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

He reached over and turned the switch again. The lights of the room sprang up.

"Jim," I said, "it can't be real! What is it? Some devilish illusion in the glass?"

He unfastened the bandages about his chest.

"The claw you saw had seven talons," he answered quietly. "Well, look at this."

Across the white flesh of his breast, from left shoulder to the lower ribs on the right, ran seven healing
furrows. They looked as though they had been made by a gigantic steel comb that had been drawn
across him. They gave one the thought they had been ploughed.
"The claw made these," he said as quietly as before.

"Ward," he went on, before I could speak, "I wanted you to see--what you've seen. I didn't know
whether you would see it. I don't know whether you'll believe me even now. I don't suppose I would if I
were in your place--still--"

He walked over and threw the hood upon the Dragon Glass.

"I'm going to tell you," he said. "I'd like to go through it--uninterrupted. That's why I cover it.

"I don't suppose," he began slowly--"I don't suppose, Ward, that you've ever heard of Rak the
WonderWorker, who lived somewhere back at the beginning of things, nor how the Greatest
Wonder-Worker banished him somewhere outside the world?"

"No," I said shortly, still shaken by the sight.

"It's a big part of what I've got to tell you," he went on. "Of course you'll think it rot, but--I came across
the legend in Tibet first. Then I ran across it again--with the names changed, of course--when I was
getting away from China.

"I take it that the gods were still fussing around close to man when Rak was born. The story of his
parentage is somewhat scandalous. When he grew older Rak wasn't satisfied with just seeing wonderful
things being done. He wanted to do them himself, and he--well, he studied the method. After a while the
Greatest Wonder-Worker ran across some of the things Rak had made, and he found them admirable--a
little too admirable. He didn't like to destroy the lesser wonderworker because, so the gossip ran, he felt
a sort of responsibility. So he gave Rak a place somewhere--outside the world--and he gave him power
over every one out of so many millions of births to lead or lure or sweep that soul into his domain so that
he might build up a people--and over his people Rak was given the high, the low, and the middle justice.

"And outside the world Rak went. He fenced his domain about with clouds. He raised a great mountain,
and on its flank he built a city for the men and women who were to be his. He circled the city with
wonderful gardens, and he placed in the gardens many things, gome good and some very--terrible. He
set around the mountain's brow seven moons for a diadem, and he fanned behind the mountain a fire
which is the fire of life, and through which the moons pass eternally to be born again." Herndon's voice
sank to a whisper.

"Through which the moons pass," he said. "And with them the souls of the people of Rak. They pass
through the fires and are born again--and again--for ten thousand lives. I have seen the moons of Rak