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

Guardian Cycle 5 - Alyssa's Ring by Julia Gray

Prologue
It was a night when mountains ground their teeth, when islands moved like
ships and the oceans boiled.
The people of Senden knew nothing of the ways of the sea or the fate of
islands, but they heard the distant mountains growl and felt the ground shake
beneath their feet. This was the night they had been waiting for, and they
watched in awe and terror, the words of the Zealot echoing in their ears, as
events unfolded in the sky above. The time of fire and darkness was upon them,
the time when the moons would fall and the world would end - the time when all
their sins would have to be accounted for. It was time to die.
As the four moons moved slowly and inexorably towards their fatal convergence,
the Family gathered together for the last time. They abandoned the huts that
had cost them so much time and effort to build out there in the wilderness,
and left behind their few belongings, knowing that they no longer had any need
of personal possessions. They made their way to the open space at the centre
of the village - the heart of Senden - where the shape of the dark,
five-pointed star had been marked upon the hard, stony ground, each of its
points extended in tapering wavy lines that reached out like tentacles to the
edges of the arena.
When they were all in place there were more than a hundred people present, two
thirds of them women, and
they all sat facing inwards, turning their backs on the rest of Nydus,
rejecting it. There was a feverish joy on some of their faces, naked fear on
others. The youngest of them, infants who could not understand what was going
on, could only trust in the adults around them - their parents, the Zealot's
servitors - and, most of all, in the Zealot himself. He moved among the group,
his voice ringing out in ecstatic promises or whispering words of
encouragement to the less brave among his flock.
Nomar Veress sat on the ground beside his mother. She was crying softly and,
although he didn't know the reason for her sorrow, her tears distressed him.
He knew that something was going to happen this night - something important -
but although the prospect had been exciting at first, he wasn't used to being
awake so late and he was finding it hard to stay alert. His mother's sadness
was the only thing that remained clear to him, and he tried to comfort her,
slipping his small hand into hers. But she didn't even seem to notice that he
was there, and her red-rimmed eyes stared up at the night sky.
Nomar followed the line of her gaze just in time to see a shooting star streak
across the heavens. A collective murmur rose from the Family, and the boy felt
his mother grow tense. In the past he had always thought shooting stars were
wonderful - so bright and so fast - but recently, since the mountains had
begun to shake, everyone seemed to regard any unusual sight in the sky as a
possible cause for alarm. His mother mumbled something he couldn't hear, but
he knew she wasn't talking to him and so he didn't ask her what it was.
'Don't cry,' he whispered instead, but she gave no sign of having heard him.
'Nomar is right, Lia. You should not be crying.' The Zealot had appeared
before them as if by magic, his feet making no sound on the hard-packed earth.
Now, as he squatted before them, his silver-grey eyes shone in the diminishing
moonlight and the dark tattoos that marked his face and forearms seemed like