Fear not! I have not abandoned the project! However, since I did miss posting yesterday, I decided I'd translate this whole section today. There were quite a few spots that I'm still not sure about.
Random sections of note (I might add more later):
- "Sparkles" became "flickers" because... sparkles... enough said.
- There was a wonderful opportunity to use the word "phantasmagorical" as a direct translation but I gave it up for "dreamlike" since it didn't seem to fit quite right.
- The line "In order to open the tunnel through which he could enter that secret place he had to find Linar the One-Eyed" was the hardest to translate. The original said "Para abrir el túnel por el que podría entrar a ese lugar secreto debía encontrar a Linar el Tuerto." It's always the lines with strings of minor words that are confusing. If you have suggestions, please add them.
Anywho, enjoy!
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When Shirta, the green moon, abandoned the heavens, the
light of her sister Taniar gave a tint of blood to the clearing where the young
Mikhon Tiq had stopped to rest. His
heart beat like a drum; little by little a strange fear had overtaken him. Its source was none other than that very same
forest, whose dangers he had been warned of by Master Yatom.
"But although it
is dangerous, it is imperative that you enter it to meet my brother Linar. He will make it so my syfrõn matures in you,
will help you in your mission and, when the time comes, will awaken the Beautiful
Light."
"Master, but you
can’t ..."
"We can all die. That day comes even to the ancient gods. When I die you must be ready for my syfrõn,
otherwise the energy locked within will leak uncontrollably and everything within
a league around you will disappear from the face of the earth."
Mikhon Tiq rested his delicate chin on his walking stick and
breathed deeply. The sounds of the night
(the hooting of owls, the whispers of branches agitated by the wind, the
shrieks of vermin whose names one doesn’t want to know), the sweet and damp
aroma of decaying leaves, the crimson light of the moon: all wove a dreamlike veil through which the
forest seemed an unreal place. One had
to take precautions against this misleading impression, for Corocín was as
material and tangible as the dangers it harbored. Before them, Mikhon Tiq no longer had the protection
of Yatom’s spells, as his mentor had died before daybreak, in the spectral boundary
that separates night from dawn. Mikhon
Tiq had heard that that hour, when the blackness of the heavens is tinged with
grey, is when most souls abandon this world, sent off by the howls of roving
dogs.
But it was not so, he corrected himself. Neither Yatom’s soul nor his mystical seat, his
syfrõn, had departed. Just before breathing
his last breath, the sorcerer had grasped his hands. At that moment, Mikhon Tiq felt that a dark
pit had opened at his feet. With a cry,
he plunged into the abyss. He fell for
an eternity, surrounded by a circular wall that shimmered with flickers and
pulsating colors. His own cry was lost high
above, far from him. At some point, the
fall ended and the youth encountered a plain that was indistinguishable from
the sky. Before his eyes emerged an
impossible construction. It was a castle
built with great blocks of grey stone covered with lichen, which stood alone from
its foundation like a monstrous tree of rock. The walls rose, row after row of solid masonry,
and from them began to emerge turrets, battlements, counterforts, posterns,
bastions, flying buttresses, bold pinnacles that challenged the sky. When the castle stopped growing, the thousand
eyes of its windows keep looking on Mikhon Tiq with a reddish glow. It was a majestic work, almost perfect, but
here and there were small gaps, lines that were lost, tiny cracks.
Nothing is ever
finished, Mikhon Tiq, whispered the voice of Yatom. Receive
my syfrõn and use it to build your future.
Then a chord resounded so low that the bones of his chest shook.
Mikhon Tiq thought it felt as though his
flesh became sand scattered by the wind. The spaces of his being opened, it expanded
like a sponge at the point of breaking; and when he felt most permeable and
defenseless, an alien presence penetrated him. That intrusion, painful yet soothing, lasted an
infinitesimal fraction of a second, and after that nothing remained.
And now he knew that almost everything that had been Yatom, his
memories, his projects, his power, was locked inside him in a minuscule corner
of his mind that he was not able to locate, but that vibrated as if inside his
head pounded a tiny heart. In order to open the tunnel through which he could enter
that secret place he had to find Linar the One-Eyed, Yatom’s companion in the order
of the Kalagor.
He didn’t know where Linar lived. Yatom had spoken to him of the "heart of
Corocín" a very vague term for a thick region stretching for leagues and
leagues. But, before his passing, the Kalagorinor had pierced a pine
needle in the back of his hand. When he
moved away from the right direction, the needle stirred beneath his skin,
producing a painful itch that would not stop until he returned to the correct
path.
He was exhausted, but did not dare to sleep. As a child, in the distant city of Malirie, they
had told him horror stories about the forest. Now he was nineteen years old, he had received military
training in Uhdanfiún and supposed that he was a man sure of himself and ready
to face his fears. But at midmorning he
had encountered a group of five men who prowled through the trees looking for
the precious red mushrooms of Corocín.
"What are you doing here, boy? Have you lost your mind?"
When Mikhon Tiq explained to them that he was looking for an
old man named Linar, they said yes, they had heard of him: the old one-eyed, the sorcerer, the madman of
the forest. They doubted he was still
alive.
One of them, a big man with a bushy beard that was mixed
with the hair of his chest, added:
"Watch this." He showed him his spear, which had a shaft of
ash wood a meter and a half long and a wrought iron tip of over two hand spans.
"Each of us has one. If a corueco appears, we will try to stab it
in the belly, which is the only place on its body where one can hurt it. But still, even if we drive five spear heads
in its body, the corueco can kill us all. Stay with us and return in the afternoon to
our village."
Mikhon Tiq replied without hesitation: he would continue
alone.
"At least take our advice: if the smell of blood comes to you, run for
your life!” they told him before they left, and as he looked so skinny to them,
on top of that they gave him, in addition to their council, half a loaf of bread
and a thick pork sausage.
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