"Ursula K. LeGuin - 2. The Tombs of Atuan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

One high horn shrilled and ceased. The silence that followed was
shaken only by the sound of many footsteps keeping time with a drum struck
softly at a slow heartpace. Through cracks in the roof of the Hall of the
Throne, gaps between columns where a whole section of masonry and tile had
collapsed, unsteady sunlight shone aslant. It was an hour after sunrise. The air
was still and cold. Dead leaves of weeds that had forced up between marble
pavement-tiles were outlined with frost, and crackled, catching on the long
black robes of the priestesses.
They came, four by four, down the vast hall between double rows of
columns. The drum beat dully. No voice spoke, no eye watched. Torches carried by
black-clad girls burned reddish in the shafts of sunlight, brighter in the dusk
between. Outside, on the steps of the Hall of the Throne, the men stood, guards,
trumpeters, drummers; within the great doors only women had come, dark-robed and
hooded, walking slowly four by four towards the empty throne.
Two came, tall women looming in their black, one of them thin and
rigid, the other heavy, swaying with the planting of her feet. Between these two
walked a child of about six. She wore a straight white shift. Her head and arms
and legs were bare, and she was barefoot. She looked extremely small. At the
foot of the steps leading up to the throne, where the others now waited in dark
rows, the two tall women halted. They pushed the child forward a little.
The throne on its high platform seemed to be curtained on each side
with great webs of blackness dropping from the gloom of the roof; whether these
were curtains, or only denser shadows, the eye could not make certain. The
throne itself was black, with a dull glimmer of precious stones or gold on the
arms and back, and it was huge. A man sitting in it would have been dwarfed; it
was not of human dimensions. It was empty. Nothing sat in it but shadows.
Alone, the child climbed up four of the seven steps of red-veined
marble. They were so broad and high that she had to get both feet onto one step
before attempting the next. On the middle step, directly in front of the throne,
stood a large, rough block of wood, hollowed out on top. The child knelt on both
knees and fitted her head into the hollow, turning it a little sideways. She
knelt there without moving.
A figure in a belted gown of white wool stepped suddenly out of the
shadows at the right of the throne and strode down the steps to the child. His
face was masked with white. He held a sword of polished steel five feet long.
Without word or hesitation he swung the sword, held in both hands, up over the
little girl's neck. The drum stopped beating.
As the blade swung to its highest point and poised, a figure in black
darted out from the left side of the throne, leapt down the stairs, and stayed
the sacrificer's arms with slenderer arms. The sharp edge of the sword glittered
in mid-air. So they balanced for a moment, the white figure and the black, both
faceless, dancer-like above the motionless child whose white neck was bared by
the parting of her black hair.
In silence each leapt aside and up the stairs again, vanishing in the
darkness behind the enormous throne. A priestess came forward and poured out a
bowl of some liquid on the steps beside the kneeling child. The stain looked
black in the dimness of the hall.
The child got up and descended the four stairs laboriously. When she
stood at the bottom, the two tall priestesses put on her a black robe and hood
and mantle, and turned her around again to face the steps, the dark stain, the