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

"Nay, not so far as my arts reveal. Ah me, I am spent! Suffer me to rest." The wizard sank with a sigh into the ferns. "Not in years have I been so fordone. Working two spells at once wellnigh slew me, and this march through the forest has finished me off." He rested his head in his hands.

"Where have you hidden the gear?"

"Alack, I am too spent to think. How found you the afterworld?"

"Oi! Ghastly, from what little I saw," said Jorian. He described the double road of cement and the monstrous vehicles that whizzed along it. "By Thio's horns, life must be riskier there by far than in our own world, with all its wars, plagues, robbers, sorceries, and wild beasts! I'd rather take a chance on one of your Mulvanian hells, where one has to cope merely with a few nice, bloodthirsty demons."

"Saw you met you any of the inhabitants?"

"Aye; a fellow whom I took to be a carpenter stopped his carriage and bespoke me, albeit neither could understand the other's lingo. He stared at me as the Xylarians would stare if a man-ape from Komilakh were to stroll amongst 'em." Jorian described the man.

Karadur gave a faint chuckle. "That was no carpenter but a peace officer a man trained in the use of arms but employed solely against evildoers of his own nation instead of against a foreign foe. I believe some of your Novarian city-states possess corps of such stalwarts. It is a plane of great wealth and many curious devices, but I hope never to spend an incarnation there."

"Wherefore not?"

"Because it is a dimension of base materialism, wherein magic is so feeble as to be wellnigh useless; so what scope were there for an accomplished thaumaturge like myself? Those who pass for magicians on that plane, I am informed, are mostly fakers. Why, even the gods of that world are but debile wraiths, able to work but little weal or woe, beyond causing petty strokes of luck, upon those they love and hate."

"Have these folk no religion, then?"

"Aye, or say they do. They also patronize magicians astrologers and necromancers and such. The reason is not that the gods and wizards of that plane can do them much good or ill, but that they come into incarnation there with buried memories of their previous lives in this world, where such things in sooth are mighty and fell. But, on the whole, the folk of that dimension are blind in spiritual matters."

Jorian slapped a gnat Then I, having no more psychic powen thai a head of cabbage, should do right well there."

"Not so, but far otherwise."

"Why?"

"Your strength and nimbleness your strongest resources here would avail you nought, because all tasks calling for such virtues in this world are there performed by soulless machines. What boots it if you can ride forty leagues between sunrise and sunset, when one of those mechanical cars you saw can cover thrice the distance in that time? Your strength were as useless as my moral purity and knowledge of spiritual forces."

"I'm not quite a halfwit, even though my thews be a trifle larger than most men's," said Jorian. "Natheless, belike you speak truth. In any case, old man, daylight will not last forever. So let us forth to find our cache, if you now be fit for walking."

"Aye, I am fit, albeit the prospect gives me no joy." With a groan, the wizard heaved himself to his feet and started poking in the nearest bushes with his staff, muttering:

"Now, let me see, where did I hide that accursed thing? Tsk, tsk. It was under the overhang of a boulder, I am sure, with a layer of leaves to conceal it& "

"No boulders here," said Jorian with a touch of impatience.

'True, true; methinks the place lay a furlong or so to the north, on higher ground. Let us look."

They moved off in the direction indicated and for the next two hours scoured the woods, looking for a boulder. Karadur mumbled:

"Let me see; let me see& It was a boulder of granite, with patches of moss, about as high as your shoulder, O Jorian& I am sure& I think& "

"Did you not blaze a nearby tree, or otherwise leave a marking to guide our search?"

"Let me think. Ah, yes, I marked three trees, on three sides of the cache. But there are so cursed many trees& "

"Why not find it by divination?"