【练手】精灵血脉前奏
被鬼子扯来的某人……上
翻译还真是伤神啊……第一次尝试翻译奇幻，果然就没有什么好下场，跟西奇不熟啊……
修行太浅，好多专有名词没有翻，怕是固定译法的。结论就是我真是无能……只比自动翻译强一点……
而且……精灵血脉实在无爱。
顺便把原文前奏部分贴出来，因为觉得可能有衍文，中间那个维尔娜的出场根本没有任何交代。麻烦油菜花的大人指教，叩首。
本文我只翻译前奏，这个不是坑，因为我不会填它，更因为我今天才知道血脉有正版圆满实体书……
精灵血脉
前奏
流浪者狄宁小心地穿过魔索布莱城——卓尔精灵的城市的黑暗的街道。作为一个叛徒，将近20年没有任何可以称之为家的存在，这个经验丰富的战士知道这座城市的险恶，同时也清楚如何避免它们。他通过一个荒废的两旁夹着两英里长的溶洞西岩的院落时，不自主地停下凝视。一对石笋般的石丘支撑着围绕着整个宫殿的被炸飞的围栏，两套被打坏的门，一套在地上，一套在墙上20英尺高的一个阳台后面，由烧焦而扭曲的铰链笨拙地悬挂着。狄宁用蹑空术从那阳台进入杜垩登家族的贵族的私人区域有多少次了？
杜垩登家族，在卓尔市里连叫出这个名字也是禁止的。狄宁的家族曾经在魔索布莱城的60户左右的卓尔家族中排名第八，他的母亲曾就职于执政委员会，他，狄宁，也曾是Melee-Magthere，这所著名的卓尔学院，战士的学校中的佼佼者。站在庭院前，对于狄宁，这里似乎已与往昔的荣耀有了千年之隔。他的家庭不在了，他的房子已成为废墟，狄宁也被迫加入Bregan D'aerthe，一个臭名昭著的佣兵团，只是为了生存。
“曾经，”这个流浪的卓尔精灵低声地开口。他晃了晃纤细的肩膀，竖起了外衣的领子，想起了一个无家可归的卓尔精灵会是多么脆弱。一次对溶洞中央和纳邦德尔的支柱的迅疾的扫视让他意识到时间很晚了。每天凌晨，魔索布莱城的大法师都会到纳邦德尔为支柱注入神奇的萦回的力量，直到使命结束。在敏感的可以感知红外线的卓尔精灵的眼里，支柱的热度起着会发光的巨大时钟的作用。
现在纳邦德尔基本凉下来了，又一天接近尾声。
狄宁得经过大半个城区才能到达Clawrift里一个秘密的洞穴——从魔索布莱城西北墙延伸出的裂层。在那里，贾拉索，Bregan D'aerthe的首领，正在他众多的藏身之所中的一个中等待。这个卓尔精灵穿过了城市的中心，从纳邦德尔右方经过，旁边是百余个中空的石笋，包括一打分隔的家族院落，其神话般的雕塑和美孚在多彩的仙女的火焰中熠熠生辉。卓尔士兵们，走过一户户院墙和连接众多里尔钟乳石的桥梁边的哨岗后，停下并仔细观察着这孤独的陌生人，举着手弩或是有毒的标枪，直到狄宁走远。
这就是魔索布莱城的行为方式，永远警醒，永不信任。
当他到达Clawrift的边缘后，狄宁小心地四处张望后滑向了一边，用自己天生的蹑空术慢慢降下裂层。下降超过100英尺后，他再次看向了准备好的手弩的螺纹，但这些手弩在佣兵卫队认出狄宁是自己人后迅速被撤下。
贾拉索在等你。一个警卫用黑暗精灵无声而复杂的手语告知狄宁。
狄宁没有费神回应。他不需要对平民士兵进行解释。他以卤莽的方式经过卫兵身边，走下一条不远便分支出一个由走廊和房间组成的迷宫的短隧道。几轮后，黑暗精灵停在薄薄的闪着微光的近乎半透明的门前。他把手放在门表面，让身体的热度给门那边的感热的眼睛留下敲门的印象。
“终于，”一会儿后，他听到贾拉索的声音。“快进来，狄宁，我的Khal'abbil，你让我等得太久了。”狄宁停了半晌来确认佣兵头子难以预测的反应和话语。贾拉索叫他“Khal'abbil”，‘我信赖的朋友’——他给狄宁取的昵称，自从摧毁杜垩登家族的那次袭击以来。佣兵的语调也并没有嘲讽的意味。似乎没什么不对。但，为什么贾拉索妨碍他侦察HOUSE Vandree，魔索布莱城第17位的家族的任务？狄宁不知道。他花了将近一年的时间来获得这家保安的职务，无庸置疑，这次无缘无故的缺勤会危及他的任务。
只有一种方法找出答案。流浪的战士如此决定。他屏住呼吸，强行进入这道不通明的屏障。看上去仿佛他在穿过一道厚厚的水墙，虽然他没有淋湿。经过几次漫长的行走后他强行穿过了似乎只1英尺厚的魔法的门，进入了贾拉索的小房间。
这个房间被一种柔和的红色辉光照亮，使狄宁可以将自己处于红外线模式的眼睛换为普通状态。转换完成时他眨了眨眼，然后再眨了一次，像平常看见贾拉索时一样。
这位佣兵头子坐在石桌后一张由一根可以以一定角度旋转的杆子支撑的异国风情的椅子上。一如既往地舒适地靠在椅子上，贾拉索将椅子压向后面，用他纤细的手抱住了对卓尔精灵而言刮得太整洁的头。似乎只是为了娱乐，贾拉索把一只脚翘到了桌子上，用高帮黑靴踢了一下石桌，发出响亮的声音，然后换了另一只脚，这次却连一丝声音也没有。
狄宁注意到，佣兵头子把他的宝石红的眼罩戴在右眼。
桌子的另一端站着一只簌簌发抖的小的人形生物，就算包括从坡状的额头上伸出的白色小喇叭也几乎不到狄宁那五英尺半的身高的一半。
