"Gabriel King - The Golden Cat" - читать интересную книгу автора (King Gabriel)

MajicouтАФthe fate of all Felidae would even now hang in the balance.
But on the headland above sacred Tintagel, where the first royal
cats forged the first wild roads, a momentous battle took place. At the
height of that battle, the QueenтАЩs kittens were born: but even as the
Alchemist strove to take them, so the Majicou struck. Together they fell;
down from the cliffs, into the depths of the ocean; then up they soared
into the radiant dome of the sky. Then, in a last despairing gesture,
bound together by the hatred of hundreds of years, they plunged back
down to Tintagel Head, where, in an eruption of dirt and vegetation, and
a hot mist of vaporized rock, they drove themselves into the earth; and
the earth sealed itself over them for ever; or so it seemed...

From The Ninth Life of Cats

* * *

PROLOGUE
A large gate tower once controlled access to the city from the east. Its excavated
remains, reduced by time to seven or eight courses of pale gray stone, lie on the
north bank not far upriver from the Fantastic Bridge. They are railed off so that
human beings cannot fall in and hurt themselves. People are always to be seen here,
whatever the weather. They walk about with that aimless human vigor, narrowing
their eyes at things and talking their dull talk. They stare down into the asymmetric
mass of the old tower. They boast about its wallsтАФso sturdy and thick, packed with
chalk ballastтАФas if they had built them only the other day. They draw one anotherтАЩs
attention to the broken arrow slits, the rusty bolts, the chisel marks on the ancient
stone, the doorstep clearly visible after all these years, polished by the passage of ten
thousand feet.
The keep itself has a mossy, pebbled floor. Weeds infest its inner ledges,
where the walls are streaked with moisture. Coins glint here and there: people have
thrown them in for what they call in their dull, human way тАЬluck.тАЭ
 The children gaze down and, a little mystified by the safety rails, ask their
parents, тАЬMommy, are there tigers in here?тАЭ
тАЬNo dear, thatтАЩs at the zoo,тАЭ the parents say. тАЬThe tigers are only at the zoo.тАЭ



But what do they know?

One unseasonable day at the end of spring, a cat flickered briefly into existence in
the ruins. He was large and muscular and had the look of an animal who lived
outdoors. His coat was pale metallic gray, tipped with black and shading to pure
white on his underside. It seemed to take up the dull, rainy light and give it back
fourfold, so that he glowed amid the broken walls. His face, with its blunt muzzle
and gently pointed ears, was decorated with patterns of a darker gray, and charcoal
gray stripes broke up the outline of his forelegs. In that light his eyes were a strange,
glaucous green, like old jade.