May, Julian - Trillium 2 - Blood Trillium

VIP免费
2024-12-02 0 0 617.71KB 172 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/Julian%20May%20-%20Blood%20TrilliumUC.txt
1
s
pringtime and the end of the winter rains were long overdue that year in the world lit by the
Three Moons. Lingering monsoons had flooded the lowlands of the Peninsula and piled the snowdrifts
high round about the Tower of the Archimage on the southern slope of Mount Brom. And on the night
that the small fugitive named Shiki came, there was sleet.
The lammergeier that bore him through the shrieking gale was too weary and battered to use its
mental M>ice to call ahead to its fellows at the eyrie of the *u-chimage, so its arrival was a
dismaying surprise. The gigantic bird had no sooner landed upon the slippery Tower roof than it
collapsed and died, and the servants at the White Lady at first did not even see the burden it had
borne so steadfastly southward. All parts of the great black-and-white body save the wings, tail,
and head were '•-eathed in a glaze of ice. The leather cloak of Shiki, fcmch had shielded him as
he crouched on the bird's back during the awful journey, was as stiff as armor and i!! but welded
to the huge corpse. The fugitive himself
Blood TVillium
was so near death that he lacked the strength to creep out of his shelter, and he might have
perished had the Archimage's voorkeepers not hastened to his rescue. They saw at once that he was
a man of the Mountain Folk, of the same aboriginal Vispi race as they themselves, but by dint of
his small stature obviously belonging to some unknown tribe.
"I am Shiki. I have news for the White Lady," he managed to say. "A terrible thing has happened in
the north country—in Tuzamen. I—I must tell her—"
Before he could say more, he fell bereft of his senses, dreaming of his dead wife and two dead
children. They seemed to beckon Shiki in his feverdream, urging him to join them in a golden realm
of peace and warmth where sacred Black Trilliums bloomed under cloudless skies.
How he longed to follow his loved ones there! To be freed at last from pain and the relentless
press of duty! But he had not yet delivered his portentous message, and so he begged the phantoms
to wait for him only a little while, until he fulfilled this last mission and informed the
Archimage of the great danger. Even as he spoke his family seemed to drift away smiling into a
bright mist. shaking their heads.
And when he woke, he knew he would live.
He found himself abed in a dim and cozy chamber, tucked beneath a fur coverlet and with both
frostbitten hands thickly swaddled in cloth. The small lamp beside the bed was strange, giving off
a bright yellow light from a kind of crystal, without any trace of flame. Freezing rain raided on
the window of the room, but the place was vers warm, even though there was no hearth or brazier of
coals to be seen. A subtle perfume filled the air. He struggled to sit up and saw on a table at
the foot of the bed a row of golden urns, and in them bloomed magical Black Tril-lium plants like
those he had seen in his dream.
Standing in the shadows beyond them was a tall woman. She was cloaked and hooded in a shimmering
white fabric that had fleeting blue glints like those in the ice of the great inland glaciers. Her
visage was hidden and
at first Shiki caught his breath in foreboding, for an aura of surpassing mystery and power seemed
to emanate from her, unmanning him and setting him trembling like a terrified child. He had
encountered a person having this kind of aura only once before, and he had nearly died of it.
The woman threw back her hood and came to his side. Gently, she pressed him back against the
pillows. "Do not be afraid," she said. The fearful aura seemed to recede then, and she appeared to
be only a handsome black-haired young female—human, not of the Folk—having eves of opalescent blue
with golden glints deep within, and a sweet mouth gravely smiling.
His fear changed to wild anxiety. Had his voor brought him to the wrong place after all? The
legendary Archimage he sought was an ancient, the protector and guardian of the Mountain Folk from
the days of die Vanished Ones. But this woman looked to be scarcely thirty years ,ld—
"Be at ease," she said. "From time out of mind, one \rchimage has followed another as was decreed
in the beginning. I am the Archimage Haramis, the White Lady of this age, and I confess to you
that I am yet a novice in
-.sing the powers of my great office, which I have held for only twelve years. But tell me who you
are and why you have sought me, and I will do my best to help you."
'Lady," he whispered. The words came slowly, like die fcast drops wrung from a sponge. "I asked my
faithful voor 10 bring me to you because I sought justice—the righting of a terrible wrong done to
me and my family and the reople of my village. But during my flight, as I came near r dving, I
realized that we are not the only ones who need "• ur help. It is the whole world that does."
