"Gray, Julia - Guardian 05 - Alyssa's Ring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gray Julia)

This was partly why he was finding it hard to fall asleep. The closer he got to Vadanis, and to the completion of his circular voyage, the stranger and more intense his dreams became. And amid all the other bizarre imagery, he constantly found himself trapped within the thunderous swell of the crimson sea, the ocean in which he swam but which he had never seen. Those dreams took him back to a time of terror, when he had first learnt the ways of pain, a time even before his birth. Ordinarily, his only escape from these nightmares was to draw in upon himself, becoming smaller and smaller until he was invisible and then ceased to exist. Taryn's intervention had saved Terrel from that ordeal the night before, but to sleep was to be alone again - and prey to a thousand fears. And yet he desperately needed to rest. If only Alyssa was here, he thought. She'd be able to explain my dreams. Nomar's too, probably.
But Alyssa was not there, and Terrel knew she was not likely to come any time soon. The last time he had seen her, she had been in the borrowed shape of a gyrfalcon, and the bird's plight had made it clear that she was terribly ill.
Her parting words to him - I can't help you any more - still lay like a malignant shadow within his mind, and the memory of her distress always plunged him into despair. That fateful encounter had taken place almost two years ago, and in all that time he had not heard from her at all.
Chapter Two
'It's a fish,' Taryn said, stating the obvious when none of his elders seemed willing to do so.
'Up here?' Nomar queried.
'Perhaps it's a flying fish,' Roskin said with a grin.
'Someone must have carved it into the stone,' Nomar said. 'It can't be real.'
'No one carved that,' Lawren responded. 'Look at the detail.'
'And why would anyone want to carve anything up here?' Roskin asked. 'We're in the middle of nowhere.'
'This part of the rock face, was only exposed quite recently,' Faulk said, indicating^ the jumble of boulders that had blocked their path and forced them to clamber to the ledge where they were standing now.
'He's right,' Lawren said. 'This would have been underground not so long ago.'
'Not too many sculptors work underground,' Roskin commented.
'But fish don't swim in rock!' Nomar objected. 'It can't be real.'
'It's real,' Terrel said, entering the debate for the first time. 'Or it was once.' As he stared at the delicate outlines of scales and bones, he was remembering the other occasion when he'd seen remnants of an ancient life transformed into stone.
'But we're halfway up a mountain,' Nomar persisted. 'There aren't any rivers or lakes within miles of this place. There might be a few streams in winter, but nothing big enough for a fish that size.'
The creature was the length of a man's arm, its fins splayed out and its tail flicked up - as though it had been frozen in the act of swimming away from some invisible foe. It was a strangely beautiful and - to Terrel, at least -a rather melancholy sight.
'I've come across something like this before,' he told the others. 'There were some ancient bones and a few huge lizard eggs that had turned into stone. When my friends broke one of the eggs in two, you could see the remains of the tiny bones inside, just like this.' He'd been blind at the time, but had traced the skeletal contours with his fingers - and had been granted a vision of the ancient past through the eyes of the long-dead creature. 'Sometimes there are memories embedded in the stone.'
'Memories?' Roskin queried, his interest quickening. 'Don't get him started,' Lawren groaned. Roskin ignored the comment. 'How do you find the memories?' he asked. 'Touch it,' Terrel suggested. 'See what happens.' The younger man hesitated, then stretched out a hand and gently ran his fingers over the surface of the rock. He closed his eyes as he did so, a look of the utmost concentration on his face.
'This still doesn't explain-' Nomar began, but broke off when his son put a hand on his arm, distracting him. Eventually Roskin stepped back and opened his eyes. 'Anything?' Terrel asked. Roskin shook his head, obviously disappointed. 'Are you going to try?' he asked. 'No. It's the future that concerns me, not the past.'
'But how did it get here?' Nomar burst out. 'You'll be telling me next that there are birds at the bottom of the ocean.'
'Maybe this was the bottom of the ocean once,' Terrel replied. As he spoke, he realized that his decision not to explore the relic for memories had been based not on indifference but on fear. The sort of upheaval necessary to transform the planet's surface to such an extent would have to have been unimaginably violent, and he shuddered inwardly at the idea.
'Now that is hard to believe,' Lawren remarked.
'So it remains a mystery,' Faulk concluded with a shrug.
