"Boreal Moon - 02 - Ironcrown Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)
THE BOREAL MOON TALE: BOOK TWO
JULIAN MAY
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authorТs imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright й 2005 by Starykon, Inc. Text design by Tiffany Estreicher.
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First edition: April
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
May, Julian.
PS3563.A942I76 2005 813С.54Чdc
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FINAL VERSE OF THE BLOSSOM MOON SONG,
AN ANCIENT CATHRAN BALLAD
Down in the waters, cold and deep,
My true love has gone to eternal sleep.
Long will I wait for his returning,
Hoping, my heart afire with yearning.
In Blossom Moon, in Blossom Moon, it will never be.
prologue
The Royal Intelligencer
An unexpected firing happened last night. As is my habit, I had been working long hours on my Boreal Moon Tale, struggling along despite cramped fingers, dimming eyesight, and the daunting magnitude of the writing project I had set myself at a time when most old men are content to doze and dream. But I have more reason than most to wish my story told to the worldЧmost specifically to the inhabitants of High Blenholme, island of my birth, whose official Chronicle will no doubt be turned all arsey-versey by my mischievous revelations.
I had laid aside my quill after describing the chain of improbable events leading to King Conrig WincantorТs establishment of the Blenholme Sovereignty, thinking this would be an appropriate place to break the narrative and end the first book of the tale. It was very late and bracingly cool, as nights tend to be during midwinter months in southern Foraile, and the air was laden with the sweet scent of moth-jasmine. OddlyЧthough I did not fully appreciate the fact until later when I went outdoorsЧthe night was almost completely silent. The usual sounds made by nocturnal birds and insects were absent and the murmur of the nearby Daravara River was muted.
After sanding the final closely written parchment sheet, I added it to the rest and locked the manuscript in the copper box that preserves it from the mice and palm roaches that would otherwise make a meal of it. I rose from my desk, paused to work the worst knots from my aching muscles, and blew out the bright flame of the brass desk lamp, plunging the room into near darkness. A faint illumination came from the lantern that my peg-legged housecarl Borve leaves lit at the far end of the hall to guide me to bed. That was usual.
What was not usual was the odd flickering glow coming through the window that looked northward towards the river. The crescent moon had set early and thick foliage made it difficult to see outside. My first thought was of wildfire, since the light was too ruddy and fitful to be starshine. The rains were late this year and the scrubby hills above the jungle valley were tinder-dry. I made haste to the door, slipped outside onto the veranda, and went down the short flight of steps into my riverside garden so as to have a clear view of the opposite shore.
The northern sky was ablaze with immense rippling curtains and thrusting beams of scarlet, green, amethyst, and flame-gold, so bright that they dimmed the stars, so active and intricate in their movements that every instinct of the beholder seemed to affirm that this was no mere natural phenomenon, but the work of elemental living beings.
I knew who they were, what they had beenЧthose shining abominations who had fed on pain!
The people of High Blenholme gave them various names: the Beaconfolk, the Coldlight Army, the Great Lights. Their domain is the far north, the arctic barrens and the island in the Boreal Sea from which I had been banished. Never had I seen the Lights during my enforced sojourn on the southern mainland. Early on in my exile, when I had cautiously questioned my manservant Borve about folkloric beliefs in this part of the world, he made no mention of terrible sky-beings in the local pantheon of demons and demigods. Yet here they were, transforming the night of subtropical Foraile into a facsimile of the incandescent heavens above the northland. Was it possible that I was dreaming? I hardly thought so, but it would not be the first time that nightmares provoked by the evil ones among the Beaconfolk had tormented me.
Still less did it seem they should be able to manifest themselves here, so far south! Their once-mighty powers were circumscribed now, pent-up and curtailed so that the pain-eating predators among them might no longer slake their obscene appetites upon humans and other ground-dwelling beings. And yet I seemed to feel something reaching for me, grasping my poor pounding heart with claws of ice and slowlyЧso slowlyЧtightening its grip. The chest spasm was tentative and entirely bearable, but my feeble old legs now refused to support my body and I subsided onto my knees, eyes still locked on to that dreadful blazing sky.
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