"Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Palace of al-Tir al-Abtan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

The Palace of al-Tir al-Abtan
by Lawrence Watt-Evans

This is a tale of the wizard al-Tir al-Abtan, when he dwelt in the
ancient city of Tahrir, on the shore of the southern sea.

The Palace of al-Tir al-Abtan stood, of the wizard's choice, in the
poorest quarter of Tahrir. To reach it, a determined traveler would find
himself required to pass through alleys that were little more than tunnels
through crumbling piles of brick, and down streets that were no more than
mud-filled gaps between one decrepit tenement and the next. The Most Profound
Tir, the great magician of the age, had raised his palace here to avoid the
petty intrigues of lesser wizards, and the maddening importunities of nobles
and kings upon his time and talent. He did not care directly to refuse the
lords of the earth admission to his palace, for that would mean constant
harassment by those seeking exceptions or an end to the ban; but instead, he
put the palace where no self-respecting nobleman would dare approach it, and
where those who did approach it could be freely dealt with.

The Most Profound Tir made it impossible for any save himself to find a
gate in the outer wall of his residence. Whether the gate was concealed
somehow, or moved about, or did not actually exist at all was a matter of much
debate among the people of Tahrir. Certainly, when he chose to enter or leave,
a gate appeared, but no one else could ever find it again afterward, or
remember just where it had been. Thus did the wizard guard his privacy, and
for fully a century his palace remained inviolate, while he grew in
necromantic prowess, and those about him lived and died; and in all those
years that passed without touching his citadel, no man or woman other than
al-Tir al-Abtan saw the inside of the marble walls that separated the palace
grounds from the remainder of the city. Even when the magician himself was
away about the world, the palace was said to be guarded by a demon, or ghoul,
that none saw but all feared. It was said, also, that other creatures, equally
terrible, patrolled the gardens. As tales grow in the telling, it was soon
rumored that Tir used djinni and afrits as his household slaves, and his
palace was shunned as an unholy and fearsome place, even when unrest came upon
the city. And unrest did come, for it happened that, many years after al-Tir
al-Abtan completed the construction of his vast edifice, a foolish and evil
man ascended the throne as Sultan of Tahrir, one Selim ibn Jafar. This sultan
so oppressed his people that those who could, fled the city, leaving behind
only the poor and wretched, who knew that they would be no more welcome
elsewhere. Thus, while the magician's palace remained untouched, the condition
of the city about it grew ever worse. The loathsome stench of poverty spread
across the city, as beggars, thieves, whores, and cutthroats played an
ever-larger role in the life of Tahrir. The city became as a stinking swamp
about the foot of the Sultan's throne, and like a rising tide about a seaside
rock the decay closed in, as more and more of the wealthy fled the city,
allowing their homes to be overrun by the starving beggars and bloody-handed
thieves. The rot came ever nearer to the Sultan's Palace, as if to surround it
as it already surrounded Tir's palace. The Sultan Selim ibn Jafar was not
totally insensible to this situation, and in the fourth year of his reign he