"Dunsany, Lord - collection - A Dreamer's Tales- And Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

furry with forests through which the river in his course sweeps on with all
the worlds of heaven. Among the colossal trunks of those dark trees, the
smallest fronds of whose branches are man nights, there walk the gods. And
whenever its thirst, glowing in space like a great sun, comes upon the
beast, the tiger of the gods creeps down to the river to drink. And the
tiger of the gods drinks his fill loudly, whelming worlds the while, and the
level of the river sinks between its banks ere the beast's thirst is
quenched and ceases to glow like a sun. And many worlds thereby are heaped
up dry and stranded, and the gods walk not among them evermore, because they
are hard to their feet. These are the worlds that have no destiny, whose
people know no god. And the river sweeps onwards ever. And the name of the
River is Oriathon, but men call it Ocean. This is the Lower Faith of the
Inner Lands. And there is a Higher Faith which is not told to all. Oriathon
sweeps on through the forests of Infinity and all at once falls roaring over
an Edge, whence Time has long ago recalled his hours to fight in his war
with the gods; and falls unlit by the flash of nights and days, with his
flood unmeasured by miles, into the deeps of nothing.
Now as the centuries went by and the one way by which a man could climb
Poltarnees became worn with feet, more and more men surmounted it, not to
return. And still they knew not in the Inner Lands upon what mystery
Poltarnees looked. For on a still day and windless, while men walked happily
about their beautiful streets or tended flocks in the country, suddenly the
west wind would bestir himself and come in from the Sea. And he would come
cloaked and grey and mournful and carry to someone the hungry cry of the Sea
calling out for bones of men. And he that heard it would move restlessly for
some hours, and at last would rise suddenly, irresistibly up, setting his
face to Poltarnees, and would say, as is the custom of those lands when men
part briefly, "Till a man's heart remembereth," which means "Farewell for a
while"; but those that loved him, seeing his eyes on Poltarnees, would
answer sadly, "Till the gods forget," which means "Farewell."
Now the king of Arizim had a daughter who played with the wild wood flowers,
and with the fountains in her father's court, and with the little blue
heaven-birds that came to her doorway in the winter to shelter from the
snow. And she was more beautiful than the wild wood flowers, or that all the
fountains in her father's court, or than the blue heaven-birds in their full
winter plumage when they shelter from the snow. The old wise kings of
Mondath and of Toldees saw her once as she went lightly down the little
paths of her garden, and turning their gaze into the mists of thought,
pondered the destiny of their Inner Lands. And they watched her closely by
the stately flowers, and standing alone in the sunlight, and passing and
repassing the strutting purple birds that the king's fowlers had brought
from Asagйhon. When she was of the age of fifteen years the King of Mondath
called a council of kings. And there met with him the kings of Toldees and
Arizim. And the King of Mondath in his Council said:
"The call of the unappeased and hungry Sea (and at the word 'Sea' the three
kings bowed their heads) lures every year out of our happy kingdoms more and
more of our men, and still we know not the mystery of the Sea, and no
devised oath has brought one man back. Now thy daughter, Arizim, is lovelier
than the sunlight, and lovelier than those stately flowers of thine that
stand so tall in her garden, and hath more grace and beauty than those