"Chalker, Jack L - Demons of the Dancing GodsUC - #2DG" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

but as he sat there, nursing the last cigar, he extended his senses
and saw that this road was different, this road was for those
with beyond normal senses and training. This road was inhab-
ited, used in the night; as he let himself go, he could hear the
groans and lamentations of those who used it now in the depths
of night.

Even he could not see them, not now, but he could hear
them, hear the crack of the whip and the cries of hopelessness
and despair from those who moved slowly, mournfully, down
that lonely road.

For in the dark, at the time of the new moon, he knewЧ
perhaps he alone knewЧthat this road had a dark and de-
spairing purpose beyond its utility to the travelers of day and
full moon.

They were walking, crawling, along that lonely road, he
knew, going toward a destination they dreaded yet had richly
earned.

The month's quota of damned souls was a bumper crop,
judging from the sounds.

One night, he knew, he'd be there, reduced to the same
level as all the rest, walking or crawling down that road himself.
One night, he, too, would be brought as low as the lowest of
those now moving down that road, paying a due bill he had
willingly run up. Perhaps, just perhaps, it would be this night,
if his tongue and quick mind failed him for once. He was
willing to go, he tried to convince himself, but not yet, not
just yet. He had surrendered much to travel that road one day,
not the least of which was his honor, and he certainly was loath
to pay without at least attaining the goal for which he'd sold
his soul.

The cigar was almost finished now, but he continued to
nurse it along almost to the point of burning his fingers, as if
the end of the cigar would also be the end of his hopes, his
dreams, his life, and his power. For the first time, in the dark,

JACK L. CHALKER 3

with the sounds of the damned filling his bargained soul to its
core, he had doubts and fears about his course and his own
well-being. Was the great goal worth this sort of ultimate price?
Did it really matter one way or the other what he did or didn't
do, or was he, like the cigar, a momentary brilliance turned to
ash and of no more consequence than that in the scheme of
things?