"Julian May - The Golden Torc" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

gunwale of the boat kissing the proffered hands of the
ladies and toasting the men with swigs from his silver flask.
In contrast, Stein Oleson sat back in the shadows with one
huge arm curved protectively around Sukey, both of them ap-prehensive.
Skipper Highjohn came to stand beside Bryan in the bows.
He fingered the gray torc around his neck and laughed out loud.
"We'll be on our way any minute now, Bryan. What a wel-come!
I've never seen anything like it. Just look at your tricky
little gold friend up there! They'll have a hell of a time taming
that oneтАФif they ever do!"
Bryan looked at the smiling brown face blankly. "What?
I'mтАФI'm sorry, Johnny. I wasn't even listening. I thought I
sawтАФsomeone. A woman I once knew."
With kind firmness the boatman pressed the anthropologist
down onto one of the benches. Teamsters whipped up the
hellads and the boat began to roll, accompanied by cheers and
a bell-loud clangor from the escort, some of whom were beating
their gem-studded shields with glowing swords. From nearly
a hundred throats and minds came the Tanu Song, its melody
oddly familiar to Bryan, for all that the words were alien:
Li gan nol po'kone niesi,
'Kone o lan li pred near,
U taynel compri la neyn,
Ni blepan algar dedone.
Shompri pone, a gabrinel,
Shal u car metan presi,
Nar metan u bar taynel o pogekone,
Car metan sed gone mori..Bryan's fingers dug into the boat's splashcover fabric. The fantastic
panoply of riders swirled along the towpath as the
boat mounted a long slope. There was no vegetation this close to the salty lagoon, but eroded
lumps and pillars of mineral
loomed in the wavering shadows like the ruins of some elfin palace. The train entered a depression
between steep cliffs and
bright Muriah disappeared from view. The hellad-drawn boat
and its faerie escort seemed to move toward a black tunnel mouth flanked by huge broken cherubim.
The Song echoed from overlooming walls.
An old imagery reasserted itself to Bryan. A caveтАФdeep
and darkтАФand a loved thing lost inside. He was a small boy
and the time was six million years into the future: in England,


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in the Mendip Hills where the family had a cottage. And his
kitten, Cinders, wandered off, and he searched for three days. And finally he had stumbled upon
the entrance to the little
cave, barely large enough for his eight-year-old body to wriggle
through. He had stood staring at the fetid black hole for more than an hour, knowing that he
should search it but terrified at