... боишься - не делай, делаешь - не бойся... (с)
Может быть, кому-то это будет интересно))
Title: Till Death do us part
Author: Dahut
Beta: Celeste
Fandom: 'Hellboy-II'
Size: midi
Genre: fantasy, philosophy, AU
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Nuada / Death
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The tired stranger pushed his back against the wall, cold and damp much like a well's. A dull ache pulsed in his temples and made a shuddering crawl to the back of his head, circling around and around. This repetition drove him mad; the distorted sound causing despair ...
He tossed back his head and thin white hair covered his sunken cheeks.
Is this a place where you can find a sanctuary to hide away from demons of your past? Oh, no. On the contrary, here only the bigger, stronger, more ancient monsters can be found; born at the same time with life, born as an opposite of it.
This essence doomed the nature of the divine, the nature of the eternal; it didn't want to make any compromises, it didn't know mercy. You couldn't offer anything to it, couldn't seduce or pacify it with wonderful gifts. It itself was both a curse and a gift.
The oval hall was lit by six torches. A black stone slab towered in the depth of it, rising a foot in height from the ground.
A sculpture rested behind the slab, on a rough, low pedestal. Wild bindweeds hung across it as a faded and withered net of antiquity, ruthlessly devouring it over the centuries. But under these the dead remnants stood a figure similar to a man’s about two feet in height.
The stranger moved slowly and in stealth to the pair.
He gazed upon the slab only to notice an indentation in the perfectly even surface. It was a half-sphere, its size resembling a human’s skull.
The guest’s amber-yellow eyes sparkled with interest – their former keen sight having already returned. He removed a dagger from his sash, the blade like a surgical scalpel in both shape and sharpness. The stranger then approached the neglected statue and started to cut the withering but very sinewy and pliable threads of dead plant.
From time to time, he listened for any noise but there was only oppressive silence around; the stillness as vast as eternity.
He found the bindweeds had cut into the stone over time causing web of the tiny cracks to litter the statue’s surface. The sound of clicking tangled stalks falling on the damp floor echoed in the silence.
The minutes of hard work passed by, the blade twinkling rapaciously in the muffled light of the dungeon. Drops of the sweat began appearing on the intruder’s forehead due to the strain, but he did not slow down. Greedily, almost compulsively, he carried on with his goal.
The struggle with the plants finished within an hour and now the figure, with cracks here and there, appeared without its faded wrap. The cold stranger looked over the statue in self-satisfaction… The figure was more woman than man. Her arms were raised and her face was even, without any features or curves. No wrinkle, no bend. There were only cracks brought upon by the years.
The stranger walked around the statue, examining it, studying, trying to guess – but there was nothing. He stopped opposite her on the side where, in his mind, a face should be. His white, marble-like fingers ran across her shoulders and neck. It was so cold, so moist, as if flowing ice rivers were running without any sound inside of her stone body. Perhaps the Styx and Kokkit itself?
The unexpected guest thoughtfully fiddled with his dagger and then slowly made a thin, half-inch cut across his index finger. A drop of strange, gold blood flashed in the semidarkness. After a few moments, he looked at the final droplet in assessment and then, without any doubt, touched the right hand of the statue. A dirty, yellow trail lingered on the faded surface.
A booming sigh was heard, and a rush of air dashed around the hall. It reached the intruder’s hair and sank through the mane to touch the back of his head like a frozen palm. A subtle trembling began running through the statue along the cracks on the surface. The uninvited guest quickly looked to the statue’s hand, where his blood remained. The surface underneath lost its own stone structure and had become slightly dark and glossy.
He lifted up his eyes, bit his lip and fixed his gaze upon the stone surface of its face. Nothing…there was only silence in the room again.
He turned around. The stare of his catlike, shimmering eyes fell upon the indentation in the stone slab. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind… it could be only for that…
The stranger knelt over the bowl-shaped groove and unbuttoned his sleeve. The silver blade shone ravenously next to his wrist and amber-colored, viscous blood streamed into the hollow.
When it had filled halfway, he bandaged his hand with the red material torn off his sash. He dipped another of the sash into the font of blood. The material turned dark and swelled instantly. He took up carefully and waited till the surplus liquid finished trickling down the side of the indentation. He then moved rapidly to the sculpture.
Spreading out the material, he covered the figure’s shin. Hissing, rustling… or was it somebody’s whispering?
He turned back to the font, dipped the material again and wrapped it around the sculpture’s thigh… again to the font and again to the statue.
The statue was completely smeared with his own blood when something within the stone suddenly sighed and opened its eyes wide – dirty, white and listless.
It was really a woman’s body with a sallow complexion. She was covered in a net of repulsive blue veins and dark scratches, as if they were given only yesterday. She had a straight nose, sunken cheeks and a bluish-purple, heartless-looking mouth. Dirty, black hair with silver threads tangled everywhere on the back of the head and there weren’t any signs of age on her face.
“Why did you wake me, Prince Nuada Silver Lance, son of King Balor?” her voice spoke like the grind of a metal machine, filling every inch of space. “Or are you so foolish, that you dare to call upon me because of idle curiosity?”a veil of jet-black eyelashes trembling and closing on unseeing eyes momentarily.
“Oh, no…” Nuada replied while pale fingers clenched the fabric hat was his own sash but an hour ago. “I’d have never come to you unless it was such an emergency as I have now.”
“Nobody has ever come to me with any requests,” She responded to the Prince, “because I can take that which is most important to you, elf, by myself. It isn’t your time… Why are you so eager to approach it?”
”But if you are so powerful, why do you languish in this prison?” the Prince inquired carefully. “Why was it I and not you who awakened your cold body? Awakened by my own blood! Is it because my father imprisoned you in the name of immortality as a corrupt benefit for his people? I heard this ancient and strange legend so many times and now I have come to end it.”
“You are very brave… or may be foolish? No, I guess not, elf.”
Nuada made a step to her.
“I’m here because I wish to propose to you a truce and a pact.”
A clanking, short laugh escaped from her bloodless lips.
“And what can be suggested to me by the offspring of my warder and deceiver?”
