"Glenda Larke - Heart of the Mirage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Larke Glenda)

tribes of the Forests of Valur to the northwest, but I never did. To me he may
have been firm and intolerant of nonsense, but he was always kind.
I lingered on the steps, remembering him. The pang of grief I felt was a
weakness, inappropriate for a compeer, but I didn't care. I decided I would
head for his tomb at the other end of the Forum and pay homage to his memory.
A long walk, although one I wanted to make. Masochism, in a way, I suppose;
not because of the destination, but because all I passed en route would remind
me of what I was about to miss. But I wanted those memories. I wanted to
absorb the essence of these symbols of Tyr. For they weren't just buildings;
they were also the commerce, the learning, the law, the sport, the religion,
the arts: they were all the things Tyr stood for. We were a cultured, refined
people who respected both the human intellect and the human body.
And Kardiastan? In Kardiastan, the soil was as barren as its cultural
heritage.
How would I be able to bear it?
Damn you, Rathrox.
The Temple of the Forum Publicum was built to honour the deity Melete. Other
public buildings were
imposing, graceful even, but the temple was surely one of the loveliest
structures ever built by mankind. The roof floated above lines of graceful
caryatids, each supposedly a likeness of the Goddess in a different mood. The
pediments and fascia were decorated with coloured friezes and statuary, the
work of several centuries of the Exaltarchy's finest artists. Marbled columns
glowed rosy in both the dawn light and the last rays of dusk or, as now,
gleamed white with painful intensity in the midday sun.
General Gayed's tomb was not in the temple proper, but along the pilgrim's way
leading up to the main steps. There was nothing ornate about it; I had
insisted on that. A flat oblong of marble marked his burial spot. A life-sized
statue on a plinth engraved with his name was the only adornment. Not a man
who liked frivolities, he would have approved of the tomb's austerity. I knelt
and prayed there, although my prayer was unorthodox. I spoke to him, not to
any god, thanking him for the compassion that had prompted him to take a war
orphan under his wing in the heat of battle, for all the kindnesses he had
extended to me as his adopted daughter. I blessed him, as I had so often done
before. Without him, I would have been a Kardi barbarian, and the thought was
the subject of a recurring nightmare I'd had in my younger years. I'd had a
narrow escape, and it was all due to him.
After I left Gayed's tomb, I walked on up into the public concourse of the
Meletian Temple.
Melete was the city's patroness, the Goddess of Wisdom, Contemplation and
Introspection. I always thought her a strange deity for a city ruling all the
lands around the Sea of Iss by virtue of armed power. There were over a
hundred deities in the pantheon, many more appropriate: Ocrastes, the
many-headed
God of War, for example. Or Selede, Goddess of Cunning. But no, our founders
had chosen Melete. People said the Goddess was the reason Tyr became a centre
of learning and scholarship; some even maintained the caryatids wept each time
Tyr conquered another nation with bloodshed rather than negotiation. I was not
given to such fancies, myself.
I bought some perfumed oil from the stalls littering the forecourt of the