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

Astria, had I been there. I had seen a number of Parset jiasks, swaggering bold
among the crowd, with their feather-plumed helmets, their tiasks beside them. At
such gatherнings they do their trading. They come to barter their woven rugs,
their precious metals, their rare drugs. I was standing with Rin beneath the
SlayersТ awning when a pelter from Galesh accidentally jostled a tiask woman in
the crowd. Her mate turned, aired steel, and struck in one motion, and the
pelterТs headless body took several steps before it fell and pumped out its
lifeblood upon the grass. I remembered the fury in RinТs face, how his hand grew
white upon his sword hilt, and how he turned away. By the Day-KeepersТ edict,
the Parsets had immunity. To the jiask, the pelter was nothing. He struck within
his chaidra, as a Slayer might an outlaw in the forest, whom he had hunted for
sport, or as a woman the wirragaet sucking blood from her arm. It was well past
eighth bell, after evening meal, before Rin diet Tron, of the, SlayersТ Seven of
Astria, had again spoken, had regained his good humor.
Occasionally I have seen a Parset man within the walls of Well Astria, there to
partake in the normal fashion of the fruits of Silistran womanhood. But never
has Astria been petitioned to admit a Parset woman, never have I heard of a
Parset man so much as allowing one to compete in the Well testings. How they
keep their birthrate at an acнceptable level was a question much bandied about.
I had seen a number of women, such as Celendra, Well-Keepress of Arlet, who had
been sired upon wellwomen by Parsets. It is said among the well-women that the
Parsets are the most potent of Silistran men, and that a woman couched by one is
almost certain to conceive. Some maintain that this is because of the strong
infusion of Gristasha blood in the Parset hide days. When the hide aniet was put
into use at the time of crisis, when the Day-Keepers and the forereaders went
underground to avoid annihilation, the hide aniet was only half-filled. Then did
the Day-Keepers of aniet invite into the hide as many as could be accommodated
of the fierce and primitive Gristashas, those anachнronistic tribesmen who had
kept their line pure from the very beginnings of Silistran prehistory. The
Parsets bear strong and clear the Gristasha stamp, even do they still tattoo
themselves, as did their ancestors before them.
Again the wind from the abyss blew chill about me as I lay beneath the full
moon, though the evening was so warm that the air wavered and rippled in its
heat. I did not welcome that cold, which upraised every hair upon me and caused
my skin to pebble and crawl. No, I did not welнcome the wind from the abyss,
which had blown me from the keeps of Astria, whipped around me where I lay with
Dellin in the SlayersТ camp, whisнtled through the halls of Arlet. The cold of
it seeped deep inside me, chilling me as it had when it drove me forth into the
Sabembe range. It keened in my ears as it had at the death of Tyith bast Sereth.
It roared as it had roared beneath the Falls of Santha. Upon MiТysten I had been
free from it. Until this day had I been free from it, and the evil portents of
its fetid breath. Now again it blew around me, and my belly cramped into a knot
so tight I drew my thighs up against my chest as the Parset came toward me,
silver-gilded in the full-moon light, my fatherТs cloak thrown carelessly over
his shoulders.
Where I lay, upon my side, he squatted down by my head and reached out a hand
toward me. Upon his chest. I saw what I had not seen before, swingнing from a
heavy golden chain. As he raised me to a sitting position, it swung inches from
my face, that palm-sized medallion upon which was worked the likeness of the
uritheria, that mythical beast of the desert who is winged and scaled, clawed