She regarded him in silence for a long moment. Then
-.<- was amazed to see tears appear in her eyes, but they not spill onto her pale cheeks. "So it
file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/Julian%20May%20-%20Blood%20TrilliumUC.txt (1 of 172) [5/21/03 11:34:20 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/Julian%20May%20-%20Blood%20TrilliumUC.txt
is true!" she »r.ispered. "All diroughout die land there have been rumblings of unease, rumors of
evil reborn among both Folk and humankind—even contention between my two beloved sisters. But I
sought mundane reasons
Blood Tell
for the disturbances because I did not want to believe that the very balance of the world was once
again threatened."
"It is indeed!" he cried, starting up. "Lady, believe me! You must believe me! My own wife would
not believe and she was slain, as were our children and scores of our Folk. That evil one who came
forth from the Sempiternal Icecap now holds all Tuzamen in his thrall. But soon— soon—"
He had a fit of coughing and could speak no more, and from frustration began to thrash about the
bed like a demented thing.
The Archimage lifted her hand. "Magira!"
The door opened. Another female entered, came swiftly to the bedside, and regarded him with
enormous green eyes. Her hair was like fine-spun platinum, with the upstanding ears adorned with
sparkling red jewels. In contrast to the austere white dress of the Archimage, the newcomer was
magnificently attired in gauzy but voluminous robes of a rich crimson color, and she wore a golden
collar and bracelets all studded with multicolored gem-stones. She carried a crystal cup of some
steaming dark liquor, and at the command of the Archimage adminis-tered it to him.
His coughing eased, as did his panic. "In a moment you will feel better," the one named Magira
said. "Have courage. The White Lady does not turn away those \vh< > • petition her." :
Magira wiped his pallid, beslimed forehead with a soft ' cloth, and he noted with relief that
her hand bore three digits like his own. It comforted him to know that thi-person was of the Folk
as he was, even though she was <•: human stature, and her features more finely drawn tha: his own,
and the accents of her speech odd. It was n humankind, after all, that the impending calamity had
it-source.
The taste of the medicinal drink was bitter, but it bot:. soothed and strengthened him. The White
Lady sea1 herself on one side of the bed and Magira sat on ;:.
other, and in a few minutes he relaxed and was able to tell his story:
My name is Shiki [he said], and my people call themselves the Dorok. We dwell in those parts of
far Tuzamen where glacial tongues of the Sempiternal Icecap thrust forth from the frozen center of
the world and nearly reach the sea. Most of that land is treeless and grim, a place of windswept
moors and desolate mountains. We Folk have our small settlements in deep valleys beneath the
frozen crags. Geysers spout there, warming the air and soil so that trees and other vegetation may
grow, and our cave-homes are simple but comfortable. Humans from the coastal setdements and the
Flame-Girt Isles visit us only rarely. We also have litde contact with other tribes of the
Mountain Folk, but we know that we have kin living in the highlands in many parts of the world,
and like them we cherish the far-flying voor, and associate with these great birds, and ride them.
(I realize now that the Lady Magira and those servants of yours who took me in must belong to an
exalted branch of my race that is privileged to serve you, White Lady. And now I begin to
understand why my poor departed voor Nunusio was so determined that I should bring my dire news to
you ... But forgive my digression! I must get on »iun the tale itself.)
1 earned my living as a trapper of the black fedoks and
j Iden worrams that live only in the highest mountains,
r.d betimes I also guided human seekers of precious
etals into the remote ice-free enclaves where the great
i canoes mitigate the terrible cold.
Over two years ago, during the autumn Dry Time,
ree humans came to our village. They were not prospec-
rs or traders, but said they were scholars from die south,
m Raktum. They had been sent forth by Queen Regent
mondri, they said, in search of a certain rare herb that
- uld cure their boy-king Ledavardis of the malignant
131ooa ~U**iltiwm
languor afflicting him. It was a plant alleged to grow only in the Kimilon, the remote Land of
Fire and Ice that is a temperate island surrounded by glaciers, lying amidst rocks newly cooled
after being belched forth from the belly of the world.
The First of our village, old Zozi Twistback, told the strangers that the Kimilon lay over nine
hundred leagues west, entirely encompassed by the icecap. It is inaccessible by land, and only
those great birds that we Folk call voor and the humans call lammergeiers can reach the place. The
journey is all but impossible because of the monstrous storms that lash the Sempiternal Icecap. No
other Mountain Folk save the Dorok have ever dared to venture to the Kimilon on voorback, and we
file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/Julian%20May%20-%20Blood%20TrilliumUC.txt (2 of 172) [5/21/03 11:34:20 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/Julian%20May%20-%20Blood%20TrilliumUC.txt
ourselves have avoided the place for nearly two hundreds.
