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

and a strange exhaustion had drained the color from her face.
"Where are we now?" demanded Smith.
She gave him an oblique glance.
' 'This is the place Julhi uses for a prison,'' she murmured, almost
indifferently. "Around us I suppose her slaves are moving, and the halls of
her palace stretch. I can't explain it to you, but at Julhi's command anything
can happen. We could be in the midst of her palace and never suspect it, for
there is no escape from here. We can do nothing but wait.''
"Why?" Smith nodded toward the columned vistas stretching away all around
them. "What's beyond that?"
"Nothing. It simply extends like that until-until you find yourself back here
again."
Smith glanced at her swiftly under lowered lids, wondering just how mad she
really was. Her white, exhausted face told him nothing.
"Come along," he said at last. "I'm going to try anyhow."
She shook her head.
"No use. Julhi can find you when she is ready. There is no escape from Julhi."
"I'm going to try," he said a-jain, stubbornly. "Are you coming?"
"No. I'm-tired. I'll wait here. You'll come back."
He turned without further words and plunged at random into the wilderness of
pillars surrounding the little carpeted room. The floor was slippery under his
boots, and dully shining. The pillars, too, shone along all their polished
surfaces, and in the queer light diffused throughout the place no shadows
fell; so that a dimension seemed to be lacking and a curious flatness lay over
all the shining forest. He went on resolutely, looking back now and again to
keep his course straight away from the little clear space he had left. He
watched it dwindle behind him and lose itself among the columns and vanish,
and he wandered on through endless wilderness, to the sound of his own echoing
footsteps, with nothing to break the monotony of the shining pillars until he
thought he glimpsed a cluster of tapestries far ahead through the unshadowed
vistas and began to hurry, hoping against hope that he had found at least a
way out of the forest. He
reached the place at last, and pulled aside the tapestry, and met Apri's
wearily smiling eyes. The way somehow had doubled back upon him.
He snorted disgustedly at himself and turned again to plunge into the columns.
This time he had wandered for no more than ten minutes before he found himself
coming back once more into the clearing. He tried a third time, and it seemed
had taken no more than a dozen steps before the way twisted under his feet and
catapulted him back again into the room he had just left. Apri smiled as he
flung himself upon one of the divans and regarded her palely from under knit
brows.
' "There is no escape,'' she repeated. ''I think this place is built upon some
different plan from any we know, with all its lines running in a circle whose
center is this room. For only a circle has boundaries, yet no end, like this
wilderness around us."
"Who is Julhi?" asked Smith abruptly. "What is she?"
"She is-a goddess, perhaps. Or a devil from hell. Or both. And she comes from
the place beyond the light-I can't explain it to you. It was I who opened the
door for her, I think, and through me she looks back into the light that I
must call up for her when she commands me. And I shall go mad-mad!"