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

 When it was burning well, with Phalerus's body a shadow in the center of leaping yellow
flames and white smoke bending like a banner toward the blackened ridge of the little island,
Pandaras and Tibor clambered on to their raft and poled away from the devastated island with
unseemly haste. It took them the rest of the day to thread a way through the stands of tall yellow
reeds to the mudbanks and pioneer mangroves that lay beyond, along the margin of the shrinking
river. When the water became too deep to use the pole, Tibor took up a leaf-shaped paddle he had
carved from a scrap of wood.
Pandaras squatted at the raft's blunt prow, Phalerus's arbalest in his lap and his master's pack
between his feet. He was more afraid than he could let the hierodule know. Tibor said that the raft
was stronger than it looked, that the strips of hide would shrink in the water and bind the logs
ever tighter, but Pandaras thought it a flimsy craft. The idea of traveling the length of the Great
River on it, like an emmet clinging to a flake of bark, filled him with dread, but he was certain
that Yama had been carried away on the flier, and he loved his master so fiercely that he would
follow him beyond the edge of the world. He had smeared every bit of his exposed pelt with
black mud to protect himself from the biting flies and midges which danced in dense clouds over
stumps and breather roots. He was a savage in a savage land. He would go naked, cover his body
with strange swirling tattoos, drink blood from freshly killed animals until he was as strong as a
storm, and then he would pull down the walls of the citadel where his master was held, rescue
him, and kill the traitor who had taken him. His people would make songs about it until the end
of time.
Such dreams sustained his small hope. Those, and the faint but unwavering spark trapped
within the ceramic coin.
At last the raft rounded the point of a long arm of mangroves, and the wide river suddenly
stretched before them, gleaming like a plain of gold in the light of the setting sun. There was so
much light glittering up from the water that Pandaras could not see if it had an ending. He stood,
suddenly filled with elation, and flung out an arm and pointed downriver, toward the war.


Chapter Two
DR. DISMAS'S DISEASE
DR. DISMAS CAME into the big white room without ceremony, flinging open the double
doors and striding straight toward Yama, scattering the machines which floated at various levels
in the air. A decad of servants in various brightly colored liveries trailed behind him.
Yama had been performing some of the exercises Sergeant Rhodean had taught him, and
jumped up as Dr. Dismas approached. He was bare-chested and barefoot, wearing only a pair of
silk trews and a wide bandage wound twice around the burns on his chest. Ever since his capture,
he had wanted nothing more than to be able to command just one machine and make it fling itself
into Dr. Dismas's eye and burn through his brain, but no matter how much he strained to contact
the machines around him, he could not bend them to his will. The powers which he had painfully
learned to master had been taken from him by the thing which had grown from seeds Dr. Dismas
had, by a trick, planted in him at the beginning of his adventures. He was plagued by a fluttering
of red and black at the edges of his vision, and was visited in his sleep by strange and terrible
dreams which, although he utterly forgot them upon waking, left an indelible residue of terror and
loathing.
Dr. Dismas did not speak at once, but clapped his stiff hands together in an irregular rhythm
and paced up and down while looking sidelong at Yama, as if trying to marshal his hectic
thoughts. The servants stood in a row behind him. They were all indigens, and all mutilated.
Yama scarcely noticed them. He was watching the bent-backed, black-clad apothecary as a
mouse might watch a snake.
"You are awake!" Dr. Dismas said at last. "Good, good. How are you, Yamamanama? Any