"Lumley,.Brian.-.Titus.Crow.3.-.Clock.Of.Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

And suddenly the dreamer was aware of his pain. His skin felt completely dehydrated, baked dry under the noon sun; his back, which through long hours of unconsciousness had lain across the sharp comers of three of the dais steps, felt as though it might break in pieces at any moment; his head ached abominably and felt grotesquely swollen. Naked, bis entire body was bruised from being brutally dragged across miles of desert sands; bis lips, tongue, and throat were parched, and leather thongs cut into his wrists and ankles where they were tied.
'Dreamer, we are going to kill you!' This time the speaker emphasized his words by idly kicking de Marigny's bruised ribs. De Marigny barely held back the cry of agony that sprang to his lips, managing at the same time to lift his head up high enough to see that he was ringed by perhaps twenty of the horned ones. Their leader, the speaker, wore no shoes, and de Marigny knew that the extreme pain he had felt when his tender ribs were kicked was due to the fact that his torturer had hooves instead of feet.
'We are going to kill you,' that monstrous being said again, 'but it is entirely up to you how we do it. You can die slowly, very slowly, losing first your hands, then your feet, and your so-called manhood. Then your ears, your eyes, your tongue at the very end. It would take at least a day, perhaps two. Or you could die the hard way!'

He paused to let that last sink in, then continued: 'On the other hand, we could be merciful.'
'I doubt,' de Marigny groaned, 'if your sort know the meaning of mercy.'
'Ah, but we do! For instance, it would be merciful to lop off your head with a single stroke - but before you are granted that boon, there are several things I want to know.'
The horned one waited expectantly but de Marigny made no answer.
'If I have your eyes propped open with slivers of wood, and your head tied back, you would very quickly, very painfully go blind. The sun is singularly unkind to those who stare so at her. But before that becomes necessary-'
' You want to know something.'
'Correct! You have been listening to me. That is good. There are several things I wish to know, yes. One: how did you come into Dylath-Leen so secretively, and manage to kill three of our colleagues so efficiently before they could even raise the alarm? Two: how were you able to smuggle your friends so cleverly, so swiftly away, when you yourself were later caught? Three: where are your friends now, for we must bring them back here in order that they may keep an important appointment. And finally, four: what is in this vial, which was all you carried other than your knife and a length of rope?'
The elixir! De Marigny gasped involuntarily as his questioner mentioned Atal's elixir. He had forgotten about the vial until now. The horned one heard the dreamer's gasp and was quick to note how his eyes had widened fractionally, however momentarily. 'Eh?' he grunted. 'Something I said? About this strange little bottle of liquid, perhaps?' He held the vial out, between thumb and forefinger, where de Marigny could see it.
'A man, with no food, no water, coming out of nowhere

with nothing but a knife, a rope, and this - and yet you somehow succeeded in rescuing your two friends. Amazing! And such a little thing, this vial, to sustain the three of you across the desert to Ulthar. What does
it contain?'
De Marigny's brain whirled as he sought an advantageous way to answer the horned one's question. 'A ... a poison,' he finally offered. 'It contains a deadly poison.' His questioner lifted his scimitar, allowing its point to scrape slowly up the line of de Marigny's ribs, and peered intently at its shiny blade. For a long moment he was silent, then: 'Oh, no, no, no, my friend.' His voice was low now, oily, deadly; his eyes glittered dangerously. 'That will never do. A little vial of poison - no more than a dozen or so drops - to murder an entire city?'
De Marigny writhed both physically and mentally, like a great intelligent moth pinned to some entomologist's card. He had hoped that his interrogator would make him drink his own 'poison' - which by now should have properly fermented - but the ruse had not worked. Then, like a flash of lightning illuminating the dark clouds of the dreamer's mind, there came a scene remembered from his youth. From a book, perhaps, or a cartoon viewed in some moviehouse of childhood. It was the picture of a rabbit: Br'er Rabbit! And suddenly de Marigny believed that there might after all be a way out. He could but try.
'If I tell you what is in the vial - if I reveal the secret of the magical potion it contains - will you swear to set
me free unharmed?'
The horned one pretended to give de Marigny's proposal some consideration, fooling the dreamer not at all, then grated: 'Agreed. After all, it is not you we want but the two you stole from us. If what you have to tell us has some bearing on their present whereabouts, then we will
set you free.' Now it was de Marigny's turn to feign deliberation.

