"Kuttner, Henry - The Dark World - uc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

I thought I sensed a hidden threat in her words. Matholch shrugged and held the curtain aside to let me pass.

"Few dare to threaten a shape-changer," he said over his shoulder.

"I dare," Edeyrn said, from the enigmatic shadows of her saffron cowl. And I remembered that she was a mutant tooЧ though not a lycanthrope, like a red-bearded werewolf striding beside me along the vaulted passage.

What wasЧEdeyrn?

IV MatholchЧand Medea

UP TO now the true wonder of the situation had not really touched me yet. The anaesthesia of shock had dulled me. As a soldierЧcaught in the white light of a flare dropped from an overhead planeЧfreezes into immobility, so my mind still remained passive. Only superficial thoughts were moving there, as though, by concentration on immediate needs, I could eliminate the incredible fact that I was not on the familiar, solid ground of Earth.

But it was more than this. There was a curious, indefinable familiarity about these groined, pale-walled halls through which I strode beside Matholch, as there had been a queer familiarity about the twilit landscape stretching to forested distance beneath the window of my room.

EdeyrnЧMedeaЧthe Coven.

The names had significance, like words in a language I had once known well, but had forgotten.

The half-loping, swift walk of Matholch, the easy swing of his muscular shoulders, the snarling smile on his red-bearded lipsЧthese were not new to me.

He watched me furtively out of his yellow eyes. Once we paused before a red-figured drapery, and Matholch, hesitating, thrust the curtain aside and gestured me forward.

I took one stepЧand stopped. I looked at him.

He nodded as though satisfied. Yet there was still a question in his face.

"So you remember a little, eh? Enough to know that this

isn't the way to Medea. However, come along, for a moment. I want to talk to you."

As I followed him up a winding stair, I suddenly realized that he had not spoken hi English. But I had understood him, as I had understood Edeyrn and Medea.

Ganelon?

We were hi a tower room, walled with transparent panes. There was a smoky, sour odor hi the air, and gray tendrils coiled up from a brazier set in a tripod in the middle of the chamber. Matholch gestured me to one of the couches by the windows. He dropped carelessly beside me.

"I wonder how much you remember," he said.

I shook my head.

"Not much. Enough not to be tooЧtrusting."

"The artificial Earth-memories are still strong, then. Ghast Rhymi said you would remember eventually, but that it would take time. The false writing on the slate of your mind will fade, and the old, true memories will come back. After a while."

Like a palimpsest, I thoughtЧmanuscript with two writings upon its parchment. But Ganelon was still a stranger; I was still Edward Bond.

"I wonder," Matholch said slowly, staring at me. "You spent much time exiled. I wonder if you have changed, basically. Always beforeЧyou hated me, Ganelon. Do you hate me now?"

"No," I said. "At least, I don't know. I think I distrust you."