"Nancy Springer - Isle 03 - The Sable Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Springer Nancy)

on stupidly, like a fish hauled in by a heavy hand, smashing through the heaving water. Spray flew as
constantly as the rain; Trevyn wondered where he still found air to breathe. The ship did not swamp, for
it rode very high, but it spun and teetered dizzily. Trevyn could not stand on the deck, and he did not
want to be trapped below. He crawled to the filigree rail, and there he clung.
When night came, scarcely to be distinguished from the dark day, Trevyn knew that the ship would
break. He did not care how soon. Nausea had long since purged him of any



desire and left him limp. When the shock came and timbers flew like the spray, Trevyn was torn away
from the rail and hurled through a confusion of water and rubble. Feebly he fought and thrashed, clawing
at illusion, gulping at water and air. His gear hampered him. He rid himself of boots, sword, purseтАФeven
his, father's brooch. He seemed to be sinking into a dark and alien place. Then he was quite naked, and
found that he could breathe again, and opened his eyes.

Unaccountably, the sea was calm. Not far away, the wolfish figurehead glinted, its gilded form eerily
etched on the dark water by the flickering lightning of the retreating storm. Trevyn shied away from it, but
it did not come at him. Straight as an arrow it made off, dragging through the water like a stick through
sand, and Trevyn knew that it laid a line toward the rising sun. He wheeled a quarter turn northeast┬мward
and swam toward the remembered sight of land.

He paddled through blackness unlit even by a star. The sea was warm in these southern parts, far
warmer than the day of soaking rain and chilling wind. Trevyn relaxed in its embrace, surrendered to its
flow, scarcely feeling the effort of his motions. The sea was a mother, a lover for whom he yearned. He
laid his face upon her bosom as on a pillow, and more than once he breathed her watery essence into his
lungs. He stirred in her at random, kicking out like an infant in the womb, cushioned by warm liquid from
any harm, so it seemed, for all eternity. How cruel it was, then, how unfathomably harsh, when a
pounding rhythm took hold of him and forced him away from this deepest haven, rushed and battered
him, tossed and shoved him through a weary stretch of time and space, abandoning him at last in a
strange place from which he might never return.

Trevyn crawled up the beach, just out of reach of the grasping sea surf, and collapsed onto the cold,
hard sand.

He awoke with a shock to full daylight and the sound of rough voices. Four muscular, sun-scorched men
stood around him, seized him as soon as he opened his eyes. He struggled to throw them off, but he was
weak and dazed; a hard cuff to the side of his head stunned him. The men bound his wrists behind him
with thongs and jerked him to his feet, prodding



him to make him walk. Trevyn stumbled and fell to his knees, then sprang up as a lash bit his shoulders.
His captors roared with laughter. "It works every time," one said.

They walked along the seaside, driving him before them. He would bring a line price, they said, by the
goddess of many names! Some lord would pay well to have such a handsome, yellow-headed oddity in
his household. If he had been shipwrecked, there should be more. They would search the beaches well.

It did not surprise Trevyn that he could understand them, for he had studied many languages. He knew
now that he was in the country called TokarтАФa villainous place. Though he had expected nothing more,