“Oblodra家族的kobold之一，”贾拉索随意地解释，“这可怜的小东西似乎知道如何进来，却无法找到出去的路。”
这个理由对于狄宁来说挺不错。Oblodra家族，魔索布莱城第三大家族，占据着Clawrift一个防备严密的院落，据说圈养了上千只kobold作为残酷的娱乐，又或者在战争时期作为家族的饲料。
“你想走么？”贾拉索用一种简单的喉音语言问。
这只kobold急切而愚蠢地点头。
贾拉索指了指不透明的门和门上这只生物的倒影。然而它没有能力穿越屏障，所以反弹了回来，差点落在狄宁脚上。在费事站起来之前，这只kobold愚蠢地朝着佣兵头子笑了。
贾拉索的手以对于狄宁而言太快而无法计算的速度抽动了几下。这个卓尔战士本能地紧张起来，但比起有所动作，他更清楚贾拉索的目标是完美。
当他再低头看这只kobold时，他看到了五把匕首从已然没有生命的身体中刺出来，在这个有鳞片的小生物胸膛上形成了一个完美的五角星。
面对狄宁疑惑的目光，贾拉索只是耸了耸肩：“我不能让这个家伙回Oblodra。”他陈述着自己的理由，“既然它已经知道我们的庭院离他们的那么近。”
狄宁和贾拉索一起笑了起来。他开始取回那五把匕首，但贾拉索提醒他并无必要。
“他们将重回自己的协议。”佣兵头子拉动上衣的衣袖，露出裹住他手腕的魔鞘，如此解释。“坐下。”他指着桌子一侧一张不起眼的凳子吩咐他的朋友，“我们还有很多要讨论的。”
“你把我叫回来干吗？”狄宁一边晃荡着他的凳子一边直截了当地问，“我已经彻底渗入了Vandree家族。”
“噢，我亲爱的朋友，”贾拉索回答道，“总是直达要害，这就是我一直仰慕你的品质。”
“Uln'hyrr”狄宁用这个卓尔精灵语里的代表“骗子”的词反驳。
维尔娜。
玛丽丝，作为维尔娜的母亲和杜垩登家族的主母，最后却因未能执行带回并杀死叛徒崔斯特的任务而被放弃了。
维尔娜的确平静下来了，然后开始了一段持续的嘲弄的笑声。
“你知道我为什么要传唤你了么？”贾拉索问狄宁，他完全没有理睬女祭司。
“你想要我在她成为一个麻烦之前杀了她？”狄宁同样轻描淡写地回答。
维尔娜的笑声骤然停止；她怒目凝视着不逊的兄弟。“Wishyal”她尖叫起来。一股魔法的力量将狄宁拽了起来，让他撞上了石墙。
“跪下！”维尔娜命令；狄宁重新镇静之后，又不由自主地跪了下来，茫然地看着贾拉索。
佣兵头子也无法掩饰他的惊讶。这些命令只是简单的法术，当然不该如此轻易地在狄宁这样经验丰富的战士身上奏效。
“我受罗丝（蜘蛛神后）的庇佑。”维尔娜直直地站着，向两者解释，“如果你违背我，那么凭借加持有罗丝的力量的祝福与诅咒，你将无法防御。”
“我们最后一次听到崔斯特在地面上的消息，”贾拉索为了平息维尔娜的怒火而转移话题，“所有的报告均是如此：他还在那儿。”
维尔娜点点头，一直怪异地微笑着，她珍珠白的牙齿与乌木色的泛着光的皮肤形成鲜明对比。“的确如此，”她同意道，“但罗丝已告知我通往他的道路，通往荣光的道路。”
贾拉索和狄宁交换了一个疑惑的眼神。以他们的角度，维尔娜的要求和她本身听起来都很疯狂。
但狄宁，违抗他的意志和所有他采取的补救措施，仍跪在地上。
Book 1 of the Legacy of the Drow series
Prelude
The rogue Dinin made his way carefully through the dark avenues of Menzoberranzan, the city of drow. A renegade, with no family to call his own for nearly twenty years, the seasoned fighter knew well the perils of the city, and knew how to avoid them. He passed an abandoned compound along the two mile-long cavern's western wall and could not help but pause and stare. Twin stalagmite mounds supported a blasted fence around the whole of the place, and two sets of broken doors, one on the ground and one beyond a balcony twenty feet up the wall, hung open awkwardly on twisted and scorched hinges. How many times had Dinin levitated up to that balcony, entering the private quarters of the nobles of his house, House Do'Urden?
