nearest secret escape passage?"
"I fear that they have all been blocked."
"Pity," he said. "Would it then be impolite of me to inquire whence you are
hastening with--Ah! Ah!"
He clutched at his burned fingertips, immediately following an arcane gesture
on the Lady Lydia's part when he had reached toward the bundle she bore.
"I am heading for a tower," she stated, "with the hope that I can summon a
dragon to bear me away--if there still be any about. They do not take well to
strangers, however, so I fear there is nothing for you there. I--I am sorry."
He smiled and nodded.
"Go," he said. "Hurry! I can take care of myself. I always have."
She nodded, he bowed, and she hurried on. Sucking his fingers, Mouseglove
turned back in the direction from which he had just come, his plan already
formed. He, too, would have to hurry.
As Lydia neared the end of the corridor, the castle began to shake. As she
mounted the stair, the window on the landing above her shattered and the rain
poured in. As she reached the second floor and moved toward the winding
stairway to the tower, an enormous clap of thunder deafened her to the ominous
creaking noise within the walls. But, had she heard it, she might still have
ventured there.
Partway up the stair, she felt the tower begin to sway. She hesitated. Cracks
appeared in the wall. Dust and mortar fell about her. The stairway began to
tilt....
Tearing her cloak from her shoulders, she wrapped it about her bundle as she
turned and rushed back in the direction from which she had come.
The angle of the stair declined, and now she could hear a roaring, grating
sound all about her. Ahead, a portion of the ceiling gave way and water rushed
in. Beyond that, she could see the entranceway sliding slowly upwards. Without
hesitation, she drew back the bundle and cast it through the opening.
The world gave way beneath her.
As the forces of Jared Klaithe pounded into the main hall at Rondoval over the
bodies of its dark defenders, the lord Det emerged from a side passage, a
drawn bow in his hands. He released an arrow which passed through Jared's
armor, breastbone and heart, in that order, dropping him in his tracks. Then
he cast the bow aside and drew his scepter from his sash. He waved it in a
slow circle above his head and the invaders felt an invisible force pushing
them back.
One figure moved forward. It was, of course, Mor. His illuminated staff turned
like a bright wheel in his hands.
"Your loyalty is misplaced, old man," Det remarked. "This is not your fight."
"It has become so," Mor replied. "You have tipped the Balance."
"Bah! The Balance was tipped thousands of years ago," said the other, "in the
proper direction."
Mor shook his head. The staff spun fester and faster before him, and he no
longer appeared to be holding it.
"I fear the reaction you may already have provoked," he said, "let alone what
might come to pass should you be permitted to continue."
"Then it must be between us two," said Det, slowly lowering the scepter and
pointing it.
"It always was, was it not?" said Mor.
The Lord of Rondoval hesitated for the barest moment. Then, "I suppose you are
right," he said. "But for this, be it upon your own head!"
The scepter flared and a lance of brilliant red light leaped from it. Old Mor
leaned forward as it struck full upon the shield his spinning staff had
become. The light was instantly reflected upward to strike against the
ceiling.
With a roar that outdid the thunder, great chunks of masonry came loose to
crash downward upon the Lord of Rondoval, crushing and burying him in an
instant.
Mor straightened. The wheel slowed, becoming a staff again. He leaned heavily
upon it.
As the echoes died within the hall the remaining sounds of battle came to a
halt without. The storm, too, was drifting on its way, its lightnings abated,
its thunders stilled in that instant.
One of Jared's lieutenants, Ardel, moved forward slowly and stood regarding
the heap of rubble.
"It is over," he said, after a time. "We've won...."
"So it would seem," Mor said.
"There are still some of his men about--to be dealt with."
Mor nodded.
"...And the dragons? And his other unnatural servants?"
"Disorganized now," Mor said softly. "I will deal with them."
"Good. We--what is that noise?"
They listened for several moments.
"It could be a trick," said one of the sergeants, Marakas by name.
"Choose a detail. Go and find out. Report back immediately. "
Mouseglove crouched behind the arras, near to the stairwell that led to the
dark places below. His plan was to return to his cell and secure himself
within it. A prisoner of Det's would be about the only person on the premises
likely to receive sympathetic treatment, he had reasoned. He had succeeded in
making it this for on his journey back to duress when the gate had given way,
the invaders entered and the sorcerous duel taken place. He had witnessed all
of these things through a frayed place in the tapestry.
