"Paul McAuley - The Book of Confluence 03 - Shrine of Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

rhythmic blows of his axe. "It must not fall apart when it burns, and so the logs must be
trimmed."
"We should leave it and go," the slender man said. "The flier might return at any moment.
And call me Pandaras. I'm not anyone's master."
"Phalerus deserves a proper funeral. He was a good man. He always bought me cigarette
makings wherever the Weazel put into port."
"Tamora was a good friend," Pandaras said sharply, "and I buried her burnt bones and the
hilt of her sword under a stone. There's no time for niceties. The flier might come back, and the
sooner we start to search for my master, the better."
"He might be dead too," Tibor said, and stood back and gave the pine a hard kick above the
gash he had cut around its trunk. The little tree leaned and Tibor kicked it again and it fell with a
threshing of boughs and a crackling as the last measure of wood in the cut broke free.
"He's alive," Pandaras said, and touched the circlet on his arm. "He left the fetish behind so
that I would know. He was led into an ambush by Eliphas, but he is alive. I think he entrusted me
with his coin and his copy of the Puranas because he suspected that Eliphas might betray him, as
Tamora so often said that he would. I swore when I found the fetish and I swear now that I will
find him, even if I must follow him to the end of the river."
 Tibor took papers cut from corn husks and a few strands of coarse tobacco from a plastic
pouch tucked into the waist of his trousers, and began to roll a cigarette. He said, "We should not
have climbed down to the shrine, little master. I know about shrines, and that one had been
warped to evil ends."
"Eliphas lured my master there, if that's what you mean. If we had not followed them, we
would not have learned what happened. Fortunately, I was able to read the clues as any other man
might read a story in a book. There was a fight in the shrine, and someone was hurt and ran away.
Perhaps Eliphas tried to surprise Tamora from behind, and she managed to defend herself. She
wounded him and chased him outside, and that was when she was killed, most likely by someone
from the flier. Eliphas didn't have an energy pistol, or he would have used it much earlierтАФthere
would have been no need to lead my master away from the ship into an ambush. But it was an
energy pistol that killed poor Tamora, and melted the keelrock of the stair, and no doubt the same
energy pistol was used to subdue Yama."
While Pandaras talked, Tibor crossed to the fire and lit his cigarette with the burning end of
a branch. He dropped the branch back into the fire and drew on his cigarette and exhaled a plume
of smoke. "We will find the Weazel," he said, "and the Captain will help us find your master."
"They are all dead, Tibor. You have to understand that."
"We found no bodies except poor Phalerus's," Tibor said stubbornly. "And nothing at all of
the ship, except the axe head."
"A fire fierce enough to transmute mud to something like glass would have vaporized the
ship like a grain of rice in a furnace. Phalerus was hunting in the marsh near the island, and he
was caught in steam flash-heated by the blast of the flier's light cannon. The others died at once
and their bodies were burned up with the ship."
Pandaras and Tibor had found Phalerus's scalded body lying near an antelope he had shot. It
was clear that the old sailor had not died immediately; he had put the shaft of an arbalest bolt
between his teeth and nearly bitten it through in his agony. Pandaras remembered a story that one
of his uncles had told him about an accident in a foundry. A man had slipped and fallen waist-
deep in a vat of molten iron. The man's workmates had been paralyzed by his terrible screams,
but his father had grabbed a long-handled ladle and had pushed his son's head beneath the
glowing surface. Phalerus had died almost as badly, and he had died alone, with no one to ease
his passing.
Tibor started to trim the larger branches from the pine he had felled. After a little while, he
stopped and said, "The Captain is clever. She's escaped pirates before, and that's what happened