"Murphy, Warren - Grandmaster" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

reached there, and looking up gave him the feeling of staring
up at a dead sky. on a night without stars.

Figures scumed by along the base of the walls. Their
movements were soft. and although he could see only shadows,
he knew that they were women

Three feather-filled cushions, each of them eight feet square,
were piled atop each other in the center of the room. A
woman lay on the cushions, and he knew, without knowing.
that she was the one he had been summoned to see.

He hesitated, but the woman beckoned him forward with a
slow movement of her graceful arm. She was naked but for a
golden chain wrapped three times around her waist. As he
drew closer he could see that her hair was black and long,
pulled forward over her left shoulder so that it draped across
her breasts. Even in the dim candlelight, her hair glistened
like oiled glass and her eyes seemed made up of thousands of
individual amber crystals, each of them reflecting the light
from the candles in the room. Closer to her. the scent of
incense was stronger, almost overpowering. He drew it deep
into his lungs and felt warmth radiate from inside him.

He stood now in front of the cushions, his knees almost
touching them, looking down at the woman. Her body was as
artfully arranged as an old master's composition; though she

1

2 GRANDMASTER

was naked, the placement of her hair and the shadows that
darkened her made it impossible for him to see her clearly.

"Do you know why I have had you brought here?" she
asked him in Russian. Her voice was musical, its pitch ex-
actly the same as that of the bell that still tinged softly from
one of the far corners of the room. He breathed deeply again;

his body felt as if it were losing its muscles; he wondered if
she had spoken or if he had merely imagined the bell was
speaking to him.

She was looking at him, waiting for an answer. He tried to
speak, but no words came. He shook his head.

"Because you belong to me," she said softly. Hd . I
never left his face. V ?