Now, while everyone's attention was elsewhere, would be the ideal time for him
to slip out and head back down. Only... His curiosity, too, had been aroused.
He waited.
The detail soon returned with the noisy bundle. Sergeant Marakas wore a tense
expression, held the baby stiffly.
"Doubtless Det planned to sacrifice it in some nefarious rite, to assure his
victory!" he volunteered.
Ardel leaned forward and inspected. He raised the tiny right hand and turned
it palm upwards.
"No. It bears the family's dragon-mark of power inside the right wrist," he
stated. "This is Det's own offspring."
"Oh."
Ardel looked at Mor. But the old man was staring at the baby, oblivious to all
else.
"What should I do with it, sir?" Marakas asked.
Ardel chewed his lip.
"That mark," he said, "means that it is destined to become a sorcerer. It is
also a certain means of identification. No matter what the child might be told
while it was growing up, sooner or later it would learn the truth. If that
came to pass, would you like to meet a sorcerer who knew you had had a part in
the death of his father and the destruction of his home?"
"I see what you are getting at..." said Marakas.
"So you had best--dispose of--the baby."
The sergeant looked away. Then, "Suppose we sent it to some distant land where
no one has ever heard of the House of Rondoval?" he asked.
"... Where one day there might come a traveler who knows this story? No. The
uncertainty would, in many ways, be worse than a sureness of doom. I see no
way out for the little thing. Be quick and merciful."
"Sir, could we not just cut off the arm? It is better than dying."
Ardel sighed.
"The power would still be there," he said,"arm or no arm. And there are too
many witnesses here today. The story would be told, and it would but add
another grievance. No. If you've no stomach for it yourself, there must be
someone in the ranks who--"
"Wait!"
Old Mor had spoken. He shook himself as one just awakening and moved forward.
"There may be a way," he said, "a way to let the child live and to assure that
your fears will never be realized."
He reached out and touched the tiny hand.
"What do you propose?" Ardel asked him.
"Thousands of years ago," Mor began, "we possessed great cities and mighty
machines as well as high magics--"
"I've heard the stories," Ardel said. "How does that help us now?"
"They are more than just stories. The Cataclysm really occurred. Afterwards,
we kept the magic and threw much of the rest away. It all seems so much legend
now, but to this day we are biased against the unnatural tech-things."
"Of course. That is--"
"Let me finish! When a major decision such as that is made, the symmetry of
the universe demands that it go both ways. There is another world, much like
our own, where they threw away the magic and kept the other. In that place, we
and our ways are the stuff of legend."
"Where is this world?"
Mor smiled.
"It is counterpoint to the music of our sphere," he said, "a single beat away.
It it just around the corner no one turns. It is another forking of the
shining road."
"Wizards' riddles! How will this serve us? Can one travel to that other
place?"
"I can."
"Oh. Then ..."
"Yes. Growing up in such a place, the child would have its life, but its power
would mean little. It would be dismissed, rationalized, explained away. The
child would find a different place in life than any it might have known here,
and it would never understand, never suspect what had occurred."
"Fine. Do it then, if mercy can be had so cheaply."
"There is a price."
"What do you mean?"
"That law of symmetry, of which I spoke--it must be satisfied if the exchange
is to be a permanent one: a stone for a stone, a tree for a tree ..."
"A baby? Are you trying to say that if you take this one there, you must bring
one of theirs back?"
"Yes."
"What would we do with that one?"
Sergeant Marakas cleared his throat.
"My Mel and I just lost one," he said. "Perhaps..."
Ardel smiled briefly and nodded.
"Then it is cheap. Let it be done."
With the toe of his boot and a nod, Ardel then indicated Det's fallen scepter.
"What of the magician's rod? Is it not dangerous?" he asked.
Mor nodded, bent slowly and retrieved it from where it had fallen. He began to
twist and tug at it, muttering the while.
"Yes," he finally said, succeeding in separating it into three sections. "It
cannot be destroyed, but if I were to banish each segment to a point of the
great Magical Triangle of Int, it may be that it will never be reclaimed. It
would certainly be difficult."
"You will do this, then?"
"Yes."
At that moment, Mouseglove slipped from behind the arras and down the
stairwell. Then he paused, held his breath and listened for an outcry. There
was none. He hurried on.
When he reached the dimness of the great stair's bottom, he turned right, took
several paces and paused. They were not corridors, but rather natural tunnels
that faced him. Had it been the one directly to the right from which he had
emerged earlier? Or the other which angled off nearby? He had not realized
that there were two in that vicinity....
