"Jack Vance - The Sorcerer Pharesm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

hear nothing but when he tried to step forward fear clamped his legs. He held high the lantern and peered
down the dusty passage. Where did it lead? What lay beyond? Dusty cave? Demonland? The blessed
land Byssom? Cugel slowly proceeded, every sense alert. On a ledge he spied a shrivelled brown
spheroid: the talisman he had carried into the past. TOTALITY had long since disengaged itself and
departed.
Cugel carefully lifted the object, which was brittle with the age of a million years and returned to the
ledge. The vortex, at a command from Pharesm, conveyed Cugel back to the ground.
Dreading the wrath of Pharesm, Cugel tendered the withered talisman.
Pharesm took it, held it between thumb and forefinger. "This was all?"
"There was nothing more."
Pharesm let the object fall. It struck and instantly became dust. Pharesm looked at Cugel, took a
deep breath, then turned with a gesture of unspeakable frustration and marched back to his divinatory.
Cugel gratefully moved off down the trail, past the workmen standing in an anxious group waiting
for orders. They eyed Cugel sullenly and a 2-ell man hurled a rock. Cugel shrugged and continued south
along the trail. Presently he passed the site of the village, now a waste overgrown with gnarled old trees.
The pond had disappeared and the ground was hard and dry. In the valley below were ruins, but none
marked the sites of the ancient cities Impergos, Tharuwe and Rhaverjand, now gone beyond memory.
Cugel walked south. Behind him the cliffs merged with haze and presently were lost to view.