"Smith, Clark Ashton - The Holiness Of Azedarac" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Clark Ashton)

His rescuer was standing on the edge of the open glade, in the wide-flung umbrage of an ancient pine. She came forward now; and the white-garmented beings fell back with evident respect before her. She was very tall, with a fearless and regal demeanor, and was gowned in a dark shimmering blue, like the star-laden blue of nocturnal summer skies. Her hair was knotted in a long golden-brown braid, heavy as the glistening coils of some eastern serpcnt. Her eyes were a strange amber, her lips a vermilion touched with the coolness of woodland shadow, and her skin was of alabastrine fairness. Ambrose saw that she was beautiful; but she inspired him with the same awe that he would have felt before a queen, together with something of the fear and consternation which a virtuous young monk would conceive in the perilous presence of an alluring succubus.

'Come with me,' she said to Ambrose, in a tongue that his monastic studies enabled him to recognize as an obsolete variant of the French of Averoigne -- a tongue that no man had supposedly spoken for many hundred years. Obediently and in great wonder, he arose and followed her, with no hindrance from his glowering and
reluctant captors.

The woman led him to a narrow path that wound sinuously away through the deep forest. In a few moments, the glade, the granite block, and the cluster of white-robed men were lost to sight behind the heavy foliage.

'Who are you?' asked the lady, turning to Ambrose. 'You look like one of those crazy missionaries who are beginning to enter Averoigne nowadays. I believe that people call them Christians. The Druids have sacrificed so many of them to Taranit, that I marvel at your temerity in coming here.'

Ambrose found it difficult to comprehend the archaic phrasing; and the import of her words was so utterly strange and baffling that he felt sure he must have misunderstood her.

'I am Brother Ambrose,' he replied, expressing himself slowly and awkwardly in the long-disused dialect. 'Of course, I am a Christian; but I confess that I fail to understand you. I have heard of the pagan Druids; but surely they were all driven from Averoigne many centuries ago.'

The woman stared at Ambrose, with open amazement and pity. Her brownish-yellow eyes were bright and clear as a mellowed wine.

'Poor little one,' she said. 'I fear that your dreadful experiences have served to unsettle you. It was fortunate that I came aIong when I did, and decided to intervene. I seldom interfere with the Druids aud their sacrifices; but I saw you sitting on their altar a little while agone, and was struck by your youth and comeliness.'

Ambrose felt more and more that he had been made the victim of a most peculiar sorcery; but, even yet, he was far from suspecting the true magnitude of this sorcery. Amid his bemusement and consternation, however, he realized that he owed his life to the singular and lovely woman beside him, and began to stammer out his gratitude.

'You need not thank me,' said the lady, with a dulcet smile. 'I am Moriamis, the enchantress, and the Druids fear my magic, which is more sovereign and more excellent than theirs, though I use it only for the welfare of men and not for their bale or bane.' The monk was dismayed to learn that his fair rescuer was a sorceress, even though her powers were professedly benignant. The knowledge added to his alarm; but he felt that it would be politic to conceal his emotions in this regard.

'Indeed, I am grateful to you,' he protested. 'And now, if you can tell me the way to the Inn of Bonne Jouissance, which I left not long ago, I shall owe you a further debt.' Moriamis knitted her light brows. 'I have never heard of the Inn of Bonne Jouissance. There is no such place in this region.'

'But this is the forest of Averoigne, is it not?' inquired the puzzled Ambrose. 'And surely we are not far from the road that runs between the town of Ximes and the city of Vyones?'

'I have never heard of Ximes, or Vyones, either,' said Moriamis. 'Truly, the land is known as Averoigne, and this forest is the great wood of Averoigne, which men have called by that name from primeval years. But there are no towns such as the ones whereof you speak, Brother Ambrose. I fear that you still wander a little in your mind.' Ambrose was aware of a maddening perplexity. 'I have been most damnably beguiled,' he said, half to himself. 'It is all the doing of that abominable sorcerer, Azщdarac, I am sure.

The woman started as if she had been stung by a wild bee. There was something both eager and severe in the searching gaze that she turned upon Ambrose.

'Azщdarac?' she queried. 'What do you know of Azщdarac? I was once acquainted with someone by that name; and I wonder if it could be the same person. Is he tall and a little gray, with hot, dark eyes, and a proud, half-angry air, and a crescent scar on the brow?'

Greatly mystified, and more troubled than ever, Ambrose admitted the veracity of her description. Realizing that in same unknown way he had stumbled upon the hidden antecedents of the sorcerer, he confided the story of his adventures to Moriamis, hoping that she would reciprocate with further information concerning Azщdarac.

The woman listened with the air of one who is much interested but not at all surprised.

'I understand now,' she observed, when he had finished. Anon I shall explain everything that mystifies and troubles you. I think I know this Jehan Mauvaissoir, also; he has long been the man-servant of Azщdarac, though his name was Melchire in other days. These two have always been the underlings of evil, and have served the Old Ones in ways forgotten or never known by the Druids.'

'Indeed, I hope you can explain what has happened,' said Ambrose. 'It is a fearsome and strange and ungodly thing, to drink a draft of wine in a tavern at eventide, and then find one's self in the heart of the forest by afternoon daylight, among demons such as those from whom you succored me.'

'Yea,' countered Moriamis 'it is even stranger than you dream. Tell me, Brother Ambrose, what was the year in which you entered the Inn of Bonne Jouissance?'

'Why, it is the year of our Lord, 1175, of course. What other year could it be?'

'The Druids use a different chronology,' replied Moriamis, 'and their notation would mean nothing to you. But, according to that which the Christian missionaries would now introduce in Averoigne, the present year is A.D. 475. You have been sent back no less than seven hundred years into what the people of your era would regard as the past. The Druid altar an which I found you lying is probably located on the future site of the Inn of Bonne Jouissance.'

Ambrose was more than dumbfounded. His mind was unable to grasp the entire import of Moriamis' words.

'But how can such things be'?' he cried. 'How can a man go backward in time, among years and people that have long turned to dust?'