There came a noise from above. He chose the opening on the extreme right and
plunged ahead. It was as dark as the route he had traversed earlier, but after
twenty paces it took a sharp turn to the right which he did not recall.
Still, he could not afford to go back now, if someone were indeed coming.
Besides, there was a small light ahead....
A brazier of charcoal glowed and smoked within an alcove. A bundle of faggots
lay upon the floor nearby. He fed tinder into the brazier, blew upon it,
coaxed it to flame. Shortly thereafter, a torch blazed in his hand. He took up
several other sticks and continued on along the tunnel.
He came to a branching. The lefthand way looked slightly larger, more
inviting. He followed it. Shortly, it branched again. This time, he bore to
the right.
He gradually became aware of a downward sloping, thought that he felt a faint
draft. There followed three more branchings and a honeycombed chamber. He had
begun marking his choices with charcoal from the body of the torch, near to
the righthand wall. The incline steepened, the tunnel twisted, widening. It
came to bear less and less resemblance to a corridor.
When he halted to light his second torch, he was aware that he had traveled
much farther than he had on the way out earlier. Yet he feared returning along
the way he had come. A hundred paces more, he decided, could do no harm...
And when he had gone that distance, he stood at the mouth of a large, warm
cavern, breathing a peculiar odor which he could not identify. He raised the
torch high above him, but the further end of the vast chamber remained hidden
in shadows. A hundred paces more, he told himself....
Later, when he had decided not to risk further explorations, but to retrace
his route and take his chances, he heard an enormous clamor approaching. He
realized that he could either throw himself upon the mercy of his fellow men
and attempt to explain his situation, or hide himself and extinguish his
light. His experience with his fellow men being what it had been, he looked
about for an unobtrusive niche.
And that night, the servants of Rondoval were hunted through the wrecked
castle and slain. Mor, by his staff and his will, charmed the dragons and
other beasts too difficult to slay and drove them into the great caverns
beneath. There, he laid the sleep of ages upon everything within and caused
the caverns to be sealed.
His next task, he knew, would be at least as difficult.
II
He walked along the shining road. Miniature lightnings played constantly
across its surface but did not shock him. To his right and his left there was
a steady flickering as brief glimpses of alternate realities came and went.
Directly overhead was a dark stillness filled with steady stars. In his right
hand he bore his staff, in the crook of his left arm he carried the baby.
Occasionally, there was a branching, a sideroad, a crossroad. He passed many
of these with only a glance. Later, however, he came to a forking of the way
and he set his foot upon the lefthand branch. Immediately, the flickering
slowed perceptibly.
He moved with increased deliberation, now scrutinizing the images. Finally, he
concentrated all of his attention on those to the right. After a time, he
halted and stood facing the panorama.
He moved his staff into a position before him and the progression of images
slowed even more. He watched for several heartbeats, then leaned the tip of
the staff forward.
A scene froze before him, grew, took on depth and coloration....
Evening... Autumn... Small street, small town... University complex...
He stepped forward.
Michael Chain--red-haired, ruddy and thirty pounds overweight--loosened his
tie and lowered his six-foot-plus frame onto the stool before the drawing
board. His left hand played games with the computer terminal and a figure took
shape on the cathode display above it. He studied this for perhaps half a
minute, rotated it, made adjustments, rotated it again.
Taking up a pencil and a T-square, he transferred several features from the
display to the sheet on the board before him. He leaned back, regarding it,
chewed his lip, began a small erasure.
"Mike!" said a small, dark-haired woman in a severe evening dress, opening the
door to his office. "Can't you leave your work alone for a minute?"
"The sitter is not here yet," he replied, continuing the erasure, "and I'm
ready to go. This beats twiddling my thumbs."
"Well, she is here now and your tie has to be retted and we're late."
He sighed, put down the pencil and switched off the terminal. "All right," he
said, rising to his feet and fambling at his throat. "I'll be ready in a
minute. Punctuality is no great virtue at a faculty party."
"It is if it's for the head of your department."
"Gloria," he replied, shaking his head, "the only thing you need to know about
Jim is that he wouldn't last a week in the real world. Take him out of the
university and drop him into a genuine industrial design slot and he'd--"
"Let's not get into that again," she said, retreating. "I know you're not
happy here, but for the time being there's nothing else. You've got to be
decent about it."
"My father had his own consulting firm," he recited. "It could have been
mine--"
"But he drank it out of business. Come on. Let's go."
