"Harrowing The Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)Harrowing the Dragon
Patricia A. McKillip The Harrowing of the Dragon of Hoarsbreath Once, on the top of a world, there existed the ring of an island named Hoarsbreath, made out of gold and snow. It was all mountain, a grim, briny, yellowing ice-world covered with winter twelve months out of thirteen. For one month, when the twin suns crossed each other at the worldТs cap, the snow melted from the peak of Hoarsbreath. The hardy trees shrugged the snow off their boughs and sucked in light and mellow air, pulling themselves toward the suns. Snow and icicles melted off the roofs of the minersТ village; the snow-tunnels they had dug from house to tavern to storage barn to mine shaft sagged to the ground; the dead white river flowing down from the mountain to the sea turned blue and began to move again. Then the miners gathered the gold they had dug by firelight out of the chill, harsh darkness of the deep mountain and took it downriver, across the sea to the mainland, to trade for food and furs, tools and a liquid fire called wormspoor because it was gold and bitter, like the leavings of dragons. After three swallows of it, in a busy city with a harbor frozen only part of the year, with people who wore rich furs, kept horses and sleds to ride in during winter, and who knew the patterns of the winter stars since they werenТt buried alive by the snow, the miners swore they would never return to Hoarsbreath. But the gold waiting in the dark secret places of the mountain-island drew at them in their dreaming, lured them back. For two hundred years after the naming of Hoarsbreath, winter followed winter, and the miners lived their rich, isolated, precarious lives on the pinnacle of ice and granite, cursing the cold and loving it, for it kept lesser folk away. They mined, drank, spun tales, raised children who were sent to the mainland when they were half-grown, to receive their education, and find easier, respectable lives. But always a few children found their way back, born with a gnawing in their hearts for fire, ice, stone, and the solitary pursuit of gold in the dark. Then two minersТ children came back from the great world and destroyed the island. They had no intention of doing that. The younger of them was Peka Krao. After spending five years on the mainland, boring herself with schooling, she came back to Hoarsbreath to mine. At seventeen, she was good-natured and sturdy, with dark eyes, and dark, braided hair. She loved every part of Hoarsbreath, even its chill, damp shafts at midwinter and the bone-jarring work of hewing through darkness and stone to unbury its gold. Her instincts for gold were uncanny; she seemed to sense it through her fingertips touching bare rock. The miners called her their good luck. She could make wormspoor, too, one of the few useful things she had learned on the mainland. It lost its bitterness, somehow, when she made it: it aged into a rich, smoky gold that made the miners forget their sore muscles and inspired marvelous tales out of them that whittled away at the endless winter. She met the Dragon-Harrower one evening at a cross section of tunnel between her motherТs house and the tavern. She knew all the things to fear in her world: a rumble in the mountain, a guttering torch in the mines, a crevice in the snow, a crack of ice underfoot. There was little else she couldnТt handle with a soft word or her own right arm. So when he loomed out of the darkness unexpectedly into her taper-light, she wasnТt afraid. But he made her stop instinctively, like an animal might stop, faced with something that puzzled its senses. His hair was dead white, with strands bright as worm-spoor running through it; his eyes were the light, hard blue of dawn during suns-crossing. Rich colors flashed out of him everywhere in her light: from a gold knife hilt and a brass pack buckle; from the red ties of his cloak that were weighted with ivory, and the blue-and-silver threads in his gloves. His heavy fur cloak was closed, but she felt that if he shifted, other colors would escape from it into the cold, dark air. At first she thought he must be ancient: the taper-fire showed her a face that was shadowed and scarred, remote with strange experience, but no more than a dozen years older than hers. УWho are you?Ф she breathed. Nothing on Hoarsbreath glittered like that in midwinter; its colors were few and simple: snow, damp fur and leather, fire, gold. УI canТt find my father,Ф he said. УLule Yarrow.Ф She stared at him, amazed that his colors had their beginnings on Hoarsbreath. УHeТs dead.Ф His eyes widened slightly, losing some of their hardness. УHe tell in a crevice. They chipped him out of the ice at suns-crossing, and buried him six years ago.Ф He looked away from her a moment, down at the icy ridges of tramped snow. УWinter.Ф He broke the word in two, like an icicle. Then he shifted his pack, sighing. УDo they still have wormspoor on this ice-tooth?Ф УOf course. Who are you?Ф УRyd Yarrow. Who are you? Ф УPeka Krao.Ф УPeka. I remember. You were squalling in somebodyТs arms when I left.Ф УYou look a hundred years older than that,Ф she commented, still puzzling, holding him in her light, though she was beginning to feel the cold. УSeventeen years youТve been gone. How could you stand it, being away from Hoarsbreath so long? I couldnТt stand five years of it. There are so many people whose names you donТt know, trying to tell you about things that donТt matter, and the flat earth and the blank sky are everywhere. Did you come back to mine?Ф He glanced up at the gray-white ceiling ot the snow-tunnel, barely an inch above his head. УThe sky is full of stars, and the gold wake of dragon-flights,Ф he said softly. УI am a Dragon-Harrower. I am trained and hired to trouble dragons out of their lairs. ThatТs why I came back here. Ф УHere. There are no dragons on Hoarsbreath.Ф His smile touched his eyes like a reflection of fire across ice. УHoarsbreath is a dragonТs heart.Ф She shifted, her own heart suddenly chilled. She said tolerantly, УThat sounds like a marvelous tale to me.Ф УItТs no tale. I know. I followed this dragon through centuries, through ancient writings, through legends, through rumors of terror and deaths. It is here, sleeping, coiled around the treasures of Hoarsbreath. If you on Hoarsbreath rouse it, you are dead. If I rouse it, I will end your endless winter.Ф УI like winter. Ф Her protest sounded very small, muted within the thick snow-walls, but he heard it. He lifted his hand, held it lightly against the low ceiling above his head. |
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