“His head.” The Prince’s eyes sparkled with triumph and despair, “I know that the blood of who turned you into stone will return to you strength and your former power.”
“But do you know, elf, what kind of consequences there will be if you choose this dangerous path? You’ll make your people mortal. Just like candles, they will be burn quickly and become lifeless as fast as humans.”
“We need restoration and only you can give it to us. I know I must sacrifice on this path that which gives me comfort”
“And what do you want in exchange for this, elf?” Her listless eyes looked at and through Nuada, unfeeling and thoughtless.
“I want to revive the Golden Army and return to my people their birthright. To do this, I need the fragments of the Crown however, they are the threads of their bearers’ lives. I will give you my father, who has already lain on your altar, if you’ll be able and willing to accept this gift from me. My sister, for whom body and soul are inseparable from mine… but I know that Nuala will never take on and share my beliefs. I feel it, it means – I know. I will have to take that part of the Crown from her…"
She slowly bowed her head and Nuada hurriedly continued, “but if my sister died, I would die too at that very moment. I am the last in my royal family, the last who can give the command to the Golden Army to make the unbalanced and maddened mankind go back to their caves and holes where they belong!”
”Ah yes…” the metallic voice teemed.
“I don’t beg of you immortality, because I don’t dare it. I yearn only for time to finish that which I have begun. Will you help me? And then I’ll return and give you meaning.”
A cold and oppressive silence fell in the hall…
As if remembering how to walk, She waveringly slid off her awkwardly-shaped pedestal and took a seat on the edge of the hollowed-out slab. Nuada didn’t dare to break this fragile silence; he almost hesitated to breathe. Sore-covered shoulders shook, and She…It… turned her sinister, heartless face to the guest and spoke,
“I’m taking your offer, Prince Nuada.”
He breathed out with a sigh of relief.
“What should I do in order to bind our pact?”
“What can be stronger then what you have already done? You brought me back to life with your own blood. And now I’ll be in the every shadow behind your back, standing in the wings.”
Prince Nuada kept his word and on the fateful, next night… the decision came fast and almost without pain. Maybe he accepted it a long time ago, upon realization that everything always has a price to pay. Especially this… His father didn’t suffer and wasn’t shamed. He died mute and meek, perhaps because he felt a forthcoming storm – just like his son.
Nuada entered into the semidarkness of the cold hall with a rapid step… The light was flickering, the platform was empty.
“I bring news to you that I, Prince Nuada, have kept my word,” his voice spread to fill the empty, ghostly air; faint and tired.
“I know…” The dispassionate answer came.
In the right corner, behind the platform, something moved and took shape for a few seconds before rising and coming out from the semidarkness.
What he woke up more then 24 hours ago now took on a different appearance. The signs of withering had almost disappeared; the blue and festering having abated, becoming softer. The grey hairs had become practically unnoticeable. Nuada felt the virtually tangible power, indistinct, woven by the threads of the mysterious Fatal Sisters… The net, which turns everything into ash.
She walked, barely leaving a footfall across the dusty, rounded the slab and stopped a few feet from the Prince.
“You are… You have changed…” He lifted up his amber-colored eyes, nervously and momentarily making a fist.
“I have not, my persistent guest,” She said as a strange and subtle wry sneer spread across Her withered lips. “Because my essence is of an absolute, unchangeable and static nature, I do not experience the changes and the symptoms of evolution… I make them and fill the void myself. You gave me what once belonged to me and having observed the heart of the deal, I will not forget about honoring my side of the agreement.”
“Will you go up with me or should I visit you here again, when the time comes?” Nuada asked, catching Her every movement with his gaze.
Inside of Her body, devouring time, something continuously pulsated but it was not a breath or a beating heart. It was alive, but primeval, strange and walking alongside death… The way of his people ran parallel to these paths too. However, Nuada knew he had to break this ‘way’ and entangle them.
”You prefer the first choice, I know. Otherwise you wouldn’t have brought me some clothes. Well…” She reached out her pale and gnarled hand.
Nuada unslung a coarse, fabric pouch and pulled out a parcel of black silk.
She took it with a subtle movement of her hand and then unclasped her fingers, the material hanging in the air only for moment. After a few seconds, the silk crept noiseless down her wounded body. It had long sleeves, a wide belt, a flowing skirt which concealed her bruise-covered legs, and a deep hood, which hid her face in its own shadow.
Nuada hurriedly pulled a pair of wicker sandals from his pouch and held them out to Her.
"How should I address you?" he asked with dry and almost numb lips, looking at the life returning to the sculpture in the darkness of the hood. Now, She looked fearful and menacing.
"I have the same name in every language. There is no worthy or qualified synonym, but a lot of associations and…that doesn't matter now. You know it." She shrugged her shoulders.
"Well..." Nuada lingered. "So how should I call you when address you henceforth?"
"Choose a name for me, Prince, if it is so important to you," a shadow hid her empty eye sockets, but he knew that She gave him a piercing glance.
"I need to think of…" he looked at her on the platform.
"As you wish, son of your father."
"No…" It was like a slap in the face, bringing Nuada to his senses and making him become a bundle of nerves. "I loved him with all of my heart, but my father was a traitor and hangman his own people because he sowed the seed of discord and rotting… among us."
"And what sow you, Prince Nuada?" She said with a hint of sneer flashing inside of her hood. "I ask because you woke up that which every living thing dreads most of all."
"This is one of those details which doesn’t matter now. A fear always burns inside of us till we look it in the face. Sometimes, we can only find truth and meaning this way."
She shook her head. "However, you don’t look in mine. And you… you have eyes but you are playing blindly."
"Obviously, that is no wisdom that I know of. Or foolery. But…" She fell silent, then continued with the same metallic voice, "you should come out with me from this dungeon now, unless you have changed your mind and wish to join me here, in the darkness and cold."
"I made a decision a long time ago."
They went out into the chilly and cold August night. The medallion-shaped full moon hung in the cloudless night sky, along with the stars scattered like coins.
She lifted her head to the skies that were as ancient as She was. Moonlight crept along her matte-blue, ragged nose bridge and became extinct in the corners of the mouth.