"That was near the end. He'd had some bad breaks. He was good. So was
Granddad," he went on. "He founded it and--"
"I already know you come from a dynasty of geniuses," she said, "and that Dan
will inherit the mantle. But right now--"
He shook himself and looked at her.
"How is he?" he asked in a softer voice.
"Asleep," she said. "He's okay."
He smiled.
"Okay. Let's get our coats. I'll be good."
She turned and he followed her out, the pale eye of the CRT looking over his
shoulder.
Mor stood in the doorway of a building diagonally across the street from the
house he was watching. The big man in the dark overcoat was on the doorstep,
hands thrust into his pockets, gazing up the street. The smaller figure of the
woman still faced the partly opened door. She was speaking with someone
within.
Finally, the woman closed the door and turned. She joined the man and they
began walking. Mor watched them head off up the street and turn the corner. He
waited awhile longer, to be certain they would not be returning after some
remembered trifle.
He departed the doorway and crossed the street. When he reached the proper
door he rapped upon it with his staff. After several moments, the door opened
slightly. He saw that there was a chain upon it on the inside. A young girl
stared at him across it, dark eyes only slightly suspicious.
"I've come to pick something up," he said, the web of an earlier spell making
his foreign words clear to her, "and to leave something."
"They are not in just now," she said. "I'm the sitter. ..."
"That is all right," he said, slowly lowering the point of his staff toward
her eye level.
A faint pulsing began within the dark wood, giving it an opalescent hue and
texture. Her eyes shifted. It held her attention for several pulsebeats, and
then he raised it slowly toward his own face. Their eyes met and he held her
gaze. His voice shifted into a lower register.
"Unchain the door now," he said.
There was a shadow of movement, a rattling within. The chain dropped.
"Step back," he commanded.
The face withdrew. He pushed the door open and entered.
"Go into the next room and sit down," he said, closing the door behind him.
"When I depart this place, you will chain the door behind me and forget that I
have been here. I will tell you when to do this."
The girl was already on her way into the living room.
He moved about slowly, opening doors. Finally, he paused upon the threshold of
a small, darkened room, then entered softly. He regarded the tiny figure
curled within the crib, then moved the staff to within inches of its head.
"Sleep," he said, the wood once again flickering beneath his hand. "Sleep."
Carefully then, he placed his own burden upon the floor, leaned his staff
against the crib, uncovered and raised the child he had charmed. He lay it
beside the other and considered them both. In the light that spilled through
the opened door, he saw that this baby was lighter of complexion than the one
he had brought, and its hair was somewhat thinner, paler. Still...
He proceeded to exchange their clothing and to wrap the baby from the crib in
the blanket which had covered the other. Then he placed the last Lord of
Rondoval within the crib and stared at him. His finger moved forward to touch
the dragonmark....
Abruptly, he turned away, retrieved his staff and lifted young Daniel Chain
from the floor.
As he passed along the hallway he called into the living room, "I am going
now. Fix the door as it was after me--and forget."
Outside, he heard the chain fall into place as he walked away. Stars shone
down through jagged openings among the clouds and a cold wind came out of the
east at his back. A vehicle turned the corner, raking him with its lights, but
it passed without slowing.
Tiny gleams began to play within the sidewalk, and the buildings at either
hand lost something of their substantiality, became two-dimensional, began to
flicker.
The sparkling of his path increased and it soon ceased to be a sidewalk,
becoming a great bright way stretching illimitably before and behind him, with
numerous sideways visible. The prospect to his right and left became a mosaic
of tiny still-shots of innumerable times and places, flashing, brightening and
shrinking, coming at last to resemble the shimmering scales of some exotic
fish in passage by him. Overhead, a band of dark sky remained, but cloudless
and pouring starlight in negative celestial image of the road below.
Occasionally, Mor glimpsed other figures upon the sideways--not all of them of
human form--bent on tasks as inscrutable as his own.
His staff came to blaze as he picked his way homeward, lightning-dew dripping
from his heels, his toes.
III
In lands mythical to one another, the days passed.
When the boy was six years old, it was noted that he not only attempted to
repair anything that was broken about the place, but that he quite often
succeeded. Mel showed her husband the kitchen tongs he had mended.
"As good as Vince could have done at the smithy," she said. "That boy's going
to be a tinker."
Marakas examined the tool.
"Did you see how he did it?" he asked.
"No. I heard his hammering, but I didn't pay him much heed. You know how he's
always fooling with bits of metal and such."
