"Zelazny, Roger - Amber 08 - Sign Of Chaos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

family; but later, after they'd gotten back onto decent terms with each other,
he had decided to share the information in the interest of survival. He was
surprised to learn then that Benedict, Gйrard, Fiona, and Bleys knew all about
it--though their knowledge had come from other hallucinogens and, strangely,
only Fiona had ever considered its possibility as an in-family weapon. She'd
shelved the notion, though, because of its unpredictability. This had been
sometime back, however, and in the press of other business in recent years it
had slipped his mind; it simply had not occurred to him that a new, arrival such
as myself should perhaps be cautioned.
Luke had told me that his attempted invasion of the Keep of the Four
Worlds, by means of a glider-borne commando team, had been smashed. Since I had
seen the broken gliders at various points within the walls during my own visit
to that place, it was logical to assume that Luke had been captured. Therefore,
it seemed a fairly strong assumption that the sorcerer Mask had done whatever
had been done to him to bring him to this state. It would seem that this simply
involved introducing a dose of a hallucinogen to his prison fare and turning him
loose to wander and look at the pretty lights. Fortunately, unlike myself, his
mental travelings had involved nothing more threatening than the brighter
aspects of Lewis Carroll. Maybe his heart was purer than mine. But the deal was
weird any way you looked at it. Mask might have killed him or kept him in prison
or added him to the coatrack collection. Instead, while what had been done was
not without risk, it was something which would wear off eventually and leave him
chastened but at liberty. It was more a slap on the wrist than a real piece of
vengeance. This, for a member of the House which had previously held sway in the
Keep and would doubtless like to do so again. Was Mask supremely confident? Or
did he not really see Luke as much of a threat?
And then there is the fact that our shadow-shifting abilities and our
sorcerous abilities come from similar roots--the Pattern or the Logrus. It had
to be that messing with one also messed with the other. That would explain
Luke's strange ability to summon me to him as by a massive Trump sending, when
in actuality there was no Trump: His drug-enhanced abilities of visualization
must have been so intense that the card's physical representation of me was
unnecessary. And his skewed magical abilities would account for all of the
preliminary byplay, all of the odd, reality-distorting experiences I'd had
before he actually achieved contact. This meant that either of us could become
very dangerous in certain drugged states. I'd have to remember that. I hoped he
wouldn't wake up mad at me for hitting him, before I could talk to him a bit. On
the other hand, the tranquilizer would hopefully keep him happy while the other
stuff worked at detoxing him.
I massaged a sore muscle in my left leg and rose to my feet. I caught hold
of Luke beneath the armpits and dragged him about twenty paces farther along
into the clearing. Then I sighed and returned to the spot where I had rested.
There was not sufficient time to flee farther. And as the wailing increased in
volume and the giant flowers swayed in a line heading directly toward
me--glimpses of a darker form becoming visible amid the stalks--I knew that with
the Jabberwock fled the Fire Angel was back on the job, and since this
confrontation seemed inevitable, this clearing was as good a place to meet it as
any, and better than most.