"Robin Hobb - Liveship 2 - Mad Ship" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)

renewal.' But it was. We were not wrong. Those who were to meet us failed.
They did not come. Not then. Perhaps not this time, either."
Maulkin fell silent. Shreever continued to anchor him against the current.
It was a strain. Even if there had been no current, there was no soothing mud
to sink into here, only coarse sea grasses and tumbled stone and block. They
should find a better place to rest. However, until Maulkin had healed, she did
not wish to travel. Besides, where would they go? They had been up and down
this current full of strange salts and she had lost her faith that Maulkin
knew where he was leading them. Left to herself, where would she go? It was a
question that was suddenly too heavy for her mind. She did not want to think.
She cleansed the lenses of her eyes and then looked down on her body
tangled with theirs. The scarlet of her scales was bright and strong, but
perhaps that was only in contrast to Maulkin's dull hide. His golden false-
eyes had faded to dull browns. The suppurating slashes of his injuries marred
them. He needed to feed and grow and then shed a skin. That would make him
feel better. It would make them all feel better. She ventured the thought
aloud. "We need to feed. All of us grow hungry and slack. My toxin sacs are
nearly empty. Perhaps we should go south, where food is plentiful and the
water is warm."
Maulkin twisted in her grip to regard her. His great eyes spun copper with
concern. "You spend too much of your strength upon me, Shreever," he rebuked
her. She could feel the effort it cost him to shake his mane free and erect. A
second shake released a weak haze of toxin. It stung her and woke her,
restoring her awareness. Sessurea leaned closer, wrapping them both in his
greater length. He shared Maulkin's toxins, pumping his gills to absorb them.
"It will be all right," Sessurea tried to reassure her. "You are just
weary. And hungry. We all are."
"Weary unto death," Maulkin confirmed tiredly. "And hungry almost to
mindlessness. The demands of the body overpower the functioning of the mind.
But listen to me, both of you. Listen and fix this in your minds and cling to
it. If all else is forgotten, cherish this. We cannot go south again. If we
leave these waters, it will be to end. As long as we can think, we must remain
here and seek for One Who Remembers. I know it in my stomach. If we are not
renewed this time, we shall not be renewed. We and all our kind will perish
and be ever after unknown in sea or sky or upon the land." He spoke the
strange words slowly and for an instant, Shreever almost recalled what they
meant. Not just the Plenty and the Lack. The earth, the sky and the sea, the
three parts of their sovereignty, once the three spheres of ... something.
Maulkin shook his mane again. This time Shreever and Sessurea both opened
their gills wide to his toxins and scalded his memories into themselves.
Shreever looked down at the tumbled blocks of worked stone that littered the
sea bottom, at the layered barnacles and sea grasses that were anchored to the
Conqueror's Arch in an obscuring curtain. The black stone veined with silver
peeped through only in small patches. The earth had shaken it down and the sea
had swallowed it up. Once, lives ago, she had settled upon that arch, first
flapping and then folding her massive wings back upon her shoulders. She had
bugled to her mate of her joy in the morning's fresh rain, and a gleaming blue
dragon had blared his reply. Once the Elderkind had greeted her arrival with
scattered flowers and shouts of welcome. Once in this city under a bright blue
sky ...