"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 06 - A Time Of Omens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

the current waterline she found the bleached-gray trunk of an entire tree, its roots all twisted with dead
kelp, and a long scatter of smaller pieces of driftwood, plenty of bone-dry fuel for a fire. Crocodiles, she
assumed, would dislike fire as much as other wild animals did. She swung her pack free of her aching
shoulders, set it down in the shade of the trunk, and set about making camp.

As she was gathering small chunks and sticks, she discovered her first concrete bit of evidence that
Evandar had indeed found her the right island. Lying half-buried in the sand was a broken plank, cut and
curved in such a way that it could only have come from a ship. It might, of course, have been nothing
more than wrack from some Bardek merchanter, carried hundreds and hundreds of miles by the currents,
but she preferred to doubt it. In the last of the dayтАЩs light she scurried round, searching for more
driftwood, scrabbling like a mole in the sand, until at last, just as the twilight was growing thick and gray,
she unearthed a flat panel of wood that must have once formed the side of a chest or back of a bench. It
seemed to be the splintered half of a big oblong, and it was carved with designs that no Bardekian would
have drawn.

Once she got a fire going with less interesting driftwood, Jill studied her discovery by firelight streaked
blue from the sea salt impregnating the wood. Although the panel was bleached and blistering, she
discovered on one edge two indentations that could only have been made by hingesтАФso it was part of a
chest, indeed. With her fingertip she could trace a long pattern of vines and flowers, looping casually,
almost randomly across the entire surface rather than being contained in strict bands, such as a Bardekian
craftsman would have chosen, and among the foliage were the little faces of Wildfolk. On the reverse
side of the panel she found deep-graved letters, recognizably elven though somewhat different from the
profuse syllabary sheтАЩd learned.

Enough of the symbols were familiar for her to make a stab at deciphering the words, most of which
seemed to have vanished with the missing piece of panel. There was the graceful hook that spelled тАЬba,тАЭ
and here the slashed cross of тАЬde.тАЭ

тАЬIranrinbaladelan linalandalтАФтАЭ she said aloud, and her blood ran cold at the sound of the city name.
тАЬRinbaladelan son of the something? Or wait! The son of Rinbaladelan, not the other way round.тАЭ

Anew city, then, founded by exiles? Quite possibly, if its name had been inscribed on this long-sunk ship
to show her home port. She tossed the panel over near her gear, then got up and laid more wood on the
fire. In the blue and gold flame the salamanders leapt and sported, rubbing their backs like cats on the
burning sea wrack. Jill wandered away from the pool of light so that she could look up at the stars,
hanging bright and clear above her, so close, seemingly, that she felt she could stretch up a hand and
touch them. She wished she had a navigatorтАЩs lore, to read the stars and learn how far south she might
be, but of course, for all the strange lore she did know, the book of the stars was closed to her. Far
down the beach at low tide, the ocean lapped soft waves,

What, then, was the noise? All at once she realized that for some time now sheтАЩd been hearing a distant
sound that sheтАЩd been assuming, only half consciously, was surf, but here in this sheltered bend of coast,
and with the tide so far out at that, no waves pounded on the shore. She went cold again, freezing
motionless, straining to hear, to place, the soft but rhythmicalboom, boom, boom floating through the
night.

Alter some long minutes she realized that the sound was growing louder, coming closer, pounding like
the footsteps of an enormous animal walking at a stately pace. She hurried back to the fire, wondered if
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