"Laura Resnick - Curren's Song" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Laura)

"You believe me?" he asked.
"Of course, I do." She looked at the opaque surface of the inland sea.
"If anyone could hear them, it's you."
He felt an absurd pleasure where he might have felt shame. If Aithne
admired it, then the knowledge must be good, a thing of pride. "There are many
of them."
"Ten?"
"More."
"A hundred?"
"Less."
She sighed. "Where do they come from?"
"Once, long ago, they came from the open sea."
"Why did they come here?"
"They came in search of food. It was plentiful, and they stayed and
mated here. But the path to the sea filled up over many years. Sand and silt
blocked their way until, one day, they became prisoners of the inland sea and
could never again leave."
"Was this in the time of the Romans?"
"Before that."
"The time of the Old Ones?"
"Before that."
She frowned. "There was nothing before that."
"Oh, no, Aithne, there was a great deal before that." Curren closed his
eyes, swaying as he listened to the songs and turned them into words for her
benefit. "There were giants in the earth. Great creatures whose footsteps
shook the mountains and made new valleys, whose weight could sink an island,
whose reach extended into the sunset. They roamed the earth and the seas. They
were the rulers, the kings, the first true conquerors."
"Were they ... Were they beautiful or ugly?"
"Beautiful?" Curren's head tilted back, the images flying behind his
closed eyelids. Strange, terrifying, devouring creatures of immense power.
"They looked like gods of the underworld," he croaked, the words harder to
push out of his throat as the dreams enveloped him.
"Curren!" Aithne gripped his hand, frightened by his manner, his
descriptions.
"They weren't evil," he murmured dreamily. "Nor were they good. They
knew the hunt, the chase, the kill. They knew the taste of plants and trees
and water; they swallowed whole forests, whole rivers in their hunger."
"Where are they now?" she asked. "I mean, what happened to the rest of
them?"
 The songs which came in answer of Curren's searching mind were sad, so
sad. The mournful, watery echo of the memories broke his heart as it wailed
over and over in loss, in loneliness, in sorrow and bewilderment.
_Where are they? Where are they?_
"Dead," he sighed, "all dead. Dead for longer than this hillside has
been green. They died so long ago."
"How?" Aithne asked. "How could such great creatures simply die off?"
"Everything changed, changed and turned and became something else."
Curren saw the disaster, felt the fear, heard the terrified howling of a
billion sunsets past. "The earth shook, the skies grew dark. Wind and water