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

'It is my duty. I must return to Clщment with the Book of Eibon and the other evidence I have collected against Azщdarac.' The words sounded a little unreal to Ambrose as he uttered them; and he tried very hard, but vainly, to convince himself of the cogency and validity of his arguments. The idyll of his stay with Moriamis, to which he was oddly unable to attach any true conviction of sin, had given to all that preceded it a certain dismal insubstantiality. Free of all responsibility or restraint, in the sheer obliviousness of dreams, he had lived like a happy pagan; and now he must go back to the drear existence of a nediaeval monk, beneath the prompting of an obscure sense of duty.

'I shall not try to hold you,' Moriamis sighed. 'But I shall miss you, and remenber you as a worthy lover and a pleasant playmate. Here is the philtre.' The green essence was cold and almost hueless in the moonlight, as Moriamis poured it into a little cup and gave it to Ambrose.

'Are you sure of its precise efficacy?' the monk inquired. 'Are you sure that I shaH return to the Inn of Bonne Jouissance, at a time not far subsequent to that of my departure therefrom?'

'Yea,' said Moriamis, 'for the potion is infallible. But stay, I have also brought along the other vial -- the vial of the past. Take it with you -- for who knows, you may sometime wish to return and visit me again.'

Ambrose accepted the red vial and placed it in his robe beside the ancient manual of Hyperborean sorcery. Then, after an appropriate farewell to Moriamis, he drained with sudden resolution the contents of the cup.

The moonlit glade, the gray altar, and Moriamis, all vanished in a swirl of flame and shadow. It seemed to Ambrose that he was soaring endlessly through fantasmagoric gulfs, amid the ceaseless shifting and melting of unstable things, the transient forming and fading of irresoluble worlds. At the end, he found himself sitting once more in the Inn of Bonne Jouissance. at what he assumed to be the very same table before which he had sat with the Sieur des ╔maux. It was daylight, and the room was full of people, among whom he looked in vain for the rubicund face of the innkeeper, or the servants and fellow-guests he had previously seen. All were unfamiliar to him; and the furniture was strangely worn, and was grimier than he remembered it.

Perceiving the presence of Ambrose, the people began to eye him with open curiosity and wonderment. A tall man with dolorous eyes and lantern jaws came hastily forward and bowed before him with an air that was half servile but full of a prying impertinence.

'What do you wish?' he asked.

'Is this the Inn of Bonne Jouissance?'

The innkeeper stared at Ambrose. 'Nay, it is the Inn of Haute Esperance, of which I have been the taverner these thirty years. Could you not read the sign? It was called the Inn of Bonne Jouissance in my father's time, but the name was changed after his death.'

Ambrose was filled with consternation. 'But the inn was differently named, and was kept by another man when I visited it not long ago,' he cried in bewilderment. 'The owner was a stout, jovial man, not in the least like you.'

'That would answer the description of my father,' said the taverner, eyeing Ambrose more dubiously than ever. 'He has been dead for the full thirty years of which I speak; and surely you were not even born at the time of his decease.'

Ambrose began to realize what had happened. The emerald potion, by some error or excess of potcncy, had taken him many years beyond his own time into the future!

'I must resume my journey to Vyones,' he said in a bewildered voice, without fully comprehending the implications of his situation. 'I have a message for the Archbishop Clщment -- and must not delay longer in delivering it.'

'But Clщment has been dead even longer than my father,' exclaimed the inn-keeper. 'From whence do you come, that you are ignorant of this?' It was plain from his manner that he had begun to doubt the sanity of Ambrose. Others, overhearing the strange discussion, had begun to crowd about, and were plying the monk with jocular and sometimes ribald questions.

'And what of Azщdarac, the Bishop of Ximes? Is he dead, too?' inquired Ambrose, desperately. 'You mean St. Azщdarac, no doubt. He outlived Clщment, but nevertheless he has been dead and duly canonized for thirty-two years. Some say that he did not die, but was transported to heaven alive, and that his body was never buried in the great mausoleum reared for him at Ximes. But that is probably a mere legend.'

Ambrose was overwhelmed with unspeakable desolation and confusion. In the meanwhile, the crowd about him had increased, and in spite of his robe, he was being made the subject of rude remarks and jeers.

'The good Brother has lost his wits,' cried some. 'The wines of Averoigne are too strong for him,' said others. 'What year is this?' demanded Ambrose, in his desperation.

'The year of our Lord, 1230,' replied the taverner, breaking into a derisive laugh. 'And what year did you think it was?'

'It was the year 1175 when I last visited the Inn of Bonne Jouissance,' admitted Ambrose.

His declaration was greeted with fresh jeers and laughter. 'Hola, young sir, you were not even conceived at that time,' the taverner said. Then, seeming to remember something, he went on in a more thoughtful tone: 'When I was a child, my father told me of a young monk, about your age, who came to the Inn of Bonne Jouissance
one evening in the summer of 1175, and vanished inexplicably after drinking a draft of red wine. I believe his name was Ambrose. Perhaps you are Ambrose, and have only just returned from a visit to nowhere.' He gave a derisory wink, and the new jest was taken up and bandied from mouth to mouth among the frequenters af the tavern.

Ambrose was trying to realize the full import of his predicament. His mission was now useless, through the death or disappearance of Azщdarac; and no one would remain in all Averoigne to recognize him or believe his story. He felt the hopelessness of his alienation among unknown years and people.

Suddenly he remembered the red vial given him at parting by Moriamis. The potion, like the green philtre, might prove uncertain in its effect; but he was seized by an allconsuming desire to escape from the weird embarrassment and wilderment of his present position. Also, he longed for Moriamis like a lost child for its mother; and the charm of his sojourn in the past was upon him with an irresistible spell. Ignoring the ribald faces and voices about him, he drew the vial from his bosom, uncorked it, and swallowed the contents....


V