"Walter M. Miller - The Lost Masters - Volume 01" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

away on the trail that led toward the abbey. The novice whispered a swift blessing after him, and a prayer
for safe wayfaring.
His privacy having been restored, Brother Francis returned the book to his burrow and resumed his
haphazard stonemasonry, not yet troubling himself to investigate the pilgrimтАЩs find. While his starved body
heaved, strained, and staggered under the weight of the rocks, his mind, machinelike kept repeating the
prayer for the certainty of his vocation:
тАЬLibere me, Domine, ab vitiis meis . . . Set me free, O Lord, from my own vices, so that in my
own heart I may be desirous of only Thy will, and be aware of Thy summons if it come . . . ut solius
tuae voluntatis mihi cupidus sim, et vocatinonis tuae conscius si digneris me vocare. Amen.
тАЬSet me free, O Lord, from my own vices, so that in my own heart...тАЭ
A sky-herd of cumulus clouds, on their way to bestow moist blessings on the mountains after
cruelly deceiving the parched desert, began blotting out the sun and trailing dark shadow-shapes across
the blistered land below, offering intermittent but welcome respite from the searing sunlight. When a
racing cloud-shadow wiped its way over the ruins, the novice worked rapidly until the shadow was gone,
then rested until the next bundle of fleece blotted out the sun.
It was quite by accident that Brother Francis finally discovered the pilgrimтАЩs stone. While wandering
thereabouts, he stumbled over the stake which the old man had driven into the ground as a marker. He
found himself on his hands and knees staring at a pair of marks freshly chalked on an ancient stone:
The marks were so carefully drawn that Brother Francis immediately assumed them to be symbols,
but minutes of musing over them left him still bemused. Witch markings perhaps? But no, the old man had
called: тАЬGod-with-you,тАЭ as a witch would not. The novice pried the stone free from the rubble and rolled
it over. As he did so, the rock mound rumbled faintly from within; a small stone clattered down the slope.
Francis danced away from a possible avalanche, but the disturbance was momentary. In the place where
the pilgrimтАЩs rock had been wedged, however, there now appeared a small black hole.
Holes were often inhabited.
But this hole seemed to have been so tightly corked by the pilgrimтАЩs stone that scarcely a flea could
have entered it before Francis had overturned the rock. Nevertheless, he found a stick and gingerly thrust
it into the opening. The stick encountered no resistance. When he released it, the stick slid into the hole
and vanished, as if into a larger underground cavity. He waited nervously. Nothing slithered forth.
He sank to his knees again and cautiously sniffed at the hole. Having noticed neither an animal odor
nor any hint of brimstone, he rolled a bit of gravel into it and leaned closer to listen. The gravel bounced
once, a few feet below the opening, and then kept rattling its way downward, struck something metallic in
passing, and finally came to rest somewhere far below. Echoes suggested an underground opening the
size of a room.
Brother Francis climbed unsteadily to his feet and looked around. He seemed alone, as usual,
except for his companion buzzard which, soaring on high, had been watching him with such interest lately
that other buzzards occasionally left their territories near the horizons and came to investigate.
The novice circled the rubble heap, but found no sign of a second hole. He climbed an adjacent
heap and squinted down the trail. The pilgrim had long since vanished. Nothing moved along the old
roadway, but he caught a fleeting glimpse of Brother Alfred crossing a low hill a mile to the east in search
of firewood near his own Lenten hermitage. Brother Alfred was deaf as a post. There was no one else in
view. Francis foresaw no reason whatever to scream for help, but to estimate in advance the probable
results of such a scream, if the need should arise, seemed only an exercise of prudence. After a careful
scrutiny of the terrain, he climbed down from the mound. Breath needed for screaming would be better
used for running.
He thought of replacing the pilgrimтАЩs stone to cork the hole as before, but the adjacent stones had
shifted slightly so that it no longer fit its previous place in the puzzle. Besides, the gap in the highest tier of
his shelter wall remained unfilled, and the pilgrim was right: the stoneтАЩs size and shape suggested a
probable fit. After only brief misgivings, he hoisted the rock and staggered back to his burrow.
The stone slipped neatly into place. He tested the new wedge with a kick; the tier held fast, even