"Sheri S. Tepper - Jinian Stareye" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

Outside the Maze were boiling fumaroles casting acid palls onto ageless forests; chasms opening to
swallow mighty rivers; mountains bursting into flame and ash. Outside the Maze was a world sick unto
death and with no desire for healing. And we were on it, with nowhere else to go.

Oh, yes, part of our fear and pain was for ourselves. Why deny it? And part for those we loved. I fretted,
thinking of Murzy and the rest of my seven away south. Peter groaned thinking of Mavin, his mother, and
Himaggery the Wizard, his father, and other kin dear to him. And both of us together thought of Queynt
and Chance, fondly and with foreboding. At one point I even found myself regretting Queen Vorbold,
back in Xammer, for all her unsympathetic pride. But if we went to them, there was nothing we could do
to help any of them. If anything could be done, it would be done here, now.

The reason for Lom's death would be found among those memories.

The reason had to be there, somewhere in the past.

Perhaps if the reason were known, something could be done to reverse this final agony.

There seemed to be no one else to make the attempt.

We might be able to do something. If we were very lucky, it might even be the right thing.

Peter said all this to me, and then I repeated it to him with all the tone and frenzy of conviction. So we
encouraged ourselves. Both of us knew that each of us was sick with anxiety and apprehension, and each
of us was very busy concealing it from the other. 'Oh, yes,' we seemed to say, 'this is perfectly possible.
Of course we will get on with it at once,' while our stomachs hurt and a smelly sweat oozed on skins
already damp. Even I could smell us. A fustigar could have followed us for leagues. We stank of fear, and
everything we saw and heard made it clear how late it was to