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:
She turned and saw Shamad the Impostor seated on a flat boulder not ten strides away. He squatted, tailor fashion, and his strong, white hands played restlessly with a slender sharp knife. He was watching her, a faint smile on his face.
And suddenly she was very afraid.
Perhaps because fear took hold of her soul so completely, she stared at him, taking in very detail of his appearance. His raiment, once rich and kingly, was worn and stained and frayed to rags. The flesh had fallen from his powerful frame, leaving it mere bone and sinew and sun-dried flesh.
He was in need of a shave, his hollow, sunken cheeks shadowed by a growth of heavy stubble. His lips, which moved continuously, as if he whispered to someone she could not see, were colorless, dry and cracked. Small beads of foamy spittle glistened at the corners of his mouth.
His eyes burned feverishly in hollowed sockets, ringed with unhealthy circles. He looked ill; ill unto death.
His bright gaze shifted from her breasts to her face when he noticed that she was looking at him. He grinned, a rictus devoid of mirth, and spread lean hands in a gesture of self-mockery.
“Welcome to my throne room!” he said, laughingly. “My empire is somewhat smaller than it has been, and my court reduced in numbers to just you and me. Zamog”—he twitched his bony shoulders, and snatched a quick glance behind him—“has gone to slay the boy, your lover; but that was hours and hours ago; I fear even my loyal monsterling has left my service, like all the rest. Faithless, faithless! But I still have you,” he said, his eyes returning to the girl suddenly.
Thyra was very afraid now. Her heart labored behind her ribs and her throat felt dry as dust. She sought to speak and coughed painfully.
“I have set wine beside you: drink, drink,” he said tonelessly.
She drew one weak hand from under the cloak, found a cup, and drank deeply of the lukewarm, strong red wine. Eyes hooded, the Impostor watched her broodingly, slapping his dagger nervously against the rock with little dull ringing sounds.
Putting down the empty cup, she looked away from the ghastly expression on his face and stared up at the walls and gates of the silent, mysterious city. He followed the direction of her gaze, and his face contorted in a snarl.
“Locked, locked, locked, locked,” be said harshly, then laughed, gesturing. “There is nowhere left for me to run!”
She followed his gesture and looked suddenly for the first time at the World’s Edge.
As far as the eye could see in the harsh morning glare, a cliff of stone ran from horizon to horizon, cutting the sky in half. The desert waste simply stretched up to a point about thirty yards from where they were—and stopped. Beyond it there was only empty sky, blue, vacant, birdless. Not even a cloud was there to stain the purity of the azure infinity.
It was apalling. It was too vast to endure. The mind flinched away from it numbly, refusing to think of it. She averted her eyes from the terrific immensity—and found him staring at her.
“I understand why the boy, your lover, has followed me all this weary way …”
“He is not my lover! He has never touched me! I am a Virgin of Zoromesh and my Vows forbid me to—” she said hotly; he waved her words away with the hand that held the sharp knife.
“Words, words! You love him, do you not? And he, you?”
“Yes, I love Kadji, with all my heart and soul,” she said a trifle unsteadily. “As for him, 1 cannot say—never has he given me a look, a word—”
“Phaugh! You are children, children! He is sworn to a Quest of vengeance, to revenge the honor of his tribe—of course he is forbidden to the love of women, he cannot even speak a word of love, any more than can you!” Shamad said restlessly.
Breathlessly, Thyra looked at the madman with wide astonished eyes. Could it be so? Could that be why Kadji had seemed to rebuff her timid overtures back there in the cave months ago? It must be—what fools they both had been! Each sworn to chastity of body and of speech, by almost identical vows—and each not understanding the other was similarly bound!
“… but why have you pursued me, girl? That is the one thing I have never understood. I have never harmed you,” he said, almost plaintively. She steeled herself and looked him directly in the face: she was weak from endless hours of riding, so weak and exhausted she had swooned in the saddle; he could strike before she could untangle her limbs from the torn cloak and rise; but she spoke anyway. Let it end here, she thought.
“Have you forgotten how you dispatched your assassins to slay me—me, a Blood Princess of the House of Holy Azakour?”
He chewed on his lips thoughtfully, gazing at her with eyes a little sideways, eyes terribly bloodshot and weary.
“There is that, I suppose,” he mumbled.
“But the real reason is that the sisterhood to which I belong has sent me hither to destroy you,” she said, trying not to let her voice tremble. “For I am of the White Witches of Zoromesh, not yet a full sorceress, merely a girl of the novitiate; my mother pledged me to the sisterhood when I was but a child, and the Elder Sisters cared for me and sheltered me after she died.”
A spark of interest flashed in his eyes.
“The White Witches? What have I ever dose to offend them?’ he cried, somewhat surprised by this revelation.
“You offend this earth of Gulzund by merely existing upon it,” she said stoutly, drawing strength and courage from some unknown source within. “Your vile usurpation of the Holy Name and Throne of Yakthodah reeks to heaven and is an affront to the very Gods. They will not tolerate that one of baseborn blood besoil the Holy Dragon Throne! Thus was I sent to slay you if I could; if I could not, another would have followed me, and another …”
Suddenly Shamad leaped to his feet and sprang down from the flat-topped boulder and stalked over to her. His face was white and twitching as if something in her words had goaded him beyond all endurance.
“Then they had best unleash another witch on my track,” he snarled. “For I shall slay you, aye, and that beardless boy that follows, and the old man, and that traitor Zamog, too, if still he lurks about—and then myself, I suppose.”
Without another word he stooped and the sharp dagger blade flashed like a steel mirror in the fierce sun as he drove it at her breast—
vii. World’s End
OUT OF NOWHERE a great grey wolf appeared. A shaggy, shadowy wolf, gigantic, fangs bared, growling thunderously. In his lean-muzzled face, eyes blazed like discs of golden flame.
He gathered himself, haunches tensing hackles rising into a rough crest down his spine. Claws scratched and scrabbled on the naked rock as he seized a purchase and in the next instant launched himself into space like a grey thunderbolt.
Shamad had frozen in astonishment at the sudden appearance of the monstrous wolf. It was as if he had solidified out of blank nothingness like an apparition. So startled was he that he had involuntarily checked his knife blow and the blade’s wicked point hovered above the flamehaired girl’s breast.
Then the mighty wolf hurtled through the air and crashed into the stooping figure of the crazed Impostor. Fearsomely long, sharp fangs caught at the wrist of his knife hand; jaws crunched—bones snapped—blood spurted. Shamad shrieked, high and shrill like a child, as the jaws of the savage wolf closed on his hand.
The impact of the wolf’s leap knocked the man flying. He fell on his back to the naked rock, the dagger spinning away to tinkle against stone.
The man shrieked again as he feebly tried to keep the snarling, snapping fangs from his face. The fetid, panting breath of the giant wolf was acrid and burningly hot on his face. In seconds his face and throat were slashed to ribbons and streaming with gore. He raised a face like a horrible scarlet mask, wherein only the mad, glaring eyes were still recognizable, in one heart rending glance at the frozen girl.