LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

that possible?” he asked Urumir. “And if it is – what does it mean?”

      “If what Nill says is true, the Other World is looking for him. And if Bucyngaphos is after him, he will be found. In this world or in his world. And because Nill can’t escape him, he must meet him head on. Are you ready, Nill?”

      Nill was not, but he nodded all the same.

      “Then we shall go through the flame.”

      Nill did not understand what he meant, for the shaman was still sitting.

      “Look into the fire, I will help you.”

      Wild images flitted past. Nill saw the primal fire igniting, raging, shrinking to earthen fire and falling apart, the sparks growing ever smaller. Now there stood only a torch in the darkness. Nill saw things burned in the fire, he saw mages conjure flames from nothing, saw the calm, silent blaze of molten rock and bursting flames. He saw fire by the river and in the mountains, fire underneath ice and in his mother’s oven.

      He felt dizzy. He was standing in the fire, felt its heat and heard its roar, saw the heat waves in the air and heard the cracking of wood and stone. In the middle of the inferno he saw a black spot that slowly grew, taking on a human form.

      “Come,” the spot said, “follow me.”

      Nill stepped hesitantly forwards and passed through the flames. In front of him was naught but an enormous darkness.

      “It takes some time for the eyes to get used to the darkness when you enter the Other World through the fire.” The shaman’s calm voice was clearly audible. The blackness all around began to feel less absolute, the shadows started taking shape. At first they were washed-out and formless, but they slowly began to resemble bodies. Nill could make out faces and differentiate between armor and robes, rags and noble dress. The people in front of him moved at a steady pace or hovered above the ground. There was no rest anywhere, everything was moving.

      “I wouldn’t have thought this place to be so busy,” he murmured in wonder.

      “It isn’t. It just seems like it because we’re in the demons’ world now. Time and space as we know it have no greater part to play here, they are not constant. If you move towards one of these figures you’ll see that there are great spaces between them. There are not many humans in the Other World.”

      “Is this not the place where all dead people go?”

      “No, only the people we remember. Our grandparents and parents, our brothers, sisters, sons and daughters. And the people of old, of legend: powerful kings and mages whose stories have been told for generations. Why do you think rulers have their deeds chronicled, why do we build statues and memorials? As long as a person remembers you, you will stay in the Other World.”

      “And if I’m forgotten?”

      “Then you will go back to the void whence you came.”

      “So as long as I’m here I can speak to my fellow people, even if I’m long dead.”

      “If someone is there to call upon you, yes. That is why people come to us shaman. We possess the magic of communing with the spirits of the dead. We are the mediators.”

      “Do spirits like being called upon?” Nill asked.

      “What do you mean?”

      “I mean maybe the spirits would rather go back into the void than waiting around here for someone to finally call them.”

      The shaman shook his head. “The spirits do not feel any longer. The time they spend here does not exist for them.”

      Nill went on through the shadows. It looked as though they were dodging out of his way, but maybe they were not there at all. Occasionally he saw someone in a regal gown or in mighty armor with bloodstained weapons, but most of them were like the villagers he had known: farmers, hunters, shepherds and craftsmen.

      Between the dead, small things that Nill could not quite make out hopped around. When he came closer they retreated quickly. Nill followed them and the amount of spirits lessened. It was not easy to see anything. Some of the creatures had small, red dots for eyes. Nill looked over his shoulder and realized with a shock that he had lost Urumir.

      “Urumir, where are you?” Nill cried out silently into the flowing nothingness all around him. His guide had left him in the Other World. He was gone. Everything seemed to fall apart. Nill’s eyes found the only solid point he could find in all the confusion: a pair of slanted, yellow eyes.

      “You, here?” Nill breathed. He had never thought he would greet his old ram with such relief and happiness. “It seems you want to follow me everywhere. How did you get past Dakh-Ozz-Han?”

      But the eyes stayed sill in the darkness and did not move. Nill stepped towards them. The eyes recoiled from him.

      “We’re all alone here, so come to me,” Nill implored and began to doubt whether the eyes really were his ram’s. His happiness was suddenly gone and fear began to replace it. Nill took a step back and the eyes followed. Nill could not make out what creature belonged to those eyes. He walked to the side, backwards and forwards. The eyes mirrored his every move as in a silent dance. Nill squatted down and the eyes rose up. He leapt and the eyes dropped to the ground without losing a trace of their intense gaze. He spun around and the eyes were gone. Nill was afraid that this was all just a game, the rules to which he did not know, something which reality could burst out of at any second.

      How do shaman find their way in the Other World if there’s nothing to hang on to? he wondered. At this point he had even begun to doubt whether the floor he was standing on was really there, for the shadows around him sank through it into the depths or rose up into the sky, as though there were no actual boundaries whatsoever. It seemed the ground was only where he chose to stand. Nill jumped up, expecting to sink with the other descending shadows, but he landed on his feet again. His jump was feeble too, not more than a small hop. “I’ll never get out of here. Urumir, was it you who lost me?”

      Nill heard the feebleness in his voice and as always he hated himself for it. But the thing that had seen him through all the humiliation and hardship in his village, the small flame of resistance, was not so easily extinguished. A hero may be desperate, but even that must have an end, he thought.

      He sat down on the ground, closed his eyes, forgot the shadows and blocked off the whirling commotion that surrounded him. In place of movement something else happened. Nill felt wide awake, equipped with magnified senses. He saw and heard everything, even if around him there was only darkness and silence. The slanted eyes had disappeared, Urumir was nowhere to be seen, but Nill no longer felt alone.

      Out of the corner of his eye, the very perimeter of his vision, he saw murky blotches tumble about and dissolve when he turned his attention toward them. So he let them be. They combined and took shape. He looked upon a throne. Four feet of a high chair were anchored to the ground, held in place by an executioner’s blade. In front of the sharp steel there were two mighty talons digging into the ground. The talons grew before his eyes, grew endlessly until he could only see spots and cracks in the ancient leathery claws. He saw congealed blood and clumps of mud.

      Nill had to tear away his gaze with force. He stared up, higher and higher, and did not so much see as sense the face up there, a face he recognized. Bucyngaphos, the Archdemon. A sudden gust of wind blew through the area as the demon lord stood up and shook out his small, thick wings. The wind dragged Nill up from the floor and pulled him through the air. Bucyngaphos extended one of his scythe-like claws, impaled Nill’s cassock and lifted him up to his face. Nill flailed a bit with his legs before becoming still.

      “It was time for you to come to us.”

      The voice reverberated deeply. It filled the space and Nill’s head completely; there was nothing left apart from it. Here, in the Other World, Nill could understand the demon.

      “Why?” It was the only question that managed to break through the

Скачать книгу