"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 25 - Torian Pearls." - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Blade watched the faces of the Kargoi as the sunrise grew. He would have liked to ask them about the
colors, but this might not be wise. So far they seemed to think that he was merely a wanderer from some
other part of this Dimension. If he said anything to hint that he was not familiar with the Dimension's
spectacular sunrises and sunsets, at least the sharp-witted Paor might wonder.

The baudz watched the sunrise in silence, until its raw beauty began to fade as daylight came to the land.
Then he turned to Blade.
"What do your people say of the colors at the rising and the setting of the sun?"

"The sky is the face of the Worldmaster," he said with glib assurance. "The Worldmaster feels a mighty
anger toward us below, his servants. From that anger the colors come, that pass across his face at the
dawn and the sunset."

Paor laughed grimly. "There were those among us who said the same thing, when the sky changed after
the shaking of the land and the burning of the mountains. But then the waters began to rise. Slowly they
ate up our homeland so that we had to seek a new one. Then we no longer worried about what anger the
gods might be showing in the sky. It was enough that their anger was on the earth-or rather, in the waters
that were swallowing it." He paused, then fixed Blade with a not quite friendly stare. "Is your land yet
uneaten by the waters?"

"Part of it," said Blade. "Some remains. But what remains is only enough for those people who live there
now. Our hearts are not hard, but our swords would be swift against anyone else who came seeking a
home among us." He laughed, to take the harshness out of his words. "There is also this. I sailed to this
land in a ship that traveled for thirty days and nights before it was wrecked. Can the Kargoi ride their
drends and haul their wagons across such a width of sea?"

Paor relaxed visibly. "No, I think your land is safe from the Kargoi, if not from the gods. It is in our
power to take our beasts and our wagons and ourselves across small rivers and perhaps large ones. So
much water as you have crossed would stand in our path forever." He frowned. "Or at least until we
learned the art of building ships. That is an art we may well wish to learn, when we have found our new
home. If the gods take from the land and give to the sea, those who can sail the farthest may live the
longest."

"Perhaps," said Blade politely. "But the wrath of the gods is abroad on the sea. Remember that although
my ship came thirty days from my homeland, it was wrecked in the end. A storm overthrew it, a storm
that made me think the bowels of the earth were being torn up. Then the creatures of the sea fell on my
comrades, so many of them did not even live to drown."

Blade could now be reasonably sure what had happened in this Dimension. His guess about volcanic
dust in the air causing the sunset colors had been right. There'd been a period of seismic activity, with
volcanoes erupting all over the world and spewing dust into the air. That dust not only colored the sunsets
and sunrises, it made the world warmer. Somewhere massive icecaps had begun to melt and gone on
melting, pouring water into the seas until they started to rise and swallow the land. One by one, the
people whose lands were vanishing beneath the water had to flee, fighting their way along as they
searched for new lands. A grim picture.

Blade let no hint of his thoughts appear as he went on. "I shall gladly teach you as much as I can. I have
little chance of returning to my homeland. By the time the Kargoi have learned to build great ships, I will
be dead or far too old for the voyage. Perhaps by that time the anger of the gods will also be no more, so
that when the Kargoi and my people meet, they will do so in peace."