Abarat 2: Days of Magic, Nights of War. Clive Barker

Чтение книги онлайн.

       PROLOGUE HUNGER

       Here is a list of fearful things:

       The jaws of sharks, a vulture’s wings,

       The rabid bite of the dogs of war,

       The voice of one who went before.

       But most of all the mirror’s gaze,

       Which counts us out our numbered days.

      —Righteous Bandy, the nomad Poet of Abarat

      OTTO HOULIHAN SAT IN the dark room and listened to the two creatures who had brought him here—a three-eyed thing by the name of Lazaru and its sidekick, Baby Pink-Eye—playing Knock the Devil Down in the corner. After their twenty-second game his nervousness and irritation began to get the better of him.

      “How much longer am I going to have to wait?” he asked them.

      Baby Pink-Eye, who had large reptilian claws and the face of a demented infant, puffed on a blue cigar and blew a cloud of acrid smoke in Houlihan’s direction.

      “They call you the Criss-Cross Man, don’t they?” he said.

      Houlihan nodded, giving Pink-Eye his coldest gaze, the kind of gaze that usually made men weak with fear. The creature was unimpressed.

      “Think you’re scary, do you?” he said. “Ha! This is Gorgossium, Criss-Cross Man. This is the island of the Midnight Hour. Every dark, unthinkable thing that has ever happened at the dead of night has happened right here. So don’t try scaring me. You’re wasting your time.”

      “I just asked—”

      “Yes, yes, we heard you,” said Lazaru, the eye in the middle of her forehead rolling back and forth in a very unsettling fashion. “You’ll have to be patient. The Lord of Midnight will see you when he’s ready to see you.”

      “Got some urgent news for him, have you?” said Baby Pink-Eye.

      “That’s between him and me.”

      “I warn you, he doesn’t like bad news,” said Lazaru. “He gets in a fury, doesn’t he, Pink-Eye?”

      “Crazy is what he gets! Tears people apart with his bare hands.”

      They glanced conspiratorially at each other. Houlihan said nothing. They were just trying to frighten him, and it wouldn’t work. He got up and went to the narrow window, looking out onto the tumorous landscape of the Midnight Island, phosphorescent with corruption. This much of what Baby Pink-Eye had said was true: Gorgossium was a place of terrors. He could see the glistening forms of countless monsters as they moved through the littered landscape; he could smell spicy-sweet incense rising from the mausoleums in the mist-shrouded cemetery; he could hear the shrill din of drills from the mines where the mud that filled Midnight’s armies of stitchlings was produced. Though he wasn’t going to let Lazaru or Pink-Eye see his unease, he would be glad when he’d made his report and he could leave for less terrifying places.

      There was some murmuring behind him, and a moment later Lazaru announced: “The Prince of Midnight is ready to see you.”

      Houlihan turned from the window to see that the door on the far side of the chamber was open and СКАЧАТЬ