"Silistra - 02 - The Golden Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

it, and I did not welcome that coolness. I looked up into the starry night,
using the north star Clous as focus. When it ceased to dance and circle above
me, when my eyes once again obeyed my mindТs commands, I turned my attention to
my body.
With all my strength I tried to move my arms, that I might sit up. I could not
do so. As my awareness sharpened, my flesh gave forth its message. My wrists
felt their bonds, my waist its encircling loop. My hands were confined by a
rope, and that rope passed once around my belly. I did not remember it being
done. Perhaps I had.been so bound to keep me from falling from the threxТs back
as it plunged its way through the barrens. I thought not. But it certainly had
not been done to prevent me from escaping or doing harm to my captors. With the
realization that this was so, that I was captive, rather than rescued, my mind
was suddenly clear, my thoughts coherent. As I lay there upon the rocky ground,
I considered all that I knew about the Parsets, while around me the moon rose
full and red-ringed and the wind sorted the sand, sighing, and the menТs gruff,
rapid exнchanges rang unintelligibly in my ears.
I recalled that which had been taught to me in the Day-KeeperiТ school. I had
learned there, among many others, the Parset language. And I recolнlected also
what I had, heard from the wellwomen, the Slayers, and the Day-Keepers
themselves about the flamboyant, tattooed desert dwellers.
I had heard it said that the men of the Parset barrens were the most insular,
prideful, arrogant men upon Silistra, and their women the mostindoнlent and
imperious. Long ago, when the remnants of Silistran civilization emerged from
the hides to rebuild a decimated planet, the Parsets took anнother path. Their
Day-Keepers and forereaders split from their brothers and sisters. History has
it that the aniet hide Day-Keepers had engaged in genetic manipulation; that the
Day-Keepers of the rest of Silistra had found them out. Whatever the reason,
there was from hide days little communication, and only a strained tolerance
between the Silistran Day-Keepers, guardians of the past, manipulators of the
present, charters of the future, and their Parset brethren. The forereaders, as
long ago as my great-grandmotherТs time, predicted that someday great harm would
come to us all from out of the Parset desert.
So the Parsets had chosen. They speak a dissimiнlar language, wear a different
chald. The chains of chaidra which have bound them from hide days are not the
same as those which bind the rest of Silistra. I recalled that the Parsets had
instigated no Wells, where a woman might go to get herself with child. I knew
also that their jiasks, warrior men, and flasks, warrior women, were not bound
by the Law of Seven, as were the Slayers of the north, east and west. And that
they alone, of all the peoples of Silistra, still made war:
I heard the flap and snap of wings about my head, saw a shadow cross the full
moon. It was bright as day upon the barrens, but a day sucked dry of color and
tone. I recollected stories I had heard about the Parset Lands; that many had
enнtered them and few had returned; that one was better off to give up oneТs
body to the chaldra of the soil than to walk the Parset barrens uninvited.
Because their chaldric chains differ so markedly from those worn upon the rest
of Silistra, all not Parset are, to them, chaldless.
Occasionally I had seen Parsets at games or festivals. Once I had been, before I
reached my majority and took up the KeepressТ robes in Astria, at Day-KeepersТ
Rollcall, that greatest of gatherнings held four times a year on the plains of
Yardum-Or. With, my teacher Rin diet Tron, first of the SlayersТ Seven of