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

It fell open in my hands. A sentence blazed out from the page.

I am become as it were a monster unto many.

I put back the book and returned to my chair. I was ifi no mood for reading. The lamp overhead bothered me, and I pressed for the switch. Instantly moonlight flooded the roomЧ and instantly the curious sense of expectancy was heightened, as though I had lowered aЧa barrier.

The sheathed sword still lay on the window-seat. I looked past it, to the clouded sky where a golden moon shone. Faint, far away, a glimmer showedЧthe Need-fire, blazing in the swampy wilderness of the Limberlost.

And it called.

The golden square of window was hypnotic. I lay back in my chair, half-closing my eyes, while the sense of danger moved coldly within my brain. Sometimes before I had felt this call, summoning me. And always before I had been able to resist.

This time I wavered.

" The lock of hair clipped from my headЧhad that given the enemy power? Superstition. My logic called it that, but a deep, inner well of conviction told me that the ancient hair-magic was not merely mummery. Since that time in Sumatra, I had been far less skeptical. And since then I had studied.

The studies were strange enough, ranging from the principles of sympathetic magic to the wild fables of lycanthropy and demonology. Yet I was amazingly quick at learning.

It was as though I took a refresher course, to remind myself of knowledge I had once known by heart. Only one subject really troubled me, and I continually stumbled across it, by roundabout references.

And that was the Force, the entity, disguised in folklore under such familiar names as the Black Man, Satan, Lucifer, and such unfamiliar names as Kutchie, of the Australian Dieris, Tuna, of the Esquimaux, the African Abonsam, and {he Swiss Stratteli.

I did no research on the Black ManЧbut I did not need to. There was a recurrent dream that I could not help identifying with the dark force that represented evil. I would be standing before a golden square of light, very much afraid, and yet straining toward some consummation that I desired. And deep down within that glowing square that would be the beginning of motion. I knew there were certain ritual gestures to be made before the ceremony could be begun, but it was difficult to break the paralysis that held me.

A square like the moon-drenched window before meЧyet not the same.

For no chill essence of fear thrust itself out at me now. Rather, the low humming I heard was soothing, gentle as a woman's crooning voice.

The golden square waveredЧshookЧand little tendrils of crepuscular light fingered out toward me. Ever the low humming came, alluring and disarming.

Golden fingersЧtentaclesЧthey darted here and there as if puzzled. They touched lamp, table, carpet, and drew back. TheyЧtouched me.

Swiftly they leaped forward nowЧavid! I had time for a momentary pulse of alarm before they wrapped me in an embrace like golden sands of sleep. The humming grew louder. And I responded to it.

As the skin of the flayed satyr Marsyas thrilled at the sound of his native Phrygian melodies! I knew this music. I knew thisЧchant!

Stole through the golden glow a crouching shadowЧnot humanЧwith amber eyes and a bristling maneЧthe shadow ofa wolf.

It hesitated, glanced over its shoulder questioningly. And

now another shape swam into view, cowled and gowned so that nothing of its face or body showed. But it was smallЧ small as a child.

Wolf and cowled figure hung in the golden mists, watching and waiting. The sighing murmur altered. Formed itself into syllables and words. Words in no human tongue, butЧI knew them.

"Ganelon! I call you, Ganelon! By the seal in your bloodЧ hear me!"

Ganelon! Surely that was my name. I knew it so well.

Yet who called me thus?