"I want to call you Diana*," Nuada said inhaling the smell of damp night air filled with an ominous, full moon. "For some reason I remembered the wonderful Sources of this Ancient Goddess and the trinity of her power…"
"There is no place for gods or demons in my world…" She whispered still catching the patches of moonlight with the end of her nose. "But if that is the name you want to give me, so be it."
Nuada took Diana to his home and realm; an underground town topped with many golden towers and turrets. The streets were empty, drowned in softly similar moonlight. The golden autumn reigned here, mixing smartly with indigo and emerald green colors.
Two oblong shadows, too alien and different here, crossed it without being noticed and passed into his palace; roundish, with the highest-pointed towers rising into the unnatural looking multi-colored sky which possessed all shades of blue and green.
Nuada left Diana alone in the smallest and most remote room. The presence of this ancient and cold, stone-like creature oppressed him but he sent away any doubts which sometimes appeared because there were no two way about it.
In this night, he slept uneasily and nervously.
He dreamt of a never-ending labyrinth made of malachite studded with veins of reddish-gold; dark and shining. Crystal, mountain rivers made a strange, metallic-clanking howl behind walls in their own narrow, stone arteries.
It was as if he was running to nowhere. He knew that somebody hunted him, but he was disarmed and defenseless, just like a child.
His nightmare was getting more and more oppressive, weighing down on his shoulders and the back of his head with cold, leaden wings.
Then suddenly, the pressure increased many fold after another corridor’s turn. The whizzing and clanking, like hot, burning rods, penetrated into his sensitive ears, crept into his nostrils and flew into his eyes.
And then in the same sudden way it began - it stopped. The dream died away without a sound.
Nuada opened his eyes, stirred his fingers and felt with relief the cold, metal surface of his lance which was still there, on his knees. The Prince had dozed off sitting in a chair next to a cold and dusty fireplace. And what kind of flame could keep me warm now?
A faint light and an icy wind rustled into the room along with the smell of damp ground and decaying flowers.
He stood up, sheathed the lance behind his back and, holding up his head, took in the strange and glacial smell.
Nuada, crept out into the wide passage where gold paint was peeling off the trellis.
After a few moments, the silence was cut by the babble of water. It was ringing with a melodious trill, unnatural sounding as though it was lighting.
Nuada had almost reached the end of corridor, when he saw an open door on his right, behind one of the trellises... Along with the sounds, there were flowing rays of green light streaming in.
Nuada remembered that there was a garden behind this door. He and his sister, Nuala, had played there when they were children and had loved it... Such a long time ago, many centuries in the past. Moreover he, Nuada, sometimes used to doze there on the bench which was covered in shadow. The wind would sing a lullaby and an invisible source would murmur next to him.
The Prince had always been ascetic and despised luxury with its own corrupting excess.
And to be honest, he had always wanted to be a warrior, not a king. So he did just that. Nuada understood his place was in war and it didn't matter what kind of war it was, war with himself or against the world. Only in battle did the Prince feel himself as a necessary and organic element of something more than life. He and his lance ruled in battle and nothing else.
Nuada entered into the neglected garden. He walked along the marble path, splashing through the mud as the garden was waterlogged.
Nuada moved carefully into the thick of faded, fragile brushwood. It looked untouched but through this net, he could make out a thin, ghostly silhouette. She still resembled a statue.
Nuada moved into the small meadow covered with blue, dried-up grass. Across from him, about 30 feet, gushed down an azure-silver waterfall. The Prince had never seen it before. The cascade submerged the scarcely growing and formerly blossoming garden.
Diana stood in the ankle-deep, murky water next to it. She was dressed in the same black clothes but was now without the hood. Her black, graying hair was no longer tangled and stuck like soggy ribbons to her back. It was a little disheveled and tied in a careless knot.
”It feels like my previous ancient crypt... But this place is shaded with the tears of those who haven’t yet died, but already lay on their deathbeds,” her voice echoed to the peculiar noise and ringing of the waterfall.
“That's right.” Nuada whispered in a constrained voice and came abreast with her. “To burn that to resuscitate it. To bleed that to preserve it.”
“You don’t know exactly what eternity conceals from you, do you?” Diana turned to his pale face. Now, it was slick because of the water also. “As you don’t know the way which you choose now.”
“The possibility and result are important, the details along the way are insignificant,” Nuada remained firm in his belief.
“I guess, my stubborn friend, this is the most unpredictable part in the scheme of things. You don’t know which one of your deep breaths will be your last.”
“It doesn't matter now.”
The metallic clatter - it seemed to be a short laugh.
“Everybody say that until the moment of reckoning is too far gone and not visible anymore... All of you are afraid of pain but not oblivion. Weakness smothered the life inside of you before me. I am the everlasting evil in your mind, though. Well, maybe...” thoughtfully she touched her chin. “I should have a reaction to this but will I bear it? Unconditionally - no.”
“Do you want the venomous doubts to creep into my soul and your power over me to be realized in its fullest measure?”
“My wishes are inessential and featureless.”
“Just like your vague answers.”
“Oh no, soon my answers will become reality and interwoven in its groundwork. You shouldn't hurry and bring this moment closer because then you will have to accept it as inevitability.”
Nuada somewhat frowned and nodded his head as a sign of acceptance to the rules of this game, which seemed as vague as Her answers.
The cold wind drove leaden clouds across the sky, catching with their enormous web the sparse, twinkling stars. Everything was breathing with a shy nervousness. Something was in the air, glimmering, hiding in the twilight shadows where new-born moonlight had not yet penetrated; its useless attempts of breaking through dying along the way.
Nuada, being highly alert, slashed an invisible enemy in the air with a resounding whirl. Then he attacked head-on; a fierce strike to an invisible head with the edge of his sullenly gleaming lance. He turned and struck again, but now with the sudden extension of his blade.
He trained almost every evening and for a long time. He was constantly testing himself, schooling himself, and subduing the inner rage within himself; he locked it away, in a part of his consciousness, along with all the other doubts which came more and more rarely.
