Fanfic Concerning the Black Númenorians

[LittleAlex]

I decided to expand the digest of translations from the first book of “Horseman of the Dead Moon” cycle, by the translation of the one more chapter from the second book of that cycle. Which not only is published, but even isn’t completed yet. However, that chapter gives the information in what direction generally will proceed further evens of that cycle. So, there is that translation:

The second book - "In the Power of Darkness"



Chapter Two – ‘The Trap’​

The way down was not quite narrow, but it was obvious that it would be very difficult to carry anything up and down it. That surprised Vladislav a little - for if the cellars had originally stored supplies, then somehow they must have been lifted up? Probably - in the tower, there were other ways to access the cellars. It occurred to him, though, that the cellars could have been completely rebuilt after the capture of the fortress. For it was unlikely that the hall they had visited on the very first day had been originally conceived by the first owners and builders of the tower as it had become afterwards. From its shape and size, it was not likely to be of any utility use.

Mystery-keeper, crouching low, walked ahead, shining a burning torch, the smoke of which rose exactly up to the discontentedly puckering Vladislav, staining the low, vaulted ceiling with traces of soot. They had to make many turns on the staircase before it led them to an unlocked, black-painted, plain iron door, which they opened into a narrow passage that ran in both directions from the entrance.

The stairs and door, however, were in remarkably well-maintained condition. It looked as if it had been used often enough. Well - the Reangbearers evidently must have had some way of getting from the tower to their secret chamber.

The outer wall of the passage, apparently part of the tower's foundation, or closely adjoining it, smouldered with the same pale, rotten glow that lit up the outer walls of the tower at night. But its inner wall, made of coal-black stone of unknown origin, was pierced with fine veins, like blood vessels, which smouldered with a barely visible scarlet-red glow, as if it were a hot wire in a forge's crucible.

Mystery-keeper turned to the left, and began to walk slowly and carefully into the darkness of the passage, lighting himself with his torch. For, in spite of the pale glow of the walls, the passage itself was dark, for the glow did not illuminate anything. The passage was surprisingly dry, and cold to the point of shivering, almost frosty. Nor was there the expected odour of a dank cellar, but there was a faint whiff of decay and decaying flesh. It was almost imperceptible, but its presence was clearly felt.

On their right hand they passed a set of stone doors in a pale-whitish glowing wall, grey-black in colour, probably carved out of basalt slabs. But these doors had no handles, and were completely unresponsive to attempts to open them with a tap of the shoulder. Mystery-keeper tried this way and that, and pressed and cast some spells, apparently dedicated to open the passages. But everything was in vain.

He wrinkled his nose, and kept muttering to himself that he'd probably have to get some lads in here with crow-bars to break through a couple of these slabs. But who knows what they might end up doing if the doors are enchanted? And - so we may have to wait for the more skilful sorcerers to arrive in time. However, it evidently was a pity, because they could have found a lot of interesting things there already, without sharing them with anyone!

In this way, by poking uselessly into the closed passages, they gradually reached what appeared to be the only door that led to the inner hall, which was obviously opposite to the staircase by which they had come down. They found nothing in the passage, not even a single piece of rubble, or even the slightest pebble that had fallen out of old age. The vaulted, rounded ceiling of the passage, laid with the same pale, smouldering marble, left a distinct impression of a certain incompleteness, for the rounding of its vault, beginning at the outer wall, did not pass into the same rounding at the inner wall, which was cut into it with a perfectly straight vertical plane. This further strengthened Vladislav in the idea that the cellars of the tower, after its capture by the Ringbearers, had undergone a very considerable alteration by them.

Mystery-keeper, however, first checked the double-leaf door (or, rather, the gate - according to its size) leading outside. It had both a handle and a lock, which was easily operated by one of the keys he had found in hiding place. The invisible guards on the outside of the gate did not show themselves in any way. Having peeped in, and having ascertained that this exit from the tower was accessible, Mystery-keeper smirked contentedly, noting with concern that, just in case, it would be well to get to grips with the mechanics of lifting the slab, which closed the passage from the outside - who knows how it might be of use to them one day - and then, having carefully locked the gate again, he turned to the door in the wall opposite to the gate. Here it was just as it had been on their first visit - a searing wave of hatred, and of utter hostility, splashed into their faces like scalding boiling water as soon as they tried to touch the door.

He raised his wand hastily, and, as then, the wave of hostility receded at once. It was as if it had been drawn inside the monstrous bas-reliefs on either side of the door, which rivalled the size of a man. Then Mystery-keeper, who had already taken a step towards the entrance to the hall, suddenly tarried, hesitated, and stepped back hastily. Then he looked into Vladislav's face, and said softly, in a slightly trembling voice:

- And what it will be a trick, if we go in there now, and they are just here - sitting on their thrones, eh?..

Vladislav shuddered to the very foundations of his soul at such a suggestion - the last thing he wanted to do now was to come face to face with any of those monstrous creatures of the ancient magic of the Ring.

- Yes, - He continued, still hesitating to insert the key he clutched tightly in his right hand into the keyhole. - They've made a lair for themselves here, I'll say! - He glanced anxiously at the closed door, and turning his gaze to Vladislav, finished quietly. - I, my dear, would not go there at any price! There's nothing for a normal, mortal man to do in this place! Absolutely nothing! Oh, if it weren't for the Palantír! Palantír is an incredible miracle, yes! You'd probably go even to the mouth of the Fire Mountain for it!

- The Palantír? And really - what is it? And what is it for? Is it possible to tell it now to me? Or what? - Vladislav ventured to ask.

- The Palantír, my dear, it's such a thing! - Mystery-keeper said thoughtfully, still hesitating to move nearer to the closed door. - The Palantír, my dear, is a legacy of the grey olden days, brought here by Renegades from our ancestral homeland! And behind that door, it's not just any Palantír! There, my dear friend, is the Key Ruler for all Palantírs! The most important of all Palantírs! Whose ability to explore all existing worlds is really immeasurable! For the essence of these stones was permeation! To penetrate wherever the will of your consciousness directs it! Here, in Middle-earth, they were mostly used only to see into the far distance - into the limits of our world, the outermost images and phenomena. But - according to legends, it could be used to see much further and much deeper! Much deeper than these most external forms and phenomena! Especially by the help of the chief of the stones! It was not in vain that the Highest One was after it so much, that he immediately tried to lay his hands on it at the first open opportunity! Though - he already owned one of these smaller stones, as far as I know. The one that the Renegades from beginning kept here, in this fortress! And that was kept here until the Highest One rose again. It must be buried somewhere under the ruins of the Black Tower now, I think. - And he shook his head sadly.

- All right - enough of this bollocks! - He interrupted himself, and - resolutely inserting the gilded, huge key into the keyhole, he turned it.

The key turned almost noiselessly - one turn, another, and - finally - the door creaked and gave way to the massive - forged gold, in the form of a withered human hand, holding a ball in the clenched palm - handle. But the same purple glow that had greeted them in this subterranean hall, when they had first entered it, when they had convey in the Palantír, they had brought from the riverbank, did not, however, appear in the slit of the ajar door.

Cautiously, they squeezed through the half-open casement, and saw that yes - indeed, there was almost total darkness there now. The crimson interlacing of threads, now faintly smouldering in the walls and floor of the hall, glowed just enough to indicate their presence there. But the light did not illuminate anything now - though they remembered well how, on their first visit to the hall, it had been bathed in the bright shimmer of that dark cherry glow.

But now the faint flame of the torch in the Mystery Master's hands was completely lost in the gloom, that filled the hall. Only the individual jewels in the now completely dark vault of the hall glowed dimly, and the light, reflected from the golden pedestal in the centre, returned to them in a dark red glow. To their great relief, however, the thrones nearest to the door, through which they had entered the hall, and which were vaguely visible on either side of it, were completely empty.

They moved cautiously towards the pedestal, which occupied the centre of the hall, and stopped only when the black ball of the Palantír was just before their very eyes. The silvering bowl of the flower's corolla, in which they had nestled it many days before, was now also completely free of that doom-laden pale glow which had nearly driven them mad on their first visit to the hall. The convex, charcoal-black side of the magic crystal could now be seen without any interference.

Polished like a mirror, its surface reflected the flame of the torch, enlarging it in size, but there was nothing to be seen except the flame. They stood there, tense, both of them staring intently into the depths of the mirror ball, for which they had to raise their heads a little, but there was nothing going on in those depths.

- All right, - Said Mystery-keeper at last, and these words echoed unexpectedly strongly in the dead silence of the vast room. - Let's try to look round this lair and see if we can find anything of interest!

He lit another torch from the first one, and passed it to Vladislav. Now it was a little brighter, but not by much. Then they moved from the column to the part of the wall opposite the entrance door, and here, in one of the segments of the polygon, they found a throne with a rounded back much higher than the others, and there, in that rounded back, shone, with a silvery glow, a plate of some metal, carved in the form of a crenellated royal crown, adorned in the centre with a huge ruby, shining brightly in the torchlight.

- Well… - Said Mystery-keeper in a voice of deep reverence, and a certain kind of underlying fear. - This, apparently, is the throne of the leader of Ringbearers himself! And it is likely that you and I, my dear friend, are the first mortal men to see this throne, which for centuries has been shelter to the most nightmarish of all the horrors of our world! - He glanced at Vladyslav, and grinned suppressibly. - What is there to say - this lair has never been even rumoured! I think - of those who once built it here for the Ringbearers - no one has ever come out of it alive! So, if what happened there, beyond the mountains, had not happened, then who knows, who knows... The Commander-in-Chief's plans about us were one thing, but whether the Ringbearers would have allowed us to get our casual knowledge of this lair out of here is, my dear, quite another question! That's the way it is! - And then he shook his head thoughtfully, as he continued to stare intently at the shining, mirror-polished crown above the throne.

And then suddenly the crown shone with a light of its own, not reflected, but sparkling like a white flame! It broke in their eyes like a white-coloured rainbow, and they were struck with an icy, scalding wave of unbearable horror! The white flame engulfed them completely, from the top of their heads to the soles of their boots, with which they seemed to be embedded in the stone floor! And - as if in response to this glow, all the purple veins in the floor and walls flashed with the brightest, purple light, filling the whole hall with a transparent, wavering, jelly-like glow. The torches in their hands flared up and died out instantly, emitting a black, acrid vapour of choking smoke that enveloped them completely!

