"Roger Zelazny - Amber 10 - Prince Of Chaos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

immensely strong, as are most demons. But I recalled our games, at Pit's-edge
and out over the darkness, in burial chambers, caves, still-smoking
battlefields, ruined temples, chambers of dead sorcerers, private hells. I
always seemed to have more fun playing with demons than with my mother's
relatives by blood or marriage. I even based my main Chaos form upon one of
their kind.
He absorbed a chair from the room's corner for extra mass, changing shape
to accommodate my adult size. As I climbed upon his elongated torso, catching
a firm hold, he exclaimed, "Ah, Merlin! What magics do you bear these days?"
"I've their control, but not full knowledge of their essence," I answered.
"They're a very recent acquisition. What is it that you feel?"
"Heat, cold, strange music," he replied. "From all directions. You have
changed."
"Everyone changes," I said as he moved toward the window. "That's life."
A dark thread lay upon the wide sill. He reached out and touched it as he
launched himself.
There came a great rushing of wind as we fell downward, moved forward,
rose. Towers flashed past, wavering. The stars were bright, a quarter moon
just risen, illuminating the bellies of a low line of clouds. We soared, the
castle and the town dwindling in an eyeblink. The stars danced, became streaks
of light. A band of sheer, rippling blackness spread about us, widening. The
Black Road, I suddenly thought. It is like a temporary version of the Black
Road, in the sky. I glanced back. It was not there. It was as if it were
somehow reeling in as we rode. Or was it reeling us in?
The countryside passed beneath us like a film played at triple speed.
Forest, hill, and mountain peak fled by. Our black way was a great ribbon
heaving before us, patches of light and dark like daytime cloud shadows
sliding past. And then the tempo increased, staccato. I noted of a sudden that
there was no longer any wind. Abruptly, the moon was high overhead, and a
crooked mountain range snaked beneath us. The stillness had a dreamlike
quality to it, and in an instant the moon had fallen lower. A line of light
cracked the world to my right and stars began to go out. There was no feeling
of exertion in Gryll's body as we plunged along that black way; and the moon
vanished and light grew buttery yellow along a line of clouds, acquiring a
pink cast even as I watched.
"The power of Chaos rises," I remarked.
"The energy of disorder," he replied.
"There is more to this than you've told me," I said.
"I am but a servant," Gryll responded, "and not privy to the councils of
the mighty."
The world continued to brighten, and for as far ahead as I could see our
black ribbon rippled. We were passing high over mountainous terrain. And
clouds blew apart and new ones formed at a rapid rate. We had obviously begun
our passage through Shadow. After a time, the mountains wore down and rolling
plains slid by. Suddenly the sun was in the middle of the sky. We seemed to be
passing just above our black way, Gryll's toes barely grazing it as we moved.
At times his wings hardly fluttered before me, at other times they thrummed
like those of a hummingbird, into invisibility.
The sun grew cherry-red far to my left. A pink desert spread beneath us...
Then it was dark again and the stars turned like a great wheel.