The Enchantress of World's End
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Gondwane Epic #2
- Год: 101
- Язык: английский
- Год: DAW
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Enchantress of World's End». Краткое содержание книги:
Gondwane... When all the kingdoms of all the peoples of Earth had come and gone and new ones arose, it was on Gondwane they created their ephemeral glories.
On Gondwane, amid the turmoil of the last wars and the last quests and the last efforts of scientists and alchemists, there arose one final hero, the mighty Ganelon Silvermane.
The saga of Ganelon is the telling of master fantasist Lin Carter. And it is in the story of the Scarlet Enchantress that Ganelon first found the meaning of manhood.
The tether was still there. So was the tree. But as for the Bazonga, it was obvious that the Bird had flown.
“What do we do now, prithee?” demanded the knightrix of Jemmerdy in a fine temper.
Unfortunately, for once the Illusionist had no adequate reply to make.
After a while, Ganelon was weary of sitting on the stone slab and stood up, looking around him. Turning to cast a glance behind him, he blinked with surprise to discover a gigantic range of mountains blocking the landscape to the south. The mountains had not been there when he and the bird vessel had flown hither; these must be the Vanishing Mountains whereof he had heard so much. He eyed the beetling ramparts with interest: considering they were made of stuff which was only half real, at best, they certainly looked solid and substantial to the untutored eye.
He was still admiring the mountains by moonlight when the Death Dwarves fell upon him.
There were thirty-two of the little green devils, although of course he swiftly became too busy to bother with counting them. He had never before seen one of the odd little monsters up close, and was not particularly happy to discover they were every bit as ugly, as formidable, and as vicious as common rumor made them out to be.
Their average height was somewhere between two-and-a-half and three feet, which meant that they hardly reached above Ganelon’s kneecap. They were colored a vile, poisonous green, covered with lumps like warts only about the size of doorknobs. Their tremendous breadth of shoulders and thick, massively-thewed arms and barrel chests reminded him of the Indigons he had battled on the Plains of Uth.
Bald and hairless, with bullet heads, they had heavy prognathous jaws and long, lipless, gash-like mouths that made them look rather froggy. Froglike, too, were their ugly, goggling eyes which glistened in the moonlight like puddles of spilt ink.
They didn’t wear any clothing to speak of, just odd bits, scraps and pieces of iron armor; but they bristled with weapons. Among these were flint-knives, stone axes, clubs roughly carven from petrified wood, and long spears made from slender stony stalactites, with obsidian blades for points.
They had no ears, and conversed amongst themselves in clicks, squeaks and hissings. They also had no genitals, just bare tough flesh between their crooked little bowlegs, which terminated in ugly, four-toed feet. They emitted a vile medicinal stench, like iodine. The insides of their mouths were black. And they had fat white tongues, like plump worms.
They had obviously been creeping up behind him for some time, taking advantage of the bewildering moonlight to crawl and scuttle among the tilted stone slabs, waddling splay-footedly from inky shadow to inky shadow. Now that they were discovered, this furtive slinking ended abruptly, and they hurled themselves at him with dizzying speed, bouncing across the slabs like so many rubber balls.
Ganelon growled and swung balled fists, batting them aside in mid-leap. He soon discovered that their broad-shouldered little bodies were hard as wood, the outer layers of their epidermis so tough as to be almost petrified. It proved remarkably difficult to hurt the squalling little monsters, but he found their skulls could be cracked open if you pounded their heads against the stone slabs enough times. In quick succession he brained the first three or four who came within reach of his long arms.
They withdrew, squeaking and hissing ominously amongst themselves, eyeing him venomously. Ganelon rested, breathing easily, wishing he had not left the Silver Sword behind him in the Scarlet City. But there was no use in crying over lost weapons. The next time they rushed him he bent, pried a mighty slab out of the crumbling soil and hurled it at them, squashing three or four of them flat as stepped-on toads.
Glancing skywards, he wished the Bazonga bird would come.
They rushed him again, hissing like so many teakettles, jabbing at him with then* stony spears. His criss-cross harness of black leather broke or deflected most of the spear-points, and the few scratches he did suffer hurt him scarcely at all. He grabbed up the first couple of wriggling little monster-men and tried to see how far he could throw them. Try as often as he could, the best he could do was about ten yards.
A change of tactics was needed here, obviously. If he simply stood here and let the little horrors come at him, they might wear him down before he had managed to extinguish all of them. Anti-life, of which the Death Dwarves were a prominent species, were of necessity remarkably difficult to kill, being not quite really alive in the first place.
He decided, after some thought, during which he managed to brain two more of the vile little creatures by hurling loose boulders at them, to make a sprint for the mountains. If he could get far enough above his pursuers, it should prove easy enough to drop big rocks on them, or perhaps trigger off an avalanche of respectable proportions.
With Ganelon, to think was to act. Whirling about, he sprang in the direction of the Vanishing Mountains, with as much speed as he could, considering the broken nature of the landscape. With a hissing cry, the green horde poured after him, waddling and hopping along at his heels.
It was no use; they could move faster than he over the broken slabs of tilted stone. In a few moments, a detachment of Dwarves had moved around in front of him, blocking him off.
He took his stand, and fought.
He was still doggedly knocking them about when they came upon him from behind, and beat him unconscious with stone clubs. Then, with many a spiteful kick in the ribs, the little green monsters trussed the unconscious Construct securely, and began dragging him off to their hidden lair. Within a few moments, save for the dead who lay scattered about, there was nothing on the plain of broken stones to show that a furious battle had been fought here—and had been lost.
Book Two
THE QUEEN OF RED MAGIC
The Scene: The Country of the Death Dwarves; The Land of Red Magic; The Palace and City of Shai.
New Characters: The Enchantress Zelmarine; A Karjbdan Tigerman; A Mentalist of Ning; Death Dwarves, Automatons, Courtiers, and Boys.
8. SLAVES OF ZELMARINE
If this was a prison cell, thought Ganelon Silvermane to himself, it was certainly the most comfortable one he had ever seen or heard of. Indeed, “comfortable” was hardly the mot juste: “luxurious” would be more like it.
The flooring consisted of scented fnutwoods, laid out in a complicated parquet, an arabesque of delicately-contrasting wood tones and grains. The windows, heavily barred though they were, were hung with sumptuous draperies. Thick carpets were soft underfoot, divans stood about piled with plump cushions, and small exquisite tabourets of carved Behemoth-tusk ivory (each table carved, of course, from a skigle tusk or portion of tusk) were scattered around the room. These bore a tempting variety of wines and liqueurs in cut-crystal decanters, platters of spiced meats, dainty pastries and fresh fruits. And the walls glowed with lambent tapestries of the sort for which the Spider Women of Yu are celebrated.
Galendil alone knows what the Death Dwarves would have done to him, had they been free to choose!* Just about the time he had come groggily back to consciousness, the little green men were turning then: captive over to a squadron of Red Magic soldiers. They bore him on Orniothohippus-back due east a full day’s ride, and into Shai, the capital of the Land of Red Magic.
* They would not, however, have eaten him: such forms of Anti-life commonly subsist on venom, acid, poison, excrement, ground glass, and less mentionable substances.