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

Not that that would help the Warlock. He who carried Glirendree was invulnerable to any power save Glirendree itself. Or so it was said.
"Let's test that," said the Warlock to himself. He dipped into his armload of equipment and came up with something wooden, shaped like an ocarina. He blew the dust off it, raised it in his fist and pointed it down the mountain. But he hesitated.
The loyalty spell was simple and safe, but it did have side effects. It lowered its victim's intelligence.
"Self-defense," the Warlock reminded himself, and blew into the ocarina.
The swordsman did not break stride. Glirendree didn't even glow; it had absorbed the spell that easily.
In minutes the swordsman would be here. The Warlock hurriedly set up a simple prognostics spell. At least he could learn who would win the coming battle.
No picture formed before him. The scenery did not even waver.
"Well, now," said the Warlock. "_Well_, now!" And he reached into his clutter of sorcerous tools and found a metal disc. Another instant's rummaging produced a double-edged knife, profusely inscribed in no known language, and very sharp.
* * * *
At the top of the Warlock's hill was a spring, and the stream from that spring ran past the Warlock's house. The swordsman stood leaning on his sword, facing the Warlock across that stream. He breathed deeply, for it had been a hard climb.
He was powerfully muscled and profusely scarred. To the Warlock it seemed strange that so young a man should have found time to acquire so many scars. But none of his wounds had impaired motor functions. The Warlock had watched him coming up the hill. The swordsman was in top physical shape.
His eyes were deep blue and brilliant, and half an inch too close together for the Warlock's taste.
"I am Hap," he called across the stream. "Where is she?"
"You mean Sharla, of course. But why is that your concern?"
"I have come to free her from her shameful bondage, old man. Too long have you -- "
"Hey, hey, hey. Sharla's my _wife_."
"Too long have you used her for your vile and lecherous purposes. Too -- "
"Sharla stays of her own free will."
"You expect me to believe that? As lovely a woman as Sharla, could she love an old and feeble warlock?"
"Do I look feeble?"
The Warlock did not look like an old man. He seemed Hap's age, some twenty years old, and his frame and his musculature were the equal of Hap's. He had not bothered to dress as he left the cavern. In place of Hap's scars, his back bore a tattoo in red and green and gold, an elaborately curlicued pentagramic design, almost hypnotic in its extradimensional involutions.
"Everyone in the village knows your age," said Hap. "You're two hundred years old, if not more."
"Hap," said the Warlock. "Belhap something-or-other roo Cononson. Now I remember. Sharla told me you tried to bother her last time she went to the village. I should have done something about it then."
"Old man, you lie. Sharla is under a spell. Everybody knows the power of a warlock's loyalty spell."
"I don't use them. I don't like the side effects. Who wants to be surrounded by friendly morons?" The Warlock pointed to Glirendree. "Do you know what you carry?"
Hap nodded ominously.
"Then you ought to know better. Maybe it's not too late. See if you can transfer it to your left hand."
"I tried that. I can't let go of it." Hap cut at the air, restlessly, with his sixty pounds of sword. "I have to sleep with the damned thing clutched in my hand."
"Well, it's too late then."
"It's worth it," Hap said grimly. "For now I can kill you. Too long has an innocent woman been subjected to your lecherous -- "
"I know, I know." The Warlock changed language suddenly, speaking high and fast. He spoke thus for almost a minute, then switched back to Rynaldese. "Do you feel any pain?"
"Not a twinge," said Hap. He had not moved. He stood with his remarkable sword at the ready, glowering at the magician across the stream.
"No sudden urge to travel? Attacks of remorse? Change of body temperature?" But Hap was grinning now, not at all nicely. "I thought not. Well, it had to be tried."
There was an instant of blinding light.
When it reached the vicinity of the hill, the meteorite had dwindled to the size of a baseball. It should have finished its journey at the back of Hap's head. Instead, it exploded a millisecond too soon. When the light had died, Hap stood within a ring of craterlets.
The swordsman's unsymmetrical jaw dropped, and then he closed his mouth and started forward. The sword hummed faintly.
The Warlock turned his back.
Hap curled his lip at the Warlock's cowardice. Then he jumped three feet backward from a standing start. A shadow had pulled itself from the Warlock's back.
In a lunar cave with the sun glaring into its mouth, a man's shadow on the wall might have looked that sharp and black. The shadow dropped to the ground and stood up, a humanoid outline that was less a shape than a window view of the ultimate blackness beyond the death of the universe. Then it leapt.
Glirendree seemed to move of its own accord. It hacked the demon once lengthwise and once across, while the demon seemed to batter against an invisible shield, trying to reach Hap even as it died.
"Clever," Hap panted. "A pentagram on your back, a demon trapped inside."
"That's clever," said the Warlock, "but it didn't work. Carrying Glirendree works, but it's not clever. I ask you again, do you know what you carry?"
"The most powerful sword ever forged." Hap raised the weapon high. His right arm was more heavily muscled than his left, and inches longer, as if Glirendree had been at work on it. "A sword to make me the equal of any magician, and without the help of demons, either. I had to kill a woman who loved me to get it, but I paid that price gladly. When I have sent you to your just reward, Sharla will come to me -- "
"She'll spit in your eye. Now will you listen to me? Glirendree is a demon. If you had an ounce of sense, you'd cut your arm off at the elbow."
Hap looked startled. "You mean there's a demon imprisoned in the metal?"
"Get it through your head. _There is no metal._ It's a demon, a bound demon, and it's a parasite. It'll age you to death in a year unless you cut it loose. A wizard of the northlands imprisoned it in its present form, then gave it to one of his bastards, Jeery of Something-or-other. Jeery conquered half this continent before he died on the battlefield, of senile decay. It was given into the charge of the Rainbow Witch a year before I was born, because there never was a woman who had less use for people, especially men."
"That happens to have been untrue."
"Probably Glirendree's doing. Started her glands up again, did it? She should have guarded against that."
"A year," said Hap. "One year."
But the sword stirred restlessly in his hand. "It will be a glorious year," said Hap, and he came forward.