And in this white-blackish glow they seemed to be frozen, having lost all imagination of who they were, where - and why! Hundreds, thousands of faces flashed before their frozen gaze, pictures of some unknown battles, and battles long forgotten in the world, horses that had lost their riders were rushing somewhere, desperate but - as if breaking through a thick blanket, screams of rage, horror and pain, and then everything seemed to be flooded by the waters of an unstoppable, all-washing, and all-buried in its streams black as pitch stream, and - suddenly, all this ended somehow instantly and at once. The purple light that had filled the hall, the lamp above the throne, disappeared, and the impenetrable darkness and the utterly overwhelming, grave silence of the place fell upon them again!


(to be continued)

 

[LittleAlex]

Continuation of translation for the Chapter Two – ‘The Trap’​

For a while they stood there in the darkness, completely stunned and overwhelmed by everything that had just happened, not quite able to regain their own memory. Then, gradually coming to their senses, they began to realise again who they were, where they were, and how they had come to be here. With a muffled, hoarse voice cursing everything in the world, Mystery-keeper fiddled endlessly, trying to light the pocket wick with sparks, which he knocked out of the flame with a flint clutched in his shaky, shaking, jumping fingers. At last the wick flickered with a spark, and soon Mystery-keeper was again holding the torch he had lit. They hastily retreated from the throne back to the pedestal with the Palantír, and only when they were hidden behind it, on the opposite side of the throne, could they feel some relief.

- Well, my dear friend! - In a wrong, jumping voice, Mystery-keeper mumbled. - As you can see, not all, not all witchcraft is gone from this tower! Its masters may be anywhere now, but what they have created still exists here, and still acts! So we'll take it for granted that you and I have escaped with only a slight fright! At any rate, I want to believe it very much!

Vladislav was still shaking, from head to toe, by a small, uncontrollable trembling of the whole body. In front of his eyes continued to pass, as in some unstoppable whirl, the images he had seen recently, in the brightest, white, sparkling, but, at the same time, unbearably icy light - as if they came from the night of a frosty, winter full moon.

- Well! - Said the Mystery Man, who apparently felt a little better. - I think we've had enough of impressions for today! We've had our fill of impressions, you might say! Let's get out of here, for the time being, it's better to get away safely - as long as there is left something to take away. And then we'll see!

And he turned round sharply and headed swiftly for the exit, not caring whether Vladislav followed him or not. He also started to turn round to follow the commander, but then he suddenly felt someone's persistent, extremely unkind, pressurising gaze on him.

Mystery-keeper had already gone out of the door, and now the light of the torch in his hands only outlined its opening in the darkness of the hall. But when Vladislav jerked his head and looked back at the surface of the ancient stone, which was completely merging with the darkness, he suddenly saw a face glowing with a dead, pale light gradually emerging from the blackness of its rounded side. And from that face - directly at him, staring at him, with a tenacious - you can't tear yourself away, intelligent, piercing and completely ruthless eyes, shining there, like bright scarlet stars in the gloomy, twilight sky!

He shuddered with horror and surprise, and tried to recoil from the vision, but it was beyond his power to do so. The irresistible pull of those shining eyes suddenly as if pulled him out of the darkness of the hall, and he realised that he was standing in the very similar hall, but completely filled with a dusky, pale, exceptionally absorbing light, coming from some unknown source. However, after a quick glance around, he realised that the hall in which his consciousness was now imprisoned (for he could neither feel nor see his body) was not exactly the same, but somewhat different.

For though it was also in the shape of a very similar polygon, yet there were no doors. There were only nine partitions, in each of which there was a throne, not black, but as if entirely carved out of smoky stone, slightly translucent with a pale glow from within. The floor, the walls, the domed ceiling - everything was exactly the same - smoky grey, emanating a dull opalescent glow.

On each throne sat a man clad in chain mail, armour, helmet, greaves, and high boots, but over the armour each wore an ample cloak of grey cloth. In front of each of them - at the foot of the throne, between their knees, stood a straight naked sword of grey, dull steel, and their crossed hands rested on the hilt of the swords. The palms of the hands were as withered as those of mummies, and yet it was felt that there was great strength in those withered fingers, for they were clenched so tightly on the hilts!

Their faces, also withered, as if covered with numerous wormholes, were devoid of any living expression, and were frozen in a single mask of detachment, and as if carefully restrained by years of pain. The sunken cheeks, the tightly compressed, dried-up, bloodless lips, the pointed noses, the sunken eye sockets, from which, nevertheless, their burning eyes continued to shine with an irrepressible frenzy - which were the only living element that still remained in those faces.

Vladislav was here, face to face, with the one - he realised this with his whole being, from the sphere of consciousness emanating from that ghostly warrior, with whom he had already once had the chance to encounter on the river, when they had been hunting for the Great Ring together, as he had learnt it later from Mystery-keeper. The Ringbearer sitting in front of him looked at him silently, studying him, without the slightest sympathy in his gaze, as if he were a small, annoying insect that had accidentally flown into the room on a candle flame.

To the right of him, on the throne, above which a star of the brightest pale light, which seemed to hang in the air above the back of the throne, sat motionless other one, on whose helmet rested a crown of dull gold, the only thing in the room that differed in colour from everything else in here. He sat upright like the others. But his eyes were closed, and his face was completely dead with the stamp of inexhaustible agony and heavy, unutterable pain. The pallid foot of the throne was drenched with black blood, that was oozing out of a stab wound in his thigh, and which was pooling there in a puddle that would not dry.

Vladislav's consciousness seemed to be immersed in the impenetrable cotton wool of unbroken, age-old silence, and in this silence he began to dissolve gradually, although his feelings were extremely naked, and were beating inside his mind like a wild bird on the verge of fright and despair, suddenly finding itself in a cramped cage.

The silence, dissolving him into itself, lasted, as it seemed to him, for nearly a century. And all this time the Ringbearer, who was staring at him, continued to scrutinise him, as if to peel away layer after layer from his consciousness in an effort to reach the very last and final bottom of it.

At last - apparently satisfied with what he saw, he said in a low, hissing, flowing voice, like a writhing snake on rustling ashes:

- Tonight. When everyone is at rest. We're waiting for you here. You will come to us, here. It's very important! For you, too. Now go! They're waiting for you there!

And here he was as if smashed hard in the face, and fell out again into the darkness of the hall, staring at the dead, sloping side of the ancient stone, which glinted visibly in the almost total darkness. For a while he stood, perfectly still, trying to make sense of where he was and what he was. Then a faint glimmer of light slipped in from behind, and Mystery-keeper, who was peering through the door, grumbled crossly - ‘Well, why are you stuck there? Are you coming, or not?’

When Vladislav finally managed to shake off his stupor, he turned and dashed towards the light of the torch in the Mystery-keeper's hand. But even when he was out of the door, which the latter had carefully locked behind him, he was still unable to come to his senses, and a fine, unstoppable shiver ran through him. The eyes of the Ringbearer would not let him go, though his mind was beginning to wonder whether the brief vision had been real, or whether he had just dreamed it.

When they reached the top of the stairs, they were astonished to see that there was no daylight in the open windows. The upper hall was plunged into darkness. Having lit another torch, and handing his own to Vladislav, Mystery-keeper was not lazy to get up on the second floor, to hide the rod and keys back in their hiding place - he had no desire to take them out of the tower.

Vladislav, left alone in the darkness of the lower hall, all the time only stared and stared non-stop thoughtlessly into the darkness around him, while his consciousness incessantly kept returning to the pallid invisibility of that inner horrible hall, locked, as he felt, hopelessly and forever, in some gloomy timelessness, in which, as if in a slammed trap, were now those who had for many centuries inflicted an infinite terror on everyone in this world. He shuddered to think that no force could make him enter that lower room under the tower a second time. Mystery-keeper, or no Mystery-keeper, but he would never set foot there again!

Then the commander himself came down at last, shoved him mirthlessly under his side, and they left the dreadful tower in a hurry.

Outside it was already deep twilight. The icy wind of the foothills was sweeping over through the courtyard of the Citadel, whistling in the crenellations of the walls, and only the windows of the refectory, which were open wide, glowed with the bright light of many candles. There they found all the lads at the set table, and there was great relief on the faces of those who sat there when they finally came inside.

- I really attended the tower, looking for you! I shouted, I called out! But I didn't dare to go too far in! - Well-knit excused himself embarrassedly. - I thought well - if you'd get hungry, then you anyway will come back, after all! But you missed lunch! Now I'll warm up the meat and hash, and then you'll choose what you would want to eat, you probably want it desperately, don't you? - And he fussily disappeared into the kitchen.

Mystery-keeper did not rebuke anyone, especially as he himself had forbidden them to come into the tower without his special orders. Among other things, what had happened there had left a heavy fatigue, and an overwhelming sullenness on his mind. He must have been completely broken and exhausted in his spirit. Vladislav, on the contrary, was bursting from within with some restless force - he continuously wanted to jump up, to run somewhere, and to do something like that. But, at the same time, a heavy, sullen thoughtfulness was also lying upon him.

Sensing their mood, the whole company made no attempt to liven up the merriment this evening. Dinner ended in a heavy, awkward silence. Besides, as the darkness thickened in the courtyard, the glow of the tower outside grew stronger and stronger. And this glow pressed upon them in a heavy, soporific way. Everyone, except Vladislav, felt a gradually growing tightness in their bodies, and an irresistible desire to get to the bed, and - to collapse into it like an open grave, falling into the darkness of heavy, unbroken sleep.

So, immediately after dinner (they had not kept their posts at night for a long time - they had relaxed, lulled by the deceptive calm, and decentness around the town), everyone, feeling completely broken, scattered to their bedrooms. They fell asleep almost instantly, but Vladislav was still unable to fall into the saving oblivion. He lay in bed on his back in a heavy half-slumber, with his eyelids barely closed, and his head seemed to fill more and more from within with the pallor of that accursed light of the tower outside.

In the dead of night he sat up suddenly, as if awakened by a poke in the back. The wound in his shoulder, which he had almost forgotten about, was suddenly throbbing with a sharp, tugging pain. He looked around in a daze, trying to figure out what had woken him. The firewood was smoldering in the hearth, and the flame - a fiery plume of fire, gave a little run from time to time, on the grey surface of the almost scattered ashes of the logs. There was a complete, almost grave silence. Mystery-keeper was lying on his bed, face up, wrapped in a blanket almost up to his nose, and was quietly, barely audibly dozing.

