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.
* They reproduced their kind through bud or graft instead of birth. It will be recalled that Ganelon’s own foster-mother, Iminix, was of their kind.
The private dinner proved to be but the first of many such, during which the Enchantress presented herself before Silvermane in a bewildering variety of raiment, each gown more ravishingly beautiful and more revealing than the one before. The beverages served to the Construct contained half the narcotics and aphrodisiacs in the pharmacopoeia. The final supper of the sequence saw Zelmarine clothed in naught but a dusting of powdered emeralds, and the wine heady with sufficient aphrodisiacs to madden with lust the denizens of an entire monastery.
Ganelon remained celibate and disinterested to the end. But Zelmarine had not yet given up and felt confident she could wear him down with time.
12. ISTROBIAN’S FLYING KAYAK
While the Red Queen strives to seduce Ganelon Silvermane with her wiles and blandishments, let us return to Chx and learn how the Illusionist, Xarda, and Prince Erigon have fared in the meanwhile.
Finding the Bazonga bird gone, as they did during their quick visit to the Hospice of the Eleven Cardinal Virtues, after making their midnight escape from the Administratium, put a severe crimp in their plans. It makes it more difficult, escaping on foot than by air. For one thing, you can put many leagues between you and your eventual pursuers when you fly. Afoot, however, is quite another matter.
“Surely, magister, the Chxians will not awaken from their nocturnal fit of criminality to discover our escape before dawn,” argued the Sirix of Jemmerdy. “By then, in sooth, we shall be far away from Chx.”
“Yes; but not as far as I could wish,” grumbled the old magician testily. “Whatever could have possessed that pesky Bird to break her tether and fly off on her own? It just isn’t like her to be so thoughtless and uncaring …”
The Prince of Valardus had been staring uncomprehendingly from one to the. other as they talked. He did not, of course, understand to whom they were referring, since Ganelon Silvermane was the only missing member of then-company, insofar as he knew.
He cleared his throat tentatively.
“Ahem! Is it, ah, a mode of transport you discuss?” he inquired. Nodding brusquely, the Illusionist curtly described the brazen animated vehicle which had been both their steed and their companion on previous adventures. The puzzlement cleared from the Prince’s handsome features.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “An aerial device, then. In that case, pray permit me to offer you the services of my aerial kayak.”
“An aerial kayak?” asked the Illusionist, surprised. “How fortunate! But how do you come to be in possession of the craft, which is, unless I am mistaken, an invention of Istrobian, the celebrated sorcerer of an earlier epoch?”
“It is indeed Istrobian’s flying kayak to which I refer,” said Erigon smilingly. “My late mother was a distant descendent of his, and it has long been in the possession of her family, passing thus by simple inheritance to me. As the celestial vessel travels more swiftly than could any mode of land transport, whether on ornith or nguamodon, I selected the vessel from the treasure-vault of Valardus palace, employing it to travel swiftly and in comparative comfort to the nearby realms.”
“But where is the miraculous vehicle now? Surely, the Ethical Triumvirs have purloined it—” began Xarda, but the young Prince cut off her flow of words with a lifted palm.
“It is here, in the very Hospice in whose courtyard we now stand,” he smiled. “I parked it in the stables, securely tethered against any possibility of theft by use of a sentient rope. Having paid the Innkeeper a cube of virgin copper for rental of the stable stall, and since, during the daylight hours, the Chxians are scrupulously honest, it is no doubt still tethered within.”
“But at night—” began Xarda.
“At night, m’lady, the criminal Chxians have more notable malefactions to commit than theft of a stabled steed! Come, let us investigate.”
He led them to the long row of stables. Within lay damp coolness, the odors of mouldy straw, the not-unpleasant muskiness of ornith turds and nguamodon droppings—and the kayak!
It was a four-seater, built like a long, slim canoe, with a blade-thin point at either terminus. The seats were all in a row down the mid-section of the craft, one after the other like peas in a pod; and, kayak-like, the bright blue fabric which was stretched tightly over the light frame of the craft could be laced snugly about the waist of the passengers. About thirty feet from stem to stem, the craft hovered four or five feet above the straw-strewn packed earth which floored the stable. It was held tightly by a glassy, odd-looking rope which resembled a fat, lucent worm.
“What holds it up?” asked the Illusionist, entranced with delight. “Our own Bazonga is impregnated with yxium crystals, which resist gravity—”
“Nothing so complicated,” said Erigon, shaking his head. ” ‘Tis said that the sorcerer Istrobian wrought the framework of the craft from the metal found in a fallen star, but the savants of Valardus pooh-pooh this as mere mythography, arguing that the thing which fell was a fragment of the Moon itself—”
“A meteorite?”
“If you wish to call it that,” said the Prince in his friendly, unargumentative manner. “At any rate, the metal yearns for its lunar home—”
“Ah, of course!” said the Illusionist with satisfaction. “A well-known property of dianium*—but pray continue your intriguing discourse, Prince.”
* Again I must refer the interested reader to the Glossary at the end of the book. I simply cannot impede the headlong pace of my narrative with lengthy explanations of each unfamiliar term.
“Thank you. As I was saying, the metal yearns for its lunar home, and seeks ever to return thence … the gravity of Old Earth, however, proves stronger than the pull of homesickness. It renders it somewhat more than weightless. The metal of the ribs is ferrous, hence magnetic, and the kayak is believed to ride the magnetic lines of force about our planet.”
“Subtle and ingenious,” marvelled the old magician. “That Istrobian was a wonder-worker, in sooth! ‘Tis far simpler than our beloved Bird …”
“But why the blue fabric?” asked Xarda.
“Oiled and enamelled, it keeps off the rain and the night-damps,” explained Prince Erigon, “which would cause the moon-metal to rust, in tune consuming the vessel utterly. Let me untie the craft and we can be off before any roving band of crazed and criminal Chxians chances upon us.”
Murmurring low cooing sounds like a half-strangled dove, he approached the thick glassy rope which bound the floating kayak to the beams which upheld the stable roof. One end of the sentient rope lifted warningly at his approach, swaying from side to side like a cobra. But the tether seemed to recognize its master’s tone, or perhaps his touch, and soon relaxed as he stroked and patted it. At his signal they clambered with some difficulty into the bucket-like seats, the kayak straining skyward all the while. Erigon himself was the last to spring lightly aboard the craft, bearing with him the coil of sentient rope which had wound itself about his upper chest and shoulders like a friendly tame boa constrictor.