"C. L. Moore - The Black Gods Kiss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

eased the speed of whatever beings the shaft was made for. It was too narrow for her to turn in, and she
had to lever herself face down and feet first, along the horizontal smoothness of the floor, pushing with
her hands. She was glad when her questing heels met open space and she slid from the mouth of the shaft
and stood upright in the dark.
Here she paused to collect herself. Yes, this was the beginning of the long passage she and Father
Gervase had traveled on that long-ago journey of exploration. By the veriest accident they had found the
place, and only the veriest bravado had brought them thus far. He had gone on a greater distance than
she--she was younger then, and more amenable to authority--and had come back white-faced in the
torchlight and hurried her up the shaft again.
She went on carefully, feeling her way, remembering what she herself had seen in the darkness a little
farther on, wondering in spite of herself, and with a tiny catch at her heart, what it was that had sent
Father Gervase so hastily back. She had never been entirely satisfied with his explanations. It had been
about here--or was it a little farther on? The stillness was like a roaring in her ears.
Then ahead of her the darkness moved. It was just that--a vast, imponderable shifting of the solid dark.
Jesu! This was new! She gripped the cross at her throat with one hand and her sword-hilt with the other.
Then it was upon her, striking like a hurricane, whirling her against the walls and shrieking in her ears like
a thousand wind-devils--a wild cyclone of the dark that buffeted her mercilessly and tore at her flying hair
and raved in her ears with the myriad voices of all lost things crying in the night. The voices were piteous
in their terror and loneliness. Tears came to her eyes even as she shivered with nameless dread, for the
whirlwind was alive with a dreadful instinct, an inanimate thing sweeping through the dark of the
underground; an unholy thing that made her flesh crawl even though it touched her to heart with its pitiful
little lost voices wailing in the wind where no wind could possibly be.
And then it was gone. In that one flash of an instant it vanished leaving no whisper to commemorate its
passage. Only in the heart of it could one hear the sad little voices wailing or the wild shriek of the wind.
She found herself standing stunned, her sword yet gripped futilely in one hand and the tears running down
her face. Poor little lost voices, wailing. She wiped the tears away with a shaking hand and set her teeth
hard against the weakness of reaction that flooded her. Yet it was a good five minutes before she could
force herself on. After a few steps her knees ceased to tremble.
The floor was dry and smooth underfoot. It sloped a little downward, and she wondered into what
unplumbed deeps she had descended by now. The silence had fallen heavily again, and she found herself
straining for some other sound than the soft padding of her own boots. Then her foot slipped in sudden
wetness. She bent, exploring fingers outstretched, feeling without reason that the wetness would be red if
she could see it. But her fingers traced the immense outline of a footprint--splayed and three-toed like a
frog's, but of monster size. It was a fresh footprint. She had a vivid flash of memory--that thing she had
glimpsed in the torchlight on the other trip down. But she had had light then, and now she was blind in the
dark, the creature's natural habitat. . . .
For a moment she was not Jirel of Joiry, vengeful fury on the trail of a devilish weapon, but a frightened
woman alone in the unholy dark. That memory had been so vivid. . . . Then she saw Guillaume's scornful,
laughing face again, the little beard dark along the line of his jaw, the strong teeth white with his laughter;
and something hot and sustaining swept over her like a thin flame, and she was Joiry again, vengeful and
resolute. She went on more slowly, her sword swinging in a semicircle before every third step, that she
might not be surprised too suddenly by some nightmare monster clasping her in smothering arms. But the
flesh crept upon her unprotected back.

The smooth passage went on and on. She could feel the cold walls on either hand and her upswung
sword grazed the roof. It was like crawling through some worm's tunnel, blindly under the weight of
countless tons of earth. She felt the pressure of it above and about her, overwhelming, and found herself
praying that the end of this tunnel-crawling might come soon, whatever the end might bring.
But when it came it was a stranger thing than she had ever dreamed. Abruptly she felt the immense,
imponderable oppression cease. No longer was she conscious of the tons of earth pressing about her.