"Smith, Wilbur - [Egyptian 03] - Warlock(txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

promised to tell me once we were on the road.'
Taita was always reticent and secretive, but seldom to the degree that
he had been over the matter of their ultimate destination on this
journey. ‘We are going to Gebel Nagara,' Taita told him.
Nefer had never heard the name before, but he repeated it softly. It
had a romantic, evocative ring. Excitement and anticipation made the
back of his neck prickle, and he looked ahead into the great desert. An
infinity of jagged and bitter hills stretched away to a horizon blue with
heat-haze and distance. The colours of the raw rocks astounded the eye:
they were the sullen blue of stormclouds, yellow as a weaver bird's
plumage, or red as wounded flesh, and bright as crystal. The heat made
them dance and quiver.
Taita looked down on this terrible place with a sense of nostalgia and
homecoming. It was into this wilderness that he had retired after the
death of his beloved Queen Lostris, at first creeping away like a wounded
animal. Then, as the years passed and some of the pain with them, he
had found himself drawn once more to the mysteries and the way of the
great god Horus. He had gone into the wilderness as a physician and a
surgeon, as a master of the known sciences. Alone in the fastness of the
desert he had discovered the key to gates and doorways of the mind and
the spirit beyond which few men ever journey. He had gone in a man
but had emerged as a familiar of the great god Horus and an adept of
strange and arcane mysteries that few men even imagined.
Taita had only returned to the world of men when his Queen Lostris
had visited him in a dream as he slept in his hermit's cave at Gebel
Nagara. Once more she had been a fifteen-year-old maiden, fresh and
nubile, a desert rose in its first bloom with the dew upon its petals. Even
as he slept his heart had swollen with love and threatened to burst his
chest asunder.
‘Darling Taita,' Lostris had whispered, as she touched his cheek and
stirred him awake, ‘you were one of the only two men I have ever loved.
Tanus is with me now, but before you can come to me also there is one
more charge that I lay upon you. You never once failed me. I know that
you will not fail me now, will you, Taita?'
‘I am yours to command, mistress.' His voice echoed strangely in his
ears.
‘In Thebes, my city of a hundred gates, this night is born a child. He
is the son of my own son. They will name this child Nefer, which means
pure and perfect in body and spirit. My longing is that he carry my
blood and the blood of Tanus to the throne of Upper Egypt. But great
and diverse perils already gather around the babe. He cannot succeed
without your help. Only you can protect and guide him. These years
you have spent alone in the wilderness, the skills and knowledge you
have acquired here were to that purpose alone. Go to Nefer. Go now
swiftly and stay with him until your task is completed. Then come to
me, darling Taita. I will be waiting for you and your poor mutilated
manhood shall be restored to you. You will be whole and entire when
next you stand by my side, your hand in my hand. Do not fail me,
Taita.'
‘Never!' Taita had cried in the dream. ‘In your life I never failed you.