优先遵循ANK汉化
毒药之颂，第三册
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2022-08-04更新
最新编辑:Lu_23333
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更新日期：2022-08-04
最新编辑：Lu_23333
毒药之颂，第三册
毒药之颂，第三册
第一纪元685年，泰伊十八岁，第一次见到哀伤之城，这座矛之城市、女神的家乡。他的堂哥凯寇里斯已是神殿的高阶新人，给了泰伊他名下房屋的两间位于一楼的房间。房间很小，而且没有家具，可是窗外长满了苦翠藤，当风吹过，便会让他的卧房充满宜人的辛香气息。
他再也不会因为那首歌而心烦意乱。有时他甚至无知无觉，因为乐声在他听来已经变得清静而悦耳。偶尔，在他前往神殿上课的途中，会有人跟他擦肩而过，令乐声一时增强。泰伊从没试着搞清楚那些人究竟有什么特别之处。他依然记得上一回他让歌曲引导他，结果杀了堂弟瓦士特。那段记忆并不特别困扰他，但没必要时，他不想伤害任何人。
家里的信差固定会从葛尼岛上杉笛尔之屋替泰伊捎来蓓娜拉的信。她其实可以到神殿学习，她的天资足够聪颖，只是她选择放弃。最多一、两年，她势必就得离开杉笛尔，回到因督利尔，那才是她的归属，不过她并不着急。泰伊喜欢那些信件捎来的琐碎八卦，也回以自己的学习和罗曼史礼尚往来。
他在哀伤之城的第三个月，就遇见一个女孩。她也是神殿的学生，名字叫做雅可拉。在给蓓娜拉的信中，泰伊文情并茂地描绘雅可拉，形容她有索萨·席的心智、维瓦克的智慧和爱玛蕾希雅的美貌。蓓娜拉开心回覆，说如果她早知道神殿原来可以允许学生如此亵渎神明，她说不定就会前来就学了。
“你和堂姐感情真好”泰伊展示来信时，雅可拉笑出声。“难道摆在我眼前的是备受阻挠之爱的残存火花吗？”
“她很可人，但我对她从来没有那样的感情”泰伊嘲弄地说。“乱伦对我不是很有吸引力”
“那么，她是跟你血源很近的亲戚吗？”
泰伊想了一下：“我也不知道。老实说，我从没听人提起她或我的父母，所以我并不清楚我们是什么样的关系。我知道我们的父母是红山之役的受难者，可是每次问起我们的父母，都好像牵动大人的敏感神经。一段时间之后，我们就不再问了。不过你也是因督利尔家族的人，搞不好你和蓓娜拉的血源关系还更近呢”
“也许吧”雅可拉微笑，离开椅子站起来。她松开原本符合良好出身女祭司的正式发型。当着泰伊专注的视线，她解下将罩袍和披肩扣在一起的小胸针。丝般柔软的布料慢慢滑下，她黝黑纤细的躯体首次展露他眼前。“如果我们是亲戚，现在乱伦对你的吸引力有没有强一点了呢？”
他们做爱时，那首歌在泰伊脑中缓慢悠扬地响起。雅可拉的身影逐渐黯淡，被他的恶梦所取代，之后才又重新浮现眼前。在他终于筋疲力尽地瘫倒之际，房间仿佛被他梦中的火红云朵垄罩，那个女孩和婴儿面临死亡的尖叫在他脑中回荡。他睁开眼睛，雅可拉正微笑看着他。泰伊亲吻她，感谢能有她在怀中。
接下来两个星期，泰伊和雅可拉形影不离。即使他们上课时位处神殿的两翼，泰伊依然想着她，而且确信她也一样思念他。一下课他们就飞奔向彼此，每晚在他房间内、每天在神殿花园的私密角落翻云覆雨。
一天下午，正当泰伊赶着去见爱人途中，那首歌突然在一名褴褛的老妇人接近时奏出强力刺耳的音调。他闭上眼睛，试图平息躁动的乐音，等他张开眼睛，再次看着正在跟小贩购买软木球茎纸的妇人，他知道她是谁了，那是他在葛尼岛上的保母艾蒂芭，连道别都没有便抛下他回到内陆跟家人相聚。
她没有看到他，只是继续沿着街道走，泰伊转身开始尾随其后。他们走过有蔽荫的通道，进入城市最贫穷的区域，在他看来，这里就跟荒芜神秘的阿卡维尔大陆一样陌生。她打开无名街道上的一扇木头小门，此时他终于开口叫唤她的名字。她没有回头，可是等他跟上脚步，他发现门只是虚掩着。
室内阴暗潮湿如洞穴。她面向他站着，她的面庞比他记忆中更皱，刻着伤心的纹路。他关上身后的门，她抓起他的手亲了亲。
“你长得好高好壮啊”艾蒂芭说着开始哭泣。“我应该抢在他们把我带离你身边之前自杀的”
“你的家人好吗？”泰伊冷冷问道。
“你是我唯一的家人”她低声说。“那些因督利尔猪逼我离开，把他们的刀剑贴上我的脸，因为他们发现我服侍的是你，不是他们。那个贱女孩蓓娜拉看到我在进行哀悼的祷告”
“你说话像个疯子”泰伊一脸轻蔑。“你怎么可能爱我和我的家人，却憎恨因督利尔家族？我是因督利尔的一分子”
“你已经够大，该知道事实了”艾蒂芭口气凶狠。尽管泰伊尖刻地嘲笑她的疯狂，却看到她老迈的眼中燃着与疯狂相去不远的狂热。“你不是因督利尔家的人；你是他们在战后抱回家的，其他家族也一样把战争孤雏抱回自己家。那是他们想到可以抹煞历史，移除所有敌人痕迹的唯一方法，就是把敌人养在自己家”
泰伊转向门口：“显然他们的确有理由把你赶离葛尼岛，老女人。你有妄想症”
“等一下！”艾蒂芭大喊，快步朝一个发霉的柜子走去。她从里面拿出一个玻璃球，即使在幽暗的房间内，依然可以看到微微发光的色彩。“你还记得这个吗？你杀了那个小男孩瓦士特，因为他持有这颗球，而我又从你的房间把它拿走，因为那时你还没准备好面对你的真实身分和责任。难道你不好奇，为何这个漂亮的小玩意会这么吸引你吗？”
泰伊倒抽口气，然后脱口而出：“有时候我会听到一首歌”
“那是你的先祖之歌，你真正家族的歌”她点着头说。“不要抗拒，那是命运的歌曲。它会引导你做该做的事”
“闭嘴！”泰伊咆哮。“你说的全是谎言！你疯了！”
艾蒂芭用尽全力把圆球往地上砸，发出震耳欲聋的回声。那些碎片在空中消失，只剩下一枚上有平面王冠的小银戒。老妇人静静地捡起戒指，交给背靠着门颤抖不已的泰伊。
“这是你继承的财产，你是第六家族的子裔”
戒指上的王冠，是用来盖章和密封正式的家族公告，泰伊曾看过叔叔崔斐斯有个类似的戒指，上头是只翅膀，那是因督利尔家的标志。这枚戒指不一样，上面的昆虫图样，从基纳·嘉甫希对蓓娜拉和他讲述家族家徽的那天起，就深植他的脑海。
那是该被诅咒的达格斯家族的象征。
