"Michael Moorcock - Corum 1 - The Knight Of The Swords" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

12 The Knight of the Swords

those days, called his race `Mabden').
The Mabden lived brief lives and bred prodigiously. Within a few centuries they rose to dominate the westerly continent on which they had evolved. Superstition stopped them from sending many of their ships towards Vadhagh and Nhadragh lands for another century or two, but gradually they gained courage when no resistance was offered. They began to feel jealous of the older races; they began to feel malicious.
The Vadhagh and the Nhadragh were not aware of this. They had dwelt a million or more years upon the planet which now, at last, seemed at rest. They knew of the Mabden but considered them not greatly different from other beasts. Though continuing to indulge their tradiнtional hatreds of one another, the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh spent their long hours in considering abstracнtions, in the creation of works of art and the like. Rational, sophisticated, at one with themselves, these older races were unable to believe in the changes that had come. Thus, as it almost always is, they ignored the signs.
There was no exchange of knowledge between the two ancient enemies, even though they had fought their last battle many centuries before.
The Vadhagh lived in family groups occupying isolated castles scattered across a continent called by them Bro-anнVadhagh. There was scarcely any communication between these families, for the Vadhagh had long since lost the impulse to travel. The Nhadragh lived in their cities built on the islands in the reas to the north west of Bro-anнVadhagh. They, also, had little contact, even with their closest kin. Both races reckoned themselves invulnerable. Both were wrong.
Upstart Man was beginning to breed and spread like a pestilence across the world. This pestilence struck down the old races wherever it touched them. And it was not

Book one 13

only death that Man brought; but terror, too. Wilfully, he made of the older world nothing but ruins and bones. Unwittingly, he brought psychic and supernatural disrupнtion of the magnitude which even the Great Old Gods failed to comprehend.
And the Great Old Gods began to know Fear.
And Man, slave of fear, arrogant in his ignorance, continued his sttunbling progress. He was blind to the huge disruptions aroused by his apparently petty ambiнtions. As well, Man was deficient in sensitivity, had no awareness of the multitude of dimensions that filled the universe, each plane intersecting with several others. Not so the Vadhagh or the Nhadragh, who had known what it was to move at will between the dimensions they termed the Five Planes. They had glimpsed and understood the nature of the many planes, other than the Five, through which the Earth moved.
Therefore it seemed a dreadful injustice that these wise races should perish at the hands of creatures who were still little more than animals. It was as if vultures feasted on and squabbled over the paralysed body of the youthful poet who could only stare at them with puzzled eyes as they slowly robbed hi-in of an exquisite existence they would never appreciate, never know they were taking.
'If they valued what they stole, if they knew what they were destroying,' says the old Vadhagh in the story, The Only Autumn Flower, `then I would be consoled.'
It was unjust.
By creating Man, the universe had betrayed the old races.
But it was a perpetual and familiar injustice. The sentient may perceive and love the universe, but the universe cannot perceive and love the sentient. The universe sees no distinction between the multitude of creatures and elements which comprise it: All are equal.
14 The Knight of the Swords

None is favoured. The universe, equipped with nothing but the materials and the power of creation, continues to create: something of this, something of that. It cannot control what it creates and it cannot, it seems, be controlled by its creations (though a few might deceive themselves otherwise). Those who curse the workings of the universe curse that which is deaf. Those who strike out at those workings fight that which is inviolate. Those who shake their fists, shake their fists at blind stars.
But this does not mean that there are some who will not try to do battle with and destroy the invulnerable.
There will always be such beings, sometimes beings of great wisdom, who cannot bear to believe in an insouciant universe.
Prince Corum jhaelen Irsei was one of these. Perhaps the last of the Vadhagh race, he was sometimes known as The Prince in the Scarlet Robe.
This chronicle concerns him.

The Book of Corum

CHAPTER ONE

At Castle Erorn

At Castle Erorn dwelt the family of the Vadhagh prince, Khlonskey. This family had occupied the castle for many cepturies. It loved, exceedingly, the moody sea that washed Erorn's northern walls and the pleasant forest that crept close to her southern flank.
Castle Erorn was so ancient that she seemed to have fфsed entirely with the rock of the huge eminence that overlooked the sea. Outside, it was a splendour of time-

Book one 15

worn turrets and salt-smoothed stones. Within, it had moving walls which changed shape in tune with the elements and changed colour when the wind changed course. And there were rooms full of arrangements of crystals and fountains, playing exquisitely complicated fugues composed by members of the family, some living, some dead. And there were gaileries filled with paintings brushed on velvet, marble and glass by Prince Khlonskey's artist ancestors. And there were libraries filled with manuscripts written by members of both the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh races. And elsewhere in Castle Erorn were rooms of statues, and there were aviaries and menageries, observatories, laboratories, nurseries, gardens, chambers of meditation, surgeries, gymnasia, collections of martial paraphernalia, kitchens, planetaria, museums, conjuratoria, as well as rooms set aside for less specific purposes, or rooms forming the apartments of those who lived in the castle.

Twelve people lived in the castle now, though once five hundred had occupied it. The twelve were Prince Khlonskey, himself, a very ancient being; his wife Colatalarna, who was, in appearance, much younger than her husband; Ilastru and Pholhinra, his twin daughters; Prince Rhanan, his brother; Sertreda, his niece; Corum, his son. The remaining five were retainers, distant cousins of the prince. All had characteristic Vadhagh features: narrow, long skulls; ears that were almost without lobes and tapered flat alongside the head; fine hair that a breeze would make rise like flimsy clouds about their faces; large almond eyes that had yellow centres and purple surrounds; wide, full-upped mouths and skin that was a strange, goldнflecked rose pink. Their bodies were slim and tall and well proportioned and they moved with a leisurely grace that made the human gait seem like the shambling of a crippled ape.
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Occupying themselves chiefly with remote, intellectual pastimes, the family of Prince Khlonskey had had no contact with other Vadhagh folk for two hundred years and had not seen a Nhadragh for three hundred. No news of the outside world had come to them for over a century. Only once had they seen a Mabden, when a specimen had been brought to Castle Erorn by Prince Opash, a naturalist and first cousin to Prince Khlonskey. The Mabden - a female - had been placed in the menageries where it was cared for well, but it lived little more than fifty years and when it died was never replaced. Since then, of course, the Mabden had multiplied and were, it appeared, even now inhabiting large areas of Bro-an-Vadhagh. There were even rumours that some Vadhagh castles had been infested with Mabden who had overwhelmed the inhabitants and eventually destroyed their homes altogether. Prince Khlonskey found this hard to believe. Besides, the speculation was of little interest to him or teis family. There were so many other things to discuss, so many more complex sources of speculation, pleasanter topics of a hundred kinds.

Prince Khlonskey's skin was almost milk-white and so thin that all the vems and muscles were clearly displayed beneath. He had lived for over a thousand years and only recently had age begun to enfeeble him. When teis weakness became unbearable, when teis eyes began to dim, he would end teis life in the manner of the Vadhagh, by going to the Chamber of Vapours and laying himself on the silk quilts and cushions and inhaling the various sweetнsmelling gases until he died. His hair had turned a golden brown with age and the colour of teis eyes had mellowed to a kind of reddish purple with pupils of dark orange. His robes were now ratteer too large for teis body, but, although he carried a staff of plaited platinum in which ruby metal

Book one 17

had been woven, teis bearing was still proud and teis back was not bent.