"C. S. Friedman - Coldfire 3 - Crown of Shadows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friedman C. S)

"Just so," he whispered. "Just so."

Two

Red plus. Shiny, like drops of blood.
While pills. Powder-soft, bitter on the tongue.

Black pills. Velvet glass, a kiss of oblivion.

Andrys laid them out on the hotel dresser, tiny bottles that glittered in the lamplight. His hands, he
noticed, were shaking. The air seemed uncomfortably warm.

Easy, Andri. Steady now. You're almost there.

Five days on the road. Not an easy journey, for one who had rarely left his home county. Not an easy
task, to go among strangers where one's name was unknown and one's heritage meant nothing and the
name of the county that had given one birth was just a mark on the map, no more or less meaningful than
any other.

He had never loved Merentha, nor had he hated it. Those terms implied strong emotion, and in truth he
had pretty much taken his home county for granted. It was there; the Tarrant estate was located within its
borders; his family had once ruled the place. But now that he had left, he found there was an emptiness
within him that no wine could dispel. He felt lost in the eastern cities, and sometimes when the night was
dark and strange sounds and scents surrounded him he felt that if he just relaxed, if he just closed his eyes
and let go, the strangeness of it all would carry him away. Until he was no more than a sigh on this foreign
breeze, a whisper of lost hope fading out into the night.

Sometimes he would pray to Calesta, as one would pray to a god. Sometimes the demon answered.
Then dreams of vengeance would flood his soul, forcing out the loneliness. Dreams of hate so powerful,
so driving,

that his body shook for hours even after they had ended, and his mind was numb for what seemed like a
small eternity afterward. Those dreams... they were pain and ecstacy almost beyond bearing, a catharsis
so terrifying and so necessary that on the nights when Calesta did not answer him he wept, helpless and
hopeless as a lost child. The dreams were all he had now. The hate was all that was holding him together.

That and the drugs.

Alcohol to numb the fear, to ease the pain of remembering. Cerebus for the madness within him, the
beast that must have outlet now and then or it would swallow him whole. Slowtime for visions of color
and music in a world washed gray by sorrow. And blackout-blessed blackout-little black pills for a taste
of oblivion, for shadows of death to fold about him like a cocoon, shutting out all the pain and the beauty
and the hope and the fear-shutting it all out, every last bit of that agony called life. Long enough for him to
rest. Long enough for him to sleep. Blackout for the coward within him, afraid to go on living but more
afraid to die.

He stared at the tiny bottles, tempted by their contents. He had come to Jaggonath in the late afternoon,
had taken a room and eaten a meager meal and cleaned off the dirt of the road as well as he was able.
Now... his fingers closed about the bottle of black pills and he shut his eyes, as though mere physical
proximity might somehow transfer its contents into him. But not yet. Not now. There was still time to