Wandering Spark - Part 32
The tower, thin and fragile from a distance, turned into a gray and gloomy womb inside. And completely empty. There was nothing in it but a ladder. The staircase curled along the walls with a spiral, higher and higher. The wind rustled and howled, crumpling clothes and fingering hair.
They rose in silence. The first walked his Excellency Lord, second inquirer Slug, and last Varan. He wasn’t guarded as there were nowhere to go except that one could jump off the ladder with head down, like into the water.
His Excellency began to gasp after a second hundred steps, so they walked slowly, often stopping to rest. The lord sniffed some grass, sighed noisily, muttered under his breath; Slug stood, like a statue in windswept clothes. Then Varan honestly tried to realize the solemnity of the moment - he, a small pod, found himself in such a society, in such a place... But he didn’t feel holy trembling. The lord was just an old man with uncomfortable hair up his shoulders, dyslexic and unhealthy. Investigator Slug was just a machine, like a father's screw, a good machine at work. There was no solemnity, and even fear - only tiredness.
They made a pause and continued again. After 50 steps the lord coughed and stopped. The tower was breathing; the wind was blowing, a stream of warm air was raising from below, and in this stream was flying detective dry rubbish - leaves, feathers, and corpses of insects.
"Enough," said the lord heavily. "Walk on yourself. The lord magician will meet you. " His lordship held his jawed cheek with a finger. "Take my ring," he pulled off one of the little yellow rings off his finger, "you will show... tell everything yourself. Yes, let it be so."
The lord squeezed his back to the stone wall, and past him, along the narrow staircase, passed Slug, then Varan. Having reached the lord, Varan heard the sour smell of his breath.
Then the climb went faster. The lord at the bottom watched as they scrambled, stairway after stairway, then the lord become barely visible in the semi-darkness.
Closer to the top of the tower tapered. The well between the windings of the staircase was very thin, the wind in it was louder and louder, and the windows were less and less. Finally, Slug stopped in front of the dark door.
"Emperor, save us," Slug muttered under his breath and added something else that Varan could not make out because of the noise of the wind.
The yellow ring, handed to Slug as a credential, tinkled with a copper handle. More and more - three solemn times.
Slug waited for an answer; Varan suddenly remembered why he was here, remembered that he was being sent to the capital and then to the imperial court - and the prison breakfast he had eaten the day before was hammered in his stomach like a bird that wanted freedom.
The door opened slightly - just enough so that an uncomplicated person could squeeze through. Slug stood aside, offering Varan to go first. Varan shook his head; Slug took him by the collar and shoved forward, towards fate. Varan made a few steps by inertia - and stopped.
The habitation of a magician in his luxury could probably satisfy the Emperor himself. The floor, the walls and even the ceiling were lined with wood, and not narrow planks - wide boards, light and dark, yellow, brown and almost black. The longevity, through which for decades and centuries, woody juices wandered somewhere in the fantastic forests, now formed a strange, but clearly meaningful pattern. Varan was standing on one leg, afraid to lower the second one, because the floor was mosaic - from different woods, and polished to a shine, and warm. Varan, if he could, would fly up and hover in the air, just not to defile the precious tree by touching bare feet, smeared with prison mud...
"Lord of Round Fang in my unworthy face welcomes his power of the Imperial Magician," Slug said, bowing politely, but without curry favor. "Here's the criminal who was reported."
Varan turned his head and smiled faintly, trying to gather his thoughts. Over the days spent in the Prison Gut, he used to consider himself a criminal; for a long way from the foot of the tower to its summit, he used to consider himself a dead man. He was ready for the horror of this moment (to look in the face of this magician, to hear the verdict, to learn the whole truth about the upcoming trials) - but, that's a shame, he felt nothing but bewilderment and shy ecstasy. This is how many years it is necessary to live a tree to build such a trunk! This is where the earth is capable of feeding such roots! And the crown?! In its shadow, probably more than one dozen people will fit...
He felt a pounding in his back:
"Bow down, you fool..."
He bowed so low that he touched the floor with his hand. He jerked his hand away - it's impossible... Probably, it is impossible to paw this magnificence, be he, Varan, a magician - would have cut off curious fingers...
"There were unrest, of course," Slug said, as if answering an unasked question. "But, since more false money has not appeared... And his Excellency lord skillfully explained to his people that rumors of counterfeit hundred square meters are nothing more than a fiction of visiting fraudster... You can justifiably inform the Emperor that Round Fang does not spread swap money."
"But perhaps it produces them," said another voice, detached and cold, like water at great depths. Varan winced at the sound of that voice. He again turned his head, trying to find among the wooden furniture - chairs with high backs, tables with patterned tabletops, light carved screens - the very same Imperial magician who will decide his fate.
"The only person," Slug said with considerable regret, "is capable of shedding light on the question of sweeping weaving... Here is this young pod that is in front of you." Ask him, and let the Emperor help us all...
The second half of the sentence Slug uttered barely audible, to himself.
At this moment, Varan saw, at last, the Imperial Magician. He sat half-turned to the men, looking at the open window, and looked much better than the day Varan had met him, armed with a useless umbrella, on the lower wharf.
Of course, I remembered everything. A fastidious mine, for which Varan immediately disliked the guest, his own refusal to feed and water. The way up on the father's screw, the slipping brace, the damned Lysik...
"What, my friend," said the magician, still cold, "you have a problem?"
His long hair covered his ears and touched his shoulders. Like a lord, Varan thought sadly. Only real Gorni can afford such a hairstyle...
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