"Karl Edward Wagner - Cold Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wagner Karl Edward)

I. Where Death Has Lain
At times the awesome curse of immortality weighed on Kane
beyond all endurance. Then he was overcome with long periods
of black despair, during which he withdrew entirely from the
world and spent his days in gloomy brooding. In such dark
depression he would remain indefinitely, his mind wandering
through the centuries it had watched, while within there cried
unanswered a longing for peace. Ultimately some new diversion,
some chance of fate, some abrupt reversal of spirit, would cut
through his hopeless despair and send him forth once again into
the world of men. Then cold despair would melt before the black
heat of his defiance against the ancient god who had cursed him.
It happened that such a mood had seized Kane when he came
to Sebbei. He had just fled the deserts of Lomarn, where his
bandits had for a few months been plundering rich caravans and
laying waste to the scattered oasis towns. An ingenious trap had
cut down most of Kane's forces, and he had fled westward into
the ghost land of Demornte. Here his enemies would not follow,
for the plague which had annihilated this nation was still held in
utmost dread, and although it had struck this desert locked land
nearly two decades before, still no one entered and no one left
silent Demornte.
Dead Demornte. Demornte whose towns lie empty, whose
farms are slowly returning to forest. Demornte where death has
lain and life will no more linger. Land of death where only
shadows move in empty cities, where the living are but a handful
to the countless dead. Demornte where ghosts stalk silent streets
in step with the living, where the living walk side by side with
their ghosts. And a man must look closely to tell one from the
other.
When the great deserts of Lartroxia West and Lomarn to the
east had been carved from the earth, some freak of nature had
spared Demornte. Here, shouldered between two mighty deserts,
green land had held out against scorched sand, and a considerable
region of gently rolling hills and cool lakes had sheltered
thousands of inhabitants under its low forests. It had been as a
giant oasis, Demornte, and its people had lived pleasantly,
working their many small farms and trading with the great
caravans that crossed the deserts from east and west.
The plague had ridden with one such caravan, a plague such as
these lands had never seen. Perhaps in the faraway land from
which it had come, the people had formed a resistance to the
disease. But here in fertile Demornte it sped like the wind
throughout the green land, and thousands burned in its fevered
delirium, screaming for water they could not swallow.
Desert locked Demornte. The plague could not cross the sands,
so its fury fell fully on this peaceful world. And when it had run
its course at last, peace returned to Demornte. The land became
one vast tomb and knew the quiet of the tomb, for rarely were