"Роджер Желязны. Lord of Light (Лорд Света, engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

personal immortality, however, led them along a different path from that
which Man followed. They found a way to perpetuate themselves as stable
fields of energy. They abandoned their bodies to live forever as vortices of
force. But pure intellect they are not. They carried with them their
complete egos, and born of matter they do ever lust after the flesh. Though
they can assume its appearance for a time, they cannot return to it
unassisted. For ages they did drift aimlessly about this world. Then the
arrival of Man stirred them from their quiescence. They took on the shapes
of his nightmares to devil him. This is why they had to be defeated and
bound, far beneath the Ratnagaris. We could not destroy them all. We could
not permit them to continue their attempts to possess the machines of
incarnation and the bodies of men. So they were trapped and contained in
great magnetic bottles."
"Yet Sam freed many to do his will," said Tak.
"Aye. He made and kept a nightmare pact, so that some of them do still
walk the world. Of all men, they respect perhaps only Siddhartha. And with
all men do they share one great vice."
"That being. . .?"
"They do dearly love to gamble. . . . They will make game for any
stakes, and gambling debts are their only point of honor. This must be so,
or they would not hold the confidence of other gamesters and would so lose
that which is perhaps their only pleasure. Their powers being great, even
princes will make game with them, hoping to win their services. Kingdoms
have been lost in this fashion."
"If," said Tak, "as you feel, Sam was playing one of the ancient games
with Raltariki, what could the stakes have been?"
Yama finished his wine, refilled the glass. "Sam is a fool. No, he is
not. He is a gambler. There is a difference. The Rakasha do control lesser
orders of energy beings. Sam, through that ring he wears, does now command a
guard of fire elementals, which he won from Raltariki. These are deadly,
mindless creatures-- and each bears the force of a thunderbolt."
Tak finished his wine. "But what stakes could Sam have brought to the
game?"
Yama sighed. "All my work, all our efforts for over half a century."
"You mean-- his body?"
Yama nodded. "A human body is the highest inducement any demon might be
offered."
"Why should Sam risk such a venture?"
Yama stared at Tak, not seeing him. "It must have been the only way he
could call upon his life-will, to bind him again to his task
- by placing himself in jeopardy, by casting his very existence with
each roll of the dice."
Tak poured himself another glass of wine and gulped it. "That
is
unknowable to me," he said.
But Yama shook his head. "Unknown, only," he told him. "Sam is not
quite a saint, nor is he a fool."
"Almost, though," Yama decided, and that night he squirted demon
repellent about the monastery.
The following morning, a small man approached the monastery and seated