"Wilbur Smith - Egyptian 01 - Warlock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

desert. An infinity of jagged and bitter hills stretched away to a horizon blue with heat-haze and distance.
The colours of the raw rocks astounded the eye: they were the sullen blue of stormclouds, yellow as a
weaver bird's plumage, or red as wounded flesh, and bright as crystal. The heat made them dance and
quiver.



Taita looked down on this terrible place with a sense of nostalgia and homecoming. It was into this
wilderness that he had retired after the death of his beloved Queen Lostris, at first creeping away like a
wounded animal. Then, as the years passed and some of the pain with them, he had found himself drawn
once more to the mysteries and the way of the great god Horus. He had gone into the wilderness as a
physician and a surgeon, as a master of the known sciences. Alone in the fastness of the desert he had
discovered the key to gates and doorways of the mind and the spirit beyond which few men ever
journey. He had gone in a man but had emerged as a familiar of the great god Horus and an adept of
strange and arcane mysteries that few men even imagined.



Taita had only returned to the world of men when his Queen Lostris had visited him in a dream as he
slept in his hermit's cave at Gebel Nagara. Once more she had been a fifteen-year-old maiden, fresh and
nubile, a desert rose in its first bloom with the dew upon its petals. Even as he slept his heart had swollen
with love and threatened to burst his chest asunder.



'Darling Taita,' Lostris had whispered, as she touched his cheek and stirred him awake, 'you were one of
the only two men I have ever loved. Tanus is with me now, but before you can come to me also there is
one more charge that I lay upon you. You never once failed me. I know that you will not fail me now, will
you, Taita?'



'I am yours to command, mistress.' His voice echoed strangely in his ears.



'In Thebes, my city of a hundred gates, this night is born a child. He is the son of my own son. They will
name this child Nefer, which means pure and perfect in body and spirit. My longing is that he carry my
blood and the blood of Tanus to the throne of Upper Egypt. But great and diverse perils already gather
around the babe. He cannot succeed without your help. Only you can protect and guide him. These years
you have spent alone in the wilderness, the skills and knowledge you have acquired here were to that
purpose alone. Go to Nefer. Go now swiftly and stay with him until your task is completed. Then come
to me, darling Taita. I will be waiting for you and your poor mutilated manhood shall be restored to you.
You will be whole and entire when next you stand by my side, your hand in my hand. Do not fail me,
Taita.'



'Never!' Taita had cried in the dream. 'In your life I never failed you. I will not fail you now in death.'