"Brian Lumley - Born Of The Winds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

anthropomorphic, a manlike yet bestial silhouette, striding both in low icy mists and high stratocumulus,
gazing down upon the affairs of men with carmine stars for eyes!тАЭ

BridgemanтАЩs treatment of the more conventional mythological figures was less romantic; he remained
solidly within the framework of accepted anthropology. For example: тАЬThe Babylonian storm-god, Enlil,
was designated тАШLord of the WindsтАЩ. Mischievous and mercurial in temperament, he was seen by the
superstitious peoples of the land to walk in hurricanes and sand-devils тАжтАЭ

Or, in yet more traditional legend: тАЬTeuton mythology shows Thor as being the god of thunder; when
thunderstorms boiled and the heavens roared, people knew that what they heard was the sound of
ThorтАЩs war-chariot clattering through the vaults of heaven.тАЭ

Again, I could not help but find it noticeable that while the author poked a sort of fun at these classical
figures of mythology, he hadnotdone so when he wrote of Ithaqua. Similarly, he was completely dry and
matter-of-fact in his descriptive treatment of an illustration portraying the Hittite god-of-the-storm,
Tha-thka, photographed from his carved representation upon a baked clay tablet excavated in theToros
MountainsofTurkey. More, he compared Tha-thka with Ithaqua of the Snows, declaring that he found
parallels in the two deities other than the merely phonetical similarity of their names.

Ithaqua, he pointed out, had left webbed tracks in the Arctic snows, tracks which the oldEsquimaux
tribes feared to cross; and Tha-thka (carved in a fashion very similar to the so-called тАШAmarna styleтАЩ of
Egypt, to mix ethnic art groups) was shown in the photograph as having star-shaped eyes of a rare, dark
carnelian тАж and webbed feet! Professor BridgemanтАЩs argument for connection here seemed valid, even
sound, yet I could see how such an argument might very well anger established anthropologists of тАШthe
Old SchoolтАЩ. How, for instance, might one equate a god of the ancient Hittites with a deity of
comparatively modern Eskimos? Unless of course one was to remember that in a certain rather fanciful
mythology Ithaqua had only been banished to the North following an abortive rebellion against the Elder
Gods. Could it be thatbeforethat rebellion the Wind-Walker strode the high currents and tides of
atmospheric air overUr of the Chaldees and ancient Khem, perhaps even prior to those lands being
named by their first inhabitants? Here I laughed at my own fancies, conjured by what the writer had
written with such assumed authority, and yet my laughter was more than a trifle strained, for I found a
certain cold logic in Bridgeman that made even his wildest statement seem merely a calm, studied
exposition тАж

And there were, certainly, wild statements.

The slimmest of the three books was full of them, and I knew after reading only its first few pages that
this must be the source of those flights of fancy which had caused BridgemanтАЩs erstwhile colleagues to
desert him. Yet without a doubt this book was by far the most interesting of the three, written almost in a
fervour of mystical allusion with an abundance тАУ aplethora тАУ of obscure hints suggestive of
half-discernible worlds of awe, wonder and horror bordering and occasionally impinging upon our very
own.
 I found myself completely enthralled. It seemed plain to me that behind all the hocus-pocus there was a
great mystery here тАУ one which, like an iceberg, showed only its tip тАУ and I determined not to be satisfied
with anything less than a complete verification of the facts concerning what I had started to think of as
тАШthe Bridgeman caseтАЩ. After all, I seemed to be ideally situated to conduct such an investigation: this was
where the professor had died, the borderland of that region in which he had alleged at least one of his
mythological beings to exist; and Judge Andrews, provided I could get him to talk, must be something of
an authority on the man; and, possibly my best line of research yet, BridgemanтАЩs widow herself was here
now in this very town.