"Cook, Glen - Dread Empire 04 - Octobers Baby" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

Overactive imagination, he told himself. Came of remembering what they had gotten into in the old days.

Mocker dismounted and entered a door. Ragnarson hurried to catch him.

It was dark as a crypt inside. He pursued Mocker's shuffling footsteps, cursing himself for not having brought a light. He bumped into something large and yielding. Mocker squawked like a kicked hen.

"Do something," Bragi growled, "but don't block the road."

"Self, am listening. And trying not to be trampled by lead-footed stumbler about without sense to bring light. Am wondering about sound heard over stampede rumble of feet of same."

"Let's go back, then. We can come by tomorrow."

Logic had no weight with Mocker. He moved ahead.

So gradually that they did not immediately realize it, light entered their ken. Before they had advanced a hundred feet, they could see dimly, as through heavy fog at false dawn.

"Something's wrong here," said Ragnarson. "I smell sorcery. We'd better get out before we stir something up."

"Pusillanimous dullard," Mocker retorted. "In old days friend Hulk would have led charge."

"In the old days I didn't have any sense. Thought you'd grown up some, too."

Mocker shrugged. He no longer was anxious to go on. "Just to end of passage," he said. "Then we follow example of Tarlson."

The corridor ended in a blank wall. What was the sense of a passage that went nowhere, that had no doors opening off it?

"We'd better go," said Ragnarson. The sourceless light was bright now. He turned. "Huh?" His sword jumped into his hand.

Blocking their withdrawal was a curtain of darkness, as if someone had taken a pane of starless night and stretched it from wall to wall.

Mocker slid round him and probed the darkness with his blade. A deep thrust got results. Laughter like the cackling of a mad god.

"Woe!" Mocker cried. "Such petty end for great mind of age, caught like stupidest mouse in trap..." He charged the darkness, sword preceeding him.

"You idiot!" Ragnarson bellowed. He muttered, "What the hell?" when his companion seemed to slide out of existence as he hit the blackness.

"Might as well." He hit the darkness seconds behind the fat man.

He felt like he was tumbling down the entire well of eternity, rolling aimlessly through a storm of color and sound underlaid by the whispering of wicked things. It went on and on and on and... Without breaking stride he entered a vast, poorly lighted chamber.

That room, or hall, was an assault on rationality. The air was overpoweringly foul. From all-surrounding, shadowed mists came rustlings, and for a moment he thought he saw a manlike, winged thing with the head of a dog, then a small, apelike dwarf with prodigious fangs. Everything seemed unstable, shifting, except the floor, which was of jet, and a huge black throne carved with exceptionally hideous designs. They reminded him of reliefs he had seen in the temples of Arundeputh and Merthregul at Gundgatchcatil. Yet these were worse, as if carved by hands washed more deeply in evil.

Mocker, sword in hand, prowled round that throne. "What is it?" Ragnarson asked, seldom having seen the fat man so upset.

"Shinsan."

They were trapped fools indeed.

The mists stirred. An old man stepped forth. "Good evening," he said. "I trust you speak Necremnen? Good."