"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Dus 3 - Sword Of Bheleu" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

 "Do you mind if I join you?" he asked softly, indicating one of the
other chairs at her table.
"No," she replied without thinking; then she added, "Garth might object,
though"
"Oh, I don't think he will," Saram whispered. "Those two are too
involved with each other to pay any attention to us." He seated himself across
from the girl, and together they watched and listened as the Forgotten King
answered.
"I care nothing for any god's service. I seek only to die."
After a brief pause, Garth answered, "I had suspected as much. I could
see no use for a basilisk except to kill. When you swore you meant to harm no
other, I guessed that you wanted it to slay yourself. Later, though, I doubted
my conclusions, for you said that what you sought would have some great
significance to the rest of the world, and the death of one old man did not
seem to fit. I thought that you might perhaps be lying, that in fact you did
want only to die, and that all your other claims were merely to entice me to
aid you-but the Wise Women of Ordunin told me that if I served you, my name
could live until the end of time, which did not fit such a hypothesis.
"Now, you say that you seek simply your own death; how can this have
such mighty repercussions? How can my aiding you ensure my eternal fame? I do
not understand. Further, you say that you care nothing for the gods, yet there
was no mistaking the Dûsarran priest's description; you are the one he
described as the high priest of the Final God."
"I was," the Forgotten King answered.
"Were? Have you forsaken the service of the deathgod?"
The old man did not answer.
Garth sat silently for a moment, then said slowly, "I think I begin to
see. The Dûsarran said that it was in the nature of your service to the god of
death that you, yourself, cannot die. You wish to die, though; you have lived
more than four ages, he said, and now you grow weary. Yet you cannot die so
long as you serve The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken. You have therefore
forsaken your service-or sought to. You did not die when you met the gaze of
the basilisk; your immortality is still strong. Death has not accepted you,
the god has not accepted your renunciation of him."
The old man nodded very slightly.
"Then is it that you mean to force the gods to acknowledge your
resignation, so that you may die? Do you intend to invoke the gods
themselves?"
The Forgotten King did not answer.
"That must be it; you will bring The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken into
our own world, so that you may end your pact with him. Such a conjuring would
indeed be a feat worthy of eternal fame, a thing unequalled in history."
The yellow-robed figure shifted slightly. "Not `unequalled in history,'
Garth. I did it once, when I first made my pact."
"I can see, too, how you could offer me immortality; I could be
presented to the god as your replacement. Such an eternal life does not appeal
to me."
The King shrugged.
"This conjuring-how is it to be done?"
"I have not said that I plan any such thing," the old man answered.