The three strangers promised an enormous reward to the Dorok guide who would take them to the
Kimilon; but none would go. Not only was the expedition deemed too perilous, but also there was an
ominous mien about the trio of humans, a smell of dark magic, that made us loath to trust them.
One was dressed all in black, another in purple, and the third wore garments of vivid yellow.
The three then demanded that we sell voors to them so they could fly to the Kimilon themselves! ,
Our First restrained her outrage and explained that f the great birds are free beings, not
property, and carry j us only out of friendship. She also reminded the ' strangers
very courteously that the voor's talons and sharp-toothed beak make it a formidable creature to
those who are not its friends. At this the trio renewed their offers of rich rewards for any Dorok
guide who would accompany them. But no one would listen, and the humans finally mounted their
fronials and seemed to quit the village.
Now, it is well known among the Dorok that I am the best guide of all, and the strangers no doubt
found this out. One day when I returned from my traplines I found my home-cave deserted. My wife
and two young daughters had disappeared, and none of the-Folk could say what had
become of them. I was mad with grief that night, and near drunk to the point of insensibility on
mistberry brandy when the stranger dressed in black tapped at my door and said he had an important
message for me.
Yes, you have guessed it: the human scoundrels had abducted my family in order to force me to be
their guide! I was warned that if I spoke to any of my people of the deed, my wife and children
would be killed. On the other hand, if I took the three men safely to the Kimilon and back, my
loved ones would be returned safe to me, and die humans would pay me with a bag of platinum that
would equal ten years' earnings.
"The dangerous trip could all be in vain," said I, "if we fail to find the medicinal herb that you
seek."
At this the villains laughed merrily. "There is no herb," »aid the one garbed in purple. "But
there is somediing else awaiting us that will brook no delay. So summon a flock of your sturdiest
lammergeiers—four for us to r.ount and ten to carry certain supplies that we require— ind we will
leave before dawn."
I could only comply.
I shall not tell you of that horrible flight into the Sempiternal Icecap. It took seven days, with
only a brief rest on the stormy surface of the ice allotted to the valiant voors each night. When
we came at last to the Land of Fire and Ice, the volcanoes were in full spate, with molten lava
pouring down their flanks and the sky full of black smoke ill smeared with crimson, like a vision
of the ten hells. A
-,;n of ash was falling, whitening the ground and coating re meager vegetation like poisonous
snow.
And there we found a lone human male.
He appeared to have built himself a sturdy house from .ocks of lava. The place was as large as two
ferol-barns
d emplaced against a great cliff, and it was not only well
-.ade but even handsome. But the man's only food would we been the lichens encrusting the rocks,
roots and
-•rries from the few shrubs growing in the thin soil, and
e slugs and shelled creatures inhabiting the hot springs.
7 he ashfall was doubdess depleting these, and he had no
Blood "Ccillium
more flesh on him than a skeleton when we first encountered him.
He was a man of tall stature, nearly twice my height. His filthy yellowish hair and beard reached
nearly to his knees. His face was seamed and scarred and his eyes—of the palest blue, with a spark
of gold deep within the dark pupils—peered out from deep caverns in his skull and had the glitter
of madness. He wore clumsy sandals to protect his feet from the sharp lava rocks, and a stiff
patchwork robe woven of plant fibers which served him well enough, since the subterranean fires
render the Kimilon much warmer than the surrounding icecap.
I immediately understood that the purpose of our expedition had been to rescue this man, whose
name was Portolanus. He was beyond doubt a powerful sorcerer. I must tell you straitly, White
Lady, that he had about him the same awesome atmosphere of enchantment that invests your own
person—but his magic evinced nothing of benevolence. Instead Portolanus seemed almost to glow with
suppressed fury, as though his inner self were a sump of incandescent emotion. It seemed to me
that this might gush forth as destructively as the red-hot magma rages from a volcano if he should
ever unleash his soul's full power.
file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/Julian%20May%20-%20Blood%20TrilliumUC.txt (3 of 172) [5/21/03 11:34:20 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/Julian%20May%20-%20Blood%20TrilliumUC.txt
When we first found this Portolanus he was scarce able to utter human speech. I never learned how
long he had been marooned in that hideous place, nor how he had managed to summon his three
rescuers—who treated him with the most profound respect, commingled with fear. They had brought
rich new snowy-white garments for him; and after he was well fed and cleaned and his hair and
beard trimmed, he could not be recognized as the poor wretch who had bellowed like a triumphant
beast when the voors first landed us near his dwelling.