那首歌全面占据了泰伊的脑袋。他听到它的声调、闻到它的恐惧、尝到它的哀伤、感觉到它的力量，除了它的毁灭之火，他什么也看不到。泰伊拿起戒指套上，其实并不知道自己在做什么。他只听到那首歌。他从刀鞘抽出匕首，把它插入老奶妈的心脏。
艾蒂芭血流如注地倒下，露出血丝满布的微笑轻声呻吟：“谢谢你”但泰伊根本没有听到。
那首歌的神秘面纱揭开当下，泰伊起先并未发现他不是在做梦。曾经出现眼前的熊熊火光，是摧毁了他故乡的罪魁祸首，而今烈焰再度现身。可是这些火焰是他在摇摇欲坠的廉价住处外亲自点燃的，火苗已经窜出墙壁，将老奶妈的尸体吞噬。
趁着人们呼唤卫兵之际，泰伊火速逃离。
The Poison Song, Book III
The Poison Song, Book II
Tay was eighteen in the year 685 of the First Era when he first saw Mournhold, the city of spires, home of the goddess. His cousin Kalkorith, already a senior initiate in the Temple, gave him a couple rooms on the ground floor of the house he had purchased. They were small and unfurnished, but bittergreen grew outside the windows, and when the wind blew, they filled his bedroom with a lovely spicy air.
The chords of the Song did not trouble him anymore. Sometimes he was even unconscious to it, so low and melodic it had become. Occasionally when he was passing through the streets on the way to the Temple for his instruction, someone would pass him and the Song would rise in intensity before falling away again. Whatever was different about those people, Tay never tried to ascertain. He remembered the last time he had let the Song lead him, and called for him to murder his young cousin Vaster. The memory did not trouble him unduly, but he did not want to hurt anyone again unless he had to.
House couriers regularly brought Tay letters from Baynarah, still back in Sandil House on the island of Gorne. She might have gone to study at the Temple, she was certainly intelligent enough, but she chose not to. In a year or two at most, she would have to leave and assume her place in House Indoril, but she was not in a hurry. Tay welcomed the trivial gossipy news the letters brought, and responded back with news of his own studies and romances.
In his third month in Mournhold, he had already met a girl. She was also a student at the Temple, and her name was Acra. Tay wrote enthusiastically about her to Baynarah, describing her as having the mind of Sotha Sil, the wit of Vivec, and the beauty of Almalexia. Baynarah replied back merrily that if she had known how blasphemous students of the Temple were allowed to be, she might have become an initiate herself.
"You are very devoted to your cousin," Acra laughed when Tay showed her the letter. "Am I looking at the last remains of a thwarted romance?"
"She's lovely, but I never thought of her that way," Tay scoffed. "Incest never particularly interested me."
"Is she a very close cousin then?"
