"Dunsany, Lord - In Zaccarath" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

know his doom and what is written of him: he sees oblivion
before him like a mist. Thou hast aroused the hate of the
mountaineers. They hate thee all along the crags of Droom.
The evilness of thy days shall bring down the Zeedians on
thee as the suns of springtide bring the avalanche down.
They shall do unto Zaccarath as the avalanche doth unto the
hamlets of the valley." When the queens chattered or
tittered among themselves, he merely raised his voice and
still spake on: "Woe to these walls and the carven things
upon them. The hunter shall know the camping-places of the
nomads by the marks of the camp-fires on the plain, but he
shall not know the place of Zaccarath."
A few of the recumbent warriors turned their heads to
glance at the prophet when he ceased. Far overhead the
echoes of his voice hummed on awhile among the cedarn
rafters.
"Is he not splendid?" said the King. And many of that
assembly beat with their palms upon the polished floor in
token of applause. Then the prophet was conducted back to
his place at the far end of that mighty hall, and for a
while musicians played on marvellous curved horns, while
drums throbbed behind them hidden in a recess. The
musicians were sitting cross-legged on the floor, all
blowing their huge horns in the brilliant torchlight, but as
the drums throbbed louder in the dark they arose and moved
slowly nearer to the King. Louder and louder drummed the
drums in the dark, and nearer and nearer moved the men with
the horns, so that their music should not be drowned by the
drums before it reached the King.
A marvellous scene it was when the tempestuous horns were
halted before the King, and the drums in the dark were like
the thunder of God; and the queens were nodding their heads
in time to the music, with their diadems flashing like
heavens of falling stars; and the warriors lifted their
heads and shook, as they lifted them, the plumes of those
golden birds which hunters wait for by the Liddian lakes, in
a whole lifetime killing scarcely six, to make the crests
that the warriors wore when they feasted in Zaccarath. Then
the King shouted and the warriors sang -- almost they
remembered then old battle-chants. And, as they sang, the
sound of the drums dwindled, and the musicians walked away
backwards, and the drumming became fainter and fainter as
they walked, and altogether ceased, and they blew no more on
their fantastic horns. Then the assemblage beat on the
floor with their palms. And afterwards the queens besought
the King to send for another prophet. And the heralds
brought a singer, and placed him before the King; and the
singer was a young man with a harp. And he swept the
strings of it, and when there was silence he sang of the
iniquity of the King. And he foretold the onrush of the