"Niven, Larry - Not Long Before the End" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

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Not Long Before the End
by Larry Niven
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Copyright (c)1969 by Larry Niven
First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1969

Fictionwise Contemporary
Fantasy
Hugo Award Nominee; Nebula Award Nominee

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A swordsman battled a sorcerer, once upon a time.
In that age such battles were frequent. A natural antipathy exists between swordsmen and sorcerers, as between cats and small birds, or between rats and men. Usually the swordsman lost, and humanity's average intelligence rose some trifling fraction. Sometimes the swordsman won, and again the species was improved; for a sorcerer who cannot kill one miserable swordsman is a poor excuse for a sorcerer.
* * * *
We will call him the Warlock, as his name is both forgotten and impossible to pronounce. His parents had known what they were about. He who knows your name has power over you, but he must speak your name to use it.
The Warlock had found his terrible truth in middle age.
By that time he had traveled widely. It was not from choice. It was simply that he was a powerful magician, and he used his power, and he needed friends.
He knew spells to make people love a magician. The Warlock had tried these, but he did not like the side effects. So he commonly used his great power to help those around him, that they might love him without coercion.
He found that when he had been ten to fifteen years in a place, using his magic as whim dictated, his powers would wane. If he moved away, they returned. Twice he had had to move, and twice he had settled in a new land, learned new customs, made new friends. It happened a third time, and he prepared to move again. But something set him to wondering.
Why should a man's powers be so unfairly drained out of him?
It happened to nations too. Throughout history, those lands which had been richest in magic had been overrun by barbarians carrying swords and clubs. It was a sad truth, and one that did not bear thinking about, but the Warlock's curiosity was strong.
So he wondered, and he stayed to perform certain experiments.
His last experiment involved a simple kinetic sorcery set to spin a metal disc in midair. And when that magic was done, he knew a truth he could never forget.
So he departed. In succeeding decades he moved again and again. Time changed his personality, if not his body, and his magic became more dependable, if less showy. He had discovered a great and terrible truth, and if he kept it secret, it was through compassion. His truth spelled the end of civilization, yet it was of no earthly use to anyone.
So he thought. But some five decades later (the date was on the order of 12,000 B.C.) it occurred to him that all truths find a use somewhere, sometime. And so he built another disc and recited spells over it, so that the disc would be ready if ever he needed it.
* * * *
The name of the sword was Glirendree. It was several hundred years old, and quite famous.
As for the swordsman, his name is no secret. It was Belhap Sattlestone Wirldess ag Miracloat roo Cononson. His friends, who tended to be temporary, called him Hap. He was a barbarian, of course. A civilized man would have had more sense than to touch Glirendree, and better morals than to stab a sleeping woman. Which was how Hap acquired his sword. Or vice versa.
* * * *
The Warlock recognized it long before he saw it. He was at work in the cavern he had carved beneath a hill, when an alarm went off. The hair rose up, tingling, along the back of his neck. "Visitors," he said.
"I don't hear anything," said Sharla, but there was an uneasiness to her tone. Sharla was a girl of the village who had come to live with the Warlock. That day she had persuaded the Warlock to teach her some of his simpler spells.
"Don't you feel the hair rising on the back of your neck? I set the alarm to do that. Let me just check...." He used a sensor like a silver hula hoop set on edge. "There's trouble coming. Sharla, we've got to get you out of here."
"But..." Sharla waved protestingly at the table where they had been working.
"Oh, that. We can quit in the middle. That spell isn't dangerous." It was a charm against lovespells, rather messy to work, but safe and tame and effective. The Warlock pointed at the spear of light glaring through the hoopsensor. "That's dangerous. An enormously powerful focus of _mana_ power is moving up the west side of the hill. You go down the east side."
"Can I help? You've taught me _some_ magic."
The magician laughed a little nervously. "Against that? That's Glirendree. Look at the size of the image, the color, the shape. No. You get out of here, and right now. The hill's clear on the eastern slope."
"Come with me."
"I can't. Not with Glirendree loose. Not when it's already got hold of some idiot. There are obligations."
They came out of the cavern together, into the mansion they shared. Sharla, still protesting, donned a robe and started down the hill. The Warlock hastily selected an armload of paraphernalia and went outside.
The intruder was halfway up the hill: a large but apparently human being carrying something long and glittering. He was still a quarter of an hour downslope. The Warlock set up the silver hula hoop and looked through it.
The sword was a flame of _mana_ discharge, an eye-hurting needle of white light. Glirendree, right enough. He knew of other, equally powerful _mana_ foci, but none was portable, and none would show as a sword to the unaided eye.
He should have told Sharla to inform the Sorcerer's Guild. She had that much magic. Too late now.
There was no colored borderline to the spear of light.
No green fringe effect meant no protective spells. The swordsman had not tried to guard himself against what he carried. Certainly the intruder was no magician, and he had not the intelligence to get the help of a magician. Did he know nothing about Glirendree?