Finally he said, 'It is an elixir to increase one's strength tenfold. One sip of the potion - one drop - and a man may leap the tallest dune at one bound, stride over the desert to Ulthar in the space of a single hour, fight like ten men to overcome tremendous odds, aye, and never once feel the effort.'
The horned one folded the vial carefully in his fat fist and stared at de Marigny intently. 'Is this true?'
'How else do you suppose I came out of the night, without provisions, defeating your three guardsmen like so many children to be tossed aside? How else do you explain the utter absence of the two I rescued, gone now like the wind over the desert? Doubtless they are even now in Ulthar, at the Temple of the Elder Ones, where Atal-'
'Atair hissed his interrogator. 'What do you know
of Atal?'
'Why, it was Atal gave me the elixir, to speed me on my quest!'
A murmuring swelled in the crowd of horned ones standing about, mutterings of hatred, of awe and amazement - of greed for the magic elixir, if elixir it was. Now de Marigny's questioner opened his fist once more to stare lustfully at the tiny bottle it contained. Then his expression grew very sly.
'No, I do not believe you. I think that after all it is perhaps a poison, and that you would trick me into tasting it. If so, then -' He quickly unstoppered the vial and thrust it toward de Marigny's face. The dreamer, expecting that this might happen, lifted up his head and opened his mouth wide, straining his neck to reach the tiny bottle.
Immediately the horned one snatched back his arm. He grinned evilly. 'So your story is true! It... must be.' His grin was quickly replaced by a look of strange anticipation. He licked his wide lips and his hand actually trembled as once more he studied the vial with wide eyes.

'Let me try it, Garl,' came a guttural rasp from one who stood behind the leader. 'No, me,' another voice demanded. 'Hold!' Garl held up his hand. "There is still one question unanswered.' He turned his gaze once more to de Marigny's face. 'If indeed you tell the truth, how was it we caught you so easily? Why did you not escape, like your friends, by leaping away over the dunes and speeding to Ulthar?'
'Simple.' De Marigny attempted a shrug as best he could. 'I neglected to heed Atal's warning.' 'Which was?'
'Too much of the elixir affects a man like too much wine, slowing him down and dulling his senses for a while. After freeing the other two dreamers, thinking to make myself stronger and faster still, I took a second sip of the elixir. Before I knew it -'
'We caught you. Hmm! I believe you, yes. And I also believe that with the aid of your elixir we might even recapture the ones you freed. But first the elixir's powers must be tested.'
'I'll test it, Garl,' came a concerted babble of cries from the crowding horned ones. 'Me!'
'No, let me be the one, Garl!' De Marigny's inquisitor turned on his colleagues. 'What? You'd all like to be stronger than Garl, would you?' He laughed and shook a fat finger at them. 'None of that, my lads. The elixir is far too precious to waste on fools and hotheads. Later, perhaps, I'll handpick a raiding party -and tonight we'll look for certain absent friends in Ulthar-but right now I myself will test the illustrious Atal's elixir! Stand back, all of you!'
Though the sun blazed high overhead, it was not the heat of that golden orb that brought fresh streams of sweat to de Marigny's brow but the slow and deliberate way in

which Garl of Leng lifted one hand up to his alien face -that and the way his other hand lifted high his scimitar.
'If you have lied to me, dreamer, then at least you'll have earned yourself a quick death. That is the only bonus such lies will bring you, however. And now -' He barely touched his lips to the rim of the tilted vial.
First a look of puzzlement changed the horned one's features, then a frown. 'A not unpleasant taste,' he began, 'though somewhat -' Then he reeled drunkenly backward down the dais steps, his scimitar falling with a clatter from a suddenly spastic hand that clawed its way to his throat. He swayed at the foot of the dais for a second only, bulging eyes fixed upon the vial still clenched in one shaking hand.
Then his outline wavered; he seemed to puff outwards as his flesh became a mist; finally his clothes fell in a silken rain to the cobbles of the square. The vial fell too, cushioned by the coarse silks. Hanging in the air, all that remained of Garl was a rapidly diminishing echo, a thin squeal of outrage and horror!
Then de Marigny's hoarse laughter broke the stunned silence. Hearing the derision in the dreamer's voice, the awed crowd of horned ones was galvanized into activity. As one of them stooped to snatch up the fallen vial and others fought over the remaining silks, the rest ringed de Marigny on the steps. Scimitars whispered from scabbards and flashed in the sun, and for a moment the dreamer thought that he was done for. Then -
'Hold, lads!' shouted the one who had snatched up the vial. 'I, Barzt, now lead you - and I claim the right to avenge Garl myself. But first there is something I must know.' He tickled de Marigny's throat with the point of his scimitar. 'You, man from the waking world, dreamer. Where have you sent Garl with your dark magic?'
'He's gone to a hell worse than anything even you could imagine,' de Marigny chuckled. 'Worse by far than any

torture you could apply to me. You see, the "elixir" was a poison after all, the key to a gate which opens to the blackest hells. Even now Garl screams in eternal agony, where he will curse me in his torment forever; but I am safe from him here in dreamland. Kill me now, if you will, for I am satisfied that Garl has paid for the deaths of my two friends from the waking world. They, too, drank of the poison rather than suffer the indignities of your vile paws. Kill me - kill me now!' He offered up his throat.