"George R. R. Martin - In the House of the Worm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

"The Manworm is the living flesh of the White Worm,├втВмтАв Riess said in a shrill, almost hysterical voice.
├втВм┼УThe priests shape him in that image, purifying, making him more fit to lead."

"And less fit to live,├втВмтАв the Meatbringer said. ├втВм┼УUntil the pain drives him mad or the surgery kills him.
You, Groff? Do you believe that? Or you, freethinker? See. I do recall you."

Annelyn flushed and brandished his rapier. Groff was a fierce bearded statue of bronze-made-flesh.
├втВм┼УSo it is in the lore of the bronze knights,├втВмтАв he said, ├втВм┼Уand we remember things the Manworm has
forgotten."

"It shocks me that the Manworm remembers anything,├втВмтАв the Meatbringer said. ├втВм┼УBut I have talked
to knights, too, learned their ├втВм╦Ьsecret├втВмтДв lore, listened to stories of a long-ago war. The grouns
remember better. They have legends of the coming of the yaga-la-hai, who changed all the high
burrows. The grouns are the First People, you know. The worm-children they call the Second People. I
was a great puzzle to them at first, with my four limbs and my eyes that see, neither First nor Second. But
I brought them flesh and learned their tongue, and so taught them of the Third People. You mock groun
secrets, and in truth they are as rotting as you, yet they know things. They remember the Changemasters,
their great enemies and the greatest friends of the yaga-la-hai, who wore the theta as a sigil, and in times
long gone made the spiders and the worms and a thousand other things. Here, where I live, was where
they sculptured and shaped the stuff of life, so the yaga-la-hai might live. Here they fashioned the blood
worms that still afflict the grouns, the light-hunger that drives them upward to their deaths if they catch it,
and the huge white eaterworms that multiply and grow more terrible every day. You, all of you, have
forgotten these things, but the Changemasters were gods greater than your White Worm could ever be.
Grouns flinch before the theta. With good reason. The yaga-la-hai do not remember this room and the
grouns had forgotten where it was, but I found it, and slowly I learn its secrets. I learned about your
Manworm here. After the grouns had brought darkness to the burrows and killed most of the
Changemasters, one was left. But he had lost all the runes, and he despaired. Still, he was the ruler. The
yaga-la-hai followed him. And he remembered how worms, a thousand kinds of worms, had been
men's best weapons against the grouns, and he knew how worms flourished better down here than men.
So the last Changemasters trained the surgeon-priests in a few arts and had himself made into a great
worm. Then he died. You see? He wanted to fashion the Third People. He was a Changemaster, but a
poor one, an animal. Since then, all the leaders of the yaga-la-hai are fashioned into worms. But no
Third People exist. Except for myself. As I learn more Changemaster secrets, I will shape the Third
People, and they will not be like the Manworm."

"You will shape nothing,├втВмтАв Groff said. He started forward, and torchlight ran up and down the
sharp-honed blade of his ax.

"Oh?├втВмтАв said the Meatbringer. And suddenly he reached out, and seized the two great doors on either
side of him, and swung them shut behind him, ducking beneath the whistling blade of Groff's ax in the
same fluid motion. The doors came together with a great rending clang.

Darkness.

And the Meatbringer.

Laughing.

Annelyn thrust wildly into the black with his rapier, at the spot where the Meatbringer had been last.
Nothing. He pierced air. ├втВм┼УRiess,├втВмтАв he called, frantic. ├втВм┼УThe torch, our torch.├втВмтАв He heard