"Fritz Leiber - FGM 7 - The Knight and Knave of Swords" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

SWORDS IN THE MIST

SWORDS AGAINST WIZARDY
 THE SWORDS OF LANKHMAR

SWORDS AND ICE MAGIC

THE KNIGHT AND KNAVE OF SWORDS

THE WANDERER

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*I: Sea Magic*

*.1.*

On the world of Nehwon and the land of Simorgya, six days fast sailing
south from Rime Isle, two handsome silvery personages conversed intimately yet
tensely in a dimly and irregularly lit hall of pillars open overhead to the
darkness. Very strange was that illumination --greenish and yellowish by
turns, it seemed to come chiefly from grotesquely shaped rugs patching the
Stygian floor and lapping the pillars' bases and also from slowly moving
globes and sinuosities that floated about at head height and wove amongst the
pillars, softly dimming and brightening like lethargic and plague-stricken
giant fireflies.

Mordroog said sharply, "Caught you that thrill, sister? -- faint and
far north away, yet unmistakably _ours._"

Ississi replied eagerly, "The same, brother, as we felt two days agone
-- our mystic gold dipped deep in the sea for a space, then out again."

"The same indeed, sister, though this time with a certain ambiguity as
to the out -- whether that or otherwise gone," Mordroog assented.

"Yet the now-confirmed clue is certain and bears only one
interpretation: our chiefest treasures, that were our most main guards, raped
away long ages agone -- and now at long last we know the culprits, those
villainous pirates of Rime Isle!" breathed Ississi.

"Long, long ages agone, before ever Simorgya sank (and the fortunate
island kingdom became the dark infernal realm) -- and their vanishment the
hastener or very agent of that sinking. But now we have the remedy -- and who
knows when our treasure's back what long-sunken things may rise in spouting
wrath to consternate the world? Your attention, sister!" snapped Mordroog.

The abysmal scene darkened, then brightened as he dipped his hand into
the pouch at his waist and brought it out again holding something big as a
girl's fist. The floating globes and sinuosities moved inward inquisitively,