"David Drake - The General 7 - The Reformer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

Drake, David - The Reformer

ONE
The High City of Solinga had been the core of the ancient town once; first a
warlord's castle, then the seat of the city council. Three centuries ago, when
Solinga was capital of the Emerald League, several million arnkets of the
League's treasury had mysteriously found their way into a building program to
turn it into a shrine to the city's godsЧto the Gray-Eyed Lady of the Stars,
first and foremost.
Money well stolen and spent, Adrian Gellert thought, as the procession mounted
the broad flight of marble stairs that led to the plateau. Right hand tucked
into the snowy folds of his robe, left hand holding the gold-capped scroll that
marked him as a Scholar of the Grove, he kept to the slow hieratic pace suitable
for a religious occasion. About him gulls swooped and shrieked; before him stood
the cream-white marble pillars, the golden roofs, the great forty-foot statue of
the Maiden holding Her bronze-tipped spear aloft to guide the mariners home.
Behind him was the tarry workaday reality of Solinga smelling of fish and offal
and sea salt, narrow crooked streets and whitewashed walls peeling to show the
mud brick, tile roofs and only occasionally the walls and colonnades and
courtyard gardens of the rich. But here, amid the scent of incense and the light
silvery tones of hand bells, was the ideal the reality served.
We may have fallen from our forefathers' power, but this at least we can
sayЧthat we alone gave godlike things to the gods, he thought with a melancholy
pride that edged out the anxiety and grief of his father's funeral.
The procession halted as a priest confronted them, a blue-edged fold of his
blanketlike mantle over his head like a hood. "Why do you come to this holy
place?"
"To render homage to the Goddess, in such seemly wise as is allowed to mortal
men," Adrian's uncle said, speaking as the eldest adult male of the Gellert
clan. Besides, he was paying for the ceremony. "In memory of Ektar Gellert, a
free citizen of this city, that the Maiden may judge him kindly; and in the name
of his sons, Esmond and Adrian Gellert, that She may watch over them in the
trials of life."
"Come, then, and do worship."
The procession resumed; Adrian, his brother Esmond, uncles, cousins,
grandfathers, hangers-on, with hired musicians following behind playing
double-pipes and lyres. Pilgrims and priests and citizens making sacrifice
parted before them. Their sandals scuffed across the pavement, slabs of
white-veined green marble edged with gold. They passed the Plinth of Victories,
a huge column set with the beaks of captured warships; past the black-basalt
fane of Wodep the War God, the pink and gold marble of Etat the All-Father, and
at last to the great raised rectangle of the Maiden's fane. It was a simple
affair of giant white columns, each ending in a riot of golden acanthus leaves.
The roof was copper-green tiles, and all around from pediment to architrave ran
mosaic panels done in gold glass, lapis, amber and semiprecious stones. Some
showed the Goddess giving Her gifts to menЧfire, the plow, the olive, ships, the
art of writing. Others were scenes from the Five Year Festival, the city's
knights on their velipads, the Year Maidens bringing the great embroidered
shawl, the athletes naked in their iron pride.
"Follow, then," the priest said.