"A. E. Merritt - Dwellers in the mirage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

its end.

Each side of the end of the shallow gorge was commanded by stone forts.
They were manned by dozens of the Uighurs. They shouted as we drew
near, and again I heard the word "Dwayanu" repeated again and again.

The heavy gates of the right-hand fort swung open. We went through,
into a passage under the thick wall. We trotted across a wide
enclosure. We passed out of it through similar gates.

I looked upon an oasis hemmed in by the bare mountains. It had once
been the site of a fair-sized city, for ruins dotted it everywhere.
What had possibly been the sources of the river had dwindled to a brook
which sunk into the sands not far from where I stood. At the right of


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this brook there was vegetation and trees; to the left of it was a
desolation. The road passed through the oasis and ran on across this
barren. It stopped at, or entered, a huge square-cut opening in the
rock wall more than a mile away, an opening that was like a door in
that mountain, or like the entrance to some gigantic Egyptian tomb.

We rode straight down into the fertile side. There were hundreds of the
ancient stone buildings here, and fair attempts had been made to keep
some in repair. Even so, their ancientness struck against my nerves.
There were tents among the trees also. And out of the buildings and
tents were pouring Uighurs, men, women and children. There must have
been a thousand of the warriors alone. Unlike the men at the
guardhouses, these watched me in awed silence as I passed.

We halted in front of a time-bitten pile that might have been a
palace--five thousand years or twice that ago. Or a temple. A colonnade
of squat, square columns ran across its front. Heavier ones stood at
its entrance. Here we dismounted. The stallion and my guide's horse
were taken by our escort. Bowing low at the threshold, my guide invited
me to enter.

I stepped into a wide corridor, lined with spearsmen and lighted by
torches of some resinous wood. The Uighur leader walked beside me. The
corridor led into a huge room--high-ceilinged, so wide and long that the
flambeaux on the walls made its centre seem the darker. At the fax end
of this place was a low dais, and upon it a stone table, and seated at
this table were a number of hooded men.

As I drew nearer, I felt the eyes of these hooded men intent upon me,
and saw that they were thirteen-six upon each side and one seated in a
larger chair at the table's end. High cressets of metal stood about