"Justin Stanchfield - Sisterhood of the Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stanchfield Justin)

"She's beautiful." Kells watched as the girl danced closer. "Who is
she?"
"Cloud Walker. Part of the Sisterhood of the Stone. They are as close
as this wretched world has to religion." The barman returned with a platter
heaped high with fried peppers, their red and yellow skins gleaming. He set it
in front of Ammons, then shuffled out to meet the dancers. He pressed his hand
reverently against his chest as the girl in blue skipped past, then dropped a
handful of coins wrapped in crude brown paper into one of the other dancer's
bowls. Ammons lifted a pepper as long as his finger from the platter and bit
it in half. He pointed with the stub toward the distant mountains. "They live
on top of that black butte, in the temple the Old Ones left. Every season,
just before festival, they come to town to take our sins away." He nodded at
the line of women. "Plus a few cartloads of donations."
"The Old Ones?" Kells snorted, eyes locked on the girl in blue as she
whirled up the street. "You've been here too long. I think you've gone
native."
"Maybe so." Ammons pushed away from the table and hopped over the low
stone wall around the cafe. He dropped a few coins in the last dancer's bowl
then returned. He grinned sheepishly. "I have a lot of sins to answer for this
year. Now, about those peppers?"
Kells nodded absently. "I'll take six hundred kilos of the dried, and
another six of the fresh, if you can stasis pack them." He paused. "It's the
medicinal ones I'm most interested in."
"Ahh, the Death Tips." Ammons selected another pepper from the bowl.
"For those, we're going to have to take a little trip. The Sisterhood are the
only ones who grow them." He pointed again at the steep-sided butte. Streamers
of silvery virga swept across its flat top. "Hope you don't mind riding
slipper-back. It's a three day journey from Kenalla, and that's only if the
trail isn't washed out."
The girl in blue was little more than a speck now. She flitted
bird-like around the bend, the others trailing behind. Kells watched until
they were lost from sight, then turned and looked at the towering black butte.
Lightning forked against it, and for a moment he swore he saw a tower,
needle-thin, backlit by the flash. Despite the afternoon's heat, he shivered.
"When would we leave?"
"Tonight, if you want. I'll arrange it at the stables."
"Fine." He looked again up the street, hoping to catch another glimpse
of the girl in blue. "Why do they call them Cloud Walkers?"
"Why?" Ammons finished his drink. "That girl in the lead? Come Festival
next week, she'll step to the edge of the cliff and jump. And if that isn't
cloud walking, then I'll jump with her."
****
No one traveled on Alkas by day, the heat and the predators too thick. Only by
torchlight and the trio of swift moons did humans venture the tangled jungles
or brave the spines and high wastelands. Sean Kells sat uncomfortably on his
slipper, a pale gray hen, the saddle-pad small protection from the creature's
narrow, bony back. As a boy he had ridden horses, but nothing could have
prepared him for the slipper's winding gait, the rolling, six-legged stride
liquid as they climbed into the foothills. The forest closed around them, a
narrow swath of star-speckled blackness above. Something in the brush to his