"S. P. Somtow - The Fallen Country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Somtow S. P)

And then it thinned. He came to a stop, stuck against a rock or a drift. A dead, sourceless light
played over vistas of whiteness. It didn't feel like the world at all. The snow didn't stop. Sometimes
it tickled his face. Sometimes it swirled in the sky, its flakes like stars in a nebula. There was no sun
or moon. Misty in the horizon, an impossibly far horizon, Billy saw white crenellated castle walls
that ran behind a white hill and emerged from the other side of it; they went on as far as he could
see, twisting like marble serpents. Billy began walking towards the hill. He did not wonder at where
he was. The cold didn't touch him, not like sticking your hand in the freezer. He walked. By a
strange foreshortening or trick of perspective he found himself facing the hillтАФ

The hill's wings flapped, eyes flared briefly, fire-brilliant blue. It was a dragon. Again the eyes flared,
dulled, flared, dulled ... Billy gazed at the dragon for a long time. In a rush that sent the wind
sighing, the dragon spread its wings, sweeping the snow into fierce sudden flurries. Billy saw that
the dragon had no scales but little mozaic-things of interlocking snowflakes; when the dragon's eyes
flashed, the flakes caught rainbow fire and sparkled for a few seconds.

The dragon said, "Billy Binder, welcome to the fallen country."

Billy was afraid at last. "Send me home!" he cried. And then he remembered Pete and said nothing.

When the dragon spoke, its voice was piping clear, emotionless, like the voice of a child's ghost. It
wasnтАЩt a booming, threatening voice at all.

"What are you thinking?" he said. "That I don't sound fierce and threatening the way a dragon
should? That I don't roar?" He did roar then, a tinny, buzzing roar like an electric alarm clock.

Billy said, "Who has stolen your roar?" He felt a twinge of pity for the dragon; but then his anger
slapped it down.

"This is the fallen country. Billy. Here there is no emotion at all. We cannot love or hate. We
cannot utter great thunderous cries of joy or terror...the world is muted by perpetual snow. That is
why you are here."

"What do you mean?" Billy was scared and wanted to go back to his bike. He looked behind him
and saw it, impossibly far away; it seemed strange that he could have walked this far, through the
trudge-thick snowdrifts, in only a few minutes. Perhaps time was different here. He knew that time
was different in different countries.

The dragon said, "You are here because you are full of anger, Billy Binder. In the fallen country we
need such anger as yours. Anger is strength here ... if I could feel such anger, such love, such hatred
as you can feel, I would die. Billy...."

Wrenching his feet out of the knee-deep coldless snow, Billy forced himself to walk toward the
dragon. Even the dread he had been feeling had passed away now. "But who has done this to you?
Who has stolen your feelings?"

"You know. You have touched his shadow. His shadow has come pursuing you. The Ringmaster.
With his whip of burning cold."

Pete! "You should kill him!" Whiteness burned all around him, making the tears run.