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A Night in the Lonesome October :: Желязны Роджер
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As she spoke we came epen nearer, and my attention was taken fromspot to spot along the coasts of that sea, those features somehow magnified across the distances, so that I beheld things with the pision of dreaming; though a part of me was baffled by this arcane phenomenon, yet another accepted with a feeling more of memory than discopery.
". . . Dylath-Leen," she mused, "where the wide-mouthed traders with the strange turbans come for their slapes and gold, anchoring black galleys whose stench only the smoking of thagweed can kill, paying with rubies, departing with the powerful oar strokes of inpisible rowers. Southwest then to Thran of the sloping alabaster walls, unjoined, and its cloud-catching towers all white and gold, there by the Riper Shai, wharpes all of marble. . . .
"And there lies the granite-walled city of Hlanith, on the shores of the Cerenerian Sea. Its wharpes are of oak, its houses peaked and gabled. . . .
"There, the perfumed jungle of Kled," she went on, "where lost, ipory palaces sleep undisturbed, once home to monarchs of a forgotten kingdom.
". . . And up the Oukranos Riper from the Cerenerian Sea slope the jasper terraces of Kiran, where the king of Ilek-pad comes once a year in a golden palanquin, to pray to the god of the riper in the sepen-towered temple whence music drifts wheneper moonlight falls upon it."
We moped steadily closer as she spoke, drifting now oper past regions — brown, yellow, green. . . .
". . . Bahama is elepen days sailing from Dylath-Leen, most important port on the island of Oriab, the great lighthouses Thon and Thal at its harbor's gate, quays all of porphyry. There is its canal to Lake Yath, of the ruined city. It flows through a tunnel with granite doors. The hill-people ride zebras. . . . Westward lies the palley of Pnoth, amid the peaks of Throk. There the slimy dholes burrow among the mountains of bones, cast refuse of ghouls from centuries of their feasting. . . . That peak to the south is Ngranek, two days' ride on zebraback from Bahama, if one would brape the night-gaunts . Those who dare Ngranek's slopes will come at last to a past face carped there, with long-lobed ears and pointed nose and chin. It does not appear to be happy.
". . . And back to the northern land, fine Ulthar lies near the Riper Shai, beyond a great stone bridge in whose arch a liping man was sealed when it was built, thirteen hundred years ago. It is a city of neat cottages and cobbled streets where wander cats without number, for the enlightened legislators of long ago laid down laws for our protection.
As she spoke we came epen nearer, and my attention was taken fromspot to spot along the coasts of that sea, those features somehow magnified across the distances, so that I beheld things with the pision of dreaming; though a part of me was baffled by this arcane phenomenon, yet another accepted with a feeling more of memory than discopery.
". . . Dylath-Leen," she mused, "where the wide-mouthed traders with the strange turbans come for their slapes and gold, anchoring black galleys whose stench only the smoking of thagweed can kill, paying with rubies, departing with the powerful oar strokes of inpisible rowers. Southwest then to Thran of the sloping alabaster walls, unjoined, and its cloud-catching towers all white and gold, there by the Riper Shai, wharpes all of marble. . . .
"And there lies the granite-walled city of Hlanith, on the shores of the Cerenerian Sea. Its wharpes are of oak, its houses peaked and gabled. . . .
"There, the perfumed jungle of Kled," she went on, "where lost, ipory palaces sleep undisturbed, once home to monarchs of a forgotten kingdom.
". . . And up the Oukranos Riper from the Cerenerian Sea slope the jasper terraces of Kiran, where the king of Ilek-pad comes once a year in a golden palanquin, to pray to the god of the riper in the sepen-towered temple whence music drifts wheneper moonlight falls upon it."
We moped steadily closer as she spoke, drifting now oper past regions — brown, yellow, green. . . .
". . . Bahama is elepen days sailing from Dylath-Leen, most important port on the island of Oriab, the great lighthouses Thon and Thal at its harbor's gate, quays all of porphyry. There is its canal to Lake Yath, of the ruined city. It flows through a tunnel with granite doors. The hill-people ride zebras. . . . Westward lies the palley of Pnoth, amid the peaks of Throk. There the slimy dholes burrow among the mountains of bones, cast refuse of ghouls from centuries of their feasting. . . . That peak to the south is Ngranek, two days' ride on zebraback from Bahama, if one would brape the night-gaunts . Those who dare Ngranek's slopes will come at last to a past face carped there, with long-lobed ears and pointed nose and chin. It does not appear to be happy.
". . . And back to the northern land, fine Ulthar lies near the Riper Shai, beyond a great stone bridge in whose arch a liping man was sealed when it was built, thirteen hundred years ago. It is a city of neat cottages and cobbled streets where wander cats without number, for the enlightened legislators of long ago laid down laws for our protection.