"De Camp, L Sprague - Reluctant King 1 - The Goblin Towe.textr" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Camp L Sprague)

An approaching vehicle drew up and stopped with a thin, mouselike squeak. A door opened and a man got out. He had, Jorian saw, normal legs, encased in gray pantaloons that hung down to his shoes. He wore a hat with a broad, flat brim, and from a stout belt depended a small leather case. From this case projected the curved handle of some instrument, which Jorian guessed to be a carpenter's tool.

The man approached Jorian and spoke, but Jorian could make nothing of his words. Although he knew several languages, that of the man in the pantaloons was strange to him.

"I am Jorian of Ardamai, son of Evor the clockmaker," he said. This had been his name until that day, five years before, when he had innocently caught a human head hurtling through the air and found himself king of Xylar.

Staring intently at Jorian's golden crown, the man shook his head and said something else. Jorian repeated his statement in Mulvanian and in Shvenic. Looking blank, the man uttered more sounds.

Then another voice sounded; Jorian jumped, for he had not seen anyone else nearby. The voice, speaking unintelligible words in a squawking, metallic tone, seemed to come from the man's vehicle. The man smiled a forced smile of reassurance, and said something more to Jorian, and went back to his carriage, which soon roared off.

Jorian turned back to his rope and began to coil it around his waist. He recalled his instructions: Walk southeast one league, lower himself back to his own world, and await Karadur, if the holy man had not already reached the rendezvous.

But which way was southeast? Luckily the sky was clear, as it had been in Xylar. The execution had been timed for noon, and little time had elapsed since Jorian had placed his neck upon the block. Soon, however, the sun's motion would make it useless as a directional guide. He would have to risk crossing one of these roads despite the danger.

Looking along the nearest paved strip to make sure that no more vehicles approached, Jorian darted across. He continued to the edge of the lawnlike sward, where plants grew more naturally. He broke off a stem of long field grass, found a patch of bare earth, and set the stem in it upright. Then, with the point of the little knife, he traced a line where the shadow of the grass stem fell. He drew a transverse line, then bisected the near left angle by still another line. That gave him his direction.

As he set out, Jorian paused now and then to cut a tree seedling and trim it to a wand two or three feet long. The first of these sticks he kept, cutting a notch in it every hundred steps. By thrusting the other sticks into the ground every fifty or hundred paces and backsighting, he kept in a fairly straight line. Every thousand steps, he checked his direction with the sun.

When he had cut fifty notches in his first wand, he halted in a gully between two wooded hillsides. Although he had seen houses in the distance, he was thankful that his march had not taken him close to any.

He counted the notches to make sure, unwound the rope from his waist, and took a turn with it around a tree. Then he uttered the Mulvanian incantation that Karadur had taught him:
Mansalmu darm rau antarau,
Nodo zaro terakh hid zor rau&

He felt his feet sinking, as if the solid ground beneath him were turning to quicksand. Then it gave way, and Jorian fell. He fetched up with a jerk, hanging suspended by the rope between earth his own earth and the clear blue heavens.

Above him, the two strands of rope arose, diverging slightly, until they faded out a yard above his head. Below, he was disconcerted to see the dark, stagnant waters of the Marsh of Moru. Karadur had told him that their rendezvous would be near the swamp, but he had not expected to come out right over it. To the north rolled the fields and woodlots of Xylar. To the south rose the foothills of the mighty Lograms, and beyond them the snow-topped peaks of that range, which sundered the Novarian city-states from the tropical empire of Mulvan.

He thought of climbing back up and trying again from another tree but decided against it. He was not sure how long the "soft spot" that his spell had created between the two planes would remain soft. It could not do to have the earth solidify just as he was climbing through it. On the other hand, he was a good swimmer and did not fear the three-foot dwarf crocodiles found in Moru Marsh.

He lowered himself to where the ends of the rope dangled. If he had tied one end around the tree with an ordinary loop, the rope would have been long enough to reach the surface of his world. In that case, however, he would not have been able to recover the precious rope after his descent. Therefore he had applied the middle of the rope to the tree and let both ends hang down an equal distance.

The dark, odorous water lay about twenty feet beneath him. A look around showed no sign of the wizard. Here we go, Jorian thought, and released one end of the rope.

He struck with a tremendous splash. The rope poured down after him, striking the water in loops and coils. Taking one end of it in his teeth, Jorian struck out for the nearest shore.

This proved to be a floating bank of reeds. Jorian hauled himself out, brown water running off his shoulders. When he stood up, the surface beneath him quivered, gave, and sank in alarming fashion. The safest mode of progress, he decided, was on all fours. Trailing the rope, he crept towards higher ground, where willows and dark cypresses grew thickly. At last he felt firm soil beneath him and rose to his feet. A water weed trailed from one of the spikes of his crown.

"Karadur!" he called, pulling loose the weed and scraping the swamp water off his skin with his fingers.

He was not surprised when there was no reply. A league-long hike would be hard on the old fellow, and he might not arrive until nightfall. Since Jorian saw nothing else of a useful nature to do, he found a spot masked by ferns, took off his crown, stretched out, and was soon fast asleep.

The sun was farther down in the sky, although still far from the horizon, when a voice awakened Jorian. He sprang up to face Karadur, who stood before him in his normal guise, leaning on a staff and breathing heavily.

"Hail!" said Jorian. "How did you find me, old man?"

"You ah snored, O King I mean, Master Jorian."

"Are we followed hither?"