The "supplies" that the henchmen of Portolanus had had me pack upon the extra voors were, in
addition to our food and the tiny tents we slept in upon the icecap, nothing but sacks and ropes.
The purpose of these wrappings soon became clear. While the voors rested and I
remained outside with one villain to guard me, the sorcerer and the other two men busied
themselves within the stone house. They eventually emerged with many packages, which they loaded
onto the birds. Then we returned to Tuzamen by the same dangerous route we had come.
We did not fly to my village, however. We went to the coast, to the squalid human settlement of
Merika at the mouth of the White River that calls itself the capital of Tuzamen. There the
villains disembarked with their mysterious freight at a ramshackle place called Casde Ten-ebrose
that overlooks the sea. I was discharged and given a small pouch of platinum coins, less than a
tenth of the sum I had been promised. The balance of my fee, Portolanus said, would be paid "when
his fortunes mended." (A likely story, thought I. But I wisely held my tongue.) The lackeys of
Portolanus told me the location of the remote lava tube where they had walled up my family. I
would find them safe enough, they said.
The voors and I returned to the mountains, and I rescued my wife and daughters. They were hungry,
cold, and dirty—but otherwise unharmed. You may imagine the happiness of our reunion. My wife was
overjoyed to see the bag of platinum, and immediately made fine plans on how we were to spend it.
I commanded her and the children to tell no one of their ordeal, for when one is dealing with
humans—especially those who are wielders of dark magic—no precaution is too great.
Then, for nearly two years, we dwelt in peace.
News of human affairs comes slowly to the remote mountain valleys of the Dorok. We did not realize
that Portolanus, claiming to be the grandnephew of the mighty sorcerer Bondanus, who had ruled
forty years earlier, swiftly put down Thrinus, the nominal potentate of Tuzamen, and took over the
country himself. It was said that he and his followers used weapons of sorcery that made ordinary
armor useless, and were themselves invulnerable to hurt, and that they could seize the very souls,
of their foes and turn them into helpless puppets.
I did not encounter Portolanus again until this winter's
Blood TVi if i w >
11
Rain, about twenty days ago. He came in the dead of night and burst into our cave in a thunderclap
of wizardry, nearly tearing the stout door from its hinges. Our little daughters awoke screaming
and my wife and I were shocked nearly out of our wits. This time the sorcerer held his aura in
check somehow, and I would not have known him—except for his eyes. He was dressed like a king
beneath his muddy riding-cloak. His body had regained its flesh and his voice was no longer harsh
but smooth and compelling.
He said: "We must go again to the Kimilon, Oddling. Summon voors for yourself and me, and one more
to carry our necessary supplies."
I was full of indignation and great fear, for I knew— even if he did not—that we had barely
managed to escape with our lives the last time we had ventured across the icecap, and that was
during the Dry Time. It was lunacy to attempt such a journey now, when the snowy hurricanes were
at their worst, and I told him so.
"Nevertheless, we shall go," said he. "I have magic to command the storm. You will suffer no harm,
and this time I will leave your reward with your wife so the thought of it will cheer you as we
travel."
And he pulled forth an embroidered leather pouch, opened it, and spilled a pile of cut gems onto
our eating-table: rubies and emeralds and rare yellow diamonds all asparkle in the guttering light
from our hearth.
I still refused. My wife was with child and one of the girls sickly, and in spite of the wizard's
assurances I feared that we two would not return alive.
To my dismay, my wife began to remonstrate with me, pointing out the good things we would be able
to buy when we traded the gems. I was in a rage at her silliness and greed, and we shouted at each
other, and the children wailed and sniveled until Portolanus barked: "Enough!"
His awesome magical aura suddenly enveloped him. He looked taller and supremely menacing, and we
shrank away from him as he drew a dark, metal rod from a pouch
at his belt. Before I knew what was happening, he touched my wife's head with this thing and she
file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/Julian%20May%20-%20Blood%20TrilliumUC.txt (4 of 172) [5/21/03 11:34:20 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/Julian%20May%20-%20Blood%20TrilliumUC.txt
fell to the floor. I gave a cry, but he did the same to my poor little daughters, then brandished
the rod at me.
"Demon!" I screamed. "You have slain them!"
"They are not dead, only bereft of their senses," he said. "But they will not wake until I touch
them once again with this magical device. And that I will not do until you and I travel to the
Kimilon and back."
