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.
Warming to his subject, or perhaps enjoying the chance to display his erudition, the furry Tigerman expanded on the subject. “Some say ‘twere the Zealots o’ the Black Enigma bent space to make the labyrinth, others say the Mnermite Dissenters, the Nexial Para-phrasts, the Monadic Centralists or the Mysteriarchs of Pesh. At any rate, ol’ Grrff, who keeps his ears open and is ever wary, understands the Shai terminus is located somewhere beneath the palace, marked with an Omega Triskelion—”
A sluggish, grating voice spoke suddenly behind them. “Why, you, talk, humans? Go, work, weapons.” It sounded like gritty pieces of carborundum being rubbed together in an echo chamber. They turned to see the green dwarfling, Drng, staring at them with dull, suspicious eyes like blood-blisters.
Ganelon did not have a chance, due to Drag’s untimely interruption, to ask what an Omega Triskelion was, or why the hyperspatial labyrinth was called “the Cavern of a Thousand Perils”. As for the latter question, he thought he could figure it out by himself; it stood to reason that, in a region where a single inaccurate step could carry you across the breadth of Gondwane or to the unknown surface of another planet, the descriptive term “Thousand Perils” might be, if anything, an understatement.
The Omega Triskelion, though, was quite another matter. That afternoon, following a light repast of hot muffins fried in glick butter and daubed with dingle-berry marmalade, with fricassee of mermaid in calandre sauce, washed down with crystal tumblers of effervescent wine the color of starshine, he sought out the librarium in the Palace of Red Magic. The Enchantress had given him library privileges at his request, to alleviate the boredom of captivity with some light reading. Never much of a reader, the moody giant had browsed through a few odd volumes during the past couple of days.
Now he asked of the librarian, an Automaton whose sentience was attuned to the catalog storage brain, for a volume on signs and symbols. Retiring to an alcove overlooking the Rainbow Fountains, he leafed through Saliche’s Symbolic Imagery until he found a representation of the sign Grrff had mentioned. It resembled a three-armed swastika composed of open loops with serifs on them. According to Saliche, the curious sign had symbolized open-end infinitism, recorded by the Blind Philosophers of Tring during the Ninth Pastoral Age.* Memorizing the design of the Omega Triskelion, he closed the book and returned it to the metal man.
* Although why Blind Philosophers should use a visual symbol is as much beyond me as it was beyond the redactor of this second book of the Epic, who interpolates a mystified footnote at this same point in the text.
That evening before moonrise a servant brought to him an invitation to attend Queen Zelmarine at another of those interminable intimate suppers of hers which he found so boring and uncomfortable. The servant also brought him a note from Grrff, which the Tigerman had bribed him to give Silvermane.
In his continuing attempt to figure out Ganelon’s sexuality, if any, Varesco had gone back to trying boys to tempt him. This was fortunate, because Grrff could hardly have bribed one of the clanking, empty-headed Automatons.
This particular boy was a languid, lissom lad of twelve or thirteen, as slim, graceful and pretty as a girl. Long blond curls tumbled over his slender shoulders, and he had enormous limpid blue eyes with thick sooty lashes and a soft, pouting mouth. Outside of an abbreviated loincloth of lilac silk, he was naked. Rather nervously, he slipped Ganelon the note from the Xombolian Tigerman. At the same tune, he gave him the perfumed invitation from the Red Queen.
His palms had been sweating from sheer anxiety and the ink wherewith Grrff had scrawled the note was smeared, but since the boy wore nothing except the skimpy loincloth and a bit of rouge on a few erogenous zones, there was nowhere else he could have concealed the note on his person. Ganelon dismissed the child with a somber nod and waited until he had exited before opening Grrff’s note. It read as follows:
What ho, big man! Prison scuttlebutt says unless you serve the Red Bitch as stud, she’ll turn you over to the Ningevite for a Mind Probe. He’ll wipe your memory clean and indite a new one, which says you are madly in love with Her Witchery: so watch your step! GRRFF. P.S. The cub bringing you Grrff s note is not as nancy as he looks, runs errands for us sometimes, and can be trusted. His name is Phadia. Keep your whiskers clean! G.
Ganelon palmed the note and read it while pretending to examine the invitation from the Queen. Then he crushed it in his hand and calmly ate it while munching on a ripe vrique-fruit from the Queen’s submarine gardens. He wondered what to do. From what little he knew of Mind Probes, he didn’t think he would have any chance of resisting the vindictive Ningevite.
Escape, then, was the only alternative. Ganelon felt embarrassed at the very notion of yielding to the seduction of the Enchantress. He thought her a very pretty lady, in a slightly overpowering way, but when it came to amatory activity he was completely innocent. It was a matter of actually not knowing just what to do, and with what and where. (For a country boy he was remarkably innocent, but his foster-parents had been artisans, not farmers. He never had the opportunity to learn about It from watching the animals.)
Escape, then: but to where, and how? Shai was an island of civilization surrounded by harsh, tindery plains and mountains infested by hordes of Death Dwarves. Overland travel would be hard and hazardous, if not suicidal. He thought of what Grrff had said about the hyperspatial labyrinth called the “Cavern of a Thousand Perils.”
On sudden impulse, he touched the gong that summoned the Automatons who guarded him. When the metal man came clanking in, Ganelon gruffly asked for the boy who had just brought him the Queen’s invitation. A few moments later the lad entered and came swaying toward him, a tentative smile on his girlish features.
“You want me, lord?” the boy inquired in a husky soprano.
Ganelon cleared his throat with embarrassment and beckoned the boy nearer to him so they could talk without being overheard.
“Grrff the Tigerman says you can be trusted. Your name is Phadia, isn’t it?” The boy nodded, awaiting his pleasure.
“Are we being watched, Phadia?*’
The lad shrugged gracefully, blond curls tumbling over his shin bare shoulders. “I think so, lord. The Lord Varesco is trying to—”
“I know what the Lord Varesco is trying to find out,” Ganelon grunted uncomfortably. “And I’m really not ‘interested in … well, you know.”
The boy pouted, then grinned impishly. “Then what do you want with me, lord?”
“Information.”
“All right, we’ll just talk. But, lord, there may be eyes watching us … The Lord Varesco will become suspicious if we just talk … ‘*
“Umm. I guess you’re right. Any ideas?”