"Lumley,.Brian.-.Titus.Crow.3.-.Clock.Of.Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)
dreamland. We used our cloaks very discreetly, usually traveling in the hours immediately before dawn. Thus, distance was no problem.
'Those first two days were wonderful; then in Ath -'Ath is an unpleasant little place bordering on Istharta. Neither Titus nor I liked it much and we did not stay there long. But while we were there Titus was given a lead to follow. It was a false lead, but we did not know that then. We were told by a man of dreamland - a traitor, in league with the dark forces of nightmare, a dupe of powers unnatural in dream who must have somehow known who we were and why we were here - that we should go to the Isle of Oriab, across the Southern Sea. He told us to go to Bahama, the great seaport, where we would find a black galley whose captain would be able to tell us all we needed to know of the troubles besetting dreamland, perhaps even how to deal with those troubles.
'We went to Bahama, arriving late in the evening when the wharves were all in darkness. The captain of the black galley, a squat little man who kept himself in the shadows, told us to go to a certain tavern, that he would meet us there upon the morrow. The tavern was a wharfside place, none too clean and somehow depressing, where furtive figures seemed to hide in dark comers. But our ' room was the best in the house, and the food and wine seemed excellent. . . The food, the wine too - they were drugged! We woke up captives of the black galley, and ... but the rest you know.'
De Marigny nodded. 'Well, it's all over now. And look there!' he pointed sharply down into the darkness. 'That's it, that white rock there. It's not too high or steep for you to climb down from should . . . should anything happen. And it's a landmark I can't miss when I return with Titus. Down we go, Tiania.'
He caused the cloak to drop them gently down to a wide ledge halfway up the peak that jutted stark and white from
the desert's sands. There he deposited Tiania, telling her that it would not be long before he brought Titus to her, and then that they would all three be in Ulthar in time for breakfast. It was not to be so, but de Marigny could not know that.
To Titus Crow, waiting behind the parapet wall of the tower only a mile from the unquiet center of Dylath-Leen, it seemed an inordinately long time indeed before de Marigny came silently winging down once more out of the night to alight beside him like some great bat. 'Henri,' Crow whispered, 'is all well?'
The low hush of his voice was not unwarranted. The streets below were alive with torch-bearing search parties, so that Dylath-Leen was a maze of redly flickering flames and leaping shadows - and now from all directions could be heard the hideous, ululant alert-cries of the horned ones from nighted Leng. Indeed the sound of hurrying footsteps even echoed up to them from the street directly beneath their tall refuge.
'So far so good,' de Marigny breathlessly answered. 'Tiania is safe for the moment. I think we're just about in the clear, Titus. This flying cloak of yours must take all the credit, though. Without it I could have done nothing.'
'The cloak is yours now, Henri - you've earned it. Here, tuck this sword into your belt. Now, just let me get a firm
grip. Right, up we go!'
More slowly this time, feeling the burden of Titus Crow's greater weight, the flying cloak lifted the two friends into the night air over Dylath-Leen, and both men were greatly relieved when the flickering torchfires had dimmed and fallen away below and behind them. It was not long then before other fires sprang up in red relief to their front, and soon after that they were flying high above the watchfires at the rim of the city.
'A mile, perhaps two miles more,' said de Marigny.
"There's a jagged fang of white rock sticking up out of the desert. That's where I left Tiania. We'll be there in another minute or so.'
'And what then, Henri - a series of short hops to Ulthar?'
'Something like that, I think, yes.'
'Good. And as soon as we've rested up a little and found safe lodging for Tiania, then we're off to Ilek-Vad. I want to know just exactly what's going on there. Yes, and you might even find time to tell me what the devil you're doing here in Earth's dreamland, when by all rights you should be well on your way to Elysia.'
'I am on my way to Elysia, Titus. This is the only way I'm ever likely to get there. Kthanid asked me to come, telling me that you and Tiania were in trouble. I'll tell you the whole story later. As for Ilek-Vad: yes, I, too, would like to know what's going on there. After all, that's where my father is. I don't remember a great deal about him, but -'
"There's your white rock dead ahead!' Crow suddenly cried, cutting his friend off short. He pointed eagerly. 'And there's Tiania, I can see her waving. Oh, well done, Henri. You're not an inch off course!'
Controlling the cloak's descent, de Marigny brought them drifting down toward the ledge where the girl-goddess waited. She waved again, reaching out her arms to them as they approached out of the darkness.
It was only then - as the two men felt a rushing blast of air, a buffeting gust much stronger and quite different from any normal draught they might expect to meet during their steady flight above the desert - that they realized something was greatly amiss. The freakish, turbulent eddy tossed them to one side, so that they crashed shoulders-on into the sheer wall of the rock at a point some thirty feet to one side of Tiania. Here the drop was sheer to the desert's floor, and de Marigny had to manipulate the cloak's studs
'Night-gaunt!' cried de Marigny, fighting to regain control of the cloak as it was caught again in the wash of the creature's wings. 'A great gray gaunt!'
'Put me down on that ledge, quick!' Crow shouted. 'That damn thing must be after Tiania! Look - here it comes again!'
For the third time they felt the turbulence of the huge night-gaunt's wings as they flapped in leathery sentience, suspending their rubbery owner directly over the girl who now crouched terrified on the ledge of the white rock. Now they were able to get a reasonably clear view of the thing, better by far than de Marigny's previous look at such creatures received through Kthanid's telepathic knowledge-imparting.
