"Chalker, Jack L - DG2 - Demons of the Dancing Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

He got up, dropped the stub, and crushed it angrily with
his right foot. Such melancholy was for fools and failures, he
scolded himself. He had not failed yet, and in his setbacks he
had learned a great deal. Now was not the time for self-de-
precation, self-doubt, and inner fears to consume him -- no,
that was what they would want, not merely his enemies but his
unhuman allies as well. They, his allies, were the cause of
this, for they dealt in such matters, traded in doubt and fear,
sowed the seeds of turmoil inside you, and, in that way, they
fed and grew stronger.

He began to walk along the dark, lonely road in the wastes,
conscious now of being among the milling throng of the damned
on their way to perdition, and conscious, too, that they knew
he was there, a living, breathing man of power. He could feel
their envy, their hatred of him for still cheating what they now
faced; he could feel, too, the pity in many of them, not merely
for their own sorry fates but for him as well.

Turn back, he could hear them crying. Do not walk this
path with us, as we have walked. You still live! For you, there
is still time...

Still time... Until his corpse rotted as theirs now did, until
his cold and silent soul received their summons, there was
always time. Time to set things right. Time not to repent, nor
turn back -- never! -- but time, instead, to complete the work.

, Within the hour he had passed through the slow-moving
throng and stood at a point in the road where, in the light of
day, it went through a narrow pass and emerged in greener,
more beauteous regions beyond. Any who dared this path on
a night so dark would still pass through to that other side,
oblivious to that which lay before them, only slightly out of
phase with the world they knew. But he -- he was a sorcerer
and he saw the many plains in his mind's eye and in the magical
energies that flowed through all the world.

The colors of the valley's magic were crimson and lavender,




4 DEMONS OF THE DANCING GODS

the colors of its district prince, and they flowed along the road
with its great traffic of once-human misery, flowed with a
curious and subtle beauty to the head of the pass, then seemed
to pause a moment before beginning a swirl in the air before