'It's just a fish,' Roskin agreed. 'It's pot important.'
'It would have been if you'd felt something through those mystic fingers of yours,' Lawren needled.
'Mock all you like,' Roskin retorted. 'One day I'll get to see your future, and you won't be so flippant then, will you?'
'When that day dawns, there will be birds at the bottom of the ocean,' the hunter replied.
'We should be moving on,' Faulk stated. 'I'd rather be on the other side of the ridge before that arrives.' He nodded in the direction of an approaching mass of dark cloud.
The company of travellers set off without further ado, but Terrel glanced round and noticed that one of their number had hung back for a few moments. Before he ran to catch up with his father, Taryn reached out a small hand and laid a tentative fingertip on the fish. For a brief instant the boy smiled, then saw Terrel looking at him and quickly moved away.
They crossed the ridge and found shelter just in time. As the first gusts of rain slashed through the air, the travellers wedged themselves into a series of crevices below an overhang of rock. Soon afterwards the sky turned an angry shade of purple, and hail was mixed in with the now torrential rain. Thunder rolled across the hills and valleys, a new peal beginning as the previous one faded. Dozens of small waterfalls cascaded down over the jagged outcrop, but because they were on its leeward side, Terrel and his companions remained reasonably dry and comfortable.
The healer was sharing a cramped space with Lawren Bir. As they had settled in, Lawren had put his fingers to his lips and emitted a shrill whistle. Within moments the hunter's trained falcon had swooped down out of the gathering gloom, alighting on its master's gauntleted wrist and then edging up along his arm to perch on his leather-patched shoulder. It was still there now, keeping quite still, its unblinking black eyes staring into the storm. The bird's name was Kephra. According to Lawren, this meant 'beautiful one' - a singularly apt description - but the falcon could be deadly too, and had proved its worth to the company many times.
'I was told once that the longer a hawk's tail feathers, the better flyer she is,' Terrel said. 'Is that true?'
'It's true,' the hunter replied. 'But Kephra is a tercel -a male.'
'I don't know enough to tell the difference,' the healer admitted. To him the bird looked very like the one he'd seen in Misrah, but Isptar had been female.
'It's enough to know that other falcons can,' Lawren said with a grin.
The hunter, together with his avian partner, had been the second to last to join the group. He was apparently making his way to the coast, where an important falconry tournament was to be held in the spring, and travelling in company would make the rigours of the journey easier to
bear. Terrel believed there was more to it than that, but Lawren and his bird had been a welcome addition to the party - not only because their expertise provided a supply of fresh meat, but also because Kephra's constant presence meant that Alyssa would have a suitable host if she were ever able to come to Terrel again. When her spirit wandered, re-entering the world in the shape of an animal, Alyssa would often choose a bird if she had the chance, finding their relatively uncomplicated and uncluttered minds the most amenable to her purpose. Terrel had long since given up any expectation that she would come, but a forlorn hope was better than none.
Beyond their refuge, the storm raged on.
'How long do you think this will last?' Terrel asked, raising his voice above the noise of the storm.
'An hour, no more,' Lawren replied, then reconsidered. 'Who knows these days? The weather's gone mad the last few months. I'm just glad Faulk got us here in time. If it had been up to the Great Londolozi, we'd still have been out there discussing stone fishes and being battered to bits by hailstones.'
Londolozi was the grandiose name Roskin had used when he'd first introduced himself to the company, and Lawren's contemptuous tone made it plain just what he thought of such pretension. At the time he and Nomar had just smiled, while Faulk, stony-faced, had simply asked the newcomer what his real name was. Eventually he had admitted that it was the rather more prosaic Roskin Steyer.
'You shouldn't be too hard on him,' Terrel said.
'He's no more a seer than I am,' the hunter replied. 'And he never will be.'
'You can't be sure of that.' The healer was thinking of others he had known who, against all expectation, had
shown talent of that sort. Neither Mlicki nor Kjolur had looked like prophets.
'The man's a complete charlatan,' Lawren persisted. 'My guess is he's sticking close to you because if he's with someone with a real gift, he's more likely to be taken seriously himself. By the gullible, at least.'
'But he might genuinely want to learn.'
'I don't think your talent's going to rub off on him. In any case, he doesn't want to be a healer, he wants to be an oracle. Which is all nonsense, whichever way you look at it.'
Terrel chose not to argue the point.