"Lord Dunsany - In Zaccarath (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

mountaineers. They hate thee all along the crags of Droom.
The evilness of thy days shall bring down the Zeedians on
theeas the suns of springtide bring the avalanche down.
They shall do unto Zaccarath as the avalanche doth unto the
hamletsof the valley." When the queens chattered or
titteredamong themselves, he merely raised his voice and
stillspake on: "Woe to these walls and the carven things
uponthem. The hunter shall know the camping-places of the
nomadsby the marks of the camp-fires on the plain, but he
shallnot know the place of Zaccarath."
A few of the recumbent warriors turned their heads to
glanceat the prophet when he ceased. Far overhead the
echoesof his voice hummed on awhile among the cedarn
rafters.
"Is he not splendid?" said the King. And many of that
assemblybeat with their palms upon the polished floor in
tokenof applause. Then the prophet was conducted back to
hisplace at the far end of that mighty hall, and for a
whilemusicians played on marvellous curved horns, while
drumsthrobbed behind them hidden in a recess. The
musicianswere sitting cross-legged on the floor, all
blowingtheir huge horns in the brilliant torchlight, but as
thedrums throbbed louder in the dark they arose and moved
slowlynearer to the King. Louder and louder drummed the
drumsin the dark, and nearer and nearer moved the men with
thehorns, so that their music should not be drowned by the
drumsbefore it reached the King.
A marvellous scene it was when the tempestuous horns were
haltedbefore the King, and the drums in the dark were like
thethunder of God; and the queens were nodding their heads
intime to the music, with their diadems flashing like
heavensof falling stars; and the warriors lifted their
headsand shook, as they lifted them, the plumes of those
goldenbirds which hunters wait for by the Liddian lakes, in
awhole lifetime killing scarcely six, to make the crests
thatthe warriors wore when they feasted in Zaccarath. Then
theKing shouted and the warriors sang -- almost they
rememberedthen old battle-chants. And, as they sang, the
soundof the drums dwindled, and the musicians walked away
backwards, and the drumming became fainter and fainter as
theywalked, and altogether ceased, and they blew no more on
theirfantastic horns. Then the assemblage beat on the
floorwith their palms. And afterwards the queens besought
theKing to send for another prophet. And the heralds
broughta singer, and placed him before the King; and the
singerwas a young man with a harp. And he swept the
stringsof it, and when there was silence he sang of the
iniquityof the King. And he foretold the onrush of the
Zeedians, and the fall and the forgetting of Zaccarath, and
thecoming again of the desert to its own, and the playing