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

she realize that she knew no way of finding the lake where her weapon lay. And not until then did she
remember how fatal it is said to be to accept a gift from a demon. Buy it, or earn it, but never accept the
gift. Well--she shrugged and stepped out upon the grass. She must surely be damned by now, for having
ventured down of her will into this curious place for such a purpose as hers. The soul can be lost but
once.
She turned her face up to the strange stars and wondered in what direction her course lay. The sky
looked blankly down upon her with its myriad meaningless eyes. A star fell as she watched, and in her
superstitious soul, she took it for an omen, and set off boldly over the dark meadows in the direction
where the bright streak had faded. No swamps guarded the way here, and she was soon skimming along
over the grass with that strange, dancing gait that the lightness of the place allowed her. And as she went
she was remembering, as from long ago in some other far world, a man's arrogant mirth and the press of
his mouth on hers. Hatred bubbled up hotly within her and broke from her lips in a little savage laugh of
anticipation. What dreadful thing awaited her in the temple in the lake, what punishment from hell to be
loosed by her own hands upon Guillaume? And though her soul was the price it cost her, she would
count it a fair bargain if she could drive the laughter from his mouth and bring terror into the eyes that
mocked her.
Thoughts like these kept her company for a long way upon her journey. She did not think to be lonely
or afraid in the uncanny darkness across which no shadows fell from that mighty, column behind her. The
unchanging meadows flew past underfoot lightly as meadows in a dream. It might almost have been that
the earth moved instead of herself, so effortlessly did she go. She was sure now that she was heading in
the right direction, for two more stars had fallen in the same arc across the sky.
The meadows were not untenanted. Sometimes, she felt presences near her in the dark, and once she
ran full-tilt into a nest of little yapping horrors like those on the hilltop. They lunged up about her with
clicking teeth, mad with a blind ferocity, and she swung her sword in frantic circles, sickened by the noise
of them lunging splashily through the grass and splattering her sword with their deaths. She beat them off
and went on, fighting her own sickness, for she had never known anything quite so nauseating as these
little monstrosities.
She crossed a brook that talked to itself in the darkness with that queer murmuring which came so near
to speech, and a few strides beyond it she paused suddenly, feeling the ground tremble with the rolling
thunder of hoofbeats approaching. She stood stiff, searching the dark anxiously, and presently the
earth-shaking beat grew louder and she saw a white blur flung wide across, the dimness to her left, and
the sound of hoofs deepened and grew. Then out of the night swept a herd of snow-white horses.
Magnificently they ran, manes tossing, tails streaming, feet pounding a rhythmic, heart-stirring roll along
the ground. She caught her breath at the beauty of their motion. They swept by a little distance away,
tossing their heads, spurning the ground with scornful feet.
But as they came abreast of her she saw one blunder a little and stumble against the next, and that one
shook his head bewilderedly; and suddenly she realized that they were blind--all running so splendidly in
a deeper dark than even she groped through. And she saw, too, their coats were roughened with sweat,
and foam dripped from their lips, and their nostrils were flaring pools of scarlet. Now and again one
stumbled from pure exhaustion. Yet they ran, frantically, blindly through, the dark, driven by something
outside their comprehension.
As the last one of all swept by her, sweat-crusted and staggering, she saw him toss his head high,
spattering foam, and whinny shrilly to the stars. And it seemed to her that the sound was strangely
articulate. Almost she heard the echoes of a name --- "Julienne, Julienne!"--in that high, despairing sound.
And the incongruity of it, the bitter despair, clutched at her heart so sharply that for the third time that
night she knew the sting of tears.
The dreadful humanity of that cry echoed in her ears as the thunder died away. She went on, blinking
back the tears for that beautiful blind creature, staggering with exhaustion, calling a girl's name hopelessly
from a beast's throat into the blank darkness wherein it was forever lost.
Then another star fell across the sky, and she hurried ahead, closing her mind to the strange,