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

globe inside, a hall shaped like the interior of a bubble, though the curve was so vast she was scarcely
aware of it. And in the very center of the globe floated a light. Jirel blinked. A light, dwelling in a bubble
of light. It glowed there in midair with a pale, steady flame that was somehow alive and animate, and
brighter than the serene illumination of the building, for it hurt her eyes to look at it directly.
She stood on the threshold and stared, not quite daring to venture in. And as she, hesitated a change
came over the light. A flash of rose tinged its pallor. The rose deepened and darkened until it took on the
color of blood. And the shape underwent strange changes. It lengthened, drew itself out narrowly, split at
the bottom into two branches, put out two tendrils from the top. The blood-red paled again, and the light
somehow lost its brilliance, receded into the depths of the thing that was forming. Jirel clutched her sword
and forgot to breathe, watching. The light was taking on the shape of a human being--of a woman--of a
tall woman in mail, her red hair tousled and her eyes staring straight into the eyes at the portal. . . .
"Welcome," said the Jirel suspended in the center of the globe, her voice deep and resonant and clear
in spite of the distance between them. Jirel at the door held her breath, wondering and afraid. This was
herself, in every detail, a mirrored Jirel--that was it, a Jirel mirrored upon a surface which blazed and
smoldered with barely repressed light, so that the eyes gleamed with it and the whole figure seemed to
hold its shape by an effort, only by that effort restraining itself from resolving into pure, formless light
again. But the voice was not her own. It shook and resounded with a knowledge as alien as the light-built
walls. It mocked her. It said,
"Welcome! Enter into the portals, woman!"
She looked up warily at the rushing walls about her. Instinctively she drew back.
"Enter, enter!" urged that mocking voice from her own mirrored lips. And there was a note in it she did
not like.
"Enter!" cried the voice again, this time a command.
Jirel's eyes narrowed. Something intuitive warned her back, and yet--she drew the dagger she had
thrust in her belt and with a quick motion she tossed it into the great globe-shaped hall. It struck the floor
without a sound, and a brilliant light flared up around it, so brilliant she could not look upon what was
happening; but it seemed to her that the knife expanded, grew large and nebulous and ringed with
dazzling light. In less time than it takes to tell, it had faded out of sight as if the very atoms which
composed it had flown apart and dispersed in the golden glow of that mighty bubble. The dazzle faded
with the knife, leaving Jirel staring dazedly at a bare floor.
That other Jirel laughed, a rich, resonant laugh of scorn and malice.
"Stay out, then," said the voice. "You've more intelligence than I thought. Well, what would you here?"
Jirel found her voice with an effort.
"I seek a weapon," she said, "a weapon against a man I so hate that upon earth there is none terrible
enough for my need."
"You so hate him, eh?" mused the voice.
"With all my heart!"
"With all your heart!" echoed the voice, and there was an undernote of laughter in it that she did not
understand. The echoes of that mirth ran round and round the great globe. Jirel felt her cheeks burn with
resentment against some implication in the derision which she could not put a name to. When the echoes
of the laugh had faded the voice said indifferently,
"Give the man what you find at the black temple in the lake. I make you a gift of it."
The lips that were Jirel's twisted into a laugh of purest mockery; then all about that figure so perfectly
her own the light flared out. She saw the outlines melting fluidly as she turned her dazzled eyes away.
Before the echoes of that derision had died, a blinding, formless light burned once more in the midst of
the bubble.


Jirel turned and stumbled away under the mighty column of the tower, a hand to her dazzled eyes. Not
until she had reached the edge of the black, unreflecting circle that paved the ground around the pillar did