Читать книгу Clash of the Worlds - Ned Vizzini - Страница 9

At the other end of the Walkers’ apartment, Cordelia was in the middle of the strangest dream of her life. In fact, it didn’t feel like a dream to her at all, but more like reality, with actual sounds and smells and textures. If it weren’t for the fact that what was happening in her dream was impossible, she would have believed it was really happening.

Cordelia was back in the book world. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she was certain of it. Perhaps it was partly because the sunshine seemed a little too bright as it poured through the narrow windows lining the walls of a huge castle. The slivers of sun lit up her feet as she moved through a long, vast stone hallway.

Except that her feet didn’t look like her feet. They seemed … bigger, but also lighter somehow, almost as if they were capable of floating. But they were her feet; they had to be, since Cordelia could feel the coldness of the stone floors through strange, thin leather shoes.

She entered a large room at the end of the extensive hallway. It didn’t take long to recognise the lush tapestries on the walls and large windows. The massive bone and amethyst throne at the end of the red silk carpet was the surest giveaway of all.

Cordelia was back at Castle Corroway from Denver Kristoff’s book Savage Warriors. She was inside the evil Queen Daphne’s throne room. Even as the royal guards knelt before her, Cordelia knew it couldn’t be true. But yet, it clearly was. And somehow she was the new queen.

But still she pressed on, almost as if something was driving her besides her own free will. Cordelia marched up to her throne like she truly belonged there. She sat down and surveyed the room. She had guests, it seemed. But they were certainly not ordinary guests.

Before Cordelia’s throne stood the most bizarre array of creatures and people that had likely ever assembled inside a castle, fictional or otherwise. Krom was there, from their first adventure, as the new leader of the band of Savage Warriors who carried out Queen Daphne’s most vicious orders. Next to him stood a familiar German general who looked exactly like the only other German general Cordelia had ever met, the Nazi cyborg, Heinrich Volnheim, Generalleutnant of the Fifteenth Panzergrenadier Division from Kristoff’s book Assault of the Nazi Cyborgs. But it couldn’t have been Volnheim himself, because she’d watched him get blown to bits on a snowy mountainside by a tank cannon. All of the cyborg generals must look exactly alike.

Next to the Nazi cyborg stood a very stereotypical-looking vampire, complete with a pronounced widow’s peak in his slicked black hair, pale skin, a black cape with a high collar and protruding bloody fangs. There was also Ungil, the slave gladiator from Emperor Occipus’s Roman Colosseum, German pilots most likely from the World War One adventure novel, The Fighting Ace, a group of Prohibition-era mobsters, military officers from what looked like virtually every major war, a few hideous purple aliens with tentacles, and a vast array of other creatures and characters that Cordelia didn’t recognise.

They were all staring at her expectantly. So Cordelia began to speak, surprising herself with the authority and confidence of her words.

“Welcome!” she said. “Thank you all for joining me. As you know, I’ve been trapped here for months. But now our time draws near. The worlds are ready to converge. As we speak, more of us are finding ways to break through, slipping past the barriers that separate us from the outside, from the place that is truly ours. And once we finally break through, nothing will be able to stop us.”

The creatures and soldiers cheered. More words spilled from her mouth, almost of their own accord. Cordelia could feel that she meant what she was saying even though each word that came out shocked her. It was almost like talking on the phone with someone and hearing an echo of your own voice.

“The only person who could have stopped us is now dead!” Cordelia announced excitedly to the crowd. Except that by now she suspected she was not really herself, and she had a sinking feeling she knew precisely what was happening. “The old man’s magic is broken, decaying like his rotting corpse inside the cold ground. So now the time has come for us to act. We must make our plans accordingly and prepare for the moment when …”

Suddenly Cordelia was torn violently from her dream. She was being shaken and there were voices whispering harshly into her ear.

“Cordelia, wake up!” the voice said. “They’re coming through! They’re going to kill us all!”