"Brian Lumley - Necroscope 4 - Deadspeak" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

Obsessed with that stone he's carving. He's been called, can't you see? He's mazed, hypnotized - doomed!'

Even as the last word left her lips, so the man on the rock stood up, took up his stone and ground it firmly into position on the rim of the cairn. It sat there side by side with many dozens
of others, like a brick in the topmost tier of a wall, and anyone having seen the ritual of the carving would know that each single stone of that cairn was marked in some weird,
meaningful way. The younger woman opened her mouth to say something, but her friend at once anticipated her question:

'His name,' she said. 'He carved his name and his dates, if he knows them. Like all the other names and dates carved up there. Like all the others gone before him. That rude stone is his
headstone, which makes the cairn itself a graveyard!'

Now the young Gypsy was craning his neck, looking up, up at the mountains. He stood frozen in that position for long moments, as if waiting for something. And high in the grey-blue
sky a small dark blot of cloud drifted across the face of the sun. At that the eldest of the two women gave a start; she herself had become almost hypnotized, stalled there and without the
will to move on. But as the sun was eclipsed and shadows fell everywhere, she grabbed the other's elbow and turned her face away. 'Come,' she gasped, suddenly breathless, 'let's be gone
from here. Our men will be worried. Especially if they know there are Gypsies about.'

They hurried through the shadows of the trees, found the track, soon began to see the first wooden houses on Halmagiu's outskirts, where the forest thinned down to nothing. But even as
they stepped out from the trees into a dusty lane and their heartbeats slowed a little, so they heard a sound from behind and above and far, far beyond.

Not quite midday in Halmagiu; the sun coming out from behind a small, stray cloud; the first days of true winter still some seven or eight weeks away - but every soul who heard that
sound took it as a wintry omen anyway. Aye, and some took it for more than that.

It was the mournful voice of a wolf echoing down from the mountains, calling as wolves have called for a thousand, thousand years and more. The two women paused, clutched their
baskets, held their breath and listened. But:

'There's no answering cry,' said the younger, eventually. 'He's alone, that old wolf.'

'For now,' the other nodded. 'Aye, alone - but he's been heard all right, take my word for it. And he will be answered, soon enough. Following which . . .' She shook her head and hurried
on.

The other caught up with her. 'Yes, following which?' she pressed.

The older woman peered at her, scowled a little, finally barked: 'But you must learn to listen, Anna! There are some things we don't much talk about up here - so if you want to learn, then
when they are talked about you must listen!'

'I was listening,' the other answered. 'It's just that I didn't understand, that's all. You said the old wolf would be answered, soon enough. And . . . and then?'

'Aye, and then,' said the older one, turning towards her doorway, where bunches of garlic dangled from the lintel, drying in the sun. And over her shoulder: 'And then - the very next
morning - why, the Szgany will be gone! No trace of them at all except maybe the ashes in their camp, the ruts in the tracks where their caravans have rolled, moving on. But their
numbers will have been shortened by one. One who answered an ancient call and stayed behind.'

The younger woman's mouth formed a silent 'O'.

'That's right,' said the first, nodding. 'You just saw him - adding his soul to those other poor souls inscribed in the cairn on the rock . . .'

That night, in the Szgany camp:

The girls danced, whirling to the skirl of frenzied violins and the primal thump and jingle of tambourines. A long table stood heavy with food: joints of rabbit and whole hedgehogs, still
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Gasping his shock
steaming from the heat of the trenches where they'd baked; wild boar sausages, sliced thin; cheeses purchased or bartered in Halmagiu village; fruit and nuts; onions simmering in gravy
poured from the meats; Gypsy wines and sharp, throat-clutching wild plum brandy.