"Robert E. Howard - Conan - The Hour of the Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Howard Robert E)

intelligence grew in his dark eyes and made them deep and strange and luminous. It was as if long-
sunken witch-lights floated slowly up through midnight pools of darkness.
Orastes cast a furtive glance at his companions, who stood staring in morbid fascination at
their strange guest. Their iron nerves had withstood an ordeal that might have driven weaker men
mad. He knew it was with no weaklings that he conspired, but men whose courage was as profound as
their lawless ambitions and capacity for evil. He turned his attention to the figure in the ebon-
black chair. And this one spoke at last.
"I remember," he said in a strong, resonant voice, speaking Nemedian with a curious, archaic
accent. "I am Xaltotun, who was high priest of Set in Python, which was in Acheron. The Heart of
Ahriman - I dreamed I had found it again - where is it?"
Orastes placed it in his hand, and he drew breath deeply as he gazed into the depths of the
terrible jewel burning in his grasp.
"They stole it from me, long ago," he said. "The red heart of the night it is, strong to save
or to damn. It came from afar, and from long ago. While I held it, none could stand before me. But
it was stolen from me, and Acheron fell, and I fled an exile into dark Stygia. Much I remember,
but much I have forgotten. I have been in a far land, across misty voids and gulfs and unlit
oceans. What is the year?"
Orastes answered him. "It is the waning of the Year of the Lion, three thousand years after
the fall of Acheron."
"Three thousand years!" murmured the other. "So long? Who are you?"
"I am Orastes, once a priest of Mitra. This man is Amalric, baron of Tor, in Nemedia; this
other is Tarascus, younger brother of the king of Nemedia; and this tall man is Valerius, rightful
heir of the throne of Aquilonia."
"Why have you given me life?" demanded Xaltotun. "What do you require of me?"
The man was now fully alive and awake, his keen eyes reflecting the working of an unclouded
brain. There was no hesitation or uncertainty in his manner. He came directly to the point, as one
who knows that no man gives something for nothing. Orastes met him with equal candor.
"We have opened the doors of hell this night to free your soul and return it to your body
because we need your aid. We wish to place Tarascus on the throne of Nemedia, and to win for


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Valerius the crown of Aquilonia. With your necromancy you can aid us."
Xaltotun's mind was devious and full of unexpected slants.
"You must be deep in the arts yourself, Orastes, to have been able to restore my life. How is
it that a priest of Mitra knows of the Heart of Ahriman, and the incantations of Skelos?"
"I am no longer a priest of Mitra," answered Orastes. "I was cast forth from my order because
of my delving in black magic. But for Amalric there I might have been burned as a magician.
"But that left me free to pursue my studies. I journeyed in Zamora, in Vendhya, in Stygia,
and among the haunted jungles of Khitai. I read the ironbound books of Skelos, and talked with
unseen creatures in deep wells, and faceless shapes in black reeking jungles. I obtained a glimpse
of your sarcophagus in the demon-haunted crypts below the black giant-walled temple of Set in the
hinterlands of Stygia, and I learned of the arts that would bring back life to your shriveled
corpse. From moldering manuscripts I learned of the Heart of Ahriman. Then for a year I sought its
hiding-place, and at last I found it."
"Then why trouble to bring me back to life?" demanded Xaltotun, with his piercing gaze fixed
on the priests. "Why did you not employ the Heart to further your own power?"
"Because no man today knows the secrets of the Heart," answered Orastes. "Not even in legends