"Zelazny, Roger - Amber 10 - Prince Of Chaos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

"They're a very recent acquisition. What is it that you feel?"
"Heat, cold, strange music," he replied. "From all directions. You have
changed."
"Everyone changes," I said as he moved toward the window. "That's life."
A dark thread lay upon the wide sill. He reached out and touched it as he
launched himself.
There came a great rushing of wind as we fell downward, moved forward,
rose. Towers flashed past, wavering. The stars were bright, a quarter moon just
risen, illuminating the bellies of a low line of clouds. We soared, the castle
and the town dwindling in an eyeblink. The stars danced, became streaks of
light. A band of sheer, rippling blackness spread about us, widening. The Black
Road, I suddenly thought. It is like a temporary version of the Black Road, in
the sky. I glanced back. It was not there. It was as if it were somehow reeling
in as we rode. Or was it reeling us in?
The countryside passed beneath us like a film played at triple speed.
Forest, hill, and mountain peak fled by. Our black way was a great ribbon
heaving before us, patches of light and dark like daytime cloud shadows sliding
past. And then the tempo increased, staccato. I noted of a sudden that there was
no longer any wind. Abruptly, the moon was high overhead, and a crooked mountain
range snaked beneath us. The stillness had a dreamlike quality to it, and in an
instant the moon had fallen lower. A line of light cracked the world to my right
and stars began to go out. There was no feeling of exertion in Gryll's body as
we plunged along that black way; and the moon vanished and light grew buttery
yellow along a line of clouds, acquiring a pink cast even as I watched.
"The power of Chaos rises," I remarked.
"The energy of disorder," he replied.
"There is more to this than you've told me," I said.
"I am but a servant," Gryll responded, "and not privy to the councils of
the mighty."
The world continued to brighten, and for as far ahead as I could see our
black ribbon rippled. We were passing high over mountainous terrain. And clouds
blew apart and new ones formed at a rapid rate. We had obviously begun our
passage through Shadow. After a time, the mountains wore down and rolling plains
slid by. Suddenly the sun was in the middle of the sky. We seemed to be passing
just above our black way, Gryll's toes barely grazing it as we moved. At times
his wings hardly fluttered before me, at other times they thrummed like those of
a hummingbird, into invisibility.
The sun grew cherry-red far to my left. A pink desert spread beneath us....
Then it was dark again and the stars turned like a great wheel.
Then we were low, barely passing above the tops of the trees....
We burst into the air over a busy downtown street, lights on poles and the
fronts of vehicles, neon in windows. The warm, stuffy, dusty, gassy smell of
city rose up about us. A few pedestrians glanced upward, barely seeming to note
our passage.
Even as we flashed across a river, cresting the house tops of suburbia, the
prospect wavered and we passed over a primordial landscape of rock, lava,
avalanche, and shuddering ground, two active volcanoes--one near, one
far--spewing smoke against a blue-green sky.
"This, I take it, is a shortcut?" I said.
"It is the shortest cut," Gryll replied.