"Janet Morris - Crusaders In Hell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

serpent's wide-spread jaws came closer - jaws that contained an entire
universe within the maw they circumscribed.
Zeno's fingers closed of their own accord, shutting out the awful sight. His
head bowed down until it touched his knees. He curled up, hiding from the
chaos he had seen. And though he could no longer see a struggle that his mind
could not comprehend, he could still hear it.
He heard the Devil snarling that Michael was his and no Power had the right to
take Michael from him. He heard a chorus of demons singing songs to sear the
inner ear.
Then he heard nothing. Silence. Utter peace.
Unutterable peace. He couldn't even hear himself breathing. He couldn't hear
the pulse in his ears. He couldn't hear the wind whipping Sinai.
Then he did hear something. He heard the squishy sound of a terrified man
losing control of his bowels. Himself And he smelled his fear in its most base
form.
And he heard a clearing of someone's throat. Then: "Zeno?"
He raised his head and the Devil was there. Alone but his familiar, riding now
upon his shoulder, wings unfurled the Devil had wings now, also, great
leathery wings and deep-burning yellow, slitted eyes.
This horror made Zeno raise his hands before his face.
But out of the gaping, sharp-toothed jaws of the Devil's new aspect came the
same cultured voice of an Oxford don: "Now that we've determined that there is
a threat, I'd like you to work on some solution. Now that the physics are
clear to you." And the Devil began to laugh.
Squinting, Zeno saw why he laughed: the familiar had sunk its teeth into his
neck and was gnashing them there. Blood began to drip from the wound, down
over Satan's shoulder.
"A solution?" Zeno gasped. "Me?"
"You. A way to keep the clocks right. I'll deal with what's throwing the
larger temporality out of balance ... it's, ah, certain mischievous souls
among the dissidents and elsewhere who're to blame." From a pouch at his
stomach, of the sort nature gives a marsupial, the Devil brought forth an
object and held it out to Zeno.
Zeno scrambled to his feet to take the artifact. "But ... it's just an
hourglass. A mere hourglass, big, but not the sort of thing I need to keep-"
"Just an hourglass?" boomed the Devil, his wings moving restlessly. "This is
the hourglass. The primal standard. If you lose it, you'll find yourself with
first-hand experience of a multi-temporal hard time. For now, your job is to
keep the observatory running like..." White teeth gleamed. "...Clockwork."
"But...."
"But what, mortal?" thundered the Father of Lies. "Its the nature of Hell to
give every man a problem he can't solve. I'll leave a few demons here to make
sure you've got the proper motivation."
And in a puff of black smoke that smelled hideously charnal, the Devil was
gone.
But the demons weren't. They were outside Zeno's cell in the hall. They were
outside his window, making obscene snowmen from the white caps of Sinai. And
they were waiting, Zeno knew, for the hourly chimes to toll.
He didn't need to hear that first ragged, imprecise and tardy announcement of
the approaching hour to know what the demons were going to do to him, every