Vladislav got up for some reason, and began too slowly put on his outer clothes. He didn't understand why, or why not, but the urge to go outside was irresistible. He tried to wake the Mystery-keeper to complain to him about what was happening, maybe even to ask for help. But he only moved restlessly, opened his cloudy eyes, and waved him away.

The courtyard was flooded with the milky light of the almost full moon disc, which hung in a patch of perfectly clear sky, clenched on all sides by the black jagged ridges of the mountains. The stars shone unbearably bright in the crystal-clear, cold night air. Suddenly it became perfectly evident to Vladislav that he would have to go to the tower, willingly or unwillingly. The pale glow emanating from the walls of the tower, rivalling the moonlight in strength, attracted him like the light of a candle to a night butterfly. And there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. It was not a deliberate choice – because no choice was left to him, in fact; it was an inescapable inevitability, independent of his will or unwillingness. He could only hesitate for a moment just before the door of the tower entrance, looking back helplessly at the dormitory. But-no one came out, no one called out to him.

The tower was surprisingly bright from the moonlight, streaming in through the open windows. It was light enough for him to move about by feel without bumping into walls.

He went up to the workroom, which was also completely flooded with the cold light of the moon, still half-hoping that Mystery-keeper had hidden the staff and keys somewhere else. But it was found just as it had been, in the same hiding place. When he had got it all out of there, he stood for some time at the window, looking down at the moonlit valley, in a sort of perfect stupor of consciousness. Then he came to his senses, and finding a torch on the ground floor, he lit it and started down into the cellar.

As he stepped into the passage, the torch in his hand was suddenly blown out by a piercingly icy whirlwind, that came from nowhere. It was unnecessary, however, for the glowing light from the outer wall, which had increased in intensity by his arrival, made it possible to see the way clearly.

He hesitated a moment before the door to the cursed hall, but when the sphere of prohibition obediently retreated before the wand in his hand, he opened the lock and rushed through it as if he were in a swim.

The hall also proved to be filled with a scarlet iridescent light, quite sufficient to see clearly in its semi-darkness. Vladislav, on poorly bending legs, approached the ball on a low column, and began to gaze fearfully into its coal-black roundness, slightly shimmering in the glow of purple veins smouldering everywhere.


(to be continued)

 

[LittleAlex]

Completion of translation for the Chapter Two – ‘The Trap’​

At first nothing could be seen there. But now - gradually, the ball began to fill as if from inside with a quiet, pale bluish glow, and then - with a bright flash, as if swallowed the consciousness of Vladislav, who was staring at it, as if instantly sucking him into himself. And he found himself standing before the very same Ringbearer, still sitting motionless on his throne.

Everything was the same - the pale, dim light, spilling around like jelly, the cotton-candy silence, the blood oozing from the Leader's foot, and the black puddle of blood in which the soles of his boots were immersed. But now Vladislav could also smell the odours that reigned in this dreadful place - the smell of chilling mustiness, with a slightly audible note of long-decayed flesh, and the well-pronounced smell of blood, but for some reason not fresh blood, but as if stale, and already beginning to decompose.

He still had no sense of his body at all, as if his naked mind was the only thing floating in this pallid jelly. So he had no idea what form he was in before the Ringbearers. But that they saw him, and saw him clearly, he had no doubt at all. He could literally feel their scrutinising, piercing, unkind gazes on him as soon as he reappeared in this den of theirs.

- We are glad to see you here! - A quiet, familiar voice rang out in his head. - I've seen you, before, in action. That was quite good! You don't seem to be of a timid sort! We need you! There's a high calling waiting for you! Listen carefully. It's important. Very important! The Ancient One miscalculated. We didn't observe it timely. The enemy has prevailed. The Lord is now a prisoner. We must free him! That is the most important thing of all! We will guide you. We will help you. We will lead you. You will free the Lord! You will become one with Him! You, you will be the new Ruler of Darkness! If you can do it! If you are worthy!

- Lord, Lord... Confusedly mumbled Vladislav, who understood very little. - Who, who is the Lord? The Highest One? He must be released?

- You do not need to say. It is not necessary. You just think! - The Ringbearer interrupted him with utter disdain in his voice. - I will hear you anyway. And I'll understand. No, the Ancient One is no longer the Lord! He is lost forever! He's lost everything! Only the Lord Himself matters now! The Lord dwelt in the world through the Great Ring. The Lord is the soul of the Ring. The Ring is only a embodied representative of Him! Only a way of joining. The Ring is a betrothal to the Lord! The Ring is fusion with the Lord! The one who is betrothed by the ring, in him is the Lord then! The Lord, and the one who holds the Ring are then an indissoluble unity!

- The Ancient One is the Highest One? - Vladislav was amazed. - What do you mean - lost? Won't he come back again?

- No. Yes. He was the Highest One. Now he's nobody. He will never return to your world. But that doesn't matter at all. What matters is the new Lord! If you can, you will be him! Yes, you will. But to do that, we need to bring the Ring back into the world. However, we don't know how. The Ring has returned to its beginnings. Somebody need to go back to where it came from. There, perhaps you can discover it again! We don't know how. But we know where. And we can help you to understand how. We can help you find it. If it's still possible, of course. We can help you to take possession of it. Then the Lord will accept you. Then you will be one with Him! Then you will be the Highest One! - The voice of the Ringbearer kept pounding and pounding in his mind, mesmerising him, enveloping him, completely depriving him of his own will.

Vladislav was silent, completely shacked by what he had just heard. The Lord! The Highest One! The Ring! The power! Power over the world! He couldn't get it all into his head. It was so frighteningly unexpected! And why him?!

- Аh.. Why me?.. - He mumbled, stammering. - Why... Why didn't you open it up to my commander?

- You, him, the other - what difference does it make? - There was only one cold, utter disdain in the voice in his head. - You were the first to respond. You were the one who could hear. Why not you then? It's the Lord that matters. It doesn't matter who accepts Him in. Let it be you! You simply happened to be in the right place at the right time! So, you have an opportunity. If you can seize it, it will be you! If you don't, it'll be someone else. For now, you're nothing. But you have the opportunity to become everything! If you can, of course.

- And.. What am I supposed to do? To do for that? Now? - Vladislav couldn't come to his senses, his head was spinning and his thoughts were jumbled. - I.. I have to inform the commander first, right?

- No - there's no need to tell anyone anything! - The Ringbearer abruptly interrupted him. - You will act alone for now! We'll tell you later how. For now, there's another mission coming up. Your first task! Not a great journey. You've been too relaxed back at the fortress. The enemy has clear plans for the town. You will have them here. And soon! You can't sit tight. We're the only ones who can repel the invasion! But we need to get out of here. Outside. For that, we need bodies. The bodies of your squad. All of them! You can keep your own. You have a different purpose. Besides, our leader can't get out of here now anyway. He's badly wounded. And his anguish is unceasing! That's why he wants to stay here for now.

- What do you mean, what do you mean, how it is – the bodies?! - Mumbled Vladislav by disobedient, barely moving lips. - What, that I have to transmit it to them?! But.. Will they agree?

- They will not agree of course. But it's not necessary. Their consent. That's why they don't have to know anything. You'll do it yourself! We'll tell you how. That's where your service begins!

- What, what will I do?! - Vladislav cried out mentally in horror and utter despair, but his lips remained perfectly still.

- It will be necessary to expel their life out of their body. And - replace it with our life! To do this - it will be necessary, that the substitute life enters their heart. There is a special way. It is necessary to plunge into their body - preferably into the very heart - a specially forged and enchanted dagger! Preferably in the heart! Then it'll be quicker and easier. We'll tell you where the armoury is. There - there's plenty of them. Enough for everyone.

- What do you mean, stab them?! Am I supposed to kill them all? - Vladislav shrieked aloud, and a wave of horror and heavy disgust flooded his mind, and his eyes darkened. No! I cannot do it! No!

- No. Of course you can't. All of them at once. They won't let you. Experienced warriors. Not like you. So you'll have put to sleep them first. You'll put a potion in their food. We'll show you where to get it. Then you can administer the daggers in peace. Straight through the heart!

- Oh, no! You don't understand! - Vladislav's heart was literally boiling. - They're my friends! My comrades in arms! They trust me! They're human beings! They're from our side! They're on our side, after all!!!

- It doesn't matter. - The voice in his head was still calm and infinitely patient. - They're doomed anyway. Soon the enemies will be here. They will come to destroy the town. You will be slaughtered. All of you. But this way, we'll save them. And they - they'll stay here, too. Forever. On the contrary, they will join the inner host of the fortress! They will only lose their bodies. Nothing more. But they will gain power over nature. Unlimited by anything else. In the end, when they joined our ranks, they knew that this would be the end of all it for them. In the end. Didn't they tell you?

- But.. But maybe we should kindly ask, and invite them willingly first? - Vladislav muttered grimly.

- No need. They are weak. Man is weak. If you want to get an opportunity to become a Lord, you must learn to control the fate of others! Learn to be ruthless - for the sake of the highest cause. That is the law! The law you accepted when you joined our ranks. You have no choice. If you refuse, you'll just needlessly destroy yourself. And most importantly, our cause will suffer! But this way, you will be the Lord! Perhaps. And they - they'll always be with you. In another form, and another existence. But does it matter which one? Sooner or later we lose our bodies. And we pass into another quality. So what difference does it make how and when? It doesn't! All that matters is what we do. And our final common victory!

Vladislav thought gloomily, listening to the Ringbear, that, by and large, the very same thing had been taught to him by Mystery-keeper himself. Not so long ago. And that by doing so, he would only be following his own instructions faithfully. And nothing more. I wonder, though, what would the commander say if he knew how his instructions would be applied to his own fate? – Mockingly considered he. - Would he accept it so calmly and obediently? But what is there to do? From the looks of it - he simply have no other choice. But... To slaughter all of them, his friends and comrades, in cold blood? He remembered the commander's kind attitude, Well-knit's constant care, and how patiently and gently Rear-Heel treated his wound. No! How can you do that? Just like that - just to take them and slaughter them in their sleep!

- I.. I don't know if I can. Spike the powder? How? I don't cook food, do I? - He tried to get out of it. Maybe someone else?..