Marakas nodded and set the tongs aside.
"Where is he now?"
"Down by the irrigation ditch, I think," she answered. "He splashes about
there."
"I'll walk down and see him, tell him he was a good boy for mending that," he
said, crossing the room and lifting the latch.
Outside, he turned the corner and took the sloping path past the huge tree in
the direction of the fields. Insects buzzed in the grasses. A bird warbled
somewhere above him. A dry breeze stirred his hair. As he walked, he thought
somewhat proudly of the child they had taken. He was certainly healthy and
strong--and very clever....
"Mark?" he called when he had reached the ditch.
"Over here, Dad," came a faint reply from around the bend to his right.
He moved in that direction.
"Where?" he asked, after a time.
"Down here."
Approaching the edge, he looked over, seeing Mark and the thing with which he
was playing. It appeared that the boy had placed a smooth, straight stick just
above the water's surface, resting each of its ends loosely in grooves among
rock heaps he had built up on either side; and at the middle of the stick was
affixed a series of squarish--wings?--which the flowing water pushed against,
turning it round and round. A peculiar tingle of trepidation passed over him
at the sight of it--why, he was not certain--but this vanished moments later
as he followed the rotating vanes with his eyes, becoming a sense of pleasure
at his son's achievement.
"What have you got there, Mark?" he asked, seating himself on the bank.
"Just a sort of--wheel," the boy said, looking up and smiling. "The water
turns it."
"What does it do?"
"Nothing. Just turns."
"It's real pretty."
"Yeah, isn't it?"
"That was nice the way you fixed those tongs," Marakas said, plucking a piece
of grass and chewing it. "Your mother liked that."
"It was easy."
"You enjoy fixing things and making things, making things work---don't you?"
"Yes."
"Think that's what you'd like to do for a living some day?"
"I think so."
"Old Vince is going to be looking for an apprentice down at the forge one of
these days. If you think you'd like to learn smithing, working with metals and
such--I could speak with him."
Mark smiled again.
"Do that," he said.
"Of course, you'd be working with real, practical things." Marakas gestured
toward the water-spun wheel. "Not toys," he finished.
"It isn't a toy," Mark said, turning to look back at his creation.
"You just said that it doesn't do anything."
"But I think it could. I just have to figure what--and how."
Marakas laughed, stood and stretched. He tossed his blade of grass into the
water and watched the wheel mangle it.
"When you find out, be sure to tell me."
He turned away and started back toward the path.
"I will ..." Mark said softly, still watching it turn.
When the boy was six years old, he went into his father's office to see once
again the funny machine Dad used. Maybe this time--
"Dan! Get out of here!" bellowed Michael Chain, a huge figure, without even
turning away from the drawing board.
The little stick figure on the screen before him had collapsed into a line
that waved up and down. Michael's hand played across the console, attempting
adjustments.
"Gloria! Come and get him! It's happening again!"
"Dad," Dan began, "I didn't mean--"
The man swiveled and glared at him.
"I've told you to stay out of here when I'm working," he said.
"I know. But I thought that maybe this time--"
"You thought! You thought! It's time you started doing what you're told!"
"I'm sor--"
Michael Chain began to rise from his stool and the boy backed away. Then Dan
heard his mother's footsteps at his back. He turned and hugged her.
"I'm sorry," he finished.
"Again?" Gloria said, looking over him at her husband.
"Again," Michael answered. "The kid's a jinx."
The pencil-can began rattling atop the small table beside the drawing board.
Michael turned and stared at it, fascinated. It tipped, fell to its side,
rolled toward the table's edge.
He lunged, but it passed over the edge and fell to the floor before he could
reach it. Cursing, he straightened then and banged his head on the nearest
corner.
"Get him out of here!" he roared. "The kid's got a pet poltergeist!"
"Come on," Gloria said, leading him away, "We know it's not something you want
to do...."
The window blew open. Papers swirled. There came a sharp rapping from within
the wall. A book fell from its shelf.
"... It's just something that sometimes happens," she finished, as they
departed.
Michael sighed, picked things up, rose, closed the window. When he returned to
his machine, it was functioning normally. He glared at it. He did not like
things that he could not understand. Was it a wave phenomenon that the kid
propagated--intensified somehow when he became upset? He had tried several
times to detect something of that sort, using various instruments. Alway
unsuccessfully. The instruments themselves usually--
"Now you've done it. He's crying and the place is a shambles," Gloria said,
entering the room again. "If you'd be a little more gentle with him when it
starts, things probably wouldn't get so bad. I can usually head them off, just
by being nice to him."
