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

a hard bargain."
Then the Sage had shown Turjan the spell in question, which he had
discovered in an ancient portfolio, and kept secret from all the world.
Turjan, remembering this conversation, descended to his study, a long low
hall with stone walls and a stone floor deadened by a thick russet rug. The
tomes which held Turjan's sorcery lay on the long table of black steel or were
thrust helter-skelter into shelves. These were volumes compiled by many
wizards of the past, untidy folios collected by the Sage, leather-bound
librams setting forth the syllables of a hundred powerful spells, so cogent
that Turjan's brain could know but four at a time.
Turjan found a musty portfolio, turned the heavy pages to the spell the
Sage had shown him, the Call to the Violent Cloud. He stared down at the
characters and they burned with an urgent power, pressing off the page as if
frantic to leave the dark solitude of the book.
Turjan closed the book, forcing the spell back into oblivion. He robed
himself with a short blue cape, tucked a blade into his belt, fitted the
amulet holding Laccodel's Rune to his wrist. Then he sat down and from a
journal chose the spells he would take with him. What dangers he might meet he
could not know, so he selected three spells of general application: the
Excellent Prismatic Spray, Phandaal's Mantle of Stealth, and the Spell of the
Slow Hour.
He climbed the parapets of his castle and stood under the far stars,
breathing the air of ancient Earth . . . How many times had this air been
breathed before him? What cries of pain had this air experienced, what sighs,
laughs, war shouts, cries of exultation, gaspsтАж
The night was wearing on. A blue light wavered in the forest. Turjan
watched a moment, then at last squared himself and uttered the Call to the
Violent Cloud.
All was quiet; then came a whisper of movement swelling to the roar of
great winds. A wisp of white appeared and waxed to a pillar of boiling black
smoke. A voice deep and harsh issued from the turbulence.
"At your disturbing power is this instrument come; whence will you go?"
"Four Directions, then One," said Turjan. "Alive must I be brought to
Embelyon."
The cloud whirled down; far up and away he was snatched, flung head over
heels into incalculable distance.
Four directions was he thrust, then one, and at last a great blow hurled
him from the cloud, sprawled him into Embelyon.
Turjan gained his feet and tottered a moment, half-dazed. His senses
steadied; he looked about him.
He stood on the bank of a limpid pool. Blue flowers grew, about his ankles
and at his back reared a grove of tall blue-green trees, the leaves blurring
on high into mist. Was Embelyon of Earth? The trees were Earth-like, the
flowers were of familiar form, the air was of the same texture . . . But there
was an odd lack to this land and it was difficult to determine. Perhaps it
came of the horizon's curious vagueness, perhaps from the blurring quality of
the air, lucent and uncertain as water. Most strange, however, was the sky, a
mesh of vast ripples and cross-ripples, and these refracted a thousand shafts
of colored light, rays which in mid-air wove wondrous laces, rainbow nets, in
all the jewel hues. So as Turjan watched, there swept over him beams of