- If it's someone else, then your body will go instead of his! – Ringbearer outlined the possibility very firmly. - If it suits you, then sure! But - But it's not easy. Replacing you. You - you already can see inner side of reality. Your commander can't. Though I don't think he'd hesitate. To stand in your place. Or do you think not?

Vladislav immediately remembered the story of his predecessors in office. He remembered how they cut out the diving boat crew. How extremely affectionate Mystery-keeper had behaved with them just before that. He remembered - and lowered his head.

- Well, I see you understand at the end! - The Ringbearer summed up the conversation. - There's still no way out. Not for you, nor for them. I mean, there's only one way out! So listen. Before you will go upstairs, go to the armoury. It's the second door from the stairs, on the part of the passage you came in through. There's a lot of weapons in there. Immediately to the left of the entrance, you'll see a chest. Open it. There are daggers in scabbards hanging from hooks. Take eight of them, one for each man! Next to it, closer along the passage, is the door to the potions storehouse. There are chests with inscriptions on them. In the language of the West - you know it. You'll find a chest of sleeping potions. Don't take poisons - they should still be breathing when the blade spell goes in! Take the Slow Sleep potion, it's the best! It doesn't work right away. It's a gradual fogging of the mind. So no one will suspect a thing. Hide the daggers somewhere in the ground floor rooms, near the tower exit. When they fall asleep, you'll come back for them. Then take the bodies down to the third floor. There will be a passage to the mountain behind the fortress. There are ancient tombs in cave of the mountain. You'll put the bodies in the sarcophaguses. With their clothes off. There you'll understand everything, how to do it. And leave them there overnight. The next night, the night of the full moon. Then it's none of your business. We'll tell you what to do afterwards. But for now, go! And remember, your fate depends on your determination and your ability to do the right thing!

- But how am I going to get to the third floor? - Vladislav, who was completely overwhelmed by what was happening, asked in confusion. - It's completely blocked there, isn't it?...

- Give me your rod! With which you came here. – Ordered him the Ringbearer.

Vladislav suddenly felt that he had a hand, in which he felt the palm of his hand firmly grasped the ribbing of the rod's hilt. He stepped closer to the Ringbearer, and extended his hand with the wand to him. As he did so, the staff appeared. However, he still could not see his own hand. The Ringbearer removed his right palm from the hilt of his sword, and carelessly touched the tip of the staff. The crystal ball there flashed brightly for a moment, a bluish-purple - like lightning thundering from the sky – in one dazzling flash, and then went out.

- That's it! Now you'll be able to enter the armoury, the potions room, and the passage to the third floor. You don't need to go any higher. Go!

And the Ringbearer froze again on his throne, seeming to have lost all interest in him. Vladislav swayed, and he realised himself again in the purple gloom of the underground hall, staring blindly at the rounded, now dead surface of the Palantír.

He tried to turn round, and found that he could hardly stand on his feet from overexertion, and from the immensity of the horror of what was happening. Thoughtlessly, and with hardly a shuffle of his feet, he got out into the passage, locked the doors quickly and carefully behind him, as if he feared pursuit from there, and then walked slowly along the passage. At the third door from the stairs he stood staring at it blindly for a long time, and then he slowly raised his wand, secretly hoping that the door would not open. But something creaked in the wall, and the black door in a rectangular opening with a rounded top crept slowly upwards, almost silently.

Inside, beyond the door, it was semi-dark, the ceiling and walls glowing with the same pale light as the whole tower. The room was not wide, but stretched longitudinally. On either side, against the walls, were closed chests with inscriptions. In the semi-darkness, however, he had no trouble finding the chest, above which hung a white-enamelled metal plaque with black enamel letters indicating that it held sleeping potions. Inside, on the shelves, there were many jars of precious, dark glass, their lids brushed on. He found a few that had paper labels neatly affixed with glue, with the words ‘Slow Sleep’ written in black ink, and hastily slipped one of them into the wide pocket of his uniform jacket.

At the next door, the armoury, he approached with a sense of doom, even not hoping for any occasional delays anymore. Indeed, where he had been instructed, in the chest, on hooks, were a bunch of daggers, long, narrow-bladed, in simple, black scabbards of wood and leather, with small steel, blackened crosses, and hilt, covered in black snakeskin. These daggers were disgusting to look at - such a horrible invisible sphere of hidden influence emanated from them. But Vladislav - nevertheless, counted out eight pieces, wrapped them in his cloak, taking it off his shoulders, and strode to the stairs.

At the top, he first threw the cloak and the daggers on the floor, and then went upstairs and returned the rod and key to their hiding place, making sure to place them in the same way as Mystery-keeper had placed them. Then he took the daggers to the guardroom at the entrance, hiding them there under a bench against the wall, and covering them with some half-decayed, dilapidated burlap that lay on one of the benches.

When he went out into the courtyard, he was astonished to see that the moon had hardly advanced. He had thought he had spent the rest of the night down there! Something was really wrong with time in these lapses of consciousness from the outside world!

Returning to the bedroom, and avoiding even to look at the sleeping commander's face, he undressed quietly, threw some wood into the almost burnt-out hearth, fell on the sheets, wrapped himself in the blanket, and fell into the black abyss of sleep, completely dreamless.

 

[LittleAlex]

Well, however I don’t see much feed-backs in Discussion Thread, dedicated to my book:

https://thetolkien.forum/threads/concerning-the-black-numenorians-discussion-thread.32267/

and so, I am not able to judge clearly whether there is any interest on the forum for it, or not,

I decided anyway to add translation of one more chapter from the second book here.

Chapter Six - "At the Bottom of the World"

Vladyslav, growing torpid, squeezed himself tighter and tighter into the stone, trying to shrink, literally flow into the gap behind his back, and with rapidly growing horror listening to the sharp claw at the end of the jointed foot of the monster, urgently, with effort, launched into the shelter - so saving for him, incessantly scratched and scratched the stone literally a couple of spans from his trembling body.

It was, after all, an insect - a huge, spider-like thing - as if it were the embodied image of some horrible nightmare. When he, almost brainlessly, on a single, completely unconscious impulse of his body - only by the very edge of his mind in time realising the salvation of that horizontal crack in the wall, on his left hand - stretching along the cave almost at the very floor, with one flexible movement, like a snake escaping from danger, squeezed into its saving twisting, the torch, squeezed in his right hand, was still smouldering dimly, throwing out the uneven, jagged reflections of its flame.

As far as possible, having twisted himself in the crevice to be as far away as possible from the bony, rounded leg or paw that was viciously groping for him, he continued to clench in his hand the torch that was burning right in front of his face, and, in the glow of this unsteady light, he could only vaguely catch a glimpse of the stubbornly searching for him gaze of a slightly smouldering greenish decaying, multitudinous, convex, lens-like eye, vaguely reminiscent of the eye of some monstrous dragonfly enlarged to an incredible size. But unlike the dead, glassy gaze of ordinary insects, this one was simply filled with a monstrous, quite conscious malice and hatred, as if radiating from it in a dull, shimmering multicolour.

The beast was perhaps at least a man and a half in height, and in this light, it would have been impossible to determine more precisely. But in any case, it felt uncomfortable in this stone passage, which pressed it from all sides and did not allow it to unfold its rigid joints. That was why the monster could not manage to squeeze its clawed limb, made of several shell-like legs of a crustacean, into the gap deep enough for it to grasp Vladislav and pull him out. It was the very stiffness of its joints, and its inability to spread its body freely enough in the passage, that hindered it. It crawled in here as an earth wasp crawls into its hole - shrunken with its many gigantic limbs, and still could not unfold and straighten itself.

The monster hissed with a thin, piercing whistle, spat a stifling stinking, probably poisonous slime, and squinted viciously at the torch still smouldering in his hands. And only when Vladislav realised that this creature, at least in the nearest moment, would not be able to reach him, he began to come to his, senses and more or less clearly understand what was happening.

Absolutely intolerable, as if from decomposing, rotting dead flesh stench, razing from this monstrous - like a spider creature, did not leave the slightest doubt that this very thing was the same evil that lurked in the hole, on the recently overcome by him pass. And that it had tried unsuccessfully to harass him in the locked guardhouse, and that it must have followed his footsteps all the way to the cave in the Fire Mountain, driven either by a vicious, unquenchable hunger, or by some other reason unknown to him. Whatever the case, he'd clearly been too early to be complacent about her then - having come down the pass into the valley. And it was a wonder she had not caught up with him much earlier on his way - in the open country!

Vladyslav had no doubt that he had no chance of defeating the creature in open combat. It was true that he still had his sword and dagger sling with him, and it was still pressing against his back with the hilt of his sword, wedged between it and the narrowing walls of the rocky crevice. But it might as well have been there now, down below, next to the camping bag he had dropped - Vladislav did not try to remove the sword from its sheath, not even for comfort. So far, the creature was clearly unable to reach him, and that was enough.

The truth - and Vladislav also began to realise it more and more clearly, that the trap into which this monster had driven him was deadly and almost hopeless. The fact that this creature would not leave him alone so easily was quite obvious to him. At first, however, he still had a faint hope that the wall of fire, which now and then rose across the passage, would drive the horror out of the cave. Therefore, gradually coming to his senses, Vladislav waited for the next rise of the flame with a feeling of trembling and all-consuming hope. If the monster had gone there, outside, he would at least be able to get out into the passage, and there to decide what to do next.

And indeed - when, after a rapidly increasing roar, the flame burst across the cave, sending a hot wave of heated, completely burnt out, inanimate air along the passage, the creature promptly staggered backwards, and flew out of the cave like a cork from a bottle of expensive sparkling wine. But as soon as Vladislav had a little breath and regained his respiration, the creature, with senseless persistence, immediately returned to its former place, and again began to continuously scratch him out of the gap. Still, in this respect, it was evidently nearer to insects. For any animal, having realised the futility of its efforts, would have calmed down, and, at least, would have ceased to expend its energies on such a senseless occupation, and would have looked for other opportunities of somehow getting to its prey. But this creature acted as if it were a mechanical puppet, except that its endless persistence was filled with a fierce, quite conscious malice.