Nuada saw the greatest peril for warrior’s spirit to be uncertainty and unwarranted tolerance. And the Prince was a warrior entirely, with every fiber of his being.
Nuada took in a little cold, but strangely musty air. Suddenly, something began to beat in his temples with excited franticness. The Prince shook his head and a few tangled locks slipped onto his shoulders, but it became only worse.
The pounding of what felt like small hammers increased, creeping all over his skull and to the back of his freezing head, cramping his cheekbones and drawing out veins from his neck and then along his shoulders and arms.
Nuada dropped his lance with a groan; his limbs became numb only momentarily but it was enough for him to lose his balance. He fell face down in an area of dewy grass, but it burned his body which was being overrun by convulsions.
Gradually, his flesh died away, lost in space. Here only his mind remained. It could contemplate, but not analyze or take in.
Eyesight free from consciousness was taken deep into a tunnel running with strange, silver threads. Perhaps they were cutting him, but there was no pain.
His mind flew along, the increasing speed trembling the different fragments, which he was now similar to.
The threads were becoming thinner, more fragile and amazingly alive. He couldn’t hear but knew that sound was flowing all around now. It shook the millions of atoms which were passing by him faster and faster. Now, he saw each atom and could count them if he wished it. In time, golden threads started to appear among the silver ones; very rarely, though, just a few.
They were burning with their own inner light. One had a bright, almost sunny light, another became extinct…
Perhaps he should feel this horror, but his heart and soul stayed down on the earth chained to his body.
At the end of the tunnel, at first irresolutely but then more clearly, appeared an aperture.
The flight began to slow down… The quantity of golden threads increased but that of the silver threads almost disappeared.
At last, he approached the opening; behind it was shining the most absolute, purest light. Two interweaving, golden threads crossed the oval shape. They embraced one another with tenderness, just like they were breathing easily and light-heartedly.
But there was one more thread on this large tambour; it was dull-looking and severed, but it still crossed the interweaving strands. It was suspended in the air, with nothing touching its own torn, immovable ends.
Suddenly, something clanked. It happened without any source but it was everywhere; the sound of grinding metal. His eardrums burst.
Everything turned into a flash.
He came back to his body as in insufferable, complete pain. It reminded him of a mother's pain, from whose eviscerated stomach pincers tore a fetus from the womb. Or maybe that of a heart, quivering and alive, still warm and breathing with bloody exhalation in the cold, alien world.
Nuada breathed out with a crackling and turned onto his back. The hellish pain went through his body, from heel to head. He moaned, twitched, rolled around and laid on his chest in the damp grass. His eyes were watering and mouth was burning. The desperate silence was ringing in his head.
The world had become empty; he knew it.
With dreadfulness and a shudder, he drove away the pain that was tormenting his flesh. It subsided slowly but willingly to the ancient shadows.
The branches of brushwood stuck into his unprotected body with a bloody crack and clung to his clothes while Nuada made his way through it in a frenzy. Now, everything was a very damp. The smell of witchcraft filled the air. The garden wasn't faded by centuries anymore, it wasn't dying…
Nuada almost tumbled out onto the glade where the cascade still buzzed peacefully. Among the rich-blue grass, two dozen flowers rose with a cold, sepulchral smell. Their big, black petals embraced their acid-orange centers and moved slightly, but there wasn't any wind.
Nuada looked around the glade with a blurred gaze and saw Her in the shadows.
Diana sat on the white marble slab crossing her legs while semidarkness covered her and dissolved in itself.
“What have you done?” the Prince whispered, moving towards her.
Diana didn't move, didn't answer. Her heartless stare turned to the Prince.
“What have you done?” He repeated in a constrained voice taking a good look at Her unemotional face.
Silence…
“What have you done?” Nuada cried angrily.
“I have kept my promise, haven't I?” Diana answered.
The Prince, heavily panting, downed himself on moist grass. His body was being beat by a heartless, ferocious shiver; his expression burned with despair.
“I don't…” he stammered while his pale, thin fingers pierced in to the ground.
“I am not a fortune-teller, Prince Nuada, or a gin,” a hint of mock appeared in her tone. “You wanted to stop the moment, to break the chains which tied you and your sister together. Well, it has been done by me because there is nothing surer than my nature. It doesn't know unbreakable chains; everything is ash and dust under my footsteps.”
“But I thought… I wanted…” Nuada mumbled, lifting his face to the timid light which was struggling through the dark azure. He fell silent and thought of nothing now. A few moments later, he finally looked at Diana again. “Did she suffer, my poor sister? I hope she didn’t…”
“What does it mean ‘suffer’?” Diana stood up. Rays crept along her lustrous face and naked shoulders – the festering having almost disappeared leaving scars and dark splotches on her thin skin. “Only something alive can suffer but there is no life next to me. Could she have suffered? I don’t know. I grant peace and freedom, obliterate pain from faces and souls which life covers. So I can’t give you this answer but you can answer it yourself.”
Making a leaning stagger towards one of the streamlets formed by the cascade, Nuada squatted down. His legs were feeble. The Prince filled his palms with immensely cold water and washed his face. His fever began to go down.
“Where is she? Where is Nuala?” Nuada asked in a low voice, feeling Diana behind his back.
“You don’t have a chance to go there. Yet. Leave her. And take this now.”
Something sparkled to in the grass next to the Prince. It was a fragment of the Golden Crown, the one which Nuala had kept in her sash for many centuries. Nuada, not wrangling any more, clenched the plate in his ice-cold palm to pain… to blood.
*Diana - in Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and also of the moon. In literature she was the equivalent of the Greek goddess Artemis, though in cult beliefs she was Italic, not Greek, in origin. Diana was worshipped in ancient Roman religion and is currently revered in the religions of Religio Romana Neopaganism and Stregheria.
Along with her main attributes, Diana was an emblem of chastity. Oak groves were especially sacred to her. According to mythology, Diana was born with her twin brother Apollo on the island of Delos, daughter of Jupiter and Latona. Diana made up a trinity with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god.
