"Kate Elliott - Jaran 2 - An Earthly Crown" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elliott Kate)

A day passed and Bakhtiian did not come down from the height.
Neither did he the next day.
But at dawn on the third day, smoke rose from the hill, billowing up into the sky.
"He's offered the tent to the gods," his aunt said approvingly. In orderly groups, elders
and dyans, commanders and etsanas, gathered at the base where the path twisted up
the hillside. Aleksi stuck close to Tess and so gained a vantage point right at the front.
Soon enough they saw a single figure, red shirt, black trousers, black boots, a
saber swaying at his hips, walking down the path. He gripped the horse-tail staff in
his left hand. Seeing the crowd, he halted. First, he sought out his wife's figure in the
throng. He stared at her as if to make sure she was real and not a spirit. Aleksi could
not otherwise read Bakhtiian's expression. But then, Aleksi was never entirely sure of
what Bakhtiian felt about anything, as if the sheer force of the emotions welling off
Bakhtiian served to hide his true feelings.
At last Bakhtiian lifted his gaze to stare at the assembly spread out, waiting for
him. Here at the front, the elders, the women, the commanders, stood and watched.
Farther back, many of the young men of the army had already mounted, holding their
restless mounts on tight reins.
Bakhtiian's face was lit, illuminated by the gods themselves, or by some trick of
the morning sunlight, Aleksi could not be sure which. He raised the horse-tail staff
and, with that small gesture, brought silence. Then he drew his saber.
"West," he said. So calmly did he raise the fire that would scorch the khaja earth.
"West to the sea."
ACT ONE
'He that plays the king shall be welcome."
тАФShakespeare, Hamlet

CHAPTER ONE
"Look here my boys, see what a world of ground Lies westward from the midst
of Cancer's line, Unto the rising of this earthly globe, Whereas the sun declining from
our sight, Begins the day with our antipodes. . . . And from th'Antartique Pole,
eastward behold As much more land, which never was descried, Wherein are rocks of
pearl, that shine as bright As all the lamps that beautify the sky, And shall I die and
this unconquered?"
In the hush of audience and air alike, Diana moved quietly around to the back of
the second balcony to watch the final minutes of the Company's final performance on
Earth. Tamburlaine the Great. Who, from a Scythian Shepheard by his rare and
wonderful Conquests became a most puissant and mighty Monarch, And (for his
tyranny, and terror in War) was termed, The Scourge of God. Divided into two
Tragical Discourses. Somehow, the two plays seemed ironically appropriate for a
repertory company that was about to leave the civilized worlds and spend a year on
the last planet in known space where humans still lived in ignorance of their space-
faring brothers and sisters.
Next week the entire Company, together with Charles Soerensen and his party,
would board a spaceliner that would take them to the Delta Pavonis system and the
Interdicted world, Rhui. Owen and Ginny had founded the Bharentous Repertory
Company in order to give themselves room to experiment with the theater they loved.
This would be their greatest experiment fulfilled: bringing theater to unlettered
savages who had not the slightest sheen of civilization to pollute their first experience
of drama.
Amyras knelt before his dying father Tamburlaine. "Heavens witness me, with