Tay thought for a moment: "I don't know. Truthfully, no one spoke much of either her parents or mine, so I really don't know how we were connected. They were casualties of the War of the Red Mountain, that I know, and it seemed to cast rather a pall on the adults' humor whenever we asked about her parents or mine. After a while, we stopped asking. But you're an Indoril too. Perhaps you're a closer cousin to me than Baynarah."
"Perhaps so," Acra smiled, rising from her chair. She uncoiled her hair, which had been pulled up in the formal arrangement reserved for well-born priestesses. As Tay watched transfigured, she removed the small brooch that fastened her robe to her shoulder cape. The soft silken fabric slipped down slowly, exposing her dark, slender body to him for the first time. "If we are, does incest particularly interest you now?"
As they made love, the Song began a slow, rhythmic ascension in Tay's head. The vision of Acra before him darkened and was replaced by images from his nightmares before returning again. When finally he collapsed, spent, the room seemed filled with the fiery red clouds of his dream, and the scream of the woman and her child facing death echoed in his head. He opened his eyes, and there was Acra, smiling at him. Tay kissed her, grateful to have her in his arms.
For the next two weeks, Tay and Acra were never far apart. Even when they were at study in opposite wings of the Temple, Tay thought of her, and somehow knew she was thinking of him. They would rush to be together afterwards, ravishing one another in his rooms every night, and in a private corner of the Temple garden every day.
It was while Tay was rushing to see his beloved one afternoon that the Song rose up in powerful strident tones at the approach of an old, ragged woman. He closed his eyes and tried to quiet it, but when he looked again at her purchasing corkbulb papyrus from a street vendor, he knew who she was. His old nursemaid from Gorne, Edebah. She who had abandoned him without even a farewell to join her family on the mainland.
She didn't see him, and as she passed down the street, Tay turned and began to follow. They walked through shadowy passageways into the very poorest part of the city, a quarter which was as alien to him as the wildest principality of Akavir. She unlocked a small wooden door on a street without a name, and he finally called out her name. She didn't turn, but when he followed, he found that the door had been left ajar.
The chamber was murky and damp like a cave. She stood facing him, her face even more wrinkled than he had remembered it, etched with lines of sorrow. He closed the door behind him, and she took his hand and kissed it.
"You are so tall and strong," Edebah said, beginning to weep. "I should have killed myself before I let them take me away from you."
"How is your family?" Tay asked coldly.
"You are my only family," she whispered. "The Indoril pigs forced me to leave, thrusting their blades in my face, when they discovered that I serve you and your family, not them. That bitch girl Baynarah saw me at a prayer of mourning."
"You're speaking like a madwoman," Tay sneered. "How could you love me and my family, but hate the House Indoril? I am of the House Indoril."
"You are old enough to know the truth," Edebah said fiercely. Tay had bitterly joked about her madness, but he saw something close to it burning in her ancient eyes. "You were not born of House Indoril; they brought you into their house after the War, like they and the other Houses brought in all the orphans. It was the only way they saw to erase history and remove all traces of their enemies, by raising their enemies as one of them."
Tay turned toward the door: "I can see why you were taken away from Gorne, old woman. You are delusional."
"Wait!" Edebah cried, rushing to a musty cabinet. She retrieved from it a glass globe that shimmered with a spectrum of color even in the chamber's gloom. "Do you remember this? You slew that little boy Vaster because he possessed it, and I took it from your room because you were not ready to face the facts of your inheritance and responsibility then. Did you not wonder why this bauble drew you so?"
Tay gasped, and though he did not want to, he said, "I hear a Song sometimes."
"That is the Song of your ancestors, of your true family," she said, nodding. "You must not fight it, for it is a song of destiny. It will lead you to do what must be done."
"Shut up!" Tay howled, "Everything you say is a lie! You're insane!"
Edebah threw the globe to the ground with all her might, shattering it with a deafening retort. The shards melted into the air. All that was left was a small silver ring, simply wrought with a flat crown. The old woman quietly picked it up and handed it to him, while he stood with his back against the door, trembling.
"This is your inheritance, as the bearer of the Sixth House."
The ring's crown was meant for stamping and sealing official House proclamations. Tay had seen his uncle Triffith's similar ring, crested with the wing which was the seal of House Indoril. This ring was different, with an insect design which he remembered from the day when Kena Gafrisi had taught the House heraldry to Baynarah and him.
It was the symbol of the accursed House Dagoth.
The Song took over all of Tay's senses. He heard its music, smelled its horror, tasted its sadness, felt its power, and the only thing he could see before him was the flames of its destruction. When he took the ring and placed it on his finger, his mind was not aware of what he was doing. Nor was Tay aware of anything but the Song when he removed his dagger from its sheath and thrust it into his old nursemaid's heart.
Tay did not even hear her final words, when Edebah fell bleeding to the ground, and groaned with a blood-streaked smile, "Thank you."
When the veil of the Song lifted, Tay did not realize at first he was no longer dreaming. Before him had been flames, the very ones that destroyed the home of his birth, and flames were before him again. But they were flames from a fire he had struck outside the crumbling tenement that were already bursting through walls, consuming the body of his old nursemaid.
Tay fled through the streets as people began to call for the guards.
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