"Smith, Clark Ashton - Tales of Averoigne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Clark Ashton)

'The ruins are those of the Chateau des Faussesflammes,' he replied.
'For untold years, men say, they have been the haunt of unholy spirits,
of witches and demons; and festivals not to be described or even
named are held within their walls. No weapon known to man, no
exorcism or holy water, has ever prevailed against these demons; many
brave cavaliers and monks have disappeared amid the shadows of
Faussesflammes, never to return; and once, it is told, an abbot of
Perigon went thither to make war on the powers of evil; but what befell
him at the hands of the succubi is not known or conjectured. Some say
that the demons are abominable hags whose bodies terminate in
serpentine coils; others that they are women of more than mortal
beauty, whose kisses are a diabolic delight that consumes the flesh of
men with the fierceness of hell-fire... As for me, I know not whether
such tales are true; but I should not care to venture within the walls of
Faussesflammes.'
Before he had finished speaking, a resolve had sprung to life full-
born in my mind: I felt that I must go to the Chateau des
Faussesflammes and learn for myself, if possible, all that could be
learned. The impulse was immediate, overwhehning, ineluctable; and
even if I had so desired, I could no more have fought against it than if I
had been the victim of some sorcerer's invultuation. The proscription
of the abbot Hilaire, the strange unfinished tale in the old manuscript,
the evil legendry at which the monk had now hinted Љ all these, it
would seem, should have served to frighten and deter me from such a
resolve; but, on the contrary, by some bizarre inversion of thought,
they seemed to conceal some delectable mystery, to denote a hidden
world of ineffable things, of vague undreamable pleasures that set my
brain on fire and made my pulses throb deliriously. I did not know, I
could not conceive, of what these pleasures would consist; but in some
mystical manner I was as sure of their ultimate reality as the abbot
Hilaire was sure of heaven.
I determined to go that very afternoon, in the absence of Hilaire,
who, I felt instinctively, might be suspicious of any such intention on
my part and would surely be inimical toward its fulfillment.
My preparations were very simple: I put in my pockets a small taper
from my room and the heel of a loaf of bread from the refectory; and
making sure that a little dagger which I always carried was in its sheath,
I left the monastery forthwith. Meeting two of the brothers in the
courtyard, I told them I was going for a short walk in the neighboring
woods. They gave me a jovial 'pax vobiscum' and went upon their way
in the spirit of the words.._
Heading directly as I could for Faussesflammes, whose turrets were
often lost behind the high and interlacing boughs, I entered the forest.
There were no paths, and often I was conpelled to brief detours and
divagations by the thickness of the underbrush. In my feverous hurry to
reach the ruins, it seemed hours before I came to the top of the hill
which Faussesflammes surmounted, but probably it was little more
than thirty minutes. Climbing the last declivity of the boulder-strewn
slope, I came suddenly within view of the chateau, standing close at
hand in the center of the level table which formed the summit. Trees