"In the first place," Michael said, "I'm not sure I believe that anything
paranormal really happens. In the second, it's always so sudden."
She laughed. So did he.
"Well, it is," he said finally. "I suppose I had better go and say something
to him. I know it's not his fault. I don't want him unhappy. ..."
He had started toward the door. He paused.
"I still wonder," he said.
"I know."
"I'm sure our kid didn't have that funny mark on his wrist."
"Don't start that again. Please. It just takes you around in circles."
"You're right."
He departed his office and walked back toward Dan's room. As he went, he heard
the sounds of a guitar being softly strummed. Now a D chord, now a G...
Surprising, how quickly a kid that age had learned to handle the undersized
instrument... Strange, too. No one else in either family had ever shown any
musical aptitude.
He knocked gently on the door. The strumming stopped.
"Yes?"
"May I come in?"
"Uh-huh."
He pushed the door open and entered. Dan was sprawled on the bed. The
instrument was nowhere in sight. Underneath, probably.
"That was real pretty," he said. "What were you playing?"
"Just some sounds. I don't know."
"Why'd you stop?"
"You don't like it."
"I never said that."
"I can tell."
He sat down beside him and squeezed his shoulder.
"Well, you're wrong," he said. "Everybody's got something they like to do.
With me, it's my work." Then, finally, "You scared me, Dan. I don't know how
it happens that machines sometimes go crazy when you come around--and things I
don't understand sometimes scare me. But I'm not really mad at you. I just
sound that way when I'm startled."
Dan rolled onto his side and looked up at him. He smiled weakly.
"You want to play something for me? I'll be glad to listen."
The boy shook his head.
"Not just now," he said.
Michael looked about the room, at the huge shelf of picture books, at the
unopened erector set. When he looked back at Dan, he saw that the boy was
rubbing his wrist.
"Hurt your hand?" he asked.
"Uh-uh. It just sort of throbs--the mark--sometimes."
"How often?"
"Whenever--something like that--happens."
He gestured toward the door and the entire external world.
"It's going away now," he added.
He took hold of the boy's wrist, examined the dark dragon-shape upon it.
"The doctor said it was nothing to worry about--no chance of it ever turning
into anything bad...."
"It's all right now."
Michael continued to stare for several moments. Finally, he squeezed the hand,
lowered it and smiled.
"Anything you want, Dan?" he asked.
"No. Uh... Well--some books."
Michael laughed.
"That's one thing you like, isn't it? Okay, maybe we can stop by a bookstore
later and see what they've got."
Dan finally smiled.
"Thank you."
Michael punched his shoulder lightly and rose.
"... And I'll stay out of your office, Dad."
He squeezed his shoulder again and left him there on the bed. As he headed
back toward his office, he heard a soft, rapid strumming begin.
When the boy was twelve years old he built a horse. It stood two hands high
and was moved by a spring-powered clockwork mechanism. He had worked after
hours at the smithy forging the parts, and on his own time in the shed he had
built behind his parents' place, measuring, grinding and polishing gears. Now
it pranced on the floor of that shed, for him and his audience of one--Nora
Vail, a nine-year-old neighbor girl.
She clapped her hands as it slowly turned its head, as if to regard them.
"It's beautiful, Mark! It's beautiful!" she said. "There's never been anything
like it--except in the old days."
"What do you mean?" he said quickly.
"You know. Like long ago. When they had all sorts of clever devices like
that."
"Those are just stories," he said. Then, after a time, "Aren't they?"
She shook her head, pale hair dancing.
"No. My father's passed by one of the forbidden places, down south by Anvil
Mountain. You can still see all sorts of broken things there without going
in--things people can't make anymore." She looked back at the horse, its
movements now slowing. "Maybe even things like that."
摘要：

CHANGELINGByRogerZelaznyIWhenhesawoldMorlimptothevanofthebesiegers'mainparty,theLordofRondovalrealizedthathisreignwasaboutover.Thedaywasfadingfastbehindstormclouds,asteadydrizzleofcoldraindescendedandthethunderrollednearerwitheachbeat,witheachdazzlingstrokeoflight.ButDetMorson,thereonthemainbalconyo...

收起<<
Roger Zelazny - Wizard World 01 - Changeling.pdf

共98页,预览20页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：98 页 大小：265.91KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-20

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 98
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注