"Modesitt, L E - The Hammer of Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

His last thought on the listing is Don't you ever learn, Mar-
tel?
Again, the dreams ... but more confused, this time, these
times.
He is floating above the same ice peak, but no one is
around him, and there are no clouds, but the upper levels of
the mountain are still in shadow.
He turns to move closer to the peak, but from his left a
golden thunderbolt blasts in front of him. On his right, a dark
thundercloud materializes.
He contemplates the needlepeak, waiting ...
. .. and finds himself sitting at a table, across from a
golden-eyed and golden-haired woman. She is speaking, but
he cannot understand the words; though each is a word he
knows, her sentences form a pattern and a puzzle he cannot
assemble, and as he wrestles with each word the next catches
him by surprise.
Finally he nods, and looks past her over the railing toward
the golden sands that slope down to the sea. He touches the
beaker by his left hand. Jasolite. A jasolite beaker. Jasolite,
jasolite ...
... LIGHT!...
... and he is strapped down on a cold metal table, under
the pinpoint of a telescope. The telescope is gathering star-
light, and that light is coming out of the pinpoint needle just
above his forehead. "*
He twists, but the heavy straps and metal bands do not
bend.
The light coming from the instrument burns his skin, and
he wrenches his left hand free, then his right, and cups them
under the enormous telescope to catch the torrent of light. But
his hands overflow, and the burning light cascades over his
palms and blisters his forehead.
Finally he throws the light back into the telescope, which
melts, collapsing away from him.
Then he curls up on the metal table, and sleeps ...
... and wakes in a lounge chair. For a long time, he is not
certain if he is awake. A woman is stretched in the chair next
to him, but he cannot turn his head. Perhaps he does not want
to.
He is near the sea. The salt tells him so, and the slow
crashes of the breakers do not confuse him, not the way the
words the unseen woman speaks do.
She speaks slowly, and the words are in order, he knows.
But some he hears twice, and some he loses because of those
he hears twice.
"... you, you, understand, stand, sedated, sedated ... if, if
... remember, remember ... dream ... dream ..."
The strain of pursuing the words presses him back into the
lounge, and he lets himself float on the vibrations of the in-