-
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
puckering my lips in the old way to avoid cutting them, and snatched up the crossbow. I whirled. A
Hikdar was running toward us waving his sword as though he acted in a play. The bolt took him through
an eye. I threw the crossbow down and with Delia at my side sprinted on for the far doors. They were
lenken and bound with gold. The uproar behind us boiled up. I could not go on swiftly enough and so out
into the street. So it must be the dark and secret ways that led to the Jikhorkdun for us.
Staring down past the half-folded doors that led first of all into a narrow passageway and then a steep
and slippery flight of stairs I heard a grunting gasp and a meaty chop and a mangled scream of agony
behind me. I whirled. A Rapa staggered back with his beak hanging and dripping blood. Delia didn t
bother to slice him again but pointed past my shoulder, so I turned back. Armed guards with weapons
bright in the lamplight boiled up that stair and crowded out past the half-folded door. The Jikhorkdun
was not for us. The massive gold-bound lenken door would not be opened without a fight, and even so
wonderful a girl as Delia could not open it single-handed as I held off the guards. I cocked an evil eye
upward.
A small arched stone entrance was barred by a sturm-wood door. I ran at it, and kicked it in so that the
lock ripped away and the wood gleamed freshly splintered. Delia bundled in before me and I hung my
shield over my back, and felt the glancing shock of bolts ricocheting from the bronze-bound wooden
surface.
Up, Delia, my heart!
Follow close, close . . .
The door was a ruin and so valueless. The first one through was a Rapa and he went shrieking back into
his comrades, beakless. The next was a Brokelsh, and he somersaulted back with half his face sheared
away. The third was a Gon, and his cleanly shaved scalp abruptly gaped all bloody through the wreck of
his helmet. The fourth did not appear. Instead a stux flashed through, and then another. These I caught
and returned, and heard two shrieks.
Delia called from above.
Doors, Dray all bolted save one And then I heard a beginning scream from Delia of the Blue
Mountains abruptly chopped off.
I went up those stairs like a devil.
A horrid screeching spitting, a diabolical hissing echoed down the stone staircase. Frantic, I roared up
the stone treads and came out onto a landing with the bolted doors and one door open. In the doorway
crouched the black form of a neemu, its wicked eyes smoldering gold, its sleek black fur electric in
the-gloom, its mouth gaping, and the white fangs bared. On one knee the slender form of Delia waited,
the dagger held before her and I saw the fresh blood on that dagger, the blood-matted fur on the
neemu s throat, the claw marks ripped down the crimson robe, and the torn tufts of the furred cape.
Delia had screamed and had cut the scream off deliberately so as not to alarm me further as she faced
a savage neemu with only a curved ornate dagger!
I hurdled Delia and, shield-first, crashed headlong into the great black cat and so, with four precise
thrusts, finished it.
Are you badly hurt, Delia Delia . . . ?
No I surprised it but it was it was
Through here.
I helped her rise. She gave me her smile, and then we were running into the long chamber beyond the
open door with the ominous clashing of mailed men following us. Along the tessellated floor of the
chamber we ran and then through a gallery lined with obscene idols of jade and alabaster and ivory, and
so to a door, tall and narrow, hung about with emerald wreaths, hundreds of brilliant emeralds cunningly
worked by a master artist into representations of triumphal wreaths. The door was of balass and it
moved smoothly and silently as I pushed it open. We passed through into a great space of shadow and
mystery. I closed the door behind us and lowered the counterpoised beam of lenk into its steel slots. A
full-scale battering ram would be needed to smash down that high door.
We surveyed this place wherein we had fled, and saw that it was a shrine raised within the fortress of
Hakal to the highest state spirit, the national god, of Hyrklana, for all that other cults and beliefs were
undermining the strength of the old religion.
Samphron-oil lamps glowed a mellow gleam upon the shrine within that vast chamber, picking out the
fantastic wealth of decoration, the abandon of riches, the exotic outpouring of art and skill. Central within
the shrine and lofting higher than fifty feet rose the idol. The image was of a morphology serene and
bland, with a bewildering wagonwheel of eight arms, each hand rigidly fixed in a ritualistic pose of power.
The face might have been apim, with Chulik tusks, Womox horns, Rapa beak, Fristle whiskers. It
combined many racial characteristics, and yet was of itself.
Havil the Green! whispered Delia.
Had we the time, my love, I d welcome the chance to prize a few of those emeralds free and tuck them
into a lesten-hide bag. I laughed. Korf Aighos should be here now!
Aye, Dray, if only he were! She controlled herself, lifting her spirits. And Seg and Inch and Turko the
Shield!
She went to move on and I placed my left hand, all bloody as it was, upon her shoulder.
Do not move, my heart!
She saw the four neemus, then, their heads low, their tails moving slowly from side to side, as they slunk
out like four demoniac black shadows, creeping forward on their bellies.
Queen Fahia had released her pets to cleanse her palace of a man and a woman who had despised her
before her people and thrown a stux at her, and defamed her.
I cocked an eye up at the statue.
With a sinewy thrust I lifted Delia so that she stood upon the idol s left foot. The leg had been encased in
a greave of chased gold and emeralds, and at my urgent gesture Delia began to climb up the projections,
as she would a ladder, so that soon she was some ten feet above my head. Then I slid the shield down
before me and took a fresh grip upon the thraxter and faced the neemus.
They spat at me. Their lips writhed back and their fangs gleamed in the mellow samphron glow.
Delia did not speak.
A sullen booming began from the high balass door and the lenken bar in its steel sockets moved and
groaned.
At that moment, with my Delia in so grave a peril, I think I can be forgiven if I say that had the four
neemus been four leems they would have stood little chance. The first one sprang and I smashed the
shield into its face and passed the thraxter through it, the sleek black fur clotting with blood, the claws
grasping and scratching at the shield rim. On the instant I ducked and withdrew and slashed the sword in
a flat arc that slit the second s throat as he sprang after his fellow. The third sprang, also, and landed on
the shield; but I kept low so that his hind legs could not rake forward. The thraxter bit again. That left
one. He circled, his tail lashing, his head turning from side to side, and he hissed and spat. And I charged
him, and so took him, the shield smashing into his head and forequarters, and the thraxter sliding bloodily
into his heart.
I stepped back. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- zambezia2013.opx.pl