"Karl Edward Wagner - Undertow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wagner Karl Edward)

stout timbers. Now an unseen hand was drawing the bolt aside.
Silently, slowly, the iron bar turned and crept back along its
mounting brackets. The lock snapped open. With nightmarish
suddenness, the door swung wide.
Darkness hung in the passageway. Burning eyes regarded
them. Advanced.
Dessylyn screamed hopelessly. Numb with terror, Mavrsal
clumsily swung his blade toward the glowing eyes. Blackness
reached out, hurled him with irresistible strength across the cabin.
Pain burst across his consciousness, and then was only the
darkness.
 II
"Never, Dessylyn"

She shuddered and drew the fur cloak tighter about her thin
shoulders. Would there ever again be a time when she wouldn't
feel this remorseless cold?
Kane, his cruel face haggard in the glow of the brazier, stood
hunched over the crimson alembic. How red the coals made his
hair and beard; how sinister was the blue flame of his eyes... He
craned intently forward to trap the last few drops of the
phosphorescent elixir in a chalice of ruby crystal.
He had labored sleepless hours over the glowing liquid, she
knew. Hours precious to her because these were hours of
freedomтАФa time when she might escape his loathed attention.
Her lips pressed a tight, bloodless line. The abominable formulae
from which he prepared the elixir! Dessylyn thought again of the
mutilated corpse of the young girl Kane had directed his servant
to carry off. Again a spasm slid across her lithe form.
"Why won't you let me go?" she heard herself ask dully for
the... how many times had she asked that?
"I'll not let you go, Dessylyn," Kane replied in a tired voice.
"You know that."
"Someday I'll leave you."
 "No, Dessylyn. You'll never leave me."
"Someday."
"Never, Dessylyn."
"Why, Kane!"
With painful care, he allowed a few drops of an amber liqueur
to fall into the glowing chalice. Blue flame hovered over its
surface.
"Why!"
"Because I love you, Dessylyn."
A bitter sob, parody of laughter, shook her throat. "You love
me." She enclosed a hopeless scream in those slow, grinding
syllables.
"Kane, can I ever make you understand how utterly I loathe
you?"
"Perhaps. But I love you, Dessylyn."
The sobbing laugh returned.