"Coldheart Canyon (preview edition)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive - Coldheart Canyon)

spectators had assembled to witness. It was an arena of sexual sport. Several
performances were going on at the same time, all unapologetically obscene. In one
section of the arena a naked woman was being held down while a creature twice her
size, his body bestial, his erection monstrous, was being roped back by four men who
appeared to be controlling his approach to the woman. In another quarter, a man had
been stripped of his skin by three naked women. A fourth straddled him as he lay on
the ground in his own blood. The other three wore pieces of his skin. One had on his
whole face and shoulders, her breasts sticking out from beneath the ragged hood.
Another sat on the ground, wearing his arms and pulling on the skin of his legs like
waders. The third, the queen of this quartet, was wearing what was presumably the
piece de resistance, the flesh which the unhappy owner had worn from mid breast-bone
to mid-thigh. She was cavorting in this garish costume like a dancer and, by some
magic known only to the maker of the mystery, the usurped skin still boasted a full
erection.
"Good God..." Zeffer said.
"I told you," Sandru said, just a little smugly. мAnd that's the least of
it, believe me."
"The least of it?"
"The more you look, the more you see."
"Anywhere in particular?"
"Go over to the Wild Wood. Look amongst the trees."
Zeffer moved along the wall, studying the tiles as he went. At first he
couldn't make out anything controversial, but Sandru had some useful advice.
"Step away a foot or so."
In his fascination with the details of the stadium, Zeffer had come too
close to the wall to see the wood for the trees. Now he stepped back and to his
astonishment saw that the thicket around the arena was alive with figures, all of
which were in some form or other monstrous; and all unequivocally sexual. Erections
were thrust between the trees like plum-headed branches, women dangled from overhead
with their legs spread (a flock of birds, thirty or more, swooped out of the sex of
one; another was menstruating light, which was splashing on the ground below the
tree. Snakes came out of the scarlet pool, in bright profusion).
"Is it like this all over?" Zeffer said, his astonishment unfeigned.
мAll over. There are thirty-three thousand, two hundred and sixty-eight
tiles, and there is obscene matter on two thousand, seven hundred and ninety-eight
of them."
"You've obviously made a study," Zeffer observed.
"Not I. An Englishman who worked with Father Nicholas did the counting. For
some reason the numbers remained in my head. I think it's old age. Things you want
to remember, you can't. And things that don't mean anything stick in your head like
a knife."
"That's not a pretty image, with respect."
"With respect, there's nothing pretty about the way I feel," Sandru replied.
"I feel old to my marrow. On a good day I can barely get up in the morning. On a bad
day, I just wish I were dead."
"Lord."
Sandru shrugged. "That's what living in this place does to you after a
while. Everything drains out of you somehow."
Zeffer was only half-listening. He was exhilarated by what he saw, and he
had no patience with Sandru's melancholy; his thoughts were with the walls, and the