Slowly coming to his senses, Vladislav began to think feverishly about his situation. He still had with him a fair number of torches, some breadcrumbs, and an almost full flask of water. It was not cold in the cave, but he could feel the stone gradually draining the warmth out of him, as he had left his cloak there at the entrance to the cave. In any case, with this creature's persistence, it would be in vain to expect it to leave him alone when it was frustrated in its endeavours. It was clearly and unalterably determined to get to him - one way or another. So even if he had had all his supplies here, it would only have stretched the time until the inevitable end, but it would not have cancelled it.

Sooner or later he would have to throw himself upon the beast in a hopeless effort to die with a weapon in his hands rather than be starved and thirsty. It would seem that the creature could survive without water or food much longer than he could, if it could chase him for so long across this lifeless and waterless plain. And yet it was so vigorous and apparently tireless!

For Vladislav, the long hours of waiting, filled with hopeless despair, dragged on. The torch, which had extinguished during the first burning of the air in the cave, he did not light again - he saw no need to do so, for in the darkness, when he was not constantly contemplating the vague glimmers of flame on the monster's shell, he was somehow calmer. Though he could hear and smell it too clearly and almost tangibly.

At first he lay almost thoughtless, unable to think clearly about anything but the utter hopelessness of his present situation. But gradually, humbling himself and becoming accustomed to it, he began to drift, in his thoughts, here and there. It was very difficult for him to breathe in this stench, and, besides, the monster, with its body, was blocking the access of fresh air into the cave. It itself, apparently, did not really need to breathe much, but from the roaring flames from the cave rolled out of the back every time quite properly. But Vladislav himself, from the constantly constricted breathing, began to sink gradually as if into a semi-conscious state, in which he began to dream about some vague, fiery ghosts appearing as if from the purple signs crossing the cave wall, as if they were wrapped around his body like flexible, thin snakes.

The ghosts around him became more and more numerous, and their entanglement around his body became more and more dense. He began to feel himself gradually as if he were imprisoned in a cage of fiery, flexible twigs like willow branches. And this cage, although it did not shrink around him, but, at the same time, as if gradually excluded his existence from the reality of the cave, pulling his consciousness into some special reality of its own.

And in this completely separate reality the dark stone of the walls became more and more ghostly, but the fiery inscriptions of the signs running in them became more and more compacted. And these signs, being poured with purple-bloody glow, little by little began to sound insensibly, merging into some absolutely strange plexus of consonances, as if someone pronounced them - consecutively, in his head, softly but audibly - letter by letter. And these pronunciations sounded as if simultaneously, merging into a discordant recitative, with a completely wild, frightening melody. In which Vladislav imagined continuous strokes of brass bells of the lowest, droning sounds, beating in a frenzy of coordinated discordant voices, in which was constantly intertwined a monotonous, mesmerising tune of a voice completely inhuman, low, dragging, drowning, all pulling the same note in its infinite variety.

Then something shifted in his mind, and he began - bit by bit, to discern some meaning in the multitudinous sounds. But it was by no means a penetration into the meaning of the individual words that made up the interwoven phrases in these tunes. No. It was a kind of grasping, a penetration into some general, quite inner sense, hidden in the depths of the meaning of each individual phrase, born, in his perception, by these sounds. Incarnated here in fiery lettering. It was as if he had been swept up by some continuous stream of muddy, icy water, carrying him along the broken, rocky shores to some very definite goal, the meaning of which he realised, though indistinguishable in its particulars, but very definite in its general integrity.

If, say, he had been asked to translate this realisation into ordinary human language, he would have found it extremely difficult to do so. But within his own mind a certain clarity of comprehension of the very essence of the meaning, that lay in the interweaving of these inscriptions, was gradually developing, moulding his understanding into some general form of inner thinking, harmonised, in its foundations, with some inner, hidden knowledge, or secret wisdom, which contained a certain kind of mystery of peculiarity of forces, from which, as from an infinitely complex intersection of sign influences, was woven the very nature of the ancient, completely non-human intellect's creation pervading this mountain.

And gradually, joining to this comprehension of the general meanings of the surrounding chanting spell, which became the basis for the existence of forces, that invisibly made up the entire dimension of the special, inner reality, woven into the stone of this mountain, and - separated from everything material here, but inseparably connected with its existence, this sound changed and changed his perception, little by little, as if soaking his mind, as if oil slowly soaks the cloth on which it was spilled. And when this influence became completely intolerable, and Vladislav felt that he was about to go mad, changed irreversibly, the intertwining of sounds and fiery images suddenly receded from him, disappeared, dissolved again, without a trace, in the dead stone.

And he again, shrinking, and already shivering incessantly from the icy chill that was constantly seeping down his back from the crevice behind it, continued to lie as a miserable, shrunken creature, completely defenceless and helpless victim of this nightmare monster, waiting patiently for him at arm's length.

To occupy his mind with something, and to distract himself from this continuous torture of pressing inevitability, he began to count to himself - as he had been taught at school, starting with double numbers, the second divisions of an hour, and bending and unbending his fingers in succession for continuity of counting - trying to determine the duration of the time intervals between the flames rising from the depths of the mountain. After a few passes at counting, he suddenly discovered that the flames were rising from below in remarkably identical time sequences. Apparently there - somewhere inside the mountain, something that produced these tides of flame was producing the flames there with the perfect precision of a good clockwork.

He was able to determine that the flame rose from below every twenty-seven minutes, and stood, a wall of fire across the passage, for about six or seven seconds, and then fell back. For long hours he spent in this pointless, but somehow distracting occupation from the horror of his situation. Time after time, calculating, with a kind of painful concentration, the intervals of the return of the flame, he became absolutely convinced, at the end, that they were entirely invariable.

(to be continued)

 

[LittleAlex]

Continuation of translation for the Chapter Six - "At the Bottom of the World"

And then suddenly his mind was visited by a completely insane, but, at the same time, incredibly crystal-clear idea that - if he tried to put a wall of fire between himself and the beast, somehow swinging to the other side of the abyss, then it - the beast, perhaps, might be afraid to follow him there!

At first he was amazed at the madness of the idea - how could he jump fifteen or even more spans over the precipice! It was beyond all human strength! No, of course it was impossible! But time passed, and as the realisation of the hopelessness of his situation became more and more palpable to him, he began, from time to time, turn to this seemingly insane possibility, and to think over all the particulars connected with it.

After all, and he understood this quite clearly, he had no other possible way out. Except, of course, to try to fight the monster, which would be, as he understood it quite clearly, just a way of radical suicide. True, jumping over the abyss also seemed to him to be just another kind of a way to end it all in one fell swoop. But it would at least be however a near hopeless, but an attempt at least! In any case, there was no other way out of this situation, except to wait for the beast to starve him to death.

But, as he thought about it, the possibility of trying to jump through the gap began to seem to him, though it promised little hope, but it was the least of all possible evils. In any case, death in the subterranean flames would be less horrible than in the claws and jaws of that hideous creature, for who knows what it would do to him before it devoured him!

The first thing that occurred to him was that if he was to be able to leap across the chasm, it would be best to do so just before the fire rose. So that the flames would separate him from the monster and drive it out. Will it jump after him after all? Who knows? You could expect anything from that stupid thing! But if he got through the gap just before the flame spewed out, he would have some time before the expelled beast came back here. And who knows - maybe it would not be so inclined to pursue him further, but would prefer to wait for his return at the exit?

Really, what's waiting for him on the other side? Who knows? Although - it may well be that there is an alternate, hidden exit from the shelter somewhere? Couldn't the Highest One not be concerned about a possible escape if his enemies were to trap him in his hideout again? It could be very possible, of course - why not? There might even be water and food supplies there, in case of a siege? Who knows, who knows? Whether the Highest One himself ate and drank, and whether his body needed drinking and food at all - Vladislav had no idea about it. But - did he take a few people with him when he wanted to hide in his shelter during the first war and the siege of Black Fortress? So we should not rule out such a possibility! Nor should it be counted on too much, he thought.

But - all this, for the time being, did not matter much. The main thing now was to try to get through the gap separating him from the other side of the passage. If he failed to do so, he thought grimly, at least all his troubles on this side of bodily existence would be solved by themselves. And then he would have other things to worry about. And there was no point in procrastinating further, because he realised that with every extra hour of waiting he had less and less strength, both bodily and mental. He had to make up his mind now, while he was still more or less fresh in body and spirit, and ready for action.



(to be continued)

 

[LittleAlex]

Continuation of translation for the Chapter Six - "At the Bottom of the World"

So - waiting for the flames to subside, he began counting down in a whisper, trying to keep the count even, and carefully bending another finger on his hand after each minute, so as not to lose count. At the same time, he wriggled through the shelter like a worm and began to pull off his clothes, deciding to leave only his leather stockings on, so that his feet would not hurt themselves on the sharp edges of the many crevices that covered the cracked floor of the cave.

Pulling off his clothes, counting and keeping track of his bent fingers at the same time was incredibly difficult. His head was so dizzy from all that had happened, that his thoughts were jumbled. When he threw off his clothes, he was immediately seized by the icy currents oozing from the stone walls. His body began to shiver, and gradually became stiff from the cold.

He lay sprawled on a pile of discarded clothes, listening tensely to what was happening at the entrance. The creature had come back to its guard at the crevice later and later in the last few cycles. Apparently, it didn't like the stinky, stifling condition of the air, which was established in the cave every time after the next flame eruption. It was to Vladislav's advantage. For about a minute before its rise, the flame, rising from the unknown depths, began to throw on the vault, stretching above the gap, more and more increasing purple reflections, which gradually filled the cave with a diffuse reddish glow. And as the floor was covered with cracks, often large enough to allow his feet to fall through them, it would be best for him to begin his run when he could still see something under his feet in the glow. But he should have started his run before the creature had settled down in its place, right in front of the crevice. For then the chance of getting out, and not being caught in its clutches, would be vanishingly small.

Judging by his clenched fingers - he went to clench them for the third time (unless, of course, he had lost his way - he had a terrible suspicion), the waiting time had already passed the second ten minutes, and the terrible monster was still lingering somewhere outside the cave. He waited, according to the count, when there were no more than two minutes left to rise, and - finishing the fingers on his left hand, and not ceasing to move his lips, and still trying not to part in the count from the excitement that was choking him, he let go the fingers on his right hand, which were already as if cramped, and - at the last moment, he clutched the hilt of the sword in them, taking it out of the scabbard. As he did so, he wriggled out of the shelter.

A thought flashed through his mind - should he not put it off until next time? But he did not let it master him and relax his convulsive movements, realising that next time the creature might not give him the opportunity to delay it so well, and if he had lost his count a little, so what? He must make up his mind!

