"Alan Dean Foster - Catechist 1 - Carnivores Of Darkness & Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)
CARNIVORES of LIGHT and DARKNESS
Journeys of the Catechist Book 1
Alan Dean Foster
THE SKY BEGAN TO DARKEN AND A VOICE BOOMED BEHIND THEM It was the lament of
something that was less than a beast and more than a natural phenomenon, the unnaturally drawn-out
moan of a fiend most monstrous and uncommon. The fleeing travelers turned, and saw at last what had
tried to ambush them. It advanced not in the manner of a living creature but in the manner of sand. It had
no arms and then a hundred, no feet but one as wide as the base of the advancing dune itself.
Everywhere and all of it was dark red, like all the rust that had ever afflicted the metals of the world
squeezed into a swiftly shifting pyramid of rage. The dune howled and moaned and bellowed like some
sky-scraping banshee unwillingly fastened to the Earth. And in the midst of all that geologic fury, two-
thirds up the face of the oncoming mountain, were two eyes...
"This odd and engaging fantasy has an apparently African setting, but... owes far more to Grimm's fairy
tales....
It's a wondrous journey." -Locus
"Top-drawer Foster, featuring a fast-paced mix of wry humor, high fantasy, and amazing new places and
creatures." -Publishers Weekly
"Combines the flexibility of a picaresque adventure with the simplicity of a folktale.... This promising
series opener belongs in most libraries." -Library Journal
For Absalom... Who burned to know how to read.Cape Cross Station, Skeleton Coast, Namibia
November 1993
IT WAS THE MORNING AFTER THE SENSUOUS SECOND FULL MOON of Telengarra, which
heralds the coming of the spring rains, when little Colai came running into the village to cry that there
were dead people washing up on the beach. And not just dead people, but people of unnatural aspect
attired in strange clothes, whose pale faces were unmarked by ritual scars yet sometimes overgrown with
hair. Most of the village was not yet awake when the frantic boy came running and shrieking past the
houses. At first his mother thought it was a trick. She caught him and shook him, angry that he should
disturb everyone's morning for the sake of a joke. Then she saw something that, like a piece of grit, had
become caught at the bottom of his eyes, and stopped shaking him. Together they hurried to the house of
the chief. Asab was just emerging as they arrived. He fumbled to adjust his fine musa-skin cloak with
the impressive dark blue stripes and the phophilant headdress with its sweeping crest of intense red and
yellow feathers. He was clearly upset at having been rousted from his sleep before normal cockcrow.
Hastily donned, his headdress kept threatening to slip from his head. "I saw them, I saw them!" In
addition to Asab, a crowd had begun to gather around Colai and his mother as the boy declaimed
breathlessly. "Now, child," the chief intoned solemnly, "what is it you think you have seen?" Other men
and a few of the women clustered close, rubbing sleep from their eyes while fighting back the sour
morning taste of recent dreams. "Dead people, Chief Asab! Many of them, very different from us." The
boy barely paused for air as he turned and pointed. "On the beach. Above where the mussels and the
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