"Zelazny, Roger - Amber 08 - Sign Of Chaos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

returned my attention to the progress of whatever it was that had moved from
flat reality to 3-D. A gunmetal snout protruded from between a rock and a shrub;
the pale eyes blazed above it; blue saliva dripped from the dark muzzle and
steamed upon the ground. It was either quite short or very crouched, and I
couldn't make up my mind whether it was the entire crowd of us that it was
studying or me in particular. I leaned to one side and caught Humpty by the belt
or the necktie, whichever it was, just as he was about to slump to the side.
"Excuse me," I said. "Could you tell me what sort of creature that is?"
I pointed just as it emerged--many-legged, long-tailed, dark-scaled,
undulating, and fast. Its claws were red, and it raised its tail as it raced
toward us.
Humpty's bleary eyes moved toward my own, drifted past.
"I am not here, sir," he began, "to remedy your zoological ignor-- My God!
It's--"
It flashed across the distance, approaching rapidly. Would it reach a spot
shortly where its cunning would become a treadmill operation--or had that effect
only applied to me on trying to get away from this place?
The segments of its body slid from side to side, it hissed like a leaky
pressure cooker, and steaming slaver marked its trail from the fiction of paint.
Rather than slowing, its speed seemed to increase.
My left hand jerked forward of its own volition and a series of words rose
unbidden to my lips. I spoke them just as the creature crossed the interface I
had been unable to pierce earlier, rearing as it upset a vacant table and
bunching its members as if about to spring.
"A Bandersnatch!" someone cried.
"A frumious Bandersnatch! " Humpty corrected.
As I spoke the final word and performed the ultimate gesture, the image of
the Logrus swam before my inner vision. The dark creature, having just extended
its foremost talons, suddenly drew them back, clutched with them against the
upper left quadrant of its breast, rolled its eyes, emitted a soft moaning
sound, exhaled heavily, collapsed, fell to the floor, and rolled over onto its
back, its many feet extended upward into the air.
The Cat's grin appeared above the creature. The mouth moved.
"A dead frumious Bandersnatch," it stated.
The grin drifted toward me, the rest of the Cat occurring about it like an
afterthought.
"That was a cardiac arrest spell, wasn't it?" it inquired.
"I guess so," I said. "It was sort of a reflex. Yeah, I remember now. I did
still have that spell hanging around. "
"I thought so," it observed. "I was sure that there was magic involved in
this party."
The image of the Logrus which had appeared to me during the spell's
operation had also served the purpose of switching on a small light in the musty
attic of my mind. Sorcery. Of course.
I--Merlin, son of Corwin--am a sorcerer, of a variety seldom encountered in
the areas I have frequented in recent years. Lucas Raynard--also known as Prince
Rinaldo of Kashfa--is himself a sorcerer, albeit of a style different than my
own. And the Cat, who seemed somewhat sophisticated in these matters, could well
have been correct in assessing our situation as the interior of a spell. Such a
location is one of the few environments where my sensitivity and training would