"Michael Moorcock - Corum 3 - The King of the Swords" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

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.

We have already learned how the Mabden followers of
Earl Glandyth-a-Krae (who called themselves the
DenledhyssiтАФor Murderers) killed Prince Corum's
relatives and his nearest kin and thus taught the Prince in
the Scarlet Robe how to hate, how to kill, and how to
desire vengeance. We have heard how Glandyth tortured
Corum and took away a hand and an eye and how Corum

way rescued by the Giant of Laahr and taken to the castle
of the Margravine RhalinaтАФa castle set upon a mount
surrounded by the sea. Though Rhalina was a Mabden
woman (of the gentler folk of Lywm-an-Esh), Corum and
she fell in love. When Glandyth roused the Pony Tribes,
the forest barbarians, to attack the Margravine's castle, she
and Corum sought supernatural aid and thus fell into the
hands of the sorcerer Shool, whose domain was the island
called Svi-an-Fanla-BroolтАФHome of the Gorged God.
And now Corum had direct experience of the morbid,
unfamiliar powers at work in the world. Shool spoke of
dreams and realities. ("I see you are beginning to argue in
Mabden terms," he told Corum. "It is just as well for you,
if you wish to survive in this Mabden dream." тАФ "It is a
dream . . . ?" said Corum.тАФ"Of sorts. Real enough. It
is what you might call the dream of a God. There again you
might say that it is a dream that a God has allowed to
become reality. I refer of course to the Knight of the
Swords, who rules the Five Planes.")

With Rhalina his prisoner Shool could make a bargain
with Corum. He gave him two giftsтАФthe Hand of Kwll and
the Eye of RhynnтАФto replace his own missing organs.
These jeweled and alien things were once the property of
two brother gods known as the Lost Gods since they
mysteriously vanished.

Now Shool told Corum what he must do if he wished to
see Rhalina saved. Corum must go to the realm of the
Knight of the SwordsтАФLord Arioch of Chaos, who ruled
the Five Planes since he had wrested them from the control
of Lord Arkyn of Law. There Corum must find the heart of
the Knight of the SwordsтАФa thing which was kept in a
tower of his castle and which enabled him to take material
shape on Earth and thus wield power (without a material