"Never!" said I, and I concentrated my mind and sent forth the Call to my Dorok tribesmen. They
came racing through the stormy night to my aid with swords and hand-catapults ready, gathering in
a howling crowd beneath the rocky overhang that shelters my cave door.
Portolanus laughed. He opened the door a crack and threw some small object outside. There was a
bright flash of light—then all the loud voices fell silent. The magician opened the door and
strode outside. My stouthearted friends lay there in the rainswept darkness, blinded and helpless.
One by one, Portolanus touched them with his rod, and they were still.
The families of the fallen now began to appear at the doors of their cave-homes, calling and
crying. The tall sorcerer turned to me, and his aura froze me like the glacial wind and his
terrible eyes had become blazing diamonds set in black obsidian. When he spoke, his voice was very
calm. "They will all die—or they will live. It is your choice to make."
"You've killed them already!" I cried, beside myself. "I'll call the voors to tear you to bits!"
Whereupon he touched me with the rod.
I felt as a candle must when it is snuffed out: swallowed into utter nothingness. An instant later
I came to myself again, limp as a newborn vart, lying on my back in the mud with the rain pelting
my face. The magical rod was poised a finger's breadth from my nose and Portolanus glared down at
me.
"You Oddling blockhead!" he said. "Can you not
"Blood TriIlium
13
understand that you have no choice? I stunned you senseless, then restored you with my magic. The
rod will restore your family and friends also—but only if you serve me!"
"The voors cannot fly long distances in the storms," I muttered. "During this season they mostly
remain in their eyries."
"I have a way to gende die storm," said he. "Call die birds and let us be off."
Having lost both courage and hope, I agreed at last. The wives and older children of the
settlement came forth to bear their stunned husbands and fadiers to shelter, and Portolanus
directed diem in the way to care for dieir loved ones and for my own family until I should return.
When we finally lofted into die air, he had die diree voors fly closely togedier, widi his own
mount at die center. In some miraculous fashion he softened die force of the windblast, and we
soared as if in calm weadier. When die birds tired, we landed upon die interior icecap as before
and sheltered in tents while die birds huddled around us. The same enchantment fended off die snow
and wind while we rested, and dien we took off once more. It took only six days to reach the
Kimilon diis time in spite of die incessant blizzards, and I arrived hale in body and resigned in
spirit.
The magician retrieved only a single diing from die lava-rock house: a dark coffer about die
lengdi of my body, diree handsbreadths wide and the same in depdi. It was made of some slick
material like black glass and had a silvery star widi many rays embossed upon die top. All jovial
now, widi his aura once again in check, Portolanus opened die box to show me dial it was empty.
"A simple thing, is it not, Oddling?" he asked me. "And yet it is my key to die conquest of die
world"—he pulled from his fine jerkin a battered and blackened medallion on a chain, formed like
die same kind of star— "just as this was die salvation of my life! There are powerful sorcerers in
die soudiern lands who would forfeit their souls' immortality in order to possess these two
diings, and kings and queens who would gladly give up dieir
crowns for them. But diey are mine and I am alive to make use of them, thanks to you."
He began to laugh madly then, and his aura enveloped me like die bone-freezing fog of the
Sempiternal Ice, and I feared I would die of despair and self-disgust on the spot. But in my mind
I heard the voice widiout words of my beloved voor Nunusio bidding me to have courage, and I
remembered my family and die others.
We must go, Nunusio told me, for a vast storm approaches that will challenge this evil one's magic
to the fullest. We must be away from the Kimilon before it breaks.
Haltingly, I told Portolanus what my voor had said. He uttered a strange oath and began quickly to
wrap up die precious star-box. He lashed it to die back of his own bird, rather than to that of
the third voor who carried our supplies. Then we were off, just as the volcanoes vanished in
impenetrable snowclouds.
file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/Julian%20May%20-%20Blood%20TrilliumUC.txt (5 of 172) [5/21/03 11:34:20 PM]
摘要：

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/Julian%20May%20-%20Blood%20TrilliumUC.txt1springtimeandtheendofthewinterrainswerelongoverduethatyearin heworldlitbytheThreeMoons.LingeringmonsoonshadfloodedthelowlandsofthePeninsulaandpiledthesnowdriftshighroundabouttheToweroftheArchimageonthesouthernslopeofMou tBrom.A...

展开>> 收起<<
May, Julian - Trillium 2 - Blood Trillium.pdf

共172页,预览5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：172 页 大小：617.71KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-02

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 动力学连接体 力的合成 配电装置 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 172
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注