The Quest of Kadji
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Chronicles of Kylix #1
- Год: 1973
- Язык: английский
- Год: Five Star Paperback
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Quest of Kadji». Краткое содержание книги:
As the Axe sped for his throat Shamad touched gloved hands together and then stretched them wide, uttering a guttural Word. From charmed sigil rings which had met when his hands were pressed together—sparks of supernal fire flashed!
Floating in thin air between his parted hands appeared a spinning globe of white fire!
Brilliant beyond a thousand suns it blazed! Scorching rays seared deep into Kadji’s eyes—he cried out, squeezing shut eyes which watered now from the stab of agony that bit through his very brain. It was as if fiery needles were suddenly thrust through and through his head.
His charge wavered and failed. He lurched to one side, stumbled, and fell.
The flame globe floated up over the throng—and burst!
Light—light—intolerable light drenched the hall of the feasting.
And then the darkness came down on them all. Black and deep, as if the ten thousand candles that flared this night to aid the Moon Gods against the Darkness Demon had blown out.
And the hall was filled with men who cursed and cried out and staggered and stumbled, blundering into each other and into the furniture.
They were all struck blind.
viii. Night of Doom
THE TOUCH of the wet rag was soothing to his aching eyes. Kadji huddled against the alley wall and drew in sobbing breaths as the, old Easterling wizard bathed his red and bleared eyes with cold water. Old Akthoob made soft, clucking sounds of sympathy as the boy warrior sobbed raggedly.
“So close … so very close! Agh, Mother Chaya! He was … within my grasp! … Gods … another moment more,” the youth wept.
All around them surged the sound of tumult and battle. Several buildings were aflame and corpses hung from rude, improvised gibbets at the head of every street. Rioting had spread through the capital all night long. Men said the treasury had been sacked—the Ja Chan still lived, but had withdrawn into the inner citadel of his palace to consult with the Gods, leaving the city to his roaring warriors who were drunk on the wine of fury and howled for blood like ravening madmen.
Most men within the city had been struck temporarily blind in that same terrible instant the Flame Globe leaped from the hands of the false Prophet.
Driven mad by the sacrilege of the Impostor, tormented by the agony of their seared and sightless eyes, the Hordesmen had gone wild, rampaging through the streets slaying all whom they encountered. As the hours of night crept on toward morning, it was learned that the magic darkness was a passing thing. But even this did little to assuage the wild drunken fury of the deluded warriors. As Shamad had been an outlander, a white-skinned Westerling, some had seized upon the notion that the imposture was a Westerling plot. This had been shouted out, and it had been like a lighted match touched to a lake of oil. The Horde chieftains had come boiling out of the palace roaring against treason and treachery, thundering through the barracks of the Westerling mercenaries to burn and slay.
The Westerlings, struck blind by the same magic, had fought back, thinking their own blindness the magic of the treacherous Easterlings. Blind armies locked in furious battle had crushed and howled through the streets, slaughtering each other in their madness.
Now buildings were seething infernos and streets were choked with rubble, with hasty barricades, with sprawled and crimson-splashed corpses. The black sky was crimsonly underlit with the glare of flaming palaces.
And thus it was that the vain imperial dreams of the Ja Chan died in one terrible night of slaughter and madness and destruction. Even if he survived the riot, his throne intact, the Ja Chan could not again dare dream of his lost empire …
OLD AKTHOOB gently dried Kadji’s wet eyes and applied a soothing ointment from his sachel.
Exhausted, his emotions drained, Kadji huddled like a bundle of soiled rags against the alley wall, staring wearily at the dawn-smudged sky.
The agony of blindness had passed. He could see, although it would be days before his tortured eyes regained once more the hawklike fierceness they had known. Somehow, although as blind as he, the old Easterling wizard had gotten the sightless and trampled boy out of the riot-torn palace and to a safe haven. Kadji laid a hand on the old man’s shoulder by way of thanks.
“And … Shamad?” he asked tiredly.
“Gone … gone. Vanished into the night, no man knows how or whither,” Akthoob sighed.
“So the road goes on,” Kadji whispered.
“Aye.”
“Will I ever bring him to swordpoint? Will he always elude my vengeance with his clever tricks?” the boy wondered dully.
The old man chuckled.
“He has not much farther to run, young sir, so this humble person dares to suggest the noble youth will set his back against the wall at last, ere long. For naught lies beyond here save for the measureless sands of a great waste … waves of desolation like a bitter and lifeless sea that wash across the leagues to break at last at the world’s very Edge! Beyond World’s Edge even the cunning Impostor cannot go… .”
“I wonder,” said Kadji.
“It is truth, young sir. But come! It is death to linger here now that men are beginning to recover from their blindness. The Hordes are slaughtering all Westerlings this night. We must be up and on our way … this cowl will mask your white skin from any suspicious eye … we must forth to the inn for our ponies, and thence from the gates of Chemedis, and forth on the track of the Impostor before the world’s an hour older.”
AND THOSE things were done, and as Kylix the sun star rose up over the Edge of this world of Gulzund the two adventurers rode forth from the broken walls of Chemedis into the morning.
Far ahead of them some where rode Shamad, accompanied by his monstrous servant.
And one other rode fast and far. For hard on the heels of the fleeing Impostor rode a young girl with flamegold hair, mounted on a great horse, with a grey plains-wolf loping by her side.
For Thyra alone had observed the flight of Shamad. Perhaps the magic powers invested in her by the White Witches of Zoromesh had been strong enough to shield her from the blinding beams of the Flame Globe. At any rate she had seen the false Prophet and his dragonish henchman as they fled into the early dawn, and the fiamehaired girl had followed not far behind.
This was not known to Kadji.
Neither was it known to Shamad.
But they were destined to meet together, all of them, at World’s End.
Part Six
THE ROAD TO WORLD’S END
Ah, it must be a pleasant thing,
To drink and feast the night away!
But we with empty bellies sing,
And ride all night-to fight all day!
—Road Song of the Kozanga Nomads
i. Scarlet Eyes
THE HILLS rose, rounded hummocks of grey earth, like the knees of giants, and beyond them to the east, like the giants themselves, huge bumped mountains thrust up athwart the sky. They were old and tired, those mountains, and the wind and weather of millions of years had worn their sharp spires and bladelike crags to smooth rondures.
The mountains marched from north to south, cutting across the drear wastes that lay to the east of Chemedis, and they made an all but impassable barrier to any traveler who dared to venture further east than this, But the flamehaired girl had traversed many thousand leagues of the world on the track of Shamad the Impostor, and mere mountains were not enough to stop her now.