Title: Till Death do us part
Author: Dahut
Beta: Celeste
Fandom: 'Hellboy-II'
Size: midi
Genre: fantasy, philosophy, AU
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Nuada / Death
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The tired stranger pushed his back against the wall, cold and damp much like a well's. A dull ache pulsed in his temples and made a shuddering crawl to the back of his head, circling around and around. This repetition drove him mad; the distorted sound causing despair ...
He tossed back his head and thin white hair covered his sunken cheeks.
Is this a place where you can find a sanctuary to hide away from demons of your past? Oh, no. On the contrary, here only the bigger, stronger, more ancient monsters can be found; born at the same time with life, born as an opposite of it.
This essence doomed the nature of the divine, the nature of the eternal; it didn't want to make any compromises, it didn't know mercy. You couldn't offer anything to it, couldn't seduce or pacify it with wonderful gifts. It itself was both a curse and a gift.
The oval hall was lit by six torches. A black stone slab towered in the depth of it, rising a foot in height from the ground.
A sculpture rested behind the slab, on a rough, low pedestal. Wild bindweeds hung across it as a faded and withered net of antiquity, ruthlessly devouring it over the centuries. But under these the dead remnants stood a figure similar to a man’s about two feet in height.
The stranger moved slowly and in stealth to the pair.
He gazed upon the slab only to notice an indentation in the perfectly even surface. It was a half-sphere, its size resembling a human’s skull.
The guest’s amber-yellow eyes sparkled with interest – their former keen sight having already returned. He removed a dagger from his sash, the blade like a surgical scalpel in both shape and sharpness. The stranger then approached the neglected statue and started to cut the withering but very sinewy and pliable threads of dead plant.
From time to time, he listened for any noise but there was only oppressive silence around; the stillness as vast as eternity.
He found the bindweeds had cut into the stone over time causing web of the tiny cracks to litter the statue’s surface. The sound of clicking tangled stalks falling on the damp floor echoed in the silence.
The minutes of hard work passed by, the blade twinkling rapaciously in the muffled light of the dungeon. Drops of the sweat began appearing on the intruder’s forehead due to the strain, but he did not slow down. Greedily, almost compulsively, he carried on with his goal.
The struggle with the plants finished within an hour and now the figure, with cracks here and there, appeared without its faded wrap. The cold stranger looked over the statue in self-satisfaction… The figure was more woman than man. Her arms were raised and her face was even, without any features or curves. No wrinkle, no bend. There were only cracks brought upon by the years.
The stranger walked around the statue, examining it, studying, trying to guess – but there was nothing. He stopped opposite her on the side where, in his mind, a face should be. His white, marble-like fingers ran across her shoulders and neck. It was so cold, so moist, as if flowing ice rivers were running without any sound inside of her stone body. Perhaps the Styx and Kokkit itself?
The unexpected guest thoughtfully fiddled with his dagger and then slowly made a thin, half-inch cut across his index finger. A drop of strange, gold blood flashed in the semidarkness. After a few moments, he looked at the final droplet in assessment and then, without any doubt, touched the right hand of the statue. A dirty, yellow trail lingered on the faded surface.
A booming sigh was heard, and a rush of air dashed around the hall. It reached the intruder’s hair and sank through the mane to touch the back of his head like a frozen palm. A subtle trembling began running through the statue along the cracks on the surface. The uninvited guest quickly looked to the statue’s hand, where his blood remained. The surface underneath lost its own stone structure and had become slightly dark and glossy.
He lifted up his eyes, bit his lip and fixed his gaze upon the stone surface of its face. Nothing…there was only silence in the room again.
He turned around. The stare of his catlike, shimmering eyes fell upon the indentation in the stone slab. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind… it could be only for that…
The stranger knelt over the bowl-shaped groove and unbuttoned his sleeve. The silver blade shone ravenously next to his wrist and amber-colored, viscous blood streamed into the hollow.
When it had filled halfway, he bandaged his hand with the red material torn off his sash. He dipped another of the sash into the font of blood. The material turned dark and swelled instantly. He took up carefully and waited till the surplus liquid finished trickling down the side of the indentation. He then moved rapidly to the sculpture.
Spreading out the material, he covered the figure’s shin. Hissing, rustling… or was it somebody’s whispering?
He turned back to the font, dipped the material again and wrapped it around the sculpture’s thigh… again to the font and again to the statue.
The statue was completely smeared with his own blood when something within the stone suddenly sighed and opened its eyes wide – dirty, white and listless.
It was really a woman’s body with a sallow complexion. She was covered in a net of repulsive blue veins and dark scratches, as if they were given only yesterday. She had a straight nose, sunken cheeks and a bluish-purple, heartless-looking mouth. Dirty, black hair with silver threads tangled everywhere on the back of the head and there weren’t any signs of age on her face.
“Why did you wake me, Prince Nuada Silver Lance, son of King Balor?” her voice spoke like the grind of a metal machine, filling every inch of space. “Or are you so foolish, that you dare to call upon me because of idle curiosity?”a veil of jet-black eyelashes trembling and closing on unseeing eyes momentarily.
“Oh, no…” Nuada replied while pale fingers clenched the fabric hat was his own sash but an hour ago. “I’d have never come to you unless it was such an emergency as I have now.”
“Nobody has ever come to me with any requests,” She responded to the Prince, “because I can take that which is most important to you, elf, by myself. It isn’t your time… Why are you so eager to approach it?”
”But if you are so powerful, why do you languish in this prison?” the Prince inquired carefully. “Why was it I and not you who awakened your cold body? Awakened by my own blood! Is it because my father imprisoned you in the name of immortality as a corrupt benefit for his people? I heard this ancient and strange legend so many times and now I have come to end it.”
“You are very brave… or may be foolish? No, I guess not, elf.”
Nuada made a step to her.
“I’m here because I wish to propose to you a truce and a pact.”
A clanking, short laugh escaped from her bloodless lips.
“And what can be suggested to me by the offspring of my warder and deceiver?”
“His head.” The Prince’s eyes sparkled with triumph and despair, “I know that the blood of who turned you into stone will return to you strength and your former power.”
