"A. E. Merritt - Through the Dragon Glass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

But they were alive, those dragons. There was never so much life in metal and wood since Al-Akram, the
Sculptor of ancient Ad, carved the first crocodile, and the jealous Almighty breathed life into it for a
punishment!

And last you saw that the topaz disk that sent up the little yellow flames was the top of a metal sphere
around which coiled a thirteenth dragon, thin and red, and biting its scorpion-tipped tail.
It took your breath away, the first glimpse of the Dragon Glass. Yes, and the second and third glimpse,
too--and every other time you looked at it.

"Where did you get it?" I asked, a little shakily.

Herndon said evenly: "It was in a small hidden crypt in the Imperial Palace. We broke into the crypt quite
by"--he hesitated--"well, call it accident. As soon as I saw it I knew I must have it. What do you think of
it?"

"Think!" I cried. "Think! Why, it's the most marvelous thing that the hands of man ever made! What is
that stone? Jade?"

"I'm not sure," said Herndon. "But come here. Stand just in front of me."

He switched out the lights in the room. He turned another switch, and on the glass oposite me three
shaded electrics threw their rays into its mirror-like oval.

"Watch!" said Herndon. "Tell me what you see!"

I looked into the glass. At first I could see nothing but the rays shining farther, farther--back into infinite
distances, it seemed. And then.

"Good God!" I cried, stiffening with horror. "Jim, what hellish thing is this?"

"Steady, old man," came Herndon's voice. There was relief and a curious sort of joy in it. "Steady; tell me
what you see."

I said: "I seem to see through infinite distances--and yet what I see is as close to me as though it were just
on the other side of the glass. I see a cleft that cuts through two masses of darker green. I see a claw, a
gigantic, hideous claw that stretches out through the cleft. The claw has seven talons that open and
close--open and close. Good God, such a claw, Jim! It is like the claws that reach out from the holes in
the lama's hell to grip the blind souls as they shudder by!"

"Look, look farther, up through the cleft, above the claw. It widens. What do you see?"

I said: "I see a peak rising enormously high and cutting the sky like a pyramid. There are flashes of flame
that dart from behind and outline it. I see a great globe of light like a moon that moves slowly out of the
flashes; there is another moving across the breast of the peak; there is a third that swims into the flame at
the farthest edge--"

"The seven moons of Rak," whispered Herndon, as though to himself. "The seven moons that bathe in the
rose flames of Rak which are the fires of life and that circle Lalil like a diadem. He upon whom the seven
moons of Rak have shone is bound to Lalil for this life, and for ten thousand lives."