"Vance, Jack - Dying Earth 01 - The Dying Earth (Mazirian the Magician)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

"They are parasites, they smell vilely."
T'sain was puzzled. "I do not know how to explain beauty. You seem to find joy in nothing. Does nothing give you satisfaction?"
"Only killing and destruction. So then these must be beautiful."
T'sain frowned. "I would term these evil concepts."
"Do you believe so?"
"I am sure of it."
T'sais considered. "How can I know how to act? I have been certain, and now you tell me that I do evil!"
T'sain shrugged. "I have lived little, and I am not wise. Yet I know that everyone is entitled to life. Turjan could explain to you easily."
"Who is Turjan?" inquired T'sais.
"He is a very good man," replied T'sain, "and I love him greatly. Soon we go to Earth, where the sky is vast and deep and of dark blue."
"Earth. ... If I went to Earth, could I also find beauty and love?"
"That may be, for you have a brain to understand beauty, and beauty of your own to attract love."
"Then I kill no more, regardless of what wickedness I see. I will ask Pandelume to send me to Earth."
T'sain stepped forward, put her arms around T'sais, and kissed her.
"You are my sister and I will love you."
TТsaisТ face froze. Rend, stab, bite, said her brain, but a deeper surge welled up from her flowing blood, from every cell of her body, to suffuse her with a sudden flush of pleasure. She smiled.
"ThenЧI love you, my sister. I kill no more, and I will find and know beauty on Earth or die."
T'sais mounted her horse and set out for Earth, seeking love and beauty.
T'sain stood in the doorway, watching her sister ride off through the colors. Behind her came a shout, and Turjan approached.
"T'sain! Has that frenzied witch harmed you?" He did not wait for a reply. "Enough! I kill her with a spell, that she may wreak no more pain."
He turned to voice a terrible charm of fire, but T'sain put her hand to his mouth.
"No, Turjan, you must not. She has promised to kill no more. She goes to Earth seeking what she may not find in Embelyon."
So Turjan and T'sain watched T'sais disappear across the many-colored meadow.
"Turjan," spoke T'sain.
"What is your wish?"
"When we come to Earth, will you find me a black horse like that of T'sais?"
"Indeed," said Turjan, laughing, as they started back to the house of Pandelume.

2. MAZIRIAN THE MAGICIAN



DEEP IN thought, Mazirian the Magician walked his garden. Trees fruited with many intoxications overhung his path, and flowers bowed obsequiously as he passed. An inch above the ground, dull as agates, the eyes of mandrakes followed the tread of his black-slippered feet. Such was Mazirian's gardenЧthree terraces growing with strange and wonderful vegetations. Certain plants swam with changing iridescences; others held up blooms pulsing like sea-anemones, purple, green, lilac, pink, yellow. Here grew trees like feather parasols, trees with transparent trunks threaded with red and yellow veins, trees with foliage like metal foil, each leaf a different metalЧcopper, silver, blue tantalum, bronze, green indium. Here blooms like bubbles tugged gently upward from glazed green leaves, there a shrub bore a thousand pipe-shaped blossoms, each whistling softly to make music of the ancient Earth, of the ruby-red sunlight, water seeping through black soil, the languid winds. And beyond the roqual hedge the trees of the forest made a tall wall of mystery. In this waning hour of Earth's life no man could count himself familiar with the glens, the glades, the dells and deeps, the secluded clearings, the ruined pavilions, the sun-dappled pleasaunces, the gullys and heights, the various brooks, freshets, ponds, the meadows, thickets, brakes and rocky outcrops.
Mazirian paced his garden with a brow frowning in thought. His step was slow and his arms were clenched behind his back. There was one who had brought him puzzlement, doubt, and a great desire: a delightful woman-creature who dwelt in the woods. She came to his garden half-laughing and always wary, riding a black horse with eyes like golden crystals. Many times had Mazirian tried to take her; always her horse had borne her from his varied enticements, threats, and subterfuges.
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 distantЧthen 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 guardЧa counter-spell, a rune of protectionЧand 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, orЧmore likelyЧhad 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 TurjanЧhardly 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 blank as before.
Mazirian stroked his chin. Apparently he must capture the girl himself. Later, when black night lay across the forest, he would seek through his books for spells to guard him through the unpredictable glades. They would be poignant corrosive spells, of such a nature that one would daunt the brain of an ordinary man and two render him mad. Mazirian, by dint of stringent exercise, could encompass four of the most formidable, or six of the lesser spells.
He put the project from his mind and went to a long vat bathed in a flood of green light. Under a wash of clear fluid lay the body of a man, ghastly below the green glare, but of great physical beauty. His torso tapered from wide shoulders through lean flanks to long strong legs and arched feet; his face was clean and cold with hard flat features. Dusty golden hair clung about his head.
Mazirian stared at the thing, which he had cultivated from a single cell. It needed only intelligence, and this he knew not how to provide. Turjan of Miir held the knowledge, and TurjanЧMazirian glanced with a grim narrowing of the eyes at a trap in the floorЧrefused to part with his secret.
Mazirian pondered the creature in the vat. It was a perfect body; therefore might not the brain be ordered and pliant? He would discover. He set in motion a device to draw off the liquid and presently the body lay stark to the direct rays. Mazirian injected a minim of drug into the neck. The body twitched. The eyes opened, winced in the glare. Mazirian turned away the projector.
Feebly the creature in the vat moved its arms and feet, as if unaware of their use. Mazirian watched intently; perhaps he had stumbled on the right synthesis for the brain.