"Eternal Champion - 01 - The Eternal Champion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

The Eternal Champion
By Micheal Moorcock

PROLOGUE

They called for me.

That is all I really know.

They called for me and I went to them. I could not do otherwise. The will of the
whole of humanity was a strong thing. It smashed through the ties of time and
the chains of space and dragged me to itself.

Why was I chosen? I still do not know, though they thought they had told me. And
now it is done and I am here. I shall always be here and if, as wise men tell
me, time is cyclic, then I shall one day return to the part of the cycle I left
and which I knew as the twentieth century A.D. in the Age of Men, for (it was no
doing or wish of mine) I am immortal.




CHAPTER ONE

A CALL ACROSS TIME


Between wakefulness and sleeping we have most of us had the illusion of hearing
voices, scraps of conversation, phrases spoken in unfamiliar tones. Sometimes we
attempt to attune our minds so that we can hear more, but we are rarely
successful. These illusions are called hypnagogic hallucinations-the beginning
of the dreams we shall later experience as we sleep.

There was a woman. A child. A city. An occupation. A name: John Daker. A sense
of frustration. A need for fulfilment. Though I loved them. I know I loved them.

It was in the winter. I lay miserably in a cold bed and I stared through the
window at the moon. I do not remember my exact thoughts. Something to do with
mortality and the futility of human existence, no doubt. Then, between
wakefulness and sleeping. I began every night to hear voices . . .

At first I dismissed them, expecting to fall immediately asleep, but they
continued, and I began trying to listen to them, thinking, perhaps, to receive
some message from my unconscious. But the most commonly repeated word was
gibberish to me:

Erekose . . . Erekose . . . Erekose . . .

I could not recognise the language, though it had a peculiar familiarity. The
closest language I could place it with was the language of Sioux Indians, but I