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

There was a festival atmosphere. The flames of a central fire, inspired by the music, leaped high and the dancers were sinuous, sensuous. Alcohol was consumed in large measure; some
of the younger Gypsies drank from a sense of relief, others from fear of an uncertain future. For those who had been spared this time around, there would always be other times.

But they were Szgany and this was the way of things; they were His to the ends of the earth, His to command, His to take. Their pact with the Old One had been signed and sealed more
than four hundred years ago. Through Him they had prospered down the centuries, they prospered now, they would prosper in all the years to come. He made the hard times easier - aye,
and the easy times hard - but always He achieved a balance. His blood was in them, and theirs in Him. And the blood is the life.

Only two amongst them were alone and private. Even with the girls dancing, the drinking, the feasting, still they were alone. For all of this noise and movement around them was an
assumed gaiety, wherein they could scarcely participate.

One of them, the young man from the cairn, sat on the steps of an ornately carved and painted wagon, with a whetstone and his long-bladed knife, bringing the cutting edge to a scintillant
shimmer of silver in the flicker of near-distant firelight. While in the yellow lamplight behind him where the door stood open, his mother sat sobbing, wringing her hands, praying for all
she was worth to One who was not a god - indeed, to One who was the very opposite - that He spare her son this night. But praying in vain.

And as one tune ended and bright skirts whispered to a halt, falling about gleaming brown limbs, and moustached men quit their leaping and high-kicking - in that interval when the
fiddlers sipped their brandy before starting up again - then the moon showed its rim above the mountains, whose misted crags were brought to a sudden prominence. And as mouths
gaped open and all eyes turned upwards to the risen moon, so the mournful howl of a wolf drifted down to them from unseen aeries of rock.

For a single moment the tableau stood frozen . . . but the next saw dark eyes turning to gaze at the young man on the caravan steps. He stood up, looked up at the moon and the crags, and
sighed. And sheathing his knife he stepped down to the clearing, crossed it on stiff legs, headed for the darkness beyond the encircling wagons.

His mother broke the silence. Her wail, rising to a shriek of anguish, was that of a banshee as she hurled herself from their caravan home, crashed down the wooden steps, came reeling
after her son, her arms outstretched. But she did not go to him; instead she fell to her knees some paces away, her arms still reaching, aching for him. For the chief of this band, their
'king', had stepped forward to embrace the young man. He hugged him, kissed him on both cheeks, released him. And without more ado the chosen one went out of the firelight, between
the wagons, and was swallowed by darkness.

'Dumitru!' his mother screamed. She got to her feet, made to rush after him - and flew into the arms of her king.

'Peace, woman,' he told her gruffly, his throat bobbing. 'We've seen it coming a month now, watched the change in him. The Old One has called and Dumitru answers. We knew what to
expect. This is always the way of it.'

'But he's my son, my son!' she sobbed rackingly into his chest.

'Aye,' he said, his own voice finally breaking, sending tears coursing down his leathery cheeks. 'And mine . . . mine too . . . aye.'

He led her stumbling and sobbing back to their caravan, and behind them the music started up again, and the dancing, and the feasting and drinking.

Dumitru Zirra climbed the ramparts of the Zarundului like a fox born to those heights. The moon lit a path for him, but even without that silver swath he would have known the way. For
there was guidance from within: a voice inside his head, which was not his voice, told him where to step, reach, grasp. There were paths up here, if you knew them, but between these
hairpin tracks were vertiginous shortcuts. Dumitru chose the latter, or someone made that choice for him.

Dumiitruuu! the dark voice crooned to him, drawing out his name like a cry of torment. Ah, my faithful, my Szgaaany, son of my sons. Step here, and there, and here, Dumiitruuu. And
here, where the wolf stepped - see his mark on the rock? The father of your fathers awaits you, Dumiitruuu. The moon is risen up and the hour draws niiigh. Make haste, my son, for I'm
old and dry and shrivelled close to death - the true death! But you shall succour me, Dumiitruuu. Aye, and all your youth and strength be miiine!

Almost to the tree line the youth laboured, his breath ragged and his hands bloody from the climbing, to the blackest crags of all where a vast ruin humped against the final cliff. On the

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Gasping his shock