"Marc Laidlaw - Jane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laidlaw Marc)

had struggled from their burrows to die there in the morning mist: marmots and
rabbits and lizards, some still thrashing. A wind had begun to thin the shallow cloud,
but it also pushed traces of the acrid mist uphill, and we hurried to climb faster than
it could seep. His falcon charted our path from above, but although I sometimes saw
her shadow or caught a silvery tinkling of her bell, she never came down to us again.
And I wondered what my Father could have told her to keep her away.

As we topped the crest and came down the other side of the ridge, we saw a
farther valley where traces of the mist still lingered. And this time, among the small
furry bodies, were two larger ones we knew on sight, flushed from their desperate
burrow. It needed no closer inspection to know that Olin lay there, and many yards
away lay Anna, just out of reach of our FatherтАЩs sheltering hand. I thought of how it
must have been for Anna, wandering blindly without a guide, never thinking to lift the
hood without FatherтАЩs permission. That was the first moment I saw the hood as a
hateful thing and knew it was only by chance that my childhood had not ended the
same way; and I wondered if without it she might have escaped.

We kept to the ridge until we heard voices coming up from the valley to one
side where a stream ran. Soon after that, I saw others moving far off among the
bamboo staves, and the hue and flow of their garments reminded me of the three
travelers, but there were many more of them.

To avoid being seen we went down from the ridge and sought a more choked
passage, where sometimes we went on all fours and sometimes had to wriggle like
snakes. From time to time our Father had to pull me over shelves of rock I could not
climb myself; he had taken to using his gloved hand to help me, so I could not feel
his fingers through it but only the thick, tough leather. It broke my heart, for it
seemed he could not bear to touch me without the glove; as if he were already
preparing to be apart. I felt almost relieved we were alone now, because my mother
would have had no heart for this, and my sister not enough strength. Only I did miss
Olin, though.

In the afternoon, we stepped onto a spur of rock like a stone finger pointing
straight out from the mountainside; and I saw more of the world in that one instant
than I had seen in my whole life. The land fell away below us, sheer above a rocky
slope that thickened into jungle down below. The jungle gave way to a wide plain,
burned and bare and grey with the look of recent devastation. Beyond the plain, in a
smoky haze, were unnatural shapes that could only be buildings, although the thing
they most reminded me of was mountains. The stony finger pointed right at this
place. When I asked my father if that was the city, he took his eyes away from it and
said,тАФYes, Jane.

And then he said,тАФI never showed you this. And I hadnтАЩt meant to show any
of you, although your mother knew, for we fled from there together. She carried Ash
in her belly, while I brought nothing with me but my falcon.

I looked closer at the city, and in its jumbled center I saw something that
puzzled me for seeming so familiar. It was a tall spire, the tallest of them. And at the
very tip of that spire was a curved shape that looked like a crook or a question mark,
though it ended in a barbed tip; and across it was a slash that seemed to cut through