"Paul Kearney - The Sea Beggars 2 - This Forsaken Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kearney Paul)

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SALT-BLOODED




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тАЬTHERE WAS A GOD ONCE, OF COURSE THERE WAS. AN ALL-FATHER who created
everything and each race to inhabit the earth. But He left us long ago, disgusted by the waywardness of
His creation, and the wanton appetites of the creatures He had populated His world with. We are
forsaken now, children abandoned by their father. And when God withdrew from the world, to punish us
He took with Him all hope of life after death. So nothing but the worm awaits us all. No justice for the
persecuted, no punishment for the wicked. And thus our world turns, spun on its axis by the greedy
dreams of men.тАЭ

тАЬBut there are other gods, surely,тАЭ Rol said. тАЬThere is Ussa, and Ran her spouse. And Gibniu of the Anvil
тАФтАЭ

тАЬLesser deities, bound to the earth even as we are, my boy. They are powerful, yes, and immortal, but
they cannot create. They can only destroy, or warp what has already been made by the One God who
abandoned us.тАЭ

тАЬAnd the Weren, what of them?тАЭ

RolтАЩs grandfather paused, frowned. It was a long moment before he answered.

тАЬSome say that the Weren are fallen angels, exiled here on earth in punishment for an ancient sin, others
that they are Man before his Fall, Man as he should have been. But the Lesser Gods, in jealousy, broke
them down and enfeebled them and produced the mankind we know now. In either case the peoples of
the world are but shadows of angels, just as the Ur-men, the Unfinished Ones, are shattered travesties of
humanity. For this much is true about Umer, the wheeling earth we inhabit: all things are in decay now
that God has left us. The world spins ever more slowly on its axis and the sun cools year by year,
century upon century. One day Umer will be a frozen ball of mud, its turning stilled at last, and it shall
drift about an ashen sun in which all light has died.тАЭ



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