"Zach Hughes - Killbird" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

who tempt them."

"Perhaps I won't," I said, "but I will try."

"Yes," she said.

"How will I know?"

"When you see the white bones of death, you will know."

No one alive in the family had even seen a dragon. My father had, had
slain one, but he was dead. And my mother had died of grief. I left the
Valley of Clean Waters, climbing the near ridge to look down and out and
up to still another ridge, and for the first few days I walked in fear,
expecting to see the white bones of death, sign of a dragon, behind every
tree, at the top of each ridge, in the bottom of each valley. I traveled light,
my hardax, my sleepskin, a bag of dried meat, for the hills were abundant
in summer with fruit and game large and small. I ate well and drank
deeply from free-flowing springs of cold and delicious water and made my
bed under the trees, looking upward to see the cold stars and, once, twice,
the sign from God, the glowing messenger which came from the west and
burned fire as it passed over me. I didn't know which direction the others
chose, and I didn't care. Perhaps Logan would make a serious effort to
find a dragon, perhaps not. I, like the Seer of Things Unseen, had little
confidence in the sincerity of the others.

Many times I had lost myself in the hills, leaving the family far behind
to wander and seek the view from the next hilltop. Once I traveled as far as
the low slopes, there to see the inbreeders, weak, starving, fighting among
themselves and breaking the basic rule of God. I had no desire to go
among the inbreeders, to see the blood of man spilled, as they spilled it on
the slightest provocation. How they must breed, to be able to afford to
squander life, God's greatest gift. Not that I fear them. In my healthful
strength I could lift two of them and toss them headlong, but they are sick
with the ultimate sickness, the madness, and I fear contagion.

I set my course away from the known haunts of the inbreeders, making
my way slowlyтАФseeing places not before seen by members of my
familyтАФtoward the unknown hills to the north of the place where the sun
rises, into vast and lonely forests, unaware of the passage of the days, for
time was not important. Should the others come before I returned, the
custom demanded a full moon of waiting. And when I returned with the
necklace, and I was determined to do so, it would be over and the gods of
man would be robbed.

There came a day when the hills descended in front of me and there
were high ridges only behind me and I could see a vista which was strange
and forbidding. I moved slowly, my skins tied high to bare my chest and
belly to feel danger, and there was none. There were deer and once or
twice a distant sight of a bear, tempting me. I denied myself repetition of