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

unnamable rites, and the buildings were very queerly shaped, for mysterious
purposes. Some of its lines ran counterwise to the understanding even of the
men who laid them out, and at intervals in the streets, following a pattern
certainly not of their own world, medallions had been set, for reasons known
to none but the king. Smih remembered what he had heard of the strangeness of
fabulous Vonng, and of the rites that attended its building, and that at last
some strange plague had overrun it, driving men mad . . . something about
ghosts that flickered through the streets at mid-day; so that at last the
dwellers there had deserted it, and for centuries it had stood here, slowly
crumbling into decay. No one ever visited the place now, for civilization had
moved inland since the days of Vonng's glory, and uneasy tales still ran
through men's minds about the queer things that had happened here once.
"Julhi lives in these ruins?" he demanded.
' 'Julhi lives here but not in a ruined Vonng. Her Vonng is a splendid city. I
have seen it, but I could never enter."
"Quite mad," thought Smith compassionately. And aloud, "Are there no boats
here? No way to escape at all?"
Almost before the last words had left his lips he heard something like the
humming of countless bees begin to ring in his ears. It grew and deepened and
swelled until his head was filled with sound, and the cadences of that sound
said,
"No. No way. Julhi forbids it."
In Smith's arms the girl startled and clung to him convulsively.
"It is Julhi!" she gasped. "Do you feel her, singing in your brain? Julhi!" ,
Smith heard the voice swelling louder, until it seemed to fill the whole
night, humming with intolerable volume.
"Yes, my little Apri. It is I. Do you repent your disobedience, my Apri?"
Smith felt the girl trembling against him. He could hear her heart pounding,
and the breath rushed chokingly through her lips.
"No-no, I do not," he heard her murmur, very softly. "Let me die, Julhi."
The voice hummed with a purring sweetness.
"Die, my pretty? Julhi could not be so cruel. Oh no, little Apri, I but
frightened you for punishment. You are forgiven now. You may return to me and
serve me again, my Apri. I would not let you die." The voice was cloyingly
sweet.
Apri's voice crescendoed into hysterical rebellion.
"No, no! I will not serve you! Not again, Julhi! Let me die!"
"Peace, peace my little one." That humming was hypnotic in its soothing lilt.
"You will serve me. Yes, you will obey me as before, my pretty. You have found
man there, haven't you, little one? Bring him with you, and come."
Apri's unseen hands clawed frantically at Smith's shoulders, tearing herself
free, pushing him away.
"Run, run!" she gasped. "Climb this wall and run! You
can throw yourself over the cliff and be free. Run, I say, before it's too
late. Oh, Shar, Shar, if I were free to die!"
Smith prisoned the clawing hands in one of his and shook her with the other.
"Be still!" he snapped. "You're hysterical. Be still!"
He felt the shuddering slacken. The straining hands fell quiet. By degrees her
panting breath evened.
"Come," she said at last, and in quite a different voice. "Julhi commands-it.