His body was stiff from lying there for hours, and he could not listen very well. He literally squeezed himself out of the crevice, and rolled heavily to the floor of the cave, twitching and trying somehow to get up on his legs, which were not obeying him at all. He understood with horror that in such a state he might not be able to accelerate hard enough on his cramped legs!

The cave was already filled with a thick, purple flicker, slightly scattered on the walls. The rumbling sound of the rapidly approaching flood of ancient flame was growing stronger, and more and more threatening. Judging by the strength of the glow, he had less time than he had thought by his own reckoning before he reached the edges of the crevice. He jerked his head towards the cave's exit hole and stiffened with horror, as he rose from his knees to his straight legs.

Literally ten paces away from him were shimmering, iridescent in every conceivable shade of red, like countless glass lenses that dotted two oval bulges, exactly as dragonflies do, only much, much larger, unimaginably gigantic in size - eyes. Dull, without a glimmer of any thought, but at the same time, as if filled to the brim with black, murky malice, completely inhuman, but very well perceptible. Beneath the eyes were black, curved as orch’s sabers, either fangs or tusks, from which, clearly visible in this somewhat faded, but quite decent light, black-salad drops of poison, dripped continuously to the floor. And behind the eyes were the outlines of the bony shell, compressed on all sides, covering this horrible body, which was constantly shaking on its twisted, jointed legs, which were constantly moving from tension

The left eye of the monster, however, bore the marks of recent damage, and some of the lenses there were, as it were, quite dead and extinguished. For some unimaginable moment he gazed, mesmerised, at the horror that had managed to get at him, quite silently, while he was struggling with such difficulty to climb out of his saving shelter. Then, involuntarily, he uttered a loud, unintelligible shriek of utter horror and despair, and involuntarily thrust his sword like a spear, pointing forward, straight at the right eye of the monster, which was still fully alive and completely unharmed.

The power of desperation gave his arm remarkable speed and astonishing marksmanship. The monster lunged backwards, and shrieked thinly, shrilly. Vladislav, not even interested in how successful his throw had been, turned round abruptly - on legs shaking from horror and long immobility, and - without thinking at all, on one flaming despair, rushed there - to the other end of the passage, where the roar of flames was already becoming all-consuming.

He could not see if the beast was following him. He ran without looking at his feet, and only by some unconscious instinct, leaping over the many cracks and fissures that covered the floor - no longer aware of anything in the icy horror that flooded him.

He could never remember clearly the moment when his muscles, almost tearing from his bones from the inhuman tension, threw him forward in a single jolting movement - at the very edge of the terrible gap, and threw his trembling body across the bottomless abyss, abyss filled with a bloody, bright scarlet glow - through the flared air, which whipped his whole body with intolerable heat, almost above the very tongues of the flames, which seemed to have almost reached the very floor of the cave

Having fallen flat on the stone - on the other side of the fiery red chasm, he immediately twisted rapidly, like a snake on a red-hot frying-pan, rolling over on his back, and in immense horror saw, with eyes wide open, literally climbing out of their orbits, how, it turned out that the monster, which had almost overtaken him, with an exceptionally light, and somehow predatory and graceful jerk of its numerous articulations, sent its body over the depression in its wake, flapping over this terrible obstacle without any difficulty!


(to be continued)

 

[LittleAlex]

Continuation of translation for the Chapter Six - "At the Bottom of the World"

A convulsion arched his whole body, and he threw forward the palms of his hands, which had broken in blood on the stone, in a desperate, thoughtless attempt to ward off the nightmare that was about to fall upon him from above. Suddenly the wall of flame beneath the monster's belly furiously flew up to the ceiling, engulfing its black body, which was spread out in a swift leap, with all-consuming tongues of fire, and tossing it upwards, literally smearing it on the ceiling of the cave. A subtle, on the verge of being audible, but unusually loud sound, like the screech of a steel blade being swiped across the edge of a glass dish, rumbled through the passage. The bony shell of the monster crackled in the flames, consumed by its terrible heat, white jets of smoke and vapour spurted in all directions, filling the cave with the intolerable odour of burning bone and flesh, and the body began to crumble into numerous charred, smoking pieces in the raging fire.

The falling flame, having lasted the time it was supposed to, began to go quickly downwards, into the cavity, and there - following it, black, decayed, broken and smoking, completely shapeless remnants of the pile of what had recently been an angry, completely irresistible monster, collapsed.

Vladislav, with a stopped, completely dead look - without the slightest comprehension, contemplated all the successive stages of the monster's destruction, but neither this death itself, nor even the absolutely unexpected miraculous rescue of himself from inevitable death in the jaws of this horrible spider-like creature of someone's nightmares - none of it affected his consciousness at all, for no awareness of what was going on in his mind had existed during those endless moments, or epochs of this uninterrupted nightmare. From the moment when he had thrown his sword with a shriek and fled from the horror that had overtaken him, his consciousness had been in a complete blackout, and all the actions of his body had taken place on the level of purely animal, unconscious and unguided impulses and movements.

And then he was hit by a wave of a dreadful suffocation of air, scorched by the flames, which on this side of the chesm was a hundred times more bitter than on the other side, and the air, already utterly unfit for breathing, was literally saturated with the disgusting fumes of the flesh and bony shell of the monster, that had just burned. And the fumes poured into his nose, his mouth, his throat, his lungs - filling them with a murderous mixture of rancid, nauseating deadness instead of life-giving air. He rolled over, onto his belly, feeling himself by vomit of utterly convulsive nausea, and then consciousness finally left him, and he fell into a black abyss without the slightest glimmer of any sense of life.

When he opened his eyes again, he realised with utter amazement that he had no idea who he was, where he was, or what he was doing here at all. When he tried to move, he managed to get to his feet as easily as if his body had been woven from the lightest fluff, and something flickered at the end in his consciousness. It was as if a vague, diffuse, whitish light was shining through a small gap in a dark, stale, stuffy room.

Yeah, there was something there, like - I guess, but what?.. And then it was like a jolt, a flash in his head - a cave, the monster, the fiery abyss, the rising flames! He looked round frightened, and was amazed to discover that he could see quite well in this solid darkness, though it was still a completely thick darkness! But here, out of the darkness protruded, as if woven out of a greyish, slightly smouldering mist, some vague outlines. He saw round him the walls of a stone passage running away on either side, and as if they were stacked on either side, and as if it was formed of uneven drifts of greyish, soaked by melted water spring snow, just if visible by the faint light of the moon, breaking through the thin clouds of the bright winter night. Nearby, almost beneath his feet, across the passage stretched a deep gash, cutting through it.

He suddenly remembered that this gash was occasionally filled with flames, but now it was only a dark gap in the whiteness of the stone floor, which did not frighten him at all. Just then, under his feet, he discerned something lying on the floor, and a little different in its whiteness. As he bent over and looked at it, he suddenly realised that there was a completely naked body lying on the floor, face downwards. It was as if carved out of smooth, matt, translucent marble, with countless reddish veins running through it, in which a bright scarlet, thick fluid was moving in jolts. The long hair, a greyish wisp, was strewn across the dirty whiteness of the stone floor on which the head lay.

And then - again as if with a jolt - he remembered everything, and realised with horror that it was his own body down there! It seemed to be still showing some signs of life! He stepped back from the body in utter horror, and then, in his memory, he recalled a definition he had heard once, a long time ago: “leaving the body”. Seems like he heard it in the Common House - at some lecture on the basics of the universe, yes - that was what the Master had said to them once, the brats, listening to him with eyes open with horror and sweet amazement! It was so tempting then, so magical! Exit and bodies! And now that phrase, completely meaningless, and saying nothing to his mind at that time, was suddenly embodied, for him, in a completely unambiguous, clear and well felt reality!

He bent down again, and lightly touched the body. Or rather, he tried to touch it, for his hand passed through the body as if it were woven from a solid mist! He felt a slight resistance, as if his hand had entered a slightly denser medium. But no more than that. He jerked his hand away, and saw that there was no trace of his touch on the surface of the body!

He fearfully tried to lie down and merge with his body, hoping that the nightmare of this bifurcation would end, and that he would be able to move his material arms and legs again. But - it was all to no avail! There was no fusion!

What does that mean? - He thought tensely. - Have I lost my body forever? Am I dead already?! But no - he felt, inside him, still warm thread of invisible connection with his body. The fluid in his vessels continued to move slowly, and although there was no sign of breathing, he felt that there was still life there, and that his connection with that life had not yet been broken!

There, in the lessons, he remembered it now with perfect clarity, the Master had spoken of leaving the body as a kind of general possibility. But - he had not given them any knowledge how it could be performed in reality, nor how, after all, one should return to one's body again. This knowledge, apparently, was the subject of the highest witchcraft. That nobody was obviously not going to reveal to them, the youngsters, at that time. Yes - he remembered what the Master had said about those who, had consciously left their bodies, by their own choice. But he had left his body unconsciously! He had been thrown out of his body - maybe from suffocation by poisonous vapours, maybe from horror, maybe from all of this at once!

He felt that his memory had suddenly become unusually clear, and incredibly detailed. He felt that if he only wanted to, he could now recall, reconstruct from memory, everything contained therein. Even the remotest and smallest event of his life. And not just to see it, but to enter it, as if into a room, through the opened doors. To see every detail, every touch of everything he had ever seen, heard, smelled, or touched!

Rising, he looked round again, much more carefully. Even now the walls were pierced through with popping inscriptions, intertwining, threading through them with threads of fire, and forming, as it were, the its own frame of passage. But now their weave was, unlike the walls they penetrated, absolutely, distinctly, frighteningly real. The stony walls, on the contrary, seemed but wisps of thick fog entangled in the entanglements of this framework.

As he began to look more closely at the letter patterns running around him, he suddenly realised that they were no longer impenetrable to him. He grasped the meaning behind them as if he were reading in a language, familiar to him from his childhood! He realised at once that this entire mountain was literally permeated with spells, that had once been woven from the living fire, that raged in its depths! And that all these spells were inextricably linked to what had been hidden, ever since, in the very depths of the mountain. That the visible embodiment of which, in the world of sensual forms, was that small ring of pure gold, refined to the purest possible degree. Pure to a degree that is utterly impossible for any material metal. Gold that belonged, at the same time, to both - to the world of the sensual, the natural world, and to the world of the extra-sensible, which lay beyond the material, the spatial, and the temporal. The ring was like the top point of a cone, which went with its base somewhere into the depths of the worlds, connected now by spells with the depths of this mountain, where the black primordial flame had been raging since the creation of the world. Which has no place at all in the upper discrete layers of the universe, but which, through this cone, was once long ago, many, many centuries ago, provided with a way out, subduing its original power, curbing it, and riding it!

