"Dave Duncan - The Seventh Sword - 1 - The Reluctant Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

stumbled and collided, and every eye went wide. Then the ceremony ended in a chaotic, clattering roll of drums, and the swordsman swayed over
backward.


He fell like a marble pillar. In the sudden silence his head hit the tiles with an audible crack.


He lay still, huge and newborn-naked. The rag had fallen off his forehead, revealing for all to see the craftmarks on his forehead, the seven swords.



II

The temple was a building whose origins lay hidden back in the Neolithic. Many times it had been enlarged, and most of the fabric had been
replaced from time to time as it had weathered or decayed-not once, but often.


Yet the temple was also people. They aged and were replaced much faster. Each fresh-faced acolyte would look in wonder at an ancient sage of the
Seventh and marvel that the old man had probably known so-and-so in his youth, little thinking that the old man himself as a neophyte had studied
that same so-and-so and mused that he was old enough to have known such-and-such. Thus, like stones in an arch, the men and women of the
temple reached from the darkness of the past into the unviewable glare of the future. They nurtured the ancient traditions and holy ways and they
worshiped the Goddess in solemnity and veneration...


But none of them had ever known a day like that one. Elderly priestesses of the Sixth were seen running; questions and answers were shouted
across the very face of the Goddess, violating all tradition; slaves and bearers and healers milled around in the most holy places; and pilgrims
wandered unattended before the dais itself. Four of the largest male juniors were led into back rooms by venerable seniors of unquestioned moral
probity, then ordered to take off their clothing and lie down. Three respected Sevenths had heart attacks before lunch.


The spider at the center of the web of confusion was Honakura. It was he who poked the stick in the ant hill and stirred. He summoned all his
authority, his unspoken power, his unparalleled knowledge of the workings of the temple, and his undoubted wits-and he used them to muddle,
confuse, confound, and disorder. He used them with expertise and finesse. He issued a torrent of commands-peremptory, obscure, convoluted,
misleading, and contradictory.


By the time the valiant Lord Hardduju, reeve of the temple guard, had confirmed that truly there was another swordsman of the Seventh within the


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 The Reluctant Swordsman

precincts, the man had totally vanished, and no amount of cajolery, bribery, interrogation, or menace could establish where he had gone.


Which was, of course, the whole idea.


Even a day like that one must end. As the sun god began to grow tired of his glory and dip toward his exit, the venerable Lord Honakura sought rest
and peace in a small room high in one of the minor wings of the temple. He had not visited those parts for years. They were even more labyrinthine