Shea, Michael / Ши, Майкл - Собрание сочинений (45 произведений) [1974-2022, fb2/epub, ENG]

A Quest for Simbilis / В поисках Симбилиса 1974, epub The Color Out of Time 2014, epub In Yana, the Touch of Undying 1985, epub

Polyphemus 1987, epub, ISBN: 0-87054-155-2, Arkham House The Autopsy and Other Tales 2008, epub, ISBN: 978-1-933618-37-1, Centipede Press Copping Squid and Other Mythos Tales 2009, epub, ISBN: 978-0-9704000-2-4, Perilous Press Demiurge: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales of Michael Shea 2017, epub, ISBN: 978-1-62641-275-0, Dark Regions Press Seven by Shea 2017, epub The Autopsy: Best Weird Stories of Michael Shea 2022, epub, ISBN: 978-1-61498-384-2, Hippocampus Press

For Every Tatter in Its Mortal Dress / Душа в лохмотьях смертной оболочки 2000, epub The Rebuke / Взбучка 2002, epub Hew the Tintmaster / Колеровщик Гью 2010, fb2 An Open Letter to Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, from a Fervent Admirer 2016, fb2

Cugel the Clever stood on the beach in the sunset, and stared at the sea. Its waters were gray as a skillet, and upon them simmered a streak of the dying sun’s blood. This time, Cugel decided, he would shun the overland route. This time he would cross this Sea of Cutz to its southern shore, and strike out for Almery from there. And when he reached Almery, by whatever means he could manage, he would kill Iouconnou, the Laughing Magician. The last time Cugel the Clever had made the journey from this place to Almery, it had taken him many months. Perhaps the sea-route would be quicker. It could not possibly be any more perilous. And now Cugel pondered on his surroundings, remembering the semihuman bandits he had encountered here before. He turned his back on the sun, a senile star that was cooling toward extinction just as surely as it was setting now. Retreating from the beach a short distance inland Cugel found a rocky hollow closely fenced around by thickets of spurge and throttlehemp. Besides concealment the heavy growth would provide an alarm if any creature of the night sought Cugel’s bedside, for it would have to be waded through, and was very dry. Naturally he lit no fire to advertise his position. He lay long awake, shivering on the stony couch, and brooding sourly on the stars that blazed in profusion above. Brief days ago he had lain on Iouconnou’s opulent bed—had possessed Iouconnou’s fabulous manse. The contrast of these memories with his present situation was unbearable to Cugel, and momentarily careless of his safety, he snarled aloud a curse on the Laughing Magician. It in no way abated Cugel’s wrath to consider that it was through his own agency, and not the magician’s, that he found himself in these barren regions a second time. In fact when Cugel had last seen him, Iouconnou had been powerless to transport anyone, and was himself completely at Cugel’s mercy. This was no extenuating circumstance, Cugel reasoned. For, if Iouconnou had not banished him here on the first occasion, then Cugel, on his hard-won return to Almery, would not have sought to revenge himself on the magician by transporting him to the same spot. And since it was during this attempted revenge that Cugel, through a mispronunciation of the spell, suffered his second transportation hither, the fault was clearly Iouconnou’s. And thus a double revenge was now called for. . . .

We made a delivery to some herb-haags in the Carnalin Mountains, not far upcoast from Lebanoi on the eastern shore of the Great Shallows, and it was from them that we obtained the commission for our Hagian delivery. We delivered to the haags—with no small trouble up the crooked roads to their steep-perched little hamlet—a gryf-gryf, for the haags use these monsters’ urine to catalyze many of their most efficacious infusions. When the delivery was accomplished, the senior haag had me in to her study—a plank table in the midst of one of their overwhelmingly odorous potting sheds. “Gryf’s got a biter broke,” she observed sullenly, referring to a severe crack in one of our delivery’s tusks. “Yes,” I said shortly, my mouth still puckered by the exceeding sour wine she had poured me. “Brute got his claws through the bars, broke that spoke on the clanker’s wheel there.” (We use the two-axle clanker for heavy deliveries, rather than the two-wheel quickshaw we much prefer.) “Two of my men—Raschle and Olombo there, had to club it near senseless to save the vehicle. That’s how his biter got cracked.” . . .

Добавлен сборник Shea, Michael - Seven by Shea - 2017.epub

Добавлено: Shea, Michael - The Autopsy and Other Tales - 2008.epub (OCR иллюстрированного издания 500 экз.) Shea, Michael - The Autopsy_ Best Weird Stories of Michael Shea - 2022.epub (включает 2 ранее не публиковавшихся рассказа)