"Chalker, Jack L. - Dancing Gods 02 - Demons of the Dancing Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

Chalker, Jack L - Demons of the Dancing Gods
CHAPTER
ENCOUNTER ON A LONELY ROAD
The road to Hell is sometimes paved with good intentions.
ЧThe Books of Rules, CVI, Introduction
IF HE HAD TO GO TO HELL, WELL, IT WAS BETTER TO GO
dressed in expensive clothes, drinking good wine, and smoking
a fine cigar.
The small figure walking slowly down the road was hardly
visible in the darkness, and any who might have come along
would probably not even see, let alone notice, him. He stopped
for a moment, as if trying to get his bearings from the stars,
and sighed. Well, he thought to himself, the clothes weren't
bad for being nondescript, and the wine was long gone, but he
did have one last cigar. He took it out, sniffed it, bit off the
end, and stood there for a moment, as if hesitant to light and
consume this one last vestige of wealth. Finally he lighted it,
simply by making a few small signs in the air and pointing his
finger at the tip. A pale yellow beam emanated from the finger,
and the cigar glowed. Such pranks were really pretty petty for
a master sorcerer, but he had always enjoyed them, taking an
almost childlike pleasure in their simplicity and basic utility.
He found a rock and sat down to enjoy the smoke, looking
out at the bleak landscape before him, invisible in the darkness
of the new moon to his eyes, but not to his other, paranormal
senses.
The darkness was in itself a living thing to him, a thing that
he sensed, touched, caressed, and tried to befriend. He found
it indifferent to him, interested instead in its own lowly subjects
Чthe lizards, the snakes, the tiny voles, and other crea-
1
2 DEMONS OF THE DANCING GODS
tures that inhabited the desolation and knew it as home. For
these and all the nameless citizens of its domain, the night was
life itself, allowing them access to food and water under cooling
temperatures, sheltered from greater enemies by the cool, caring
dark.
The road seemed empty, lonely, desolate as the landscape
itself, a track forlorn and forgotten in the shelter of deep night;
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 inhabited,
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