“But do you know, elf, what kind of consequences there will be if you choose this dangerous path? You’ll make your people mortal. Just like candles, they will be burn quickly and become lifeless as fast as humans.”
“We need restoration and only you can give it to us. I know I must sacrifice on this path that which gives me comfort”
“And what do you want in exchange for this, elf?” Her listless eyes looked at and through Nuada, unfeeling and thoughtless.
“I want to revive the Golden Army and return to my people their birthright. To do this, I need the fragments of the Crown however, they are the threads of their bearers’ lives. I will give you my father, who has already lain on your altar, if you’ll be able and willing to accept this gift from me. My sister, for whom body and soul are inseparable from mine… but I know that Nuala will never take on and share my beliefs. I feel it, it means – I know. I will have to take that part of the Crown from her…"
She slowly bowed her head and Nuada hurriedly continued, “but if my sister died, I would die too at that very moment. I am the last in my royal family, the last who can give the command to the Golden Army to make the unbalanced and maddened mankind go back to their caves and holes where they belong!”
”Ah yes…” the metallic voice teemed.
“I don’t beg of you immortality, because I don’t dare it. I yearn only for time to finish that which I have begun. Will you help me? And then I’ll return and give you meaning.”
A cold and oppressive silence fell in the hall…
As if remembering how to walk, She waveringly slid off her awkwardly-shaped pedestal and took a seat on the edge of the hollowed-out slab. Nuada didn’t dare to break this fragile silence; he almost hesitated to breathe. Sore-covered shoulders shook, and She…It… turned her sinister, heartless face to the guest and spoke,
“I’m taking your offer, Prince Nuada.”
He breathed out with a sigh of relief.
“What should I do in order to bind our pact?”
“What can be stronger then what you have already done? You brought me back to life with your own blood. And now I’ll be in the every shadow behind your back, standing in the wings.”
Prince Nuada kept his word and on the fateful, next night… the decision came fast and almost without pain. Maybe he accepted it a long time ago, upon realization that everything always has a price to pay. Especially this… His father didn’t suffer and wasn’t shamed. He died mute and meek, perhaps because he felt a forthcoming storm – just like his son.
Nuada entered into the semidarkness of the cold hall with a rapid step… The light was flickering, the platform was empty.
“I bring news to you that I, Prince Nuada, have kept my word,” his voice spread to fill the empty, ghostly air; faint and tired.
“I know…” The dispassionate answer came.
In the right corner, behind the platform, something moved and took shape for a few seconds before rising and coming out from the semidarkness.
What he woke up more then 24 hours ago now took on a different appearance. The signs of withering had almost disappeared; the blue and festering having abated, becoming softer. The grey hairs had become practically unnoticeable. Nuada felt the virtually tangible power, indistinct, woven by the threads of the mysterious Fatal Sisters… The net, which turns everything into ash.
She walked, barely leaving a footfall across the dusty, rounded the slab and stopped a few feet from the Prince.
“You are… You have changed…” He lifted up his amber-colored eyes, nervously and momentarily making a fist.
“I have not, my persistent guest,” She said as a strange and subtle wry sneer spread across Her withered lips. “Because my essence is of an absolute, unchangeable and static nature, I do not experience the changes and the symptoms of evolution… I make them and fill the void myself. You gave me what once belonged to me and having observed the heart of the deal, I will not forget about honoring my side of the agreement.”
“Will you go up with me or should I visit you here again, when the time comes?” Nuada asked, catching Her every movement with his gaze.
Inside of Her body, devouring time, something continuously pulsated but it was not a breath or a beating heart. It was alive, but primeval, strange and walking alongside death… The way of his people ran parallel to these paths too. However, Nuada knew he had to break this ‘way’ and entangle them.
”You prefer the first choice, I know. Otherwise you wouldn’t have brought me some clothes. Well…” She reached out her pale and gnarled hand.
Nuada unslung a coarse, fabric pouch and pulled out a parcel of black silk.
She took it with a subtle movement of her hand and then unclasped her fingers, the material hanging in the air only for moment. After a few seconds, the silk crept noiseless down her wounded body. It had long sleeves, a wide belt, a flowing skirt which concealed her bruise-covered legs, and a deep hood, which hid her face in its own shadow.
Nuada hurriedly pulled a pair of wicker sandals from his pouch and held them out to Her.
"How should I address you?" he asked with dry and almost numb lips, looking at the life returning to the sculpture in the darkness of the hood. Now, She looked fearful and menacing.
"I have the same name in every language. There is no worthy or qualified synonym, but a lot of associations and…that doesn't matter now. You know it." She shrugged her shoulders.
"Well..." Nuada lingered. "So how should I call you when address you henceforth?"
"Choose a name for me, Prince, if it is so important to you," a shadow hid her empty eye sockets, but he knew that She gave him a piercing glance.
"I need to think of…" he looked at her on the platform.
"As you wish, son of your father."
"No…" It was like a slap in the face, bringing Nuada to his senses and making him become a bundle of nerves. "I loved him with all of my heart, but my father was a traitor and hangman his own people because he sowed the seed of discord and rotting… among us."
"And what sow you, Prince Nuada?" She said with a hint of sneer flashing inside of her hood. "I ask because you woke up that which every living thing dreads most of all."
"This is one of those details which doesn’t matter now. A fear always burns inside of us till we look it in the face. Sometimes, we can only find truth and meaning this way."
She shook her head. "However, you don’t look in mine. And you… you have eyes but you are playing blindly."
"Obviously, that is no wisdom that I know of. Or foolery. But…" She fell silent, then continued with the same metallic voice, "you should come out with me from this dungeon now, unless you have changed your mind and wish to join me here, in the darkness and cold."
"I made a decision a long time ago."
They went out into the chilly and cold August night. The medallion-shaped full moon hung in the cloudless night sky, along with the stars scattered like coins.
She lifted her head to the skies that were as ancient as She was. Moonlight crept along her matte-blue, ragged nose bridge and became extinct in the corners of the mouth.
