"Robert E. Howard - Conan - Hour of the Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Howard Robert E)

"They stole it from me, long ago," he said. "The red heart of the night it is, strong to save or
to damn. It came from afar, and from long ago. While I held it, none could stand before me. But it
was stolen from me, and Acheron fell, and I fled an exile into dark Stygia. Much I remember, but
much I have forgotten. I have been in a far land, across misty voids and gulfs and unlit oceans.
What is the year?"

Orastes answered him. "It is the waning of the Year of the Lion, three thousand years after the
fall of Acheron."

"Three thousand years!" murmured the other. "So long? Who are you?"

"I am Orastes, once a priest of Mitra. This man is Amalric, baron of Tor, in Nemedia; this other
is Tarascus, younger brother of the king of Nemedia; and this tall man is Valerius, rightful heir
of the throne of Aquilonia."

"Why have you given me life?" demanded Xaltotun. "What do you require of me?"

The man was now fully alive and awake, his keen eyes reflecting the working of an unclouded brain.
There was no hesitation or uncertainty in his manner. He came directly to the point, as one who
knows that no man gives something for nothing. Orastes met him with equal candor.

"We have opened the doors of hell this night to free your soul and return it to your body because
we need your aid. We wish to place Tarascus on the throne of Nemedia, and to win for Valerius the
crown of Aquilonia. With your necromancy you can aid us."

Xaltotun's mind was devious and full of unexpected slants.

"You must be deep in the arts yourself, Orastes, to have been able to restore my life. How is it
that a priest of Mitra knows of the Heart of Ahriman, and the incantations of Skelos?"

"I am no longer a priest of Mitra," answered Orastes. "I was cast forth from my order because of
my delving in black magic. But for Amalric there I might have been burned as a magician.

"But that left me free to pursue my studies. I journeyed in Zamora, in Vendhya, in Stygia, and
among the haunted jungles of Khitai. I read the ironbound books of Skelos, and talked with unseen
creatures in deep wells, and faceless shapes in black reeking jungles. I obtained a glimpse of
your sarcophagus in the demon-haunted crypts below the black giant-walled temple of Set in the
hinterlands of Stygia, and I learned of the arts that would bring back life to your shriveled
corpse. From moldering manuscripts I learned of the Heart of Ahriman. Then for a year I sought its
hiding-place, and at last I found it."

"Then why trouble to bring me back to life?" demanded Xaltotun, with his piercing gaze fixed on
the priests. "Why did you not employ the Heart to further your own power?"

"Because no man today knows the secrets of the Heart," answered Orastes. "Not even in legends live
the arts by which to loose its full powers. I knew it could restore life; of its deeper secrets I
am ignorant. I merely used it to bring you back to life. It is the use of your knowledge we seek.
As for the Heart, you alone know its awful secrets."