House Do'Urden. It was forbidden even to speak the name in the drow city. Once, Dinin's family had been the eighth-ranked among the sixty or so drow families in Menzoberranzan; his mother had sat on the ruling council; and he, Dinin, had been a Master at Melee-Magthere, the School of Fighters, at the famed drow Academy.
Standing before the compound, it seemed to Dinin as if the place were a thousand years removed from that time of glory. His family was no more, his house lay in ruins, and Dinin had been forced to take up with Bregan D'aerthe, an infamous mercenary band, simply to survive.
"Once," the rogue drow mouthed quietly. He shook his slender shoulders and pulled his concealing piwafwi cloak around him, remembering how vulnerable a houseless drow could be. A quick glance toward the center of the cavern, toward the pillar that was Narbondel, showed him that the hour was late. At the break of each day, the Arch-mage of Menzoberranzan went out to Narbondel and infused the pillar with a magical, lingering heat that would work its way up, then back down. To sensitive drow eyes, which could look into the infrared spectrum, the level of heat in the pillar acted as a gigantic glowing clock.
Now Narbondel was almost cool; another day neared its end.
Dinin had to go more than halfway across the city, to a secret cave within the Clawrift, a great chasm running out from Menzoberranzan's northwestern wall. There Jarlaxle, the leader of Bregan D'aerthe, waited in one of his many hideouts.
The drow fighter cut across the center of the city, passed right by Narbondel, and beside more than a hundred hollowed stalagmites, comprising a dozen separate family compounds, their fabulous sculptures and gargoyles glowing in multicolored faerie fire. Drow soldiers, walking posts along house walls or along the bridges connecting multitudes of leering stalactites, paused and regarded the lone stranger carefully, hand crossbows or poisoned javelins held ready until Dinin was far beyond them.
That was the way in Menzoberranzan: always alert, always distrustful.
Dinin gave one careful look around when he reached the edge of the Clawrift, then slipped over the side and used his innate powers of levitation to slowly descend into the chasm. More than a hundred feet down, he again looked into the bolts of readied hand crossbows, but these were withdrawn as soon as the mercenary guardsmen recognized Dinin as one of their own.
Jarlaxle has been waiting for you, one of the guards signaled in the intricate silent hand code of the dark elves.
Dinin didn't bother to respond. He owed commoner soldiers no explanations. He pushed past the guardsmen rudely, making his way down a short tunnel that soon branched into a virtual maze of corridors and rooms. Several turns later, the dark elf stopped before a shimmering door, thin and almost translucent. He put his hand against its surface, letting his body heat make an impression that heat-sensing eyes on the other side would understand as a knock.
"At last," he heard a moment later, in Jarlaxle's voice. "Do come in, Dinin, my Khal'abbil. You have kept me waiting far too long."
Dinin paused a moment to get a bearing on the unpredictable mercenary's inflections and words. Jarlaxle had called him Khal'abbil, "my trusted friend," his nickname for Dinin since the raid that had destroyed House Do'Urden (a raid in which Jarlaxle had played a prominent role), and there was no obvious sarcasm in the mercenary's tone. There seemed to be nothing wrong at all. But, why, then, had Jarlaxle recalled him from his critical scouting mission to House Vandree, the Seventeenth House of Menzoberranzan? Dinin wondered. It had taken Dinin nearly a year to gain the trust of the imperiled Vandree house guard, a position, no doubt, that would be severely jeopardized by his unexplained absence from the house compound.
