"C. L. Moore - Julhi" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

to death. I thought you were death coming for me, as it will come at any
instant now.'' Her voice failed on the last syllables, so that she spoke in a
fading gasp as if terror had her by the throat and would not let her breathe.
He felt her trembling against his arm.
Many questions crowded up to his lips, but the most urgent * found utterance.
' 'What will come?'' he demanded.' 'What is the danger?''
"The haunters of Vonng," she whispered fearfully. "It is to feed them that
Julhi's slaves bring men here. And those among us who are disobedient must
feed the haunters too. I have suffered her displeasure-and I must die."
"The haunters-what are they? Something with a touch like a live wire had me
awhile ago, but it let me loose again. Could that have been-"
"Yes, one of them. My coming must have disturbed it. But as to what they are,
I don't know. They come in the darkness. They are of Julhi's race, I think,
but not flesh and blood, like her. I-I can't explain."
"And Julhi-?"
"Is-well, simply Julhi. You don't know?"
' 'A woman? Some queen, perhaps? You must remember I don't even know where I
am."
"No, not a woman. At least, not as I am. And much more than queen. A great
sorceress, I have thought, or perhaps a goddess. I don't know. It makes me ill
to think, here in Vonng. It makes me ill to-to-oh, I couldn 't bear it! I
think I was going mad! It's better to die than go mad, isn't it? But I'm so
afraid-"
Her voice trailed away incoherently, and she cowered shivering against him in
the dark.
Smith hid been listening above her shuddering whispers for any tiniest sound
in the night. Now he turned his mind more fully to what she had been saying,
though with an ear still alert for any noises about them.
"What do you mean? What was it you did?"
"There is a-a light," murmured Apri vaguely. "I've always seen it, even from
babyhood, whenever I closed my eyes and tried to make it come. A light, and
queer shapes and shadows moving through it, like reflections from somewhere I
never saw before. But somehow it got out of control, and then I began to catch
the strangest thought-waves beating
through, and after a while Julhi came-through the light. I don't know-I can't
understand. But she makes me summon up the light for her now, and then queer
things happen inside my head, and I'm ill and dizzy, and-and I think I'm going
mad. But she makes me do it. And it grows worse, you know, each time worse,
until I can't bear it. Then she's angry, and. that dreadful still look comes
over her face-and this time she sent me here. The haunters will come, now-"
Smith tightened his arm comfortingly about her, thinking that she was perhaps
a little mad already.
' 'How can we get out of here ? " he demanded, shaking her gently to call back
her wandering mind. "Where are we?"
"In Vonng. Don't you understand? On the island where Vonng 's ruins are."
He remembered then. He had heard of Vonng, somewhere. The ruins of an old city
lost in the tangle of vines upon a small island a few hours off the coast of
Shann. There were legends that it had been a great city once, and a strange
one. A king with curious powers had built it, a king in league with beings
better left unnamed, so the whispers ran. The stone had been quarried with