"Zelazny, Roger & Saberhagen, Fred - The Black Throne - txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

water. In places the whiteness broke, giving him glimpses of pebbles and sand.
In other places it writhed, serpent-like, near to the ground, or was blown into
grotesque shapes which faded almost as quickly as they formed. Advancing till he
came to the water, he halted, stooped, let the sea run into and out of his
hands. He raised a finger to his lips.
It was real. Warm and salty as blood.
A wave slopped over his shoetops and he backed away. He turned and began walking
again, certain now where he was headed. He increased his pace. Before long, he
was running.
He stumbled, picked himself up and kept going. Perhaps he had somehow crossed
over and was back in his dream. The tinny sound of a buoy bell came to him now,
marking some channel far to the right. The sea itself seemed of a sudden louder.
A vast flock of birds passed overhead, uttering cries unlike those of the gulls
or any other birds he had ever heard. The bells—somewhere behind him now—took on
a new voice, answering the random notes of the buoy with something patterned,
something deeper. And the singing. . . . For the first time the singing grew
louder. It seemed very near.
A dark form appeared suddenly in his path. A small hill or—
He stumbled again, trying to avoid it. As he fell, the singing ceased. The bells
ceased. He looked upon bleak walls and vacant eye-like windows—battlemented,
turreted edifice emergent from duneside—drear, dark, partly crumbling, beside a
gray, unruffled tarn. He was falling—somehow too fast—toward it. . . .
Then the fog swirled and the veil fell away. What had seemed a distant prospect
was almost within reach, as an instant rearrangement of perspective showed it to
be a castle of sand constructed on a slope above a tidal pool.
His outflung arm struck a wall. A tower toppled. The great gateway was broken.
"No!" came a cry. "You mean thing! No!"
And she was upon him, small fists pummeling his shoulder, head, back.
"I'm—sorry," he said. "I didn't mean—I fell. I'll help. I'll put it back—the
way—it was."
"Oh."
She stopped striking him. He drew back and regarded her.
She had very gray eyes, and brown hair lay disheveled upon her brow. Her hands
were delicate, fingers long. Her blue skirt and white blouse were sand-streaked,
smudged, the hem of the skirt sodden. Her full lips quivered as her gaze darted
from him to the castle and back, but her eyes remained dry.
"I'm sorry," he repeated.
She turned her back to him. A moment later her bare foot kicked forward. Another
wall fell, another tower toppled.
"Don't!" he cried, rising, reaching to restrain her. "Stop! Please stop!"
"No!" she said, moving forward, trampling towers. "No."
He caught hold of her shoulder and she pulled away from him, continuing to kick
and stamp at the castle.
"Please . . ." he repeated.
"Say, leave the poor fellow's castle alone, would you?" came a voice from behind
them both.
They turned, to regard the figure which approached through the fog.
"Who are you?" they asked, in near unison.
"Edgar," he replied.
"That's my name," said the first boy, staring, as the other drew nearer.