"C. L. Moore - The Black Gods Kiss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

incomprehensible pathos that made an undernote of tears to the starry dark of this land. And the thought
was growing in her mind that, though she had come into no brimstone pit where horned devils pranced
over flames, yet perhaps it was after all a sort of hell through which she ran.

Presently, in the distance she caught a glimmer of something bright. The ground dipped after that and
she lost it, and skimmed through a hollow where pale things wavered away from her into the deeper
dark. She never knew what they were, and was glad. When she came up onto higher ground again she
saw it more clearly, an expanse of dim brilliance ahead. She hoped it was a lake, and ran more swiftly.
It was a lake--a lake that could never have existed outside some obscure hell like this. She stood on
the brink doubtfully, wondering if this could be the place the light devil had meant. Black, shining water
stretched out before her, heaving gently with a motion unlike that of any water she had ever seen before.
And in the depths of it, like fireflies caught in ice, gleamed myriad small lights. They were fixed there
immovably, not stirring with the motion of the water. As she watched, something hissed above her and a
streak of light split the dark air. She looked up in time to see something bright curving across the sky to
fall without a splash into the water, and small ripples of phosphorescence spread sluggishly toward the
shore, where they broke at her feet with the queerest whispering sound, as if each succeeding ripple
spoke the syllable of a word.
She looked up, trying to locate the origin of the falling lights, but the strange stars looked down upon
her blankly. She bent and stared down into the center of the spreading ripples, and where the thing had
fallen she thought a new light twinkled through the water. She could not determine what it was, and after
a curious moment she gave the question up and began to cast about for the temple the light-devil had
spoken of.
After a moment she thought she saw something dark in the center of the lake, and when she had stared
for a few minutes it gradually became clearer, an arch of darkness against the starry background of the
water. It might be a temple. She strolled slowly along the brim of the lake, trying to got a closer view of
it, for the thing was no more than a darkness against the spangles of light, like some void in the sky where
no stars shine. And presently she stumbled over something in the grass.
She looked down with startled yellow eyes, and saw a strange, indistinguishable darkness. It had
solidity to the feel but scarcely to the eye, for she could not quite focus upon it. It was like trying to see
something that did not exist save as a void, a darkness in the grass. It had the shape of a step, and when
she followed with her eyes she saw that it was the beginning of a dim bridge stretching out over the lake,
narrow and curved and made out of nothingness. It seemed to have no surface, and its edges were
difficult to distinguish from the lesser gloom surrounding it. But the thing was tangible--an arch carved out
of the solid dark--and it led out in the direction she wished to go. For she was naively sure now that the
dim blot in the center of the lake was the temple she was searching for. The falling stars had guided her,
and she could not have gone astray.
So she set her teeth and gripped her sword and put her foot upon the bridge. It was rock-firm under
her, but scarcely more than a foot or so wide, and without rails. When she had gone a step or two she
began to feel dizzy; for under her the water heaved with a motion that made her head swim, and the stars
twinkled eerily in its depths. She dared not look away for fear of missing her footing on the narrow arch
of darkness. It was like walking a bridge flung across the void, with stars underfoot and nothing but an
unstable strip of nothingness to bear her up. Halfway across, the heaving of the water and the illusion of
vast, constellated spaces beneath and the look her bridge had of being no more than empty space ahead,
combined to send her head reeling; and as she stumbled on, the bridge seemed to be wavering with her,
swinging in gigantic arcs across the starry void below.
Now she could see the temple more closely, though scarcely more clearly than from the shore. It
looked to be no more than an outlined emptiness against the star-crowded brilliance behind it, etching its
arches and columns of blankness upon the twinkling waters. The bridge came down in a long dim swoop
to its doorway. Jirel took the last few yards at a reckless run and stopped breathless under the arch that
made the temple's vague doorway. She stood there panting and staring about narrow-eyed, sword