"Andre Norton - Darkness and Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

dunes and saw the great lake of legend. There was no end to the gray-blue
expanse of waterтАФit must be almost as large as the distant sea. High piles of bleached
driftwood lay along the shore. There must have been a recent storm for the bodies of fish
lay there too. Fors' nose wrinkled as he plowed through the sand, the mare sinking deeply
as she followed him. Lura, investigating the fish, strayed some yards behind.
SoтАФthis much was trueтАФthis was the lake. And somewhere along its shore must lie
the city his father had sought. Right or left, east or westтАФthat was the question. He found
shelter from the wind behind a dune and squatted down to consult the scrap of map.
When they had avoided that last town they had gone westтАФso nowтАФeast. He would
keep to the shore and seeтАФ
It was hard to travel in the sand, and after some time he gave up in disgust and edged
inland to the more solid earth. Within two yards he was on a road! And, since the
roadway hugged the shoreline, he held to it. Shortly the familiar mounds of debris closed
in. But this was the remains of no small town. Even in his inexperience he could judge
that. In the morning sun far ahead he saw battered towers rising in the sky. This was one
of the cities, the great cities of huge sky-reaching towers! And it was not a "blue" one
either. He would have seen the sign of that taint on the sky in the night.
His cityтАФall his! Langdon had been rightтАФthis was an untouched storehouse waiting
to be looted for the benefit of the Eyrie. Fors allowed the mare to amble on at her own
pace as he tried to recall all the training rules. LibrariesтАФthose were what one was to
look forтАФand shops, especially those which had stores of hardware or paper or kindred
supplies. One was not to touch foodтАФno matter if it was found in unbroken containers.
Experimentation of that kind had brought death by poisoning too many times in the past.
Hospital supplies were best of all, but those had to be selected by the trained expert.
Danger lay too in unknown drugs.
For his looting he had best take only samples of what was to be foundтАФbooks,
writing supplies, maps, anything which would prove that he knew how to select
intelligently. And with the mare he ought to be able to pack out quite a lot.
Here were signs of fire too. He rode across a bare stretch where the rough footing was
all black ash. But the towers stood taller and they did not appear to be too badly
damaged. If this city had been bombed, would they be standing at all? Maybe this was
one of the places which had perished in the plagues which followed the war. Maybe it
had died slowly with the ebbing life of its peopleтАФand not suddenly in explosion.
The road they had been following was now a narrow gorge between tall ranks of
broken buildings, the upper stories of which had fallen into the street in mounds which
almost blocked it completely at places. Here were numerous surface machines in which
the Old Ones had ridden in comfort. And here, also, were bones. That single skull he had
found in the old bank had had the power to shake him a little, but here lay a nation of
dead and soon he ceased to notice them at all, even when the mare trod on brittle ribs or
kicked rolling skulls aside. Yes, now it was very apparent that the men of this city had
died of plague, or gas, or even of the radiation sickness. But sun and wind and animals
had cleared away the foulness of that death, leaving only a framework without power to
harm.
As yet Fors did not attempt to explore those caverns which had once been the lower
floors of the buildings. Now he only wanted to get on into the very heart of the place, to
the foundations of those towers which had guided him all morning. But before he could
reach that goal a barrier was laid across his road.
There was a gash breaking the city in two, a deep valley which nursed a twisted river
in its middle. Bridges spanned it. He came to the lip of one such span and he could see
two others. But before him was a mass of rusting wreckage piled into a fantastic wall.