"Karl Edward Wagner - Two Suns Setting" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wagner Karl Edward)

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Two Suns Setting
Karl Edward Wagner
I
Alone with the Night Winds
Sullen red disk, the sun was burying itself beneath a monotonous horizon of rolling gravel waste that
stretched behind him miles uncounted—and possibly untrod save by his horse's hooves. Long
before the sunlight failed, its warmth was snuffed out in the empty lifelessness of the desert, so that in its
last hour the sun shone cheerless as the rising moon. Crimson as it climbed, the full moon seemed a false
dawn to mock the dying sun, arriving prematurely, disrespectful as a greedy heir pacing in eager
impatience before the master's deathbed. For a space the limitless skies of twilight displayed two rubrous
globes low on either horizon, so that Kane mused as to whether his long journey across the desert might
not have led him to some strange dusk world where two ancient suns smouldered in the heavens. The
region seemed unearthly in its chill desolation, and certainly an aura of unguessable antiquity hung as a
grey shadow over each tumbled bit of stone.

Kane had left Carsultyal with no particular destination or goal other than to ride far beyond that city's
influence. There were those who said that Kane was driven from Carsultyal, his power there broken at
last by fellow sorcerers jealous of his long-held prestige—and alarmed by the bizarrely alien
direction his studies had taken in recent years. Kane himself considered his departure more or less
voluntary, albeit precipitous, arguing privately that had he really wanted to, he could have fended off the
attack of his former colleagues—even though he owed allegiance to neither god nor demon from
whom he might have sought intercession. Rather, mankind's first great city had grown stagnant over the
last century. The spirit of discovery, of renaissance that had drawn him to Carsultyal in its earliest years
was burned out now, so that boredom, his nemesis, had overtaken Kane once more. To be sure, he had
been restless, his thoughts drawn more and more to the world beyond Carsultyal—lands yet to
know the presence of man. But that he returned to his pathless wandering without much forethought
could be judged in that Kane had left the city with little more than a few supplies, a double handful of
gold coins, a fast horse, and a sword of tempered Carsultyal steel. Those who sought to seize his
relinquished power may have regretted their inheritance, but this minor vindication seemed pointless
now.

With dusk, the wind began to rise, a whining chill breath from the mountains whose rusted peaks still
burned with the final rays of the sun, now vanished beneath the opposite horizon. Kane shivered and
drew his russet cloak closer about his massive shoulders, regretting the warm furs that scavengers now
snarled over in Carsultyal. The Herratlonai was a cold, empty waste, where nights dropped to freezing.
With the mountain wind, his outfit of green wool shirt, dark leather vest, and pants was less than
adequate for the night.
The previous day he had eaten the last hoarded chips of dried fruit and jerky, after short rations for a
week or more. Of water luckily there was yet half a bag; he had filled the skins to bursting before
entering the desert, and a waterhole had providentially appeared along the ghost of a trail he followed. Or
thought he followed. The gravel waste southeast of Carsultyal's domains was reputed to border on one of
the prehuman realms of lost antiquity. There were tales of cities impossibly ancient buried beneath the