"I want to call you Diana*," Nuada said inhaling the smell of damp night air filled with an ominous, full moon. "For some reason I remembered the wonderful Sources of this Ancient Goddess and the trinity of her power…"
"There is no place for gods or demons in my world…" She whispered still catching the patches of moonlight with the end of her nose. "But if that is the name you want to give me, so be it."
Nuada took Diana to his home and realm; an underground town topped with many golden towers and turrets. The streets were empty, drowned in softly similar moonlight. The golden autumn reigned here, mixing smartly with indigo and emerald green colors.
Two oblong shadows, too alien and different here, crossed it without being noticed and passed into his palace; roundish, with the highest-pointed towers rising into the unnatural looking multi-colored sky which possessed all shades of blue and green.
Nuada left Diana alone in the smallest and most remote room. The presence of this ancient and cold, stone-like creature oppressed him but he sent away any doubts which sometimes appeared because there were no two way about it.
In this night, he slept uneasily and nervously.
He dreamt of a never-ending labyrinth made of malachite studded with veins of reddish-gold; dark and shining. Crystal, mountain rivers made a strange, metallic-clanking howl behind walls in their own narrow, stone arteries.
It was as if he was running to nowhere. He knew that somebody hunted him, but he was disarmed and defenseless, just like a child.
His nightmare was getting more and more oppressive, weighing down on his shoulders and the back of his head with cold, leaden wings.
Then suddenly, the pressure increased many fold after another corridor’s turn. The whizzing and clanking, like hot, burning rods, penetrated into his sensitive ears, crept into his nostrils and flew into his eyes.
And then in the same sudden way it began - it stopped. The dream died away without a sound.
Nuada opened his eyes, stirred his fingers and felt with relief the cold, metal surface of his lance which was still there, on his knees. The Prince had dozed off sitting in a chair next to a cold and dusty fireplace. And what kind of flame could keep me warm now?
A faint light and an icy wind rustled into the room along with the smell of damp ground and decaying flowers.
He stood up, sheathed the lance behind his back and, holding up his head, took in the strange and glacial smell.
Nuada, crept out into the wide passage where gold paint was peeling off the trellis.
After a few moments, the silence was cut by the babble of water. It was ringing with a melodious trill, unnatural sounding as though it was lighting.
Nuada had almost reached the end of corridor, when he saw an open door on his right, behind one of the trellises... Along with the sounds, there were flowing rays of green light streaming in.
Nuada remembered that there was a garden behind this door. He and his sister, Nuala, had played there when they were children and had loved it... Such a long time ago, many centuries in the past. Moreover he, Nuada, sometimes used to doze there on the bench which was covered in shadow. The wind would sing a lullaby and an invisible source would murmur next to him.
The Prince had always been ascetic and despised luxury with its own corrupting excess.
And to be honest, he had always wanted to be a warrior, not a king. So he did just that. Nuada understood his place was in war and it didn't matter what kind of war it was, war with himself or against the world. Only in battle did the Prince feel himself as a necessary and organic element of something more than life. He and his lance ruled in battle and nothing else.
Nuada entered into the neglected garden. He walked along the marble path, splashing through the mud as the garden was waterlogged.
Nuada moved carefully into the thick of faded, fragile brushwood. It looked untouched but through this net, he could make out a thin, ghostly silhouette. She still resembled a statue.
Nuada moved into the small meadow covered with blue, dried-up grass. Across from him, about 30 feet, gushed down an azure-silver waterfall. The Prince had never seen it before. The cascade submerged the scarcely growing and formerly blossoming garden.
Diana stood in the ankle-deep, murky water next to it. She was dressed in the same black clothes but was now without the hood. Her black, graying hair was no longer tangled and stuck like soggy ribbons to her back. It was a little disheveled and tied in a careless knot.
”It feels like my previous ancient crypt... But this place is shaded with the tears of those who haven’t yet died, but already lay on their deathbeds,” her voice echoed to the peculiar noise and ringing of the waterfall.
“That's right.” Nuada whispered in a constrained voice and came abreast with her. “To burn that to resuscitate it. To bleed that to preserve it.”
“You don’t know exactly what eternity conceals from you, do you?” Diana turned to his pale face. Now, it was slick because of the water also. “As you don’t know the way which you choose now.”
“The possibility and result are important, the details along the way are insignificant,” Nuada remained firm in his belief.
“I guess, my stubborn friend, this is the most unpredictable part in the scheme of things. You don’t know which one of your deep breaths will be your last.”
“It doesn't matter now.”
The metallic clatter - it seemed to be a short laugh.
“Everybody say that until the moment of reckoning is too far gone and not visible anymore... All of you are afraid of pain but not oblivion. Weakness smothered the life inside of you before me. I am the everlasting evil in your mind, though. Well, maybe...” thoughtfully she touched her chin. “I should have a reaction to this but will I bear it? Unconditionally - no.”
“Do you want the venomous doubts to creep into my soul and your power over me to be realized in its fullest measure?”
“My wishes are inessential and featureless.”
“Just like your vague answers.”
“Oh no, soon my answers will become reality and interwoven in its groundwork. You shouldn't hurry and bring this moment closer because then you will have to accept it as inevitability.”
Nuada somewhat frowned and nodded his head as a sign of acceptance to the rules of this game, which seemed as vague as Her answers.
The cold wind drove leaden clouds across the sky, catching with their enormous web the sparse, twinkling stars. Everything was breathing with a shy nervousness. Something was in the air, glimmering, hiding in the twilight shadows where new-born moonlight had not yet penetrated; its useless attempts of breaking through dying along the way.
Nuada, being highly alert, slashed an invisible enemy in the air with a resounding whirl. Then he attacked head-on; a fierce strike to an invisible head with the edge of his sullenly gleaming lance. He turned and struck again, but now with the sudden extension of his blade.
He trained almost every evening and for a long time. He was constantly testing himself, schooling himself, and subduing the inner rage within himself; he locked it away, in a part of his consciousness, along with all the other doubts which came more and more rarely.
Nuada saw the greatest peril for warrior’s spirit to be uncertainty and unwarranted tolerance. And the Prince was a warrior entirely, with every fiber of his being.
