"Alan Dean Foster - Humanx 4 - Voyage City of the Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

De-me-Halmur had not become ruler of a great city-state without the occasional
ostentatious display of compassion. "You must have bribed efficiently to
obtain
this entrance, oldster. You are to be admired for that. Say what you have come
to say."
"Good members of the Zanur, I have for most of my life been a trader of fine
woods and metals between our great city of Po Rabi and the Upriver. Hai, even
as
far as Kek-kalong." Kekkalong was a very long way Upriver, and many of the
Zanurals had never journeyed beyond the boundaries of the city. They listened
to
the rover with a little more respect.
"I am a good citizen and work hard for my city. So I listen well to any tale
or
rumor that suggests the opportunity to increase my wealth."
"As do we all," Zanural de-Parinti commented. "Get on with it."
"Among the many tales of the Upriver are those which speak of a dead place,
home
to spirits and ghosts and demons beyond counting, who guard such wealth as
could
not be counted in a thousand lifetimes by all the accountants of all the
city-states that ring the Groalamasan itself."
"A wonderful story, I'm sure," another Zanural called from his council seat.
"I
too have heard such stories."
"It is well known," de-Panltatol continued, "that the nearer one travels to
the
source of such tales, the more vivid and impressive they become-or else they
fade away entirely.
"This particular tale is told over and over again in a hundred towns and
villages of the North. I have listened to it for more than fifty years. I
resolved finally to pursue it to the last storyteller. Instead it drew me
onward, pulling me ever farther north. Sometimes the tale smelled of truth,
more
often of village embroidery, but never did I lose track of it entirely.
"I went beyond maps and merchant trails, always up the Barshajagad, following
the current of the Skar and in places abandoning it completely. I walked- I,
Bril de-Panltatol- upon the surface of the frozen Guntali itself!"
Now the whispers of interest were submerged by ill-concealed laughter. The
Guntali Plateau, from which arose all the great rivers of the world that
drained
into the single ocean that was the Groalamasan, was so high and cold and thin
of
air that no Mai could travel upon it. Yet the wrinkled old trader was laying
claim to such a feat.
Like his fellow merchants and Zanural, de-me-Halmur refused to countenance the
possibility, but neither did he laugh. He had not become Moyt of Po Rabi by
dismissing the most elaborate absurdities without careful dissection. "Let
this
one continue proving himself the fool, but let him not be convicted until he