"Brackett, Leigh - Skaith 2 - Hounds Of Skaith" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brackett Leigh)

He was uneasy with these creatures, terrified lest he show it. Their forebears had been human, even as he was, but by some lost magic of the ancients their bodies had been altered so that they might live and be happy in these beautiful sunless catacombs, the protecting womb of the goddess they worshipped. Yetko was a child of Old Sun and the wide cruel sky; he could not understand their worship. The fine white fur that covered them disturbed him. So did their smell, a faint dry pungency. Their faces were distorted subtly from what Yetko considered the human normЧnoses too blunt, jaws too prominent, eyes too large and glowing in the lamplight.
"From our high northern balconies," said Kell с Marg, "we have seen flames and smoke on the other side of the plain, behind the mists. Tell us what has happened."
"One came," said Yetko. "He overthrew the Lords Protector. They fled from him through the passes of the Bleak Mountains, along the road to Yurunna; and he burned their Citadel that has been since before the Wandering, so that only the empty walls still stand."
A sigh went around the hall, a sound of astonishment and shock.
Kell с Marg said, "Did you see this person?"
"I saw him. He was very dark and tall, and his eyes were like the ice that forms over clear water."
Again the sigh, this time with a note of vicious hatred.
"It was Stark!"
Yetko glanced sidelong at Skaith-Daughter. "You know him?"
"He was here, a prisoner of the Wandsman Gelmar. He has brought death to the House of the Mother, killing two of our young men when he broke free by the northern gate."
"He will bring more death," said one of the Diviners. "The Eye of the Mother has seen this." He stepped forward and shouted at Yetko. "Why is it that the Northhounds did not kill him? Why, why? Always they guarded the Citadel from intruders. Why did they let him live?"
The Clan Mothers and the counselors echoed him, and Kell с Marg said:
"Tell us why."
"I do not know," said Yetko. "The Lords Protector told us that somehow he had slain the great king-dog Flay and taken control of the pack. They said he was more beast than man. Certainly the hounds went with him to the Citadel, and certainly they killed a number of the servants there." A deep shudder shook him as he remembered. "Certainly when he came to our camp to take riding animals from us, the Northhounds followed at his heels like puppies."
"He is not Skaith-born," said Kell с Marg. "He comes from another world. His ways are not ours."
Yetko shuddered again, partly because of her words, but mostly because of the tone in which she spoke them.
"He followed the Lords Protector?"
"Yes, with the hounds. He and another man. The other man came long before, up the Wandsmen's Road from the south. He was a captive in the Citadel." Yetko shook his head. "That one also was said to have come from beyond the sky. Mother Skaith is beset by demons."
"She is strong," said Kell с Marg, and laid her head against the breast of the brown stone woman. "There are many dangers, I believe, beyond the Bleak Mountains."
"Yes. The Hooded Men permit us to come only as far as the first wayhouse, but that is a week's journey and dangerous enough because of the Runners, which are terrible things, and because of the sandstorms. The Hooded Men themselves are man-eaters; and the Ochar, who keep the road, are a powerful tribe."
"So that with good fortune the man Stark may die in the desert."
Yetko said, "It is likely."
"What of the Wandsman Gelmar? He left the House of the Mother with two prisoners."
"He crossed the Bleak Mountains before the attack on the Citadel. He had a Southron woman with him, and a wounded man in a litter. There were also three lesser Wandsmen and the servants."
"Perhaps I was wrong," said Kell с Marg, speaking to herself aloud, "not to let Gelmar keep the man Stark, as he wanted. But Stark was in chains. Who would have believed that he could escape our daggers, and then survive even the Northhounds?"
For the first time Yetko understood that the Presence was afraid, and that frightened him more than her strangeness or her power. He said humbly, "Please, if there is nothing more you require from me ..."
Her dark unhuman eyes brooded upon him. "Now that the Citadel has fallen, your people are preparing to abandon the village?"
"We kept the village only to serve the Wandsmen and the Lords Protector. If they come again, so will we. In the meantime, we will only come for the trading."
"When do you go?"
"With Old Sun's next rising."
Kell с Marg nodded slightly and lifted a slender hand in a gesture of dismissal. "Take him to the outer cavern, but see that he stays there until I send word."
The two white-furred man-things who had brought Yetko from the camp to the great hall took him out again, through long hollow-sounding corridors with carved walls and ornamented ceilings and myriad doorways into dimly lighted rooms filled with half-glimpsed unknowable things. There was a smell of dust and of the sweet oil that fed the lamps. Yetko's thick feet went faster and faster, in a hurry to be gone.
Kell с Marg sat upon the knees of Skaith-Mother. She did not move or speak; her courtiers stood waiting, silent and afraid.
At last she said, "Fenn. Ferdic."
Two lordly men stepped forward. They wore shining diadems. Their eyes, too, shone with anguish, because they knew what she was about to say to them.
Skaith-Daughter leaned forward. "The threat is greater than the man Stark. We must know the true nature and extent of the danger. Go with the Harsenyi as far south as you may, and as quickly. Go on to Skeg. Learn about these starships. Do all in your power to have them sent away to whatever suns they came from."
She paused. They bent their furred and handsome heads.
"Seek out Gelmar," she said. "He will know if Stark has somehow managed to survive the desert. And if he has, do anything, pay any price, to have him killed."
Fenn and Ferdic bowed. "We hear, Skaith-Daughter. Even this we will do, in the service of the Mother."
Men condemned to death, they withdrew to make their preparations for the journey.
First of these was a ceremony in the Hall of Joyful Rest, where the Children were laid to sleep in the embrace of the Mother. It had been so long since anyone had been forced to leave the sacred House that the officiating Diviner had difficulty in finding the proper scrolls for the ritual. The stone knife and small jeweled caskets had been untouched for centuries. Still, the thing was done at last. The severed fingers were buried in hallowed ground, so that no matter where death might overtake them on the outside, Fenn and Ferdic could know that they were not lost entirely from the tender love of Skaith-Mother.
2
Gerd thrust his massive head against Stark's knee and said, Hungry.
The Northhounds had been ranging ahead of the men. Born telepaths, they were able to communicate well enough for most needs; but sometimes their talk, like their minds, was overly simple.
Stark asked, Gerd is hungry?
Gerd growled and the coarse white fur bristled along his spine. He looked uneasily at the emptiness surrounding them.
Out there. Hungry.
What?
Not know, N'Chaka. Things.
Out there. Things. Hungry. Well, and why not? Hunger was the great constant over most of this world of Skaith, senile child of the ginger star that spilled its rusty glare out of a dim cold sky onto the dim cold desert.