"Jack Vance - The Dying Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

 Agonized screaming jarred the garden. Mazirian, hastening his step, found
a mole chewing the stalk of a plant-animal hybrid. He killed the marauder, and
the screams subsided to a dull gasping. Mazirian stroked a furry leaf and the
red mouth hissed in pleasure.
Then: "K-k-k-k-k-k-k," spoke the plant. Mazirian stooped, held the rodent
to the red mouth. The mouth sucked, the small body slid into the
stomach-bladder underground. The plant gurgled, eructated, and Mazirian
watched with satisfaction.
The sun had swung low in the sky, so dim and red that the stars could be
seen. And now Mazirian felt a watching presence. It would be the woman of the
forest, for thus had she disturbed him before. He paused in his stride,
feeling for the direction of the gaze.
He shouted a spell of immobilization. Behind him the plant-animal froze to
rigidity and a great green moth wafted to the ground. He whirled around. There
she was, at the edge of the forest, closer than ever she had approached
before. Nor did she move as he advanced. Mazirian's young-old eyes shone. He
would take her to his manse and keep her in a prison of green glass. He would
test her brain with fire, with cold, with pain and with joy. She should serve
him with wine and make the eighteen motions of allurement by yellow
lamp-light. Perhaps she was spying on him; if so, the Magician would discover
immediately, for he could call no man friend and had forever to guard his
garden.
She was but twenty paces distantтАФthen there was a thud and pound of black
hooves as she wheeled her mount and fled into the forest
The Magician flung down his cloak in rage. She held a guardтАФa
counter-spell, a rune of protectionтАФand always she came when he was
ill-prepared to follow. He peered into the murky depths, glimpsed the wanness
of her body flitting through a shaft of red light, then black shade and she
was gone . . . Was she a witch? Did she come of her own volition, orтАФmore
likelyтАФhad an enemy sent her to deal him inquietude? If so, who might be
guiding her? There was Prince Kandive the Golden, of Kaiin, whom Mazirian had
bilked of his secret of renewed youth. There was Azvan the Astronomer, there
was TurjanтАФhardly Turjan, and here Mazirian's face lit in a pleasing
recollection . .. He put the thought aside. Azvan, at least, he could test He
turned his steps to his workshop, went to a table where rested a cube of clear
crystal, shimmering with a red and blue aureole. From a cabinet he brought a
bronze gong and a silver hammer. He tapped on the gong and the mellow tone
sang through the room and out, away and beyond. He tapped again and again.
Suddenly Azvan's face shone from the crystal, beaded with pain and great
terror.
"Stay the strokes, Mazirian!" cried Azvan. "Strike no more on the gong of
my life!"
Mazirian paused, his hand poised over the gong. "Do you spy on me, Azvan?
Do you send a woman to regain the gong?"
"Not I, Master, not I.I fear you too well."
"You must deliver me the woman, Azvan; I insist."
"Impossible, Master! I know not who or what she is!" Mazirian made as if
to strike. Azvan poured forth such a torrent of supplication that Mazirian
with a gesture of disgust threw down the hammer and restored the gong to its
place. Azvan's face drifted slowly away, and the fine cube of crystal shone