There was only one way to find out, the rogue soldier decided. He held his breath and forced his way into the opaque barrier. It seemed as if he were passing through a wall of thick water, though he did not get wet, and, after several long steps across the flowing extraplanar border of two planes of existence, he forced his way through the seemingly inch-thick magical door and entered Jarlaxle's small room.
The room was alight in a comfortable red glow, allowing Dinin to shift his eyes from the infrared to the normal light spectrum. He blinked as the transformation completed, then blinked again, as always, when he looked at Jarlaxle.
The mercenary leader sat behind a stone desk in an exotic cushioned chair, supported by a single stem with a swivel so that it could rock back at a considerable angle. Comfortably perched, as always, Jarlaxle had the chair leaning way back, his slender hands clasped behind his clean-shaven head (so unusual for a drow!).
Just for amusement, it seemed, Jarlaxle lifted one foot onto the table, his high black boot hitting the stone with a resounding thump, then lifted the other, striking the stone just as hard, but this boot making not a whisper.
The mercenary wore his ruby-red eye patch over his right eye this day, Dinin noted.
To the side of the desk stood a trembling little humanoid creature, barely half Dinin's five-and-a-half-foot height, including the small white horns protruding from the top of its sloping brow.
"One of House Oblodra's kobolds," Jarlaxle explained casually. "It seems the pitiful thing found its way in, but cannot so easily find its way back out."
The reasoning seemed sound to Dinin. House Oblodra, the Third House of Menzoberranzan, occupied a tight compound at the end of the Clawrift and was rumored to keep thousands of kobolds for torturous pleasure, or to serve as house fodder in the event of a war.
"Do you wish to leave?" Jarlaxle asked the creature in a guttural, simplistic language.
The kobold nodded eagerly, stupidly.
Jarlaxle indicated the opaque door, and the creature darted for it. It had not the strength to penetrate the barrier, though, and it bounced back, nearly landing on Dinin's feet. Before it even bothered to get up, the kobold foolishly sneered in contempt at the mercenary leader.
Jarlaxle's hand flicked several times, too quickly for Dinin to count. The drow fighter reflexively tensed, but knew better than to move, knew that Jarlaxle's aim was always perfect.
When he looked down at the kobold, he saw five daggers sticking from its lifeless body, a perfect star formation on the scaly creature's little chest.
Jarlaxle only shrugged at Dinin's confused stare. "I could not allow the beast to return to Oblodra," he reasoned, "not after it learned of our compound so near theirs."
Dinin shared Jarlaxle's laugh. He started to retrieve the daggers, but Jarlaxle reminded him that there was no need.
"They will return of their own accord," the mercenary explained, pulling at the edge of his bloused sleeve to reveal the magical sheath enveloping his wrist. "Do sit," he bade his friend, indicating an unremarkable stool at the side of the desk. "We have much to discuss."
"Why did you recall me?" Dinin asked bluntly as he took his place beside the desk. "I had infiltrated Vandree fully."
"Ah, my Khal'abbil," Jarlaxle replied. "Always to the point. That is a quality I do so admire in you."
"Uln'hyrr," Dinin retorted, the drow word for "liar."
Vierna. Malice, Vierna's mother and Matron of House Do'Urden, had ultimately been undone by her failure to recapture and kill the traitorous Drizzt.
Vierna did calm down, then she began a fit of mocking laughter that went on for many minutes.
"You see why I summoned you?" Jarlaxle remarked to Dinin, taking no heed of the priestess.
"You wish me to kill her before she can become a problem?" Dinin replied equally casually.
Vierna's laughter halted; her wild-eyed gaze fell over her impertinent brother. "Wishyal" she cried, and a wave of magical energy hurled Dinin from his seat, sent him crashing into the stone wall.
"Kneel!" Vierna commanded, and Dinin, when he regained his composure, fell to his knees, all the while looking blankly at Jarlaxle.
The mercenary, too, could not hide his surprise. This last command was a simple spell, certainly not one that should have worked so easily on a seasoned fighter of Dinin's stature.
"I am in Lloth's favor," Vierna, standing tall and straight, explained to both of them. "If you oppose me, then you are not, and with the power of Lloth's blessings for my spells and curses against you, you will find no defense."
"The last we heard of Drizzt placed him on the surface," Jarlaxle said to Vierna, to deflect her rising anger. "By all reports, he remains there still."
Vierna nodded, grinning weirdly all the while, her pearly white teeth contrasting dramatically with her shining ebony skin. "He does," she agreed, "but Lloth has shown me the way to him, the way to glory."
Again, Jarlaxle and Dinin exchanged confused glances. By all their estimates, Vierna's claims-and Vierna herself-sounded insane.
But Dinin, against his will and against all measures of sanity, was still kneeling.
