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

On and on she went, at that surprising speed, while the meadows skimmed past beneath her flying feet
and gradually the light drew nearer. She saw now that it was a round tower of sheeted luminance, as if
walls of solid flame rose up from the ground. Yet it seemed to be steady, nor did it cast any illumination
upon the sky.

Before much time had elapsed, with her dreamlike speed she had almost reached her goal. The ground
was becoming marshy underfoot, and presently the smell of swamps rose in her nostrils and she saw that
between her and the light stretched a belt of unstable ground with black reedy grass. Here and there she
could see dim white blotches moving. They might be beasts, or only wisps of mist. The starlight was not
very illuminating.
She began to pick her way carefully across the black, quaking morasses. Where the tufts of grass rose
she found firmer ground, and she leaped from clump to clump with that amazing lightness, so that her feet
barely touched the black ooze. Here and there slow bubbles rose through the mud and broke thickly.
She did not like the place.
Halfway across, she saw one of the white blotches approaching her with slow, erratic movements. It
bumped along unevenly, and at first she thought it might be inanimate, its approach was so indirect and
purposeless. Then it blundered nearer, with that queer bumpy gait, sucking noses in the ooze and
splashing as it came. In the starlight she saw suddenly what it was, and for an instant her heart paused
and sickness rose overwhelmingly in her throat. It was a woman--a beautiful woman whose white bare
body had the curves and loveliness of some marble statue. She was crouching like a frog and as Jirel
watched in stupefaction she straightened her legs abruptly and leaped as a frog leaps, only more clumsily,
falling forward into the ooze a little distance beyond the watching woman. She did not seem to see Jirel.
The mud-spattered face was blank. She blundered on through the mud in awkward leaps. Jirel watched
until the woman was no more than a white wandering blur in the dark and above the shock of that sight
pity was rising, and uncomprehending resentment against whatever had brought so lovely a creature into
this--into blundering in frog leaps aimlessly through the mud, with empty mind and blind, staring eyes. For
the second time that night she knew the sting of unaccustomed tears as she went on.
The sight, though, had given her reassurance. The human form was not unknown here. There might be
leathery devils with hoofs and horns, such as she still half expected, but she would not be alone in her
humanity; though if all the rest were as piteously mindless as the one she had seen--she did not follow that
thought. It was too unpleasant. She was glad when the marsh was past and she need not see any longer
the awkward white shapes bumping along through the dark.
She struck out across the narrow space which lay between her and the tower. She saw now that it was
a building, and that the light composed it. She could not understand that, but she saw it. Walls and
columns outlined the tower, solid sheets of light with definite boundaries, not radiant. As she came nearer
she saw that it was in motion, apparently spurting up from some source underground as if the light
illuminated sheets of water rushing upward under great pressure. Yet she felt intuitively that it was not
water, but incarnate light.
She came forward hesitantly, gripping her sword. The area around the tremendous pillar was paved
with something black and smooth that did not reflect the light. Out Of it sprang the uprushing walls of
brilliance with their sharply defined edges. The magnitude of the thing dwarfed her to infinitesimal size.
She stared upward with undazzled eyes, trying to understand. If there could be such a thing as solid,
non-radiating light, this was it.

She was very near under the mighty tower before she could see the details of the building clearly. They
were strange to her--great pillars and arches around the base, and one stupendous portal, all molded out
of the rushing, prisoned light. She turned toward the opening after a moment, for the light had a tangible
look. She did not believe she could have walked through it even had she dared.
When that tremendous portal arched over her she peered in, affrighted by the very size of the place.
She thought she could hear the hiss and spurt of the light surging upward. She was looking into a mighty