"Asaro, Catherine - Skolian Empire 6 - Quantum Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asaro Catherine)

LionstarТs people were the only ones who might reveal her indiscretion, though, and they rarely came to the village. Lionstar had "rented" the Quartz Palace in the mountains for more than a hundred days now, and in that time no one she knew had seen his face. Why he wanted a ruined palace remained a mystery, given that he refused all visitors. When his emissaries had inquired about it, she and Maxard had been dismayed by the suggestion that they let a stranger take residence in the honored, albeit disintegrating, home of their ancestors.

However, no escape had existed from the "rent" LionstarТs people put forth. The law was clear: she and Maxard had to best his challenge or bow to his authority. Impoverished Argali could never match such an offer: shovels and awls forged from fine metals, stacks of dried firewood, golden bridle bells, dewhoney and molasses, dried rose-leeks, cobberwheat, tri-grains, and reedflour that poured through your fingers like powdered rubies.

So they yieldedЦand an incensed Maxard had demanded Lionstar pay a rent of that same worth every fifty days. It was a lien so outrageous, all Argali feared Lionstar would send his soldiers to "renegotiate."

Instead, he paid.

With Lyode at her side, Kamoj entered the forest. Walking among the trees, with tubemoss soft under her bare feet, made her more aware of her precarious position. Why had Lionstar come riding here today? Did their lands now also risk forfeiture to his wealth? She had invested his rent in machinery and tools for farms in Argali. As humiliating as it was to depend on a stranger, it was better than seeing her people starve. But she didnТt think she could bear to lose any more to him, especially not this forest she so loved.

Drapes of moss hung on the trees and shadow-ferns attended their trunks. Far above, the branches formed a canopy that let only stray sunbeams reach the ground. Argali vines hung everywhere, heavy with the blush-pink roses that gave her home its name. Argali. It meant vine rose in Iotaca.

At least, most scholars translated it as rose. One insisted it meant resonance. He also claimed they mispronounced her middle name, Quanta, an Iotaca word with no known translation. The name Kamoj came from the Iotaca word for bound, so if this strange scholar was correct, her name meant Bound Quantum Resonance. She smiled at the absurdity. Rose made more sense, of course.

Not all the "roses" in the forest were flowers, though. Camouflaged among the blossoms, puff lizards swelled out their red sacs. A shaft of sunlight slanted through the forest, admitted by a ruffling breeze, and sparkles glittered where the light hit the scaled lizards, the scale-bark on the trees, and the delicate scale-leaves. Then the ray vanished and the forest returned to its dusky violet shadows.

Suddenly a thornbat whizzed past her, its wings beating furiously. It homed in on a vine and stabbed its needled beak into the red sac of a puff lizard. As the puff deflated with a whoosh of air, the lizard scrambled away to safety, leaving the disgruntled thornbat to whiz on without its prey.

Powdered scales drifted across KamojТs arm. She wiped off the shimmering dust, wondering why people had no scales. Most everything else on Balumil, the world, had them. Scaled needles fat with water nestled among the leaves, and roots swollen with moisture churned the soil. The trees grew slowly, storing water and converting it into energy as a bulwark against summer droughts and winter snows. Seasonal plants had other methods of survival. They lived only in spring and autumn, but their big, hard-scaled seeds could lie dormant for long periods, until the climate was to their liking.

If only people were as well adapted to survive. She swallowed, remembering the last winter, when nearly a fourth of Argali had died in its blizzards and brutal ices. Including her parents. Even after so long, that loss haunted her. She had been a small child when she and Maxard, her motherТs brother, became sole heirs to the impoverished remains of a province that had once been proud.

Glancing at Lyode, Kamoj wondered if her bodyguard shared her concern about seeing Lionstar on Argali lands today. A tall woman with lean muscles, Lyode had the brown eyes and black hair common in Argali. Here in the shadows, the vertical slits of her pupils had widened until they almost filled her irises, like black pools. She carried KamojТs boots dangling from her belt by their laces.

"Do you know the maize-girls that work in the kitchen?" Kamoj asked.

The older woman glanced at her. "Three children? Tall as your elbow?"

"ThatТs right." Kamoj smiled. "They told me, in solemn voices, that Havyrl Lionstar came here in a cursed ship that the wind chased across the sky, and that he can never go home again because heТs so loathsome the elements refuse to let him sail again." Her smile faded. "Where does all the superstition come from? Apparently most of Argali believes it. There is some story heТs centuries old, with a metal face so ugly that if you look at it youТll have nightmares."

"IТm not sure." Lyode paused. "Legends often have their seeds in truth." With a dry smile, she added, "Though with the maize-girls, who knows? The last time I talked to them, they tried to convince me Argali is haunted. They think thatТs why all the light panels have gone dark."

Kamoj chuckled. "They told me that one too. They werenТt too specific on who was haunting what, though." Legend claimed the Current had once lit all the houses in the Northern Lands. But that had been centuries past. In fact, in the North Sky Islands the Current had died thousands of years ago. The only reason one light panel still worked in Argali House, KamojТs home, was because before KamojТs birth, her parents had happened upon a few intact fiberoptic threads in the ruins of the Quartz Palace.

The threads were only one part in the panel, which used many components, all linked by cables and threads that extended into the walls of the house and to the few remaining sun-squares on the roof. No one understood anymore how any of it worked. LyodeТs husband, Opter, had replaced the fiberoptics. Opter didnТt know how the panel worked either, nor could he fix damaged components. But given undamaged parts, he had an uncanny ability to figure out how they fit into gadgets.

"Hai!" Kamoj grimaced as a twig stabbed her foot. Lifting her leg, she saw a gouge between her toes welling with blood.

"A good reason to wear your shoes," Lyode observed.

"Pah," Kamoj muttered. She enjoyed walking barefoot, but it had its drawbacks.

A drumming that had been tugging at her awareness finally intruded enough to make her listen. "Those are greenglass stags."

Lyode tilted her head. "On the road to Argali."

"Come on. LetТs look." Kamoj started to run, then hopped on her good foot and settled for a limping walk. When they reached the road, they hid behind the trees, listening to the riders.

"IТll bet itТs Lionstar," Kamoj said.