"John Norman - Telnarian Histories 01 - The Chieftain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

Their origins remain obscure. Perhaps, somewhere, in some dim archive, other such manuscripts
exist, remaining to be found. It is difficult to say.

The current manuscript is that known as the Valens manuscript, because it was found in the ducal
library of the district of Valens, one of the minor duchies of the Talois Confederation. It is known
as 122B, following the system devised by the collegium of Harcourt, to which institution the
original trove, consisting of more than one hundred manuscripts, primarily fragments, was
referred.

This particular manuscript, portions of which I have prepared for the press, is unusual among the
manuscripts, as it deals on a personal level with affairs of states, movements of men, the destinies
of nations and worlds, such matters as seen by individuals involved in them. In such a sense the
vast pageants involved, the sweeping biographies of empires and peoples, are only dimly hinted
at. What a tiny particle of space and time falls within the brief purview of any individual! We are
but specks on a cosmic sea. In this manuscript one discerns, and this seems precious to me, not so
much the vast tides of time and space, the configuration of those awesome seas, understood in
terms of charts of currents and winds, but what it was, at a given time, to be embarked upon
them.

The manuscript may have been glossed. I have, in certain places, set certain materials in italics.
These italicized portions of the manuscript almost invariably provide background information
without which certain actions and events in the story would be obscure. Some regard the glosses
as interpolations by an independent hand, to supply later readers with political, historical and
religious background. My hypothesis with respect to such passages is that they are by one, and
the original, author, and constitute glosses, if they are even to be understood as such, which
seems to me unlikely, on his own work. Certain statistical studies of a linguistic nature support
this theory, that of the single author, both in the more narrative and in the more expository or
explanatory remarks, without which the narrative passages might seem less intelligible.

3. Telnaria:

There seems no reason to doubt the existence, at one time, of Telnaria, and her empire. Too many
records, too many allusions, too many stories and legends, too many ancient place names, too
much linguistic evidence, embedded in current languages, too much archaeological evidence,
now-silent beacons, debris, claiming stones, coins struck by barbarous kings bearing the devices
of an empire perhaps even then little but a memory and a legend, support the hypothesis.
In the legends Telnaria seems mythic to us, but, indubitably, at the bottom of such myths there
once lay a far-flung, bright, formidable, perhaps even terrible reality. The location of the empire
in time and space remains obscure, as do those modalities of being themselves. It is usually
assumed that Telnaria has fallen, and long ago. But this is not actually clear, even in the
manuscripts. Perhaps the empire has only drawn back a border, that it will later fling forth again,
with a hand of iron. Some think that the Telnarian world lies before us, that it is our own world,
others think that it was once our world, others that it recurs, coming again and again, perhaps as
our own might, in the cycles of nature, in years so large and meaningless as to baffle our
comprehension. Some speculate, interestingly, as suggested above, that the empire never fell, but
survives, that it exists even today, and that we are but a lonely, isolated world, forgotten, or
neglected, for a time, and that one day the ships will return, demanding their claiming stones,
their taxes, their tribute. Who knows. Perhaps Telnaria lies at our elbow, and at that of other
worlds, as well, our sleeves perhaps brushing, now and again, a column, unnoticed, in a temple
not antique but one fresh and golden, consecrated but a moment ago. Can you not see the