"Charles Stross - Duat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

2: In the Duat

The drone paused at the end of the corridor, waiting for her to catch up, then moved off
again -- through doors and hallways more numerous than she could see any cause for --
emerging finally into a dim room with a high-vaulted ceiling and a few items of inanimate
furniture. What light there was came from a trio of dull globes suspended from the ceiling;
the shadows were long and dark. There was a curtained archway at the far side of the
room, set between two oddly-shaped pillars. "God will see you now," it repeated, backing
towards a low niche. "Proceed ..."

Oshi reached out and grabbed at a tabletop. Her aim was accurate: the alabaster dish
shattered when it struck the drone, shards of stone splintering in all directions with the
slow spread of a low-gee explosion. " Squeee -- " The drone fell over, all six legs beating
helplessly at the air.

" Proceed!" she sneered, trying to conceal her fear. "I'll proceed when I feel like it, you
lump of shit and plastic."

She pushed through the curtains, and paused. She stood at one end of a twilit hall of
columns, marble capped in lotus-blossom scrollwork supporting low beams of stone,
wrought in carvings of incredible intricacy and antiquity. Cressets set into bronze brackets
on the columns cast a fitful glow across the room. The floor was inlaid with mosaics, the
design of which were vaguely familiar to her: designs that she felt she had seen
somewhere before. The side walls of the hall were shrouded by darkness and pillars, unlit
and unseen. The door-frame at the far end of the hall arched overhead in a sweep of
polished stone, converging in a parabola. A brass balance hung from it, pans wide enough
to weigh an adult human swinging slowly in the air. To either side of the balance, a throne
of granite stood upon a dais. The left-hand one was empty: but seated in the right --

The thing on the throne lolled sideways, black tongue hanging from between its narrow
jaws. It had the body of a man from the neck down, but its skin was black: not merely
pigmented, but a deep, iridescent darkness like the carapace of a beetle. From the neck up,
it was utterly inhuman, a wild-dog fantasy grafted onto human anatomy.

"Oh shit," said Oshi.

"Welcome to the Duat, Dead ka." The occupant of the throne grinned like a hound. "Be at
home in my domain. Come hither; approach the throne of Anubis." His voice grated like a
saw blade dragged across sheet steel.

Oshi took a step forward on legs like jelly: "what is going on?"

Something moved, off to one side. A sideways glance showed her something she wished
she hadn't seen, hanging between two of the pillars. Its mouth gaped wide in a silent rictus

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2: In the Duat

of agony: judging by the gaping wound in the owner's chest he had died before --
whatever -- had hung him out to dry.