Nuada took in a little cold, but strangely musty air. Suddenly, something began to beat in his temples with excited franticness. The Prince shook his head and a few tangled locks slipped onto his shoulders, but it became only worse.
The pounding of what felt like small hammers increased, creeping all over his skull and to the back of his freezing head, cramping his cheekbones and drawing out veins from his neck and then along his shoulders and arms.
Nuada dropped his lance with a groan; his limbs became numb only momentarily but it was enough for him to lose his balance. He fell face down in an area of dewy grass, but it burned his body which was being overrun by convulsions.
Gradually, his flesh died away, lost in space. Here only his mind remained. It could contemplate, but not analyze or take in.
Eyesight free from consciousness was taken deep into a tunnel running with strange, silver threads. Perhaps they were cutting him, but there was no pain.
His mind flew along, the increasing speed trembling the different fragments, which he was now similar to.
The threads were becoming thinner, more fragile and amazingly alive. He couldn’t hear but knew that sound was flowing all around now. It shook the millions of atoms which were passing by him faster and faster. Now, he saw each atom and could count them if he wished it. In time, golden threads started to appear among the silver ones; very rarely, though, just a few.
They were burning with their own inner light. One had a bright, almost sunny light, another became extinct…
Perhaps he should feel this horror, but his heart and soul stayed down on the earth chained to his body.
At the end of the tunnel, at first irresolutely but then more clearly, appeared an aperture.
The flight began to slow down… The quantity of golden threads increased but that of the silver threads almost disappeared.
At last, he approached the opening; behind it was shining the most absolute, purest light. Two interweaving, golden threads crossed the oval shape. They embraced one another with tenderness, just like they were breathing easily and light-heartedly.
But there was one more thread on this large tambour; it was dull-looking and severed, but it still crossed the interweaving strands. It was suspended in the air, with nothing touching its own torn, immovable ends.
Suddenly, something clanked. It happened without any source but it was everywhere; the sound of grinding metal. His eardrums burst.
Everything turned into a flash.
He came back to his body as in insufferable, complete pain. It reminded him of a mother's pain, from whose eviscerated stomach pincers tore a fetus from the womb. Or maybe that of a heart, quivering and alive, still warm and breathing with bloody exhalation in the cold, alien world.
Nuada breathed out with a crackling and turned onto his back. The hellish pain went through his body, from heel to head. He moaned, twitched, rolled around and laid on his chest in the damp grass. His eyes were watering and mouth was burning. The desperate silence was ringing in his head.
The world had become empty; he knew it.
With dreadfulness and a shudder, he drove away the pain that was tormenting his flesh. It subsided slowly but willingly to the ancient shadows.
The branches of brushwood stuck into his unprotected body with a bloody crack and clung to his clothes while Nuada made his way through it in a frenzy. Now, everything was a very damp. The smell of witchcraft filled the air. The garden wasn't faded by centuries anymore, it wasn't dying…
Nuada almost tumbled out onto the glade where the cascade still buzzed peacefully. Among the rich-blue grass, two dozen flowers rose with a cold, sepulchral smell. Their big, black petals embraced their acid-orange centers and moved slightly, but there wasn't any wind.
Nuada looked around the glade with a blurred gaze and saw Her in the shadows.
Diana sat on the white marble slab crossing her legs while semidarkness covered her and dissolved in itself.
“What have you done?” the Prince whispered, moving towards her.
Diana didn't move, didn't answer. Her heartless stare turned to the Prince.
“What have you done?” He repeated in a constrained voice taking a good look at Her unemotional face.
Silence…
“What have you done?” Nuada cried angrily.
“I have kept my promise, haven't I?” Diana answered.
The Prince, heavily panting, downed himself on moist grass. His body was being beat by a heartless, ferocious shiver; his expression burned with despair.
“I don't…” he stammered while his pale, thin fingers pierced in to the ground.
“I am not a fortune-teller, Prince Nuada, or a gin,” a hint of mock appeared in her tone. “You wanted to stop the moment, to break the chains which tied you and your sister together. Well, it has been done by me because there is nothing surer than my nature. It doesn't know unbreakable chains; everything is ash and dust under my footsteps.”
“But I thought… I wanted…” Nuada mumbled, lifting his face to the timid light which was struggling through the dark azure. He fell silent and thought of nothing now. A few moments later, he finally looked at Diana again. “Did she suffer, my poor sister? I hope she didn’t…”
“What does it mean ‘suffer’?” Diana stood up. Rays crept along her lustrous face and naked shoulders – the festering having almost disappeared leaving scars and dark splotches on her thin skin. “Only something alive can suffer but there is no life next to me. Could she have suffered? I don’t know. I grant peace and freedom, obliterate pain from faces and souls which life covers. So I can’t give you this answer but you can answer it yourself.”
Making a leaning stagger towards one of the streamlets formed by the cascade, Nuada squatted down. His legs were feeble. The Prince filled his palms with immensely cold water and washed his face. His fever began to go down.
“Where is she? Where is Nuala?” Nuada asked in a low voice, feeling Diana behind his back.
“You don’t have a chance to go there. Yet. Leave her. And take this now.”
Something sparkled to in the grass next to the Prince. It was a fragment of the Golden Crown, the one which Nuala had kept in her sash for many centuries. Nuada, not wrangling any more, clenched the plate in his ice-cold palm to pain… to blood.
*Diana - in Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and also of the moon. In literature she was the equivalent of the Greek goddess Artemis, though in cult beliefs she was Italic, not Greek, in origin. Diana was worshipped in ancient Roman religion and is currently revered in the religions of Religio Romana Neopaganism and Stregheria.
Along with her main attributes, Diana was an emblem of chastity. Oak groves were especially sacred to her. According to mythology, Diana was born with her twin brother Apollo on the island of Delos, daughter of Jupiter and Latona. Diana made up a trinity with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god.
, т.к. сама тема на форуме, кажется, скоро лопнет...
)
Итак, продюсеры Александр Роднянский и Сергей Мелькумов представляют первую часть дилогии режиссера Федора Бондарчука по знаменитому роману братьев Стругацких "Обитаемый остров". 
