"Brunner,.John.-.Traveler.In.Black.V1 (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brunner John)

"The name matters little if the nature does not change."
She laughed scornfully. "You speak in resounding but in empty phrases, Mazda or whoever you may be! If your nature is unchangeable, give demonstration! Let me see you descend into the water of this river!"
"I did not say that," murmured the traveler peaceably. "I did not say my nature was unchangeable."
"Then you are a coward. Nonetheless, come down with me and bathe in this river."
"I shall not. And it would be well for you to think on this, Lorega of Acromel: that if you are without sense, your intention to bathe in Metamorphia is also without sense."
"That is too deep for me," said Lorega unhappily, and a tear stole down her satiny cheek. "I cannot reason as wise persons do. Therefore let my nature be changed!"
"As you wish, so be it," said the traveler in a heavy tone, and motioned with his staff. A great lump of the bank detached itself and fell with a huge splashing into the water. A wave of this water soaked Lorega from head to foot, and she underwent, as did the earth of the bank the moment it broke the surface, changes.
Thoughtfully, and a mite sadly, the traveler turned to continue his journey towards Acromel. Behind him, the welkin rang with the miserable cries of what had formerly been Lorega. But he was bound by certain laws. He did not look back.

Before the vast black gate of the city, which was a hundred feet high and a hundred feet wide, two men in shabby clothes were fighting with quarter-staffs. The traveler leaned on his own staff and watched them batter at one another for fully an hour before they both found themselves too weak to continue, and had to stand panting and glaring at each other to recover their breath.
"What is the quarrel between you?" said the traveler then.
"Little man in black, it concerns not you," grunted the nearer of the two. "Go your way and leave us be."
"Wait!" said the other. "Ask first whether he likewise is bent on the same errand!"
"A good point!" conceded the first, and raised his great cudgel menacingly. "Speak, you!"
"First I must know what your errand was, before I can say if mine is the same or not," the traveler pointed out.
"A good point!" admitted the second, who had now also approached to threaten him. "Know that I am Ripil of the village called Masergon-"
"And I," interrupted the first, "am Tolex of the village called Wyve. Last week I set forth from my father's house, he having six other sons older than I-"
"As did I!" Ripil broke in. "Exactly as did I! You've registered my name, I trust, stranger? You will have good cause to remember it one day!"
"All men will!" snapped Tolex contemptuously. "They will remember your name to laugh at it, and when boys scribble it daringly on the wall with charcoal old women will spit on the ground as they hobble past!"
Ripil scowled at him. "Booby! Possessed of unbelievable effrontery! Go your way before it is too late, and the people of this city hang you in chains before the altar!"
"Your errand, though!" cried the traveler, just in time to forestall a renewal of the fighting.
Tolex gave him a huge but humorless grin. "Why, it's all so simple! This idiot called Ripil came hither thinking to make his fortune, dethrone Duke Vaul, and claim the hand of Lorega of Acromel! As though a dunderheaded village lout could do more than dream of such glories!"
"And your own ambition?"
"Why, I have come to make my fortune and be chosen as heir to Duke Vaul, when naturally I shall be assigned Lorega's hand!"
The traveler, not unexpectedly, burst out laughing. In a moment Tolex began to laugh also, thinking that it was Ripil's foolishness alone which had caused the joke, and Ripil, his face black like a storm-cloud, caught up his quarterstaff and began to belabor him anew.
The traveler left them to it, and went forward into the city.

II

In this city called Acromel there was a temple, crowning the black tower about which the buildings clustered like a single onyx on a pillar of agate. In this temple, before the red idol of the god Lacrovas-Pellidin-Agshad-Agshad, Duke Vaul yawned behind his hand.
"Take her," he said to the chief priest, nodding his large black-bearded head to his left. The priest bowed to the hard slippery floor and signaled his minions. In a moment the consort who had shared Vaul's life for fifteen years, and until that moment had also shared his throne, was hanging from the gallows in front of the altar, her heart's blood trickling onto Agshad's hands outstretched like a cup to receive it.
And still that was not enough.
Duke Vaul knitted his brows until his forehead was creased like a field trenched to grow vegetables, and drummed with his thick fingers on the arm of his ebony chair. He looked at the idol.
From the vantage-point where he sat, he saw Agshad in the attitude of accepting sacrifice: mouth open, eyes closed, hands outstretched and cupped with blood filling them. On the left Pellidin, who shared Agshad's body but not his head or his limbs, was portrayed in the act of executing justice: to wit, wringing the life from three persons of indeterminate sex-indeterminate, because Pellidin's cruel grasp had compressed their bodies into a gelatinous mess and left only their arms and legs sticking out like the limbs of a beetle. On the right, Lacrovas was portrayed in the mode of obliterating enemies, with a sword in one hand and a morning-star in the other. And finally, facing away from the spot where by preference Duke Vaul had his throne located, there was the second Agshad in the attitude of devotion, with hands clasped together and eyes cast heavenward in a beseeching look. That was the aspect of the Quadruple God with which Duke Vaul had the least concern.
Below the dais on which he presided, priests and acolytes by the hundred-predominantly sacrificers, men expert in every art of human butchery-wove their lines of movement into traditional magical patterns. Their chanting ascended eerily towards the domed roof of the temple, along with the stink of candles made from the fat of those who had hung earlier in the chains before the altar. There was no point in letting their mortal remains go to waste, was there?
But on the other hand there was no point-so far-in any of this ritual. At least, the desired effect had not been accomplished. If even his own consort had not sufficed to provoke the sought-after reaction, what would? Duke Vaul cast around in his mind.
On impulse, he signaled the deputy chief priest, and pointed a hairy-backed finger at the chief priest himself. "Take him," he directed.
And that was no good, either.

Accordingly, he sent out the temple guard into the city at half an hour past noon of that day, and the guardsmen set about gathering idle citizens into the yard before the temple. If it wasn't a matter of quality, reasoned Duke Vaul, it might perhaps be a matter of quantity. The second priest-now of course the chief priest by right of succession-had been consulted, and had given it as his considered opinion that a hundred all at once must have the desired effect. Duke Vaul, to be on the safe side, had ordained that a thousand should be brought to the temple, and had set carpenters and metalsmiths to work on the chain-jangling gallows to accommodate them.
The temple guardsmen carried out their assignment with a will, all the better because they feared the lot might fall on them when Duke Vaul had used up his supply of ordinary townsfolk. They brought in everyone they could catch, and among the crowd was a small man in black clothing, who seemed to be consumed with uncontrollable laughter.
His merriment, in fact, was so extreme that it became infectious, and the Duke noticed the fact and bellowed across the temple floor in a howl of fury.
"Who is that idiot who laughs in this sacred spot?" his bull voice demanded. "Does the fellow not realize that these are serious matters and may be disturbed by the least error in our actions? Priests! Drag him forth and make him stand before me!"
In a little while, because the throng was so great, the black-clad traveler was escorted to the foot of the duke's dais.. He bowed compliantly enough when the rough hand of a guardsman struck him behind the head, but the cheerful twinkle did no depart from his eyes, and this peculiarity struck Duke Vaul at once.
He began to muse about the consequences of sacrificing one who did not take the Quadruple God seriously, and eventually spoke through the tangle of his beard.
"How do men call you, foolish one?" he boomed.
"I have many names, but one nature."
"And why are you laughing at these holy matters?"
"But I am not!"
"Then are you laughing at me?" thundered the duke, heaving himself forward on his throne so that the boards of the dais creaked and squealed. His eyes flashed terribly.