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.
“I gather you are strangers to Chx?” said a male voice in a pleasing tenor. She looked up in surprise to find a tall, well-set-up young man standing at the door of the cell directly across the corridor. He was tanned and handsome in a well-bred way, with a finely-shaped head and clear-cut, if rather delicate, features. But his arms were admirably muscular and his shoulders strong-enough looking, which belied the slight delicacy she detected. His legs and torso were clothed in close fitting steel mesh, over which he wore the tattered remnants of a surcoat emblazoned with an heraldic emblem unfamiliar to her.
Catching her eye, he smiled pleasantly. Xarda frowned, then, with a slight shrug, decided to smile back.
“Strangers, by my halidom!” she swore bitterly. “Jailed for the non-commission of every crime in the book. And yourself, good sir?”
“Another un-disturber of the peace,” he smiled. Then, making a courtly bow, he said: “Pray permit me to introduce myself, madam! Erigon of Valardus, at your service.”
“I am the Sirix Xarda of Jemmerdy, and my companions in misfortune are.a friendly magician called the Illusionist of Nerelon—for he seems to have no other name than that—and Ganelon Silvermane, the Hero of Uth, formerly of Zermish-city in the Realm of the Nine Hegemons.”
“Good-day, then, to you all,” said the young man amiably. “I fear your places of origin are unknown to me, perchance even as mine realm of Valardus be unknown to you …”
“Yes,” the girl knight nodded, ““I was about to ask you where Valardus was.”
“Far to the north of here, beyond the Purple Plains, lieth my unhappy kingdom.”
“Wherefore unhappy, sir?” asked Xarda, falling in with the young man’s slightly antiquated mode of speech, which almost exactly suited her own.
“Alas, the fair glades and dells of gleaming Valardus now groan ‘neath the tyrant’s heel,” he said, somewhat dramatically.
“Oh? What tyrant is that?” asked the knightrix.
“Zaar, as he calls himself. The Warlord, as his followers term him, in all their grim and martial myriads. ‘Tis a mighty horde of savages, come wandering down from further north to ramp and roar through the tiny kingdoms of the lands Valardine … said Barbarians having over-run my realm, and tossed me forth upon the winds of chance, a homeless wanderer, who once upon a time could claim the very princely coronal—”
Xarda cleared her throat a bit impatiently; this old-fashioned roundabout way of talking was all very grand and stately in its way, but not ideally suited to the succint imparting of information. “Do you mean you’re a Prince?” she demanded.
The chiseled features of the young man looked faintly pained at such curt inquiry, but he nodded. “Prince Erigon of Valardus,” he admitted. “Or such at least I was when Good King Vergus held the throne! My hereditary throne!” She looked blank. “My late father,” he added. “Oh,” she said.
Along towards noon, a jailer came shuffling down the corridor to ladle a greasy and unappetizing stew into tin dishes from a common bucket. He eyed the knightrix primly, thin lips clamped shut in an expression of sour disapproval, failing to reply to several questions she asked of him. Among these were, “What are they going to do to us, and When?”
By this time, the old magician had recovered much of his good-humor and tackled the cold stew with a degree of zest the girl knight found repulsive and annoying. She had noticed, on similar occasions how the Illusionist seemed to virtually thrive on hardships, perils and adventures. He had once explained that after a long, fairly dull and uneventful career of magicianhood, a few dangers, imprisonments and excitements like these were a welcome change from unrelenting safety and security.
She was no limp-hearted weakling, was Xarda of Jemmerdy; but after the colorful, unsettling events of the last few weeks, she could happily have suffered through a bit of that same safety and security.
By this time, Ganelon had recovered from the sleep-inducing vapor, and gloomily prowled the narrow cell, testing the bars of the door until they squealed and squeaked. The giant did not enjoy captivity, and such were his incredible thews that the girl knight wondered if they should have to suffer very long. Indeed, next to Silvermane, the door of steely bars looked somewhat fragile and flimsy.
“Relax, my boy,” advised the old magician, chewing with relish on the greasy stew. “Even if you did rip the door off its hinges, which perhaps you could, we should still face an entire city filled with enemies before reaching the outside world. Relax, and keep calm.”
“I’ll try, master,” said Ganelon. “But I keep worrying about the poor Bazonga, and what these crazy people may be doing to her …”
“The dear Bird can take care of herself, as you will doubtless learn,” said the magician cheerfully. “No doubt she is still floating in the courtyard of the hospice, obediently tethered to her tree, amusing herself by singing little songs. I doubt if the so-called Ethical Triumvirs have any notion the vehicle is animate, much less sentient. Do stop that pacing to and fro, my boy! Sit down and have some stew. Save your strength, for the time when we shall need it.”
“And when will that be?” asked Xarda with a sigh. The Illusionist winked, although she couldn’t see the wink, with his vapor veil covering his features.
“When we make our escape,” he said comfortably.
“And when win that be?” she repeated the question.
“Soon enough,” he said, with a smugness she found rather irritating. It was annoying to share adventures with people who refused to take danger seriously, she thought to herself. But there was no use complaining about it. Wiping his lips and taking a swig of fresh water from the pail, the Illusionist settled back on the bench, folded his hands in his lap, and seemed to doze.
How could anybody take a nap at a time like this? Xarda swore under her breath, and turned back to the door to start another conversation with the pleasant, young prince across the corridor.
5. OF THE XIMCHAK HORDE
During the rest of that afternoon, Xarda and Prince Erigon got better acquainted, while the old magister napped and Ganelon moped and sulked gloomily to himself.
In a rather hazy fashion, Xarda was familiar with the local geography of this part of the Gondwane super-continent. She knew the Free City of Chx was directly north of Dwarf-Land, across the Vanishing Mountains, whatever they were; and that north of Chx were many little dukedoms, princedoms, city-states and kingdoms, with Jemmerdy itself northeast of Quay. And she knew that to the north of Jemmerdy and the Glass Lake, there stretched an interminable region of flatland called the Purple Plain, whereon the ferocious Indigon herds wandered and the Moving Cities were occasionally seen. But whatever realms might, or might not, lie north of the Purple Plain were thoroughly unknown to her.
This slight geographical ignorance in the education of the Jemmerdine girl is quite understandable, when you pause to consider the true immensity of Gondwane. In the seven hundred million years between our own Twentieth Century and the Eon of the Falling Moon, the theory of the continental drift was more than proven scientifically accurate. The continents did indeed form one vast land mass (called Pangaea) in Time’s Dawn; tidal forces did cause the breakup of the primal super-continent and set the various fragments into a slow drifting apart. But, after enormous ages of time, they came together again on the opposite side of the globe, until now, in the Twilight of Time, a second Supercontinent had been formed, which comprised the total land surface of the planet.