All this, and much, much more, came to his mind in a single flash of insight, as he watched the fiery patterns of powerful spells running, constantly intertwining around him. He remembered that what had brought him here was the desire to bring the very top of this cone back into the world again. Which, in order to return, must again touch the world of material forms, with which the world of immaterial forms shares a degree of indirect connection, dividing the unified reality into two quite distinct, but nevertheless inseparable halves - like two sides of the same blade, or the side of internal causes and the side of their external effects.

And the causes of the cone were still raging flames within the cone itself, bound by the threads of these spells, which could only disappear along with the mountain they were incessantly penetrating. Or perhaps they would remain, invisibly forever, unharmed. Even if the mountain had been torn apart by some terrible cataclysm, they would only have retreated inside - in their discrete degree of reality.

But these causes lacked the very last little thing to come out, on the other side. The very last consequence of their existence - in the world, on the other side of cause-and-effect relations. For this very ‘smallness,’ this vortex, going deep into reality, on the other side of it, was thrown back into the flame, that generated it, and dissolved in it. The cone moved inwards. The cause-and-effect relationship between the two sides of a single reality was broken. And for everything to go back to normal relationship again, it was necessary to go down to the very bottom - to the base of the cone, and - to ‘turn’ it inside out again. So that this base, as a cause, would be embodied again in a ring of flaming gold - its visible embodiment in the world of consequences from the deep causes. Which served as the foundation, embodiment, and final completion of all these causes.

He suddenly felt an unmistakable call, that was perceived by him like an irresistible attraction! A call coming from somewhere in the immeasurable, but - nevertheless - quite achievable for him now, from the very depths of this mountain. The call, like a magical, enticing melody, suddenly spilled out from all sides - from the resounding polyphony of incessantly intertwined lines of spells, that permeated everything around him. There had to be a way down to the very bottom of this cone of ancient witchcraft! And all he had to do now was try to find that way here! In the depths of this passageway.

(to be continued)

 

[LittleAlex]

Continuation of translation for the Chapter Six - "At the Bottom of the World"

He looked once more at his body, lying on the floor. But he did not think it was as desirable and necessary to go back there as he had done some time ago. He was beginning to get used to his position, and even to find some advantages in it. For instance, he did not need any external breathing, and consequently no external air in the passage. He felt that his chest was heaving - so he was breathing. But what was he breathing with? It did not matter. What was important was that it was enough for him, and he did not suffer from suffocation, as he had to do it long ago, in his abandoned material body.

Then - the passage of time. He'd been tramping around here for what seemed like an eternity, but not a single rise of flame had come from below. And he knew somehow that the passage of time was different here. And that no matter how much time he spent here on his search, it would make no difference to his body, which remained on the other side of the unified reality. But he also realized, that if his search was successful, he would still need his body, his living, natural body, his OWN body, very, very much! To - to manifest that inner degree of the cone of force in the world of external effects. For it was here, in the living human body, that the two sides of the unified reality were inseparably united. Now he understood quite perfectly why - the Reangbearers, who had lost their own bodies, would never be able to bring the last, final degree of the Cone of Force back into the world by themselves.

Turning his back to the gap in the floor - he clearly felt that the way through it was not for him, and that it was only a guard and a trap for those who did not KNOW - he began to move slowly, slowly getting used to the smooth movement of his intangible body, deep into the passage. He could not say how long it took - the concept of time intervals had no meaning here, and its course was determined by something else entirely - but when suddenly, on his left hand, a flat dip with a rounded top in the whitish driftwood of the wall opened up to him, he suddenly perceived quite clearly that this was it! And it would be useless, and perhaps even fatal, to go any further!

He peered cautiously into the crimson darkness of the opening. As he peered into the crimson murk, it gradually began to clear, revealing a small landing from which a wide spiral staircase descended, curving to the left. There was no door in the opening, but the shroud that covered it - transparent now - sparkled as if streams of living flame - like small, dazzling lightning bolts were sliding ceaselessly through it. And he understood quite clearly, that if he tried to pass through it, it would scorch him instantly!

Looking closer, he saw an inscription in fiery letters curved across the roundness of the upper semicircle above the passage. He realised that it was an opening spell, in the same language as the inscriptions pervading the mountain. He tried to read it aloud, but it took him a long time. At the first he managed to say loudly the whole thing, but he realised at once that just by the sound of saying it would not work at all. He had to let the sounds in, to let them flow into his mind, to absorb them, and make them part of himself!

It was excruciating - as if the sounds were woven from a hot wire, that was being slowly plunged into his head. The pain was simply intolerable! He sank involuntarily to his knees, and the torture of the pain went on and on, until at last the pain flooded him. For a while he seemed to crumble, to melt, like a piece of ice thrown into the jaws of a blazing, fiery furnace! Then consciousness came back to him, centred in a restored, but at the same time completely changed mind. Now the words were already coming off his lips like the advance clouds of a storm front, followed by a wave of fiery rain, in a flash of lightning and incalculable thunder. He - the whole of him - sounded as if a huge flute in human form, and the melody, the vibration emanating from him as if a single sphere of radiating consciousness, struck the veil closing the passage, and it parted, faded, went into the walls.

He had only now realised the folly of trying to enter this wormhole in the thickness of the mountain in his material body. If he had somehow managed to get here in the consciousness of that body, he would have been burned to death by the shroud. And would he even have seen this passage with his corporeal eyes? He doubted it very much.

He slid smoothly into the opening, and began to descend slowly down the spiral staircase. The stairs and the walls of the wormhole were woven together from the fiery shimmers of spells, which were so dense that they formed an exceptionally thin and compact laces of fire. Judging from the fog that filled this wormhole, it was inside the material walls of the mountain, and it would really be impossible for a human body to penetrate it.

He went down and down the innumerable turns of this truly endless staircase, and the monotony of this smooth, unceasing, like an endless, mesmerisingly magical dream descending, gradually plunged his mind into a kind of pervasive stupor. The strings of continuously running, intersecting lines of spells floated past him, slowly, as if they were one continuous cocoon, flowing into him with an incessant stream of melodies, which, inside his mind, seemed to be constantly ‘read’ without ceasing, and were mentally pronounced by him. And from this incessant pronunciation inside, from his entire immaterial body, a sphere of bright scarlet, dense radiation was continuously emanating - he was glowing as if he were a red-hot translucent piece of metal snatched by the blacksmith's tongs from the very centre of his forge.

How long this descent of his - into the unknown depths of the mountain lasted, again - would be quite impossible to say. Here the passage of time was measured not by strict, unambiguous intervals, but only by the number and speed of the spells he cast. Simply - when he had exhausted the entire flow of these spells - woven into the image of an endless staircase of fire - the same platform opened up below as up there, with the same opening, but now leading outwards. Or vice versa, and leading further inwards.

Here the power of the last and final spell, also inscribed on the arch above the doorway, had almost dissolved him completely and utterly, as he sank inwardly into its chants. He only came to his senses when he had gathered himself together again on the other side of the doorway, as if he had arisen anew out of total oblivion.

And there - in front of him, out of the black oblivion, a huge, as if overturned bowl - rounded in its outlines, as if it were a cut half of a ball, forming a huge hall - gradually appeared. There was simply no way to estimate its size in material units of measurement. For it would be as impossible as, say, to weigh a thought, or to measure the volume of a dream with a measuring cup. The hall stretched into the depths of the room, and the medium that filled it was clear, pure, and dry, as, say, air completely scorched in a blazing furnace can be. The walls, rising from the floor, gradually rounded upwards, and there, as it were, were woven into the haze of the rounded ceiling. And there, above - in the very centre of this roundness, at a height absolutely unreachable and immeasurable, there shone a ring of pure, red-hot gold, shimmering with all shades of golden-black, but at the same time, the very centre of the ring was occupied by a coal-black darkness - as if it were an abyss into complete nothingness.

(to be continued)

 

[LittleAlex]

Completion of translation for the Chapter Six - "At the Bottom of the World"

The circular walls here were formed by continuous, running swirls of black-cherry, barely smouldering fire, firmly grasped and held together by an framework of the same, continuously changing and intertwining spells. The floor of the hall - as if cast from solidified lava of coal-black, matte marble, in the centre of the hall rose several polygonal, coal-black pyramidal ledges.

There were four levels of these ledges - of uneven size. And in the middle of the last one, there was a kind of a cut-off spire. From which came a perfectly dazzling, golden glow, rivalling - in its power - the golden glow that flowed down from the stream, from the ring-shaped vortex, that was constantly rotating there. And this glow, mingling with the purple decay emanating from the walls of the hall, in which, through the tangles of the spell-net, it kept bursting out, in little tongues - as fire sometimes runs over burned-out coals, black and purple, thick, flame, as if of molten metal, this radiance constantly enveloped this multistage pyramid, as if it were a light, but preventing one from seeing in detail all the particulars of its structure, as if it were a smoky, golden-black veil.

And then, suddenly, he felt someone's presence near him. When he looked to his left, he saw that there, on the floor, with his legs tucked under him, was a small, crouched human-liked figure sitting perfectly still.

He realised at once that it was not a statue, and certainly not a material body, but something, something like himself now, a life-form separated from his natural body! At first he had had the horrible thought that he had stumbled here upon the Highest One himself, lurking here now, after his fall! And that he might have to fight to the death with the original master of this place of power! But as he looked closer, he calmed down - too pitiful, too helpless, trapped, and utterly powerless did the figure look, dirty grey on the impenetrable blackness of the floor - just like the ghostly walls of the mountain he had contemplated when he had left his body, up there.

He cautiously approached, and finally made sure that that creature could not see him, or simply could not tear his gaze away from the magic glow of the spire, crowning the pyramid in the centre of the hall. Standing up in front of the seated man and running his palm near of his eyes, he made sure that, yes, he was completely petrified of his mesmerism and could neither see, nor hear anything around him.

He began to scrutinise the wretched creature with attention, gradually becoming disgusted with it, with a certain kind of squeamish pity. It was evident that once, long ago, it had been a human being - a small, gnarled, withered creature, like a mummified body buried in a deep cave. But in his withered, worm-eaten hands he had a very great muscular strength, and his wiry body left the impression of having been well trained by continuous effort, though exhausted by long, hard trials.

But what was most striking was the creature's face. Bony, as if covered with a parchment of withered skin, it bore an expression of utter cruelty, and yet its eyes, cold and merciless as a snake's, smouldered with a constant, fierce fire of unquenchable greed and barely restrained, utterly malicious rage.

He stared into those eyes for a long time, realising that the creature had come here, at the bottom of the spell-woven cone of power, quite by accident - for the image of it did not comprehend at all the changes that had passed through his own consciousness as he had descended through the innumerable twists and turns of the wormhole. The word would be that this creature had toppled down here, from the outside, through this very gap in the middle of the evil vortex, somehow managing to fall into this very ‘nothingness’ and then fall out of it here. In any case, it was quite clear that this creature had fallen into a hopeless and permanent trap here, at the bottom of this irresistible network of spells. From which it would never escape. And where it is doomed to remain forever, because the intertwining forces, that hold it captive here, are many times greater than its own abilities.

Looking into those pitiful eyes, full of unquenchable anger and rage, he had a fleeting thought of whether he would be able to get out of here himself? And if he did, would he be able to get back into his body? Or would he remain forever just one of the countless ghostly shadows, forced to wander in the vast darkness, that forever enveloped the walls of the ancient fortress of the Dead Moon?

This thought made him at last break away from the contemplation of the man sitting in front of him, and turn to the very centre of the hall, which was dominated by the radiance, emanating from the top of the stepped pyramid. It was the call of this very radiance that continued to beckon to him quite clearly - as the call of a once lost, in the endless interweaving of times and worlds, some selflessly beloved, kindred soul - lost, and now calling to him, from an accessible distance, for an incalculably happy reunion forever!

He began to approach slowly to the face of the verge of the pyramid, turned to him. As he approached, he saw that in the middle of this verge there was a steep staircase without a railing, leading upwards, to the nearest level of the ledge. Above the ladder, as if floating in the air, at the height of a human gaze, as if from the very air the fiery signs of the next security spell were appearing. Slowly flowing into his perception, these signs came to life - in his consciousness - with a heavy, pressurising hum, in which the semantic order, gradually emerging, step by srtep forming into words, ringing with honed steel: “Nine in a row for those mortals, whose souls are asleep, whose bodies are made of clay, and whose iron stuffing is inside, separating the clay, forging iron into bulat - nine blades that forever stand guard over your throne!”.

A hot, red-hot wave washed over him, as if from a scorching forge, a heavy, searing wave embraced his mind, as if coming from a lake of red-hot metal, and he began to move slowly, as if floating from step to step on a steep ladder, but it was not his own will that carried him up there, and it was not his consciousness that moved his feet.

The height of that ledge was somewhere about a man and a half tall. When he stepped on its upper edge, he saw that it was like a well-polished road, wide enough for two people to walk across it without difficulty, running away, on either side of it, winding round the next, also multi-faceted ledge, which was perhaps two men's height. Just opposite the ladder he had climbed, a second ladder was cut into the body of the flat face of the second ledge, and above it, too, a curved arc of the letting-in spell emerged from the void.

Looking round, he saw that the flat upper edge of the ledge, running away from him on either side, curved at its breaks, and enveloped there some elevations, as if inscribed in these angles of breaks in the form of truncated cones, on the flat truncations of which stood black, semicircular bowls. On his left, and on his right hand two such elevations, with perfectly smooth, matte-black, rounded surfaces, were visible.

He turned to the right, and with the same leisurely, slightly shuffling, but, at the same time, as if floating gait, walked towards one of these elevations, driven by curiosity, and, at the same time, as if urged to this action by some force, pressing from within his consciousness. He was floating here as if in a denser medium than there, below, under the pyramid, with a density resembling the elasticity of the strongest wind, hitting him in the face, but, nevertheless, not reaching the density of water.

As he approached the dais, which reached almost to his chest, he saw that there, in a simple, semicircular bowl of blued steel, lay a golden ring, slightly shimmering, as if from an inner glow. It attracted the eye, it completely mesmerised the mind. Almost unconsciously, he reached into the bowl with his right palm and pulled the ring outwards, gripping it tightly with his fingers.

Rolling down his palm, the ring froze in midair, and he felt currents of warm jets flowing from the ring into his ghostly flesh. These currents, penetrating him, growing through him as if by threads of steel, gradually completely filled his insides with their interwoven framework. And then, out of the depths of his consciousness, the image of the Ringwraith appeared before his eyes, as if it were a three-dimensional image, woven out of the medium, that was replacing the air. Vladislav was looking straight into his forehead, and he was staring at his face with his sightless eyes, and he realised quite clearly that the Ringwraith did not see him, nor did he even feel his gaze. It was the one with the crown, sitting there in the forlorn distance of his refuge, beneath the Citadel Tower, grievously, incurably wounded by the enchanted steel of ancient weapons in the recent battle.

He looked just into the Ringwraith's face, and saw the severity and agony of the ulcerating, unhealing wound. He perceived through all his thoughts, and even all his most secret impulses of will, and the whole history of his enslavement to the power of the Primordial Fire, hidden here, behind the walls of interwoven, purple lines of spells. He was looking through - literally through, both inside and out, his entire life, from his earliest youth to the present moment. He stood there, absorbing all this knowledge, not memorising it, but absorbing it as a sponge absorbs water, with all, even the most insignificant details that filled his mind with inexhaustible knowledge.

He held the ring in his palm until he had absorbed all that knowledge, exhausted it completely. Then he carefully returned the ring back to the bowl. He clearly perceived somehow that the ring had returned to this dais when the bonds, that had held the enchanted elements of the once living flesh of this king of antiquity together for centuries had broken down. And that - if new flesh were to be woven for him, by a certain kind of spells, the ring would reincarnate, and return to him on his finger. To turn him again into an instrument, devoid of his own will, though meaningful - a merciless sword blade in the hand of its Owner.

He, then, continued along the chain of these elevations inscribed in the corners of the nine-cornered flat of this first base of the pyramid. And from each successive bowl he took out another ring, and drank and absorbed into himself this forbidden knowledge of another's mind, and another's destiny. The last ring, lying on the dais to the left of the staircase, proved to belong to the one, with whom fate had bound him at the waterfalls of the great river. And having taken into himself the knowledge of this ring, he clearly comprehended all that intricacy of schemes, and secret cunning, which, having subdued him, Vladislav, to that horrible being, led him, in the end, to the very primordial bottom of the universe, to this intertwining of ancient forces, and cunning witchcraft of one of those, who stood at the very origins of this universe.

He now clearly perceived that, if he were to rise again to the surface, his inner knowledge of the hidden essence of the Ringbearers' minds, and hence his potential power over their souls, would now be for him limitless. But this knowledge gave him neither satisfaction, nor joy. For terrible were their thoughts, their aspirations, and the impulses of their wills.

Returning to the base of the staircase, leading here to the next level of the pyramid, he raised his eyes, and immersed himself - with his contemplation - in the quiet chiming of bells of magnificent, tinkling bronze, with which the fiery words, inscribed here in the void, flooded his mind once again. Slowly, as if in an incessant chime, his consciousness began to embrace the slightly audible recitation that filled it: ‘Seven caves in the depths of the mountains, seven lakes of flowing copper, seven lords on thrones of copper, who have grasped the power of the roots of the earth, and turned their hands into art, to whom the hardness of the foundations of all existing is subject, and who will henceforth be the foundation of the throne for you!’

In a single breath he was filled with the chime of pure copper, and he was lifted up and carried up the steps.

As he stepped onto the plane of the second ledge, he saw here, in general, the same as on the first level of the pyramid. The next staircase before his eyes, cut into a ledge much higher - already the height of three people, no less. And - a path around this ledge, as if broken, in the corners of the fractures of which the same conical, dark, velvety-coloured truncated cone-shaped elevations were inscribed. Turning to the right, and reaching the first of them, he saw there the same simple, semi-circular bowl, but already of red, polished copper. And there also lay a golden ring, which he took in his palm, and plunged into the visions that were woven before his eyes out of nothing.

Taking one ring after another, he went round all the elevations, of which there were exactly seven. The knowledge given to him by these rings was much more distant, and alien to any human being. He sensed clearly that these rings had never been able to subdue the souls, or bodies of those who wielded them. They had brought them innumerable riches, but the chiefs who possessed them, and their peoples, were neither happier nor better off. And the final end of every such possession was, in the end, utterly terrible. All those who wore the rings perished - terribly and ignominiously, and their nations were scattered, and their riches, and their works, and their possessions - all went to dust. He beheld the souls of the ancient dungeon kings, their terrible fates, and their sad end. Never again would any hand wear a single one of these rings that had returned here - to their very beginnings. But which, in their wanderings in the terrestrial world, sucked from the souls, minds, and bodies of those, who wore them, that plenitude of knowledge and feeling, which now became the unshakable foundation of this level of Power, concentrated here.

Having absorbed the knowledge of all seven rings, during his circumambulation of this level of the pyramid, and having bypassed here, on his left hand, only three sharp turns of the faces of the level above, he returned, at last, to the base of the third staircase, and raising his eyes, plunged into comprehension of the third spell, opening the entrance to the top of the pyramid.

This time, for some reason, the spell was silent for a long period. Then, as if from the inexhaustible distance, subtle chiming sounds came, as if molten, flowing silver, coming down from the top of the mountain, and freezing on its degression, slightly audible, crystal-like, shimmered with the most delicate sounds, constantly touching with its finest threads, frozen on the fly - in this endless flight in the swift wind. And these silent iridescences, flowing from the spell, shining brighter and brighter above his head, gradually began to merge into a single thought-image, which sounded, with a deafening silver ringing, in his mind: ‘Three eagles soaring in the sky, piercing the world with their keen eyes, will open all comprehension for him who sits on the throne!’.

He raised his hands, and smoothly plunged them into the sphere of that silvery chime, which gradually descended downwards. It trembled under his palms with the finest sparkling cobweb, and began to envelop him with its ringing, iridescent veil.