"Ian R. Macleod - Sealight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

he was getting married tomorrow, and were full of advice as to his wedding night.
Ran made the appropriate gestures to them, knowing that they would be unable to
tell whether he was actually smiling.

The wind hurried them down through the main channel toward the lagoon. The
seagulls circled and cried. Spires and cupolas flashed bronze and drifted to leeward.

Off to the east, the last island of the city soared darkly from weedblack rocks.
As he had done each morning since his childhood, Ran gazed toward it. This was
where the palace of Torea raised the dark shoulders of its impenetrable seaward
face, shrugging off storm and time. He had learned of its legend, which is also the
legend of Lady Jolenta, from his long-dead father as he sat at the prow of this same
little boat. How Jolenta had been cursed with ageless beauty five centuries before,
and how it was said that she still lived somewhere beyond those ragged battlements.
Every few decades, some nobleman would tire of writing turgid poetry in her honor
and vow to release her, make her his lover, even his wife. But the stories always
ended there. The abandoned Eastern Quarter of the city was a dangerous place at the
best of times, where ghosts darted in the dark canals and the mined houses held
secrets best left undiscovered, those who tried to penetrate the walls of Torea were
invariably never heard of again.

What Lady Jolenta needed, Ran had decided long ago, was an adventurer, a
hero from the dazzling pages of the books Ran lacked the talent to read. Some giant
built with shoulders like a milk yoke, golden hair and flashing blue eyes, a magic
sword and a dark secret. Ran gazed up at ToreaтАЩs massive central tower, topped by
a widening profusion of roofs, weathervanes and turrets like a warted mushroom.
Sometimes, when he returned weary from a day hauling the nets and stared up at it
through the grainy evening, he thought he glimpsed a light flickering from the highest
window. But tomorrow he was to be married, and the sun was already bright enough
to douse a thousand lanterns. It seemed that there was no room left in his life for
such mysteries.

Ran hawked up a gob of spit, lobbed it an admirable distance. He swung the
boom toward the wind and cut through the water, leaving the little flotilla behind.
Partly, he wanted to spend his last day of bachelorhood alone, but also the further
west he sailed along the coast, the bigger his catch of skidling was likely to be.
Mostly, the fishermen in their fragile boats preferred to keep together and net the
thinner shoals in the middle flats of the lagoon rather than risk going near the
marches. Even the surrounding waters were places of uncertain danger, tied to the
past by a gray pall of nightmare legends. But RanтАЩs boat was close to the end of its
life. His grandfather had bought it thirdhand many years ago. Now, the boards were
split and the sail was more patch than canvas. Within the next year or two, and if a
storm didnтАЩt catch him before, Ran would need a new boat. With his mother to
support тАФ and now Piir and the child that was forming in her bellyтАФ it was
imperative that he find the money.

The keel creaked and the ominous coastline grew nearer as Ran daydreamed
of heroes and quests. Green scum veined the water. Islands of slick black sand
slumped to the horizon, tufted biliously green in patches. The catches were abundant
here тАФ the water was like soup and the fish thrived тАФ but so were the risks, not