"Gardner F. Fox - Kothar 01 - Kothar Barbarian Swordsman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fox Gardner F)

What was this door? Where did it lead?

No matter what! No matter where!

Anywhere was better than out here with the mercenaries and their
yapping dogs following his footprints. His huge brown hand caught hold of
an iron bolt, slid it back with a wrench of muscles so painful as to make
him groan. It had been long years since anyone had walked this way.
Unused metal screeched in protest to his tug, but the bolt yielded and the
door swung inward onto blackness.

Kothar stumbled into that welcoming dark.

The sole of his war-boot touched a hard dirt floor. It was cool in the
gloom, and his eyes could see nothing at all. He stood swaying like a giant
tree about to topple, his fingers loosing their grip on his broken sword.

Slowly the darkness died away before a pallid green radiance that
seemed to fill the chamber. The light came from nowhere and everywhere.
It did not ease the chill bite of the air, it was like the coldness of the grave,
that air. It made Kothar shiver, accustomed as he was to the snow-cold of
the northern wastes.

An angry growl rose into his throat.

He found himself staring at a flat slab of stone that rested on marble
amphoras. It was a crypt, this place in hollow rock. And that dead thing
wrapped in funereal garments, brown with age, was what lay buried in it.
He had blundered into a tomb.

His lips twisted in a grin. Let the dead shelter him who sought life in
this sanctuary. He was about to turn and close the iron door when the
hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

The withered brown body on the slab—he could make out bits of
whitened bone and grisly fragments of flesh and hair protruding from the
rotted cloth—was moving. It sighed, as if it breathed immeasurable
distances away. Its chest lifted and fell in a slow pulsing.

Dwallka of the War Hammer! What was this thing? The corpse turned
its head so that it could look at Kothar out of its empty eye-sockets. The
barbarian felt the touch of eyes, even though there were no eyes to see or
be seen. He stiffened, his flesh crawled, his long fingers took a firmer grip
on his sword-haft.

Even as he stared, the lich sat up.

"You came at last, Kothar. I had almost given up hope for you."