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

JULHI
The tale of Smith's scars would make a saga. From head to foot his brown and sunburnt hide was scored with the marks of, battle. The eye of a connoisseur would recognize the distinctive tracks of knife and talon andrayburn, the slash of the Martian drylandercrwg, the clean, thin stab of the Venu-sian stiletto, the crisscross lacing of Earth's penal whip. But one or two scars that he carried would have baffled the most discerning eye. That curious, convoluted red circlet, for instance, like some bloody rose on the left side of his chest just where the beating of his heart stirred the sun-darkened flesh. ...
In the starless dark of the thick Venusian night Northwest Smith's pale steel eyes were keen and wary. Save for those restless eyes he did not stir. He crouched against a wall that his searching fingers had told him was stone, and cold; but he could see nothing and he had no faintest idea of where he was or how he had come there. Upon this dark five minutes ago he had opened puzzled eyes, and he was still puzzled. The dark-piercing pallor of his gaze flickered restlessly through
the blackness, searching in vain for some point of familiarity. He could find nothing. The dark was blurred and formless around him, and though his keen senses spoke to him of enclosed spaces, yet there was a contradiction even in that, for the ah- was fresh and blowing.
He crouched motionless in the windy dark, smelling earth and cold stone, and faintly-very faintly-a whiff of something unfamiliar that made him gather his feet under him noiselessly and poise with one hand against the chill stone wall, tense as a steel spring. There was motion in the dark. He could see nothing, hear nothing, but he felt that stirring come cautiously nearer. He stretched out exploring toes, found the ground firm underfoot, and stepped aside a soundless pace or two, holding his breath. Against the stone where he had been leaning an instant before he heard the soft sound of hands fumbling, with a queer, sucking noise, as if they were sticky. Something exhaled with a small, impatient sound. In a lull of the wind he heard quite distinctly the slither over stone of something that was neither feet nor paws nor serpent-coils, but akin to all three.
Smith's hand sought his hip by instinct, and came away empty. Where he was and how he came there he did not know, but his weapons were gone and he knew that their absence was not accidental. The something that was pursuing him sighed again, queerly, and the shuffling sound over the stones moved with sudden, appalling swiftness, and something touched him that stung like an electric shock. There were hands upon him, but he scarcely realized it, or that they were no human hands, before the darkness spun around him and the queer, thrilling shock sent him reeling into a blurred oblivion.
When he opened his eyes again he lay once more upon cold stone in the unfathomable dark to which he had awakened before. He lay as he must have fallen when the searcher dropped him, and he was unhurt. He waited, tense and listening, until his ears ached with the strain and the silence. So far as his blade-keen senses could tell him, he was quite
alone. No sound broke the utter stillness, no sensation of movement, no whiff of scent. Very cautiously he rose once more, supporting himself against the unseen stones and flexing his limbs to be sure that he was unhurt.
The floor was uneven underfoot. He had the idea now that he must be in some ancient ruins, for the smell of stone and chill and desolation was clear to him, and the breeze moaned a little through unseen openings. He felt his way along the broken wall, stumbling over fallen blocks and straining his senses against the blanketing gloom around him. He was trying vainly to recall how he had come here, and succeeding in recapturing only vague memories of much red segir whisky in a nameless dive, and confusion and muffled voices thereafter, and wide spaces of utter blank-and then awakening here in the dark. The whisky must have been drugged, he told himself defensively, and a slow anger began to smolder within him at the temerity of whoever it was who had dared lay hands upon Northwest Smith.
Then he froze into stony quiet, rigid in mid-step, at the all but soundless stirring of something in the dark near by. Blurred visions of the unseen thing that had seized him ran through his head-some monster whose gait was a pattering glide and whose hands were armed with the stunning shock of an unknown force. He stood frozen, wondering if it could see him in the dark.
Feet whispered over the stone very near him, and something breathed pantingly, and a hand brushed his face. There was a quick suck of indrawn breath, and then Smith's arms leaped out to grapple the invisible thing to him. The surprise of mat instant took his breath, and then he laughed deep in his throat and swung the girl round to face him in the dark.
He could not see her, but he knew from the firm curves of her under his hands that she was young and feminine, and from the sound of her breath that she was near to fainting with fright.
"Sh-h-h," he whispered urgently, his lips at her ear and her hah- brushing his cheek fragrantly. "Don't be afraid.
Where are we?"
It might have been reaction from her terror that relaxed the tense body he held, so that she went limp in his arms and the sound of her breathing almost ceased. He lifted her clear of the ground-she was light and fragrant and he felt the brush of velvet garments against his bare arms as unseen robes swept him-and carried her across to the wall. He felt better with something solid at his back. He laid her down there in the angle of the stones and crouched beside her, listening, while she slowly regained control of herself.
When her breathing was normal again, save for the faint hurrying of excitement and alarm, he heard the sound of her sitting up against the wall, and bent closer to catch her . whisper.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
' 'Northwest Smith,'' he said under his breath, and grinned at her softly murmured "Oh-h!" of recognition. Whoever she was, she had heard that name before. Then,
"There has been a mistake," she breathed, half to herself. ' 'They never take any but the-space-rats and the scum of the ports for Julhi to-I mean, to bring here. They must not have known you, and they will pay for that mistake. No man is brought here who might be searched for-afterward."
Smith was silent for a moment. He had thought her lost like himself, and her fright had been too genuine for pretense. Yet she seemed to know the secrets of this curious, unlit place. He must go warily.
"Who are you?" he murmured. "Why were you so frightened? Where are we?"
In the dark her breath caught in a little gasp, and went on unevenly.
"We are in the ruins of Vonng," she whispered. "I am Apri, and I am condemned 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 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?"