"Gene Wolfe - Peritonitis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

light. Savages he met there, and, defeating their chief in solitary combat,
bound him when his vassels fled--till hunger forced from him the tale of
Singing's passing, and her captor's. Deeper they had gone by his telling,
and even Deepdelver's mighty strength--so he himself recounted it --died
within him.
Then came a wetting, but not as we have known them. The dim rills of
the Throat turned to black as the waters multiplied, and there came upon
Deepdelver, in the rushing confusion of those waters, all the thoughts that
men have ever felt, so that he knew himself to be brave and afraid, happy
yet sorrowful, God and nothing--all at once and without causes; and
though his thought told him that to do so was death, he dived into the
waters and swam with them, laughing to die so, laughing in the breakers,
dizzy with delight in the darkness, knowing that it was death but eager to
die so.
So he came to the depths, to Everdark, and heard there the weeping of
Singing. Who can tell a tale that was born in the blackness? How he found
her and killed her captor, drowning him, though he was himself delirious,
in the millrace of madness. How the Inner People won them, they who
then ate what they had from the waters, those unseen ones who never
stand in sun, whelming Deepdelver in their myriads; how he their slave
taught them to tear the meat they trod and so live lawfully, and how they
gave freedom to him, and Singing too, when once they had tasted; how the
two made their way midst difficulties and dangers to the Neck again; all
these are more than I can say. But you must know the courage, and the
history of your People before you fare forth; and I have told you.
Field and hill are cold now, and the World itself dying or dead, and the
lands are filled with ghouls. It is time you go.
This was the last story.