"02 - Faery Lands Forlorn 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

In the more than eighty years since Sagorn had visited Faerie, Thinal's memories
of the event had become vague. He was fairly sure that Milflor lay somewhere on
this eastern coast, but he had no idea whether the castaways were right to head
north.
The jungle contained nothing any of them recognized as edible, but they chewed
coconut and drank the milk until they were nauseated, longing for fresh water.
Even under the palms there was little shade, and already the sun was brutal.
The goblin had an old pair of moccasins that old Hononin had found for him two
days before, but he limped and he had lost his smug air of unworried
superiority. Maybe his twisted ankle was more painful than he would admit, or he
was suffering from the tropical climate, or the unfamiliar surroundings
frightened him-or all three. He was no longer the skilled woodsman who had
shielded Rap in the taiga.
Rap limped, also, being pinched by his borrowed boots. Faun half-breeds were not
as heat resistant as he would have hoped. Thinal was in worse shape than either
of the other two. Andor's silver-buckled shoes would have been too large for his
brother even when new and they had been split apart by Darad's enormous feet.
Thinal soon threw them away and struggled along barefoot over the sand, his
skinny legs laboring harder than they had done in a hundred years.
The headland seemed to withdraw as they advanced. It was hours before the beach
had turned to face south and Rap began to notice the jungle narrowing. His
farsight told him there was only more sand beyond the cape, but farsight's range
was limited. At last the jungle faded away and there were only palms left. Soon
his eyes could see through them, to another wide bay, as vast and deserted as
the first. He had not known there was so much sand in the world.
On the point itself, sand gave way to rock. Rap and the goblin sank down and
leaned back against boulders. Thinal was trailing, several hundred paces back,
already looking boiled and mashed, as Rap's mother would have said.
"We should leave him!"
Rap smiled, for that had been a credible attempt at impish, although spoken with
a heavy goblin accent. "We mustn't! "
"Why? Him ... he ... worse trash than me."
"Because he might give up and call Darad. "
Little Chicken scowled, then nodded understanding. Darad's arm would still be
bleeding from the bites of Rap's dog, his back burned raw, and his eye bruised
by the goblin's finger. Even in a good mood, the giant would not be a welcome
companion. Mad, he would be literal murder.
Thinal arrived and sank wearily to the ground. He slumped back against a palm,
and yelped when it scraped him.
Rap let him rest for a while before he spoke. "There are mountains. "
Thinal twisted around to stare at the peaks now visible over the jungle. "So?"
"You can't recall seeing those from Milflor?"
"No." Thinal wiped his brow with a bony arm and brooded in sulky silence.
So Milflor was some way off yet. North or south? There seemed to be no way of
telling. Rap's feet hurt already and the thought of retracing all those steps
was unbearable. He decided to continue north. If the coast swung westward, then
he would know they had made the wrong choice.
Offshore lay a reef, and from the headland he could hear the surf quite clearly
and see pillars of spray walking along it as the waves advanced. Faerie would be
a glorious place, he thought, with proper water and food and shelter. For a