"Roger Zelazny - Amber 02 - The Guns Of Avalon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

He held out his hand and I unstoppered a small flask and gave it to him.
He must have coughed for twenty seconds after a slug of that stuff Jopin
drinks.
Then the left side of his mouth smiled and he winked lightly.
"Much better," he said. "Mind if I pour a drop of this onto my side? I
hate to waste good whisky, but..."
"Use it all, if you have to. On second thought, though, your hand looks
shaky. Maybe I'd better do the pouring."
He nodded, and I opened his leather jacket and with my dagger cut away at
his shirt until I had exposed the wound. It was nasty-looking, deep, running
from front to back a couple inches above the top of his hip. He had other,
less serious gashes on his arms, chest, and shoulders.
The blood kept oozing from the big one, and I blotted it a bit and wiped
it clean with my kerchief.
"Okay," I said, "clench your teeth and look away," and I poured.
His entire body jerked, one great spasm, and then he settled down to
shivering. But he did not cry out. I had not thought he would. I folded the
kerchief and pressed it in place on the wound. I tied it there, with a long
strip I had torn from the bottom of my cloak. "Want another drink?" I asked
him.
"Of water," he said. "Then I fear I must sleep." He drank, then his head
leaned forward until his chin was resting upon his breast. He slept, and I
made him a pillow and covered him over with dead men's cloaks.
Then I sat there at his side and watched the pretty black birds.
He had not recognized me. But then, who would? Had I revealed myself to
him, he might possibly have known me. We had never really met, I guess, this
wounded man and I. But in a peculiar sense, we were acquainted.
I was walking in Shadow, seeking a place, a very special place. It had
been destroyed once, but I had the power to re-create it, for Amber casts an
infinity of shadows. A child of Amber may walk among them, and such was my
heritage. You may call them parallel worlds if you wish, alternate universes
if you would, the products of a deranged mind if you care to. I call them
shadows, as do all who possess the power to walk among them. We select a
possibility and we walk until we reach it. So, in a sense, we create it. Let's
leave it at that for now.
I had sailed, had begun this walk toward Avalon.
Centuries before, I had lived there. It is a long, complicated, proud and
painful story, and I may go into it later on, if I live to finish much more of
this telling.
I was drawing nearer to my Avalon when I came upon the wounded knight and
the six dead men. Had I chosen to walk on by, I could have reached a place
where the six men lay dead and the knight stood unwounded - or a place where
he lay dead and they stood laughing. Some would say it did not really matter,
since all these things are possibilities, and therefore all of them exist
somewhere in Shadow.
Any of my brothers and sisters - with the possible exceptions of Gerard
and Benedict - would not even have given a second glance. I have become
somewhat chickenhearted, however. I was not always that way, but perhaps the
shadow Earth, where I spent so many years, mellowed me a bit, and maybe my
hitch in the dungeons of Amber reminded me somewhat of the quality of human