"Dunsany, Lord - Fifty-one Tales" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

Spanish seas: I am not allowed to die."













The Dream of
King Karna-Vootra




King Karna-Vootra sitting on his throne commanding all
things said: "I very clearly saw last night the queenly
Vava-Nyria. Though partly she was hidden by great clouds
that swept continually by her, rolling over and over, yet
her face was unhidden and shone, being full of moonlight.
"I said to her: `Walk with me by the great pools in
many-gardened, beautiful Istrakhan where the lilies float
that give delectable dreams; or, drawing aside the curtain
of hanging orchids, pass with me thence from the pools by a
secret path through the else impassable jungle that fills
the only way between the mountains that shut in Istrakhan.
They shut it in and look on it with joy at morning and at
evening when the pools are strange with light, till in their
gladness sometimes there melts the deadly snow that kills
upon lonely heights the mountaineer. They have valleys
among them older than the wrinkles in the moon.
"`Come with me thence or linger with me there and either
we shall come to romantic lands which the men of the
caravans only speak of in song; or else we shall listlessly
walk in a land so lovely that even the butterflies that
float about it when they see their images flash in the
sacred pools are terrified by their beauty, and each night
we shall hear the myriad nightingales all in one chorus sing
the stars to death. Do this and I will send heralds far
from here with tidings of thy beauty; and they shall run and
come to Sendara and men shall know it there who herd brown
sheep; and from Sendara the rumour shall spread on, down
either bank of the holy river of Zoth, till the people that
make wattles in the plains shall hear of it and sing; but
the heralds shall go northward along the hills until they