"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Dus 1 - Lure Of The Basilisk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

The Lure of the Basilisk
Book One of the Lords of D├╗s Series
Copyright 1980 by Lawrence Watt-Evans


PROLOGUE

"I am weary of all this death and dying."
The speaker was a huge armor-clad figure almost seven feet in height,
standing at the narrow mouth of a small cave near the top of a snowy and
rubble-strewn hillside. Even from a distance an observer would have seen the
fading light of the setting sun glinting a baleful red from his eyes, marking
him as something other than human. He was speaking to a bent, crouching
creature clad in tatters who stood inside the cave's mouth, at the edge of the
impenetrable gloom of the interior, her face and form only faintly visible in
the dim twilight. She was hunched and humpbacked, shriveled and bent with age.
Her face was twisted and broken, her teeth gone, one of her golden eyes
squinted horribly, yet she was plainly of the same race as the tall warrior.
"Death is everywhere;" the decrepit creature replied.
"I know that, Ao; I would it were not so." The hag addressed as Ao
merely shrugged, and the warrior continued: "It makes life pointless-to know
that I and all I know will die and pass away, as if I had never been." He
paused briefly, then went on. "I wish that it were possible for me to perform
some feat of cosmic significance, to change the nature of things, so that all
would look back millennia from now and say, 'Garth did this.' I wish that I
could alter the uncaring universe so that even the stars would respond to my
passing, so that my life would not be insignificant."
Ao moved uncomfortably. "You are a lord and a warrior whose deeds will
be recalled for a generation."
"I am known to a tiny corner of a single continent; and even there, as
you yourself say, I will be remembered only for a century or two, an instant
in the life of the world."
"What would you have of us, my sister and myself?"
"Is it possible for a mortal being to alter the way things are?"
"That, it is said, is the province of the gods; if the gods are the
baseless myth some believe them, then it is the role of Fate and Chance."
Garth had apparently expected this reply; there was only the slightest
pause before he said, "I would have it, then, that if I cannot change the
world, at the least the world shall remember me. I would have it that my name
shall be known as long as anything shall live, to the end of time. Can this
be?" He stared at the misshapen hag, his usually expressionless face intent.
She gazed back impassively and answered slowly, "It is your desire that
you be known throughout history, from now until the end of the world?"
"Yes."
"This can be done." Her tone seemed curiously reluctant.
"How?"
"Go to the village called Skelleth, and seek there the Forgotten King;
submit yourself to him, obey him without fail, and what you have wished will
be."
"How am I to find this king?"