The horror, while being twice as big as any of its loathsome species viewed before, was nevertheless endowed with the same noxiously thin outline as lesser gaunts and wore precisely the same aspect. Horns sprouted from its faceless head; it was barb-tailed and bat-winged; its skin looked rubbery, cold, and damp - and, possibly worst of all, it was utterly silent.
Then de Marigny was rushed abruptly aloft as Crow let go his hold on the cloak's harness to leap to the ledge close to Tiania. Yet again struggling to bring the cloak under his control, de Marigny all but missed what followed next. As it was he heard Crow's cry of rage and horror . . . and he saw the gray shape of that giant among night-gaunts as it lifted skyward on silently beating pinions, bearing aloft the wriggling, shrieking, slender form of Tiania grasped in prehensile paws!
Atal's Elixir
On the wide ledge of the white rock's peak high above the desert, Titus Crow raged silently in the night and shook his scimitar at the diminishing gray shape that flapped away against a background of strange constellations. By the time de Marigny had landed beside him, however, the naked giant had recovered his equilibrium sufficiently to cry out in a half-choked voice: 'Quickly, man, out of the cloak! Hurry, Henri, I must get after that monster!'
Seeing instantly how useless and time-consuming it would be to argue - aware that the cloak was designed to operate at maximum efficiency with only one passenger and that it was Titus Crow's prerogative to pursue the huge night-gaunt and rescue Tiania, if such was at all possible - de Marigny immediately unfastened the cloak's harness and helped Crow into it. Then, without another word spoken, Crow grabbed his friend around the waist with one arm, his other hand flying to the collar studs that controlled the cloak. Another moment saw de Marigny deposited none too gently on the desert's sandy floor.
Rising again into the night, Crow called: 'Can you find your way back to Ulthar, Henri?'
'I know the way,' de Marigny shouted back. 'Five miles or so from here I pick up the Skai and simply follow the river. No need to worry about me, Titus. I'll see you in Ulthar . . . both of you! Good luck!'
'Thanks. I fancy I'll need all the luck I can get,' Crow's answer came back from the heights. 'Take care, Henri.' For a moment or two he was a vague batshape against the blue crystal stars, then he was gone.
Half an hour and a little more than two miles later, as he strode out over the desert dunes in the direction of Ulthar, led on by the sweet scent of night-blooming flowers on the banks of the Skai, de Marigny glanced for the tenth time apprehensively over his shoulder. It was his imagination, of course, but for the last twenty minutes or so, since shortly after he set out from the foot of the white rock pinnacle, he had had the feeling that he was being followed. Yet each time he looked back there was nothing to be seen, only the low dunes and occasionally the rock jutting starkly against the night-dark sky.
Climbing to the top of a high dune, he glanced back yet again and this time spied in the distance the darkly looming basalt towers of Dylath-Leen. No healthy lights showed in the city, only a dull glow from the watchfires at its rim. It shocked de Marigny to be reminded how close he still was to that nightmare-cursed city, and he determined there and then to increase his distance from it as rapidly as humanly possible. It did not seem likely that the horned ones could be on his trail already, and yet -He shuddered and felt the short hairs rise at the back of bis neck, a reaction not alone engendered of the desert's chill, and turned once more toward friendly Ulthar; but even as he turned he saw a movement in the corner of his eye. Something had slipped silently from shadow to shadow less than a hundred yards to his rear. Now he remembered something Grant Enderby had told him -about how expert the horned ones were at tracking their prey - and he shuddered again.
Quickly de Marigny slid down the side of the dune and looked about for a vantage point. He ran for a boulder that lay half-buried in the sand and hid behind it. As he went to his knees in the shadows he heard a distant but distinct wail rising in the night air. The cry reached its highest note, quavered inquiringly, then died into eerie
silence. It was almost immediately answered by a second call, from a point de Marigny judged to be just beyond the tall dune; and while these were not the ululant alert cries with which he was now familiar, nevertheless the dreamer knew that they were given voice by those same horned horrors from Leng!
Now de Marigny shot frantic glances to left and right, his eyes searching the desert's starlit gloom for areas of deeper shadow that might hide his onward flight toward the river. And as he did so there came to his ears many more of the inquiring cries - except that now certain of the creatures who uttered those hideous bayings obviously flanked him! Indeed, one of those cries had seemed to come from somewhere behind where he crouched, from the direction of the Skai itself. And this cry had been different in that it had seemed somehow - triumphant?
So intent was he upon gauging the exact directions whence these latter sounds had issued that he almost failed to hear the soft footfalls in the sand. Too late, he did hear them, and he turned with a single gasp of horror in time to see only the jeweled hilt of a scimitar in the instant before it struck him between the eyes . . .
When de Marigny regained consciousness he believed for a moment that he had somehow returned through the barriers of dream to the waking world. But not so. Though the sun stood at its zenith and hurt his eyes behind his fluttering eyelids, the dreamer knew that indeed he was still a prisoner of dreamland; more than ever a prisoner, for the buildings and towers that loomed blackly upwards before him, and the steps that sent knives of pain lancing into his spine where he was tied to them were a basalt quarried in dreamland. This could only be Dylath-Leen; and sure enough, if he tilted his head right back at an angle he could see - the great ruby! 'Ah, our friend from the waking world of men has finally
returned to us - with a very sick head, no doubt!' The squat speaker leaned carelessly on the hilt of his scimitar, its point digging into the rough grain of the steps and its blade curving uncomfortably close to de Marigny's rib cage. The coarse black silk of the horned one's baggy breeches was stained and grimed, the red sash at his waist festooned with knives. He wore huge rubies in the rings on his fat fingers and an evil grin upon his face, in which veiled, slightly slanted eyes regarded de Marigny
almost hungrily.
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