"Nancy Springer- Sea King Trilogy 01 - Madbond" - читать интересную книгу автора (Springer Nancy)

Madbond
First book of the Sea King Trilogy
Nancy Springer




Two there were who came before
To brave the deep for three:
The rider who flees,
The seeker who yearns.
And he who is king by the sea.
Two there were who came before
To forge the swords for three:
The warrior who heals.
The hunter who dreams,
And he who is master of mercy.
He who has captured the heart of hell
He who is king by the sea.
--- TASSIDAтАЩS SONG



Prologue

I am a madman, a murderer, a mystic and some say a god. But before I was any of those,
and even before I was a fool, I am a storyteller.
Let me tell you the tale of the sea king, at first as the eye of sky saw it.
He waited alone in the midnight shadows. No bodyguard for the young sea king that night,
no Eire, no faithful Rowalt. Once each fortnight, at the time of the highest tides, when the
moon was at the full or at the new, it was required of him that he should keep vigil alone in
the darkness of the great lodge. He, his tribeтАЩs most precious member, waiting to fend off
death, aloneтАФno one clearly knew why. The practice reached back beyond memory into the
times of legend, into ages even before the time of Sakeema, he-whom-all-we-seek, he who
would come again. The young king could not call even on Sakeema for help. Pacing the
shadows with his long knife of flint in hand, every nerve at the ready, or standing and
hearkening for the approach of the unknown enemy in the black night, the footfalls masked
by the soughing of the surf . . . Seven times challengers in disguise had come to meet him
and he had bested them, not without wounds, but in grim silence, holding fast to a cutting
point of honor: that the king in vigil beset must not cry out. Of necessity he had become a
canny fighter, though never an eager one. And three times the devourers had come, the
cold, swaddling, life-sucking demons from the stormy western sea, or certainly as cold as
that greendeep, though they came at him out of wind and shadowy air. They had beaten him
to the rocky floor with the corpse-cold folds of their winglike flesh. Their teeth had torn at his
chest. They seemed to mind his knife no more than seawater would, and still he had not
shouted out for help. And somehow he had driven them off.
But no such foe had ever come upon him as that which attacked him the night of the late
winterтАЩs new moon.
The sea was raging in bitter storm, so that there could be no warning. Lightning in the night
sky, even at the time of year. Thunder like that of the surf, and thenтАФhoofbeats, it was a