"Ursula K. LeGuin - Earthsea 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