"Fifth Millennium - 01 - Shadow's Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meier Shirley)

They walked past the lawyer's house, with its red brick and
worn black gargoyles. It leaned and always looked like it wanted
to fall on their house, but never did; past the baker's house, that
smelled so good, past the drovers' houses and the empty space
that had nothing in it but broken, burned stones and grass taller
than Megan; past the brewers' houses and the nigh grey wall of
the Sysbaet School.
They were good teachers as well as healers, almost as good as
Haians, and she might be able to go to the school and learn to
read. Megan wanted to learn, but her parents said that it cost a
lot of Dragonclaws and they didn't have time to teach her more,
though they tried. She knew her letters already because Papa
said that it was a good thing to know. He knew because his
family had had enough money for schooling before the Great
Fire took most of his family, and Ness had learned from her
mother, Grandma-who-was-with-Koru. If you couldn't read, you
couldn't be apprenticed in the Guild and would have to be a
beggar or a thief.
The cobblestones were old; worn by the tread of generations

of people. Because the year had been dry so far the sewer in
mid-street was cracking mud and didn't smell, which to Megan's
mind was almost as nice as when the fall rains came and washed
the mud and odor away. Her papa nodded hello to the neighbors
who sat on their front steps or walked along Szyzka Lane.
The bare trees' branches reminded Megan of old people's
gap-teeth. The buds were just big enough to make small
shadows to step in. She skipped from shadow to shadow,
pretending the sunny spaces were the rat pits in the Va Zalstva,
the Arena, where she mustn't step or she'd be devoured. Her
papa got ahead of her a little and she gave up her game, running
to catch up. Even this far down the street she could still hear the
vats in the brewery groaning and sighing, like sleeping men
snoring.
"Megan, you mustn't let go my hand until you're bigger,"
Papa said and stroked her hair back out of her face. "Bylashka,
my little shadow, in a crowd, anyone can get lost. I want you to
be careful, even when you walk with me."
"I will, Papa." She held tight to his hand and walked onto the
dusty grass of the park as if she were grown up, instead of
running ahead like she wanted to.
The park was a small patch of grass with a few trees along the
streets and the stream, and lilacs around the Shrine. Across the
park the Sneykh tributary gurgled to itself, on its way down to
Chas Lake. It was a shallow creek cascading from the Dark
Lord's Temple in the northern cliff wall of the City. The Sneykh
was usually dirty because the Dark Lord's priests sacrificed into
the water. The other stream, the Byeliey, ran out of the
Ladyshrine on the south cliff wall, and was carefully kept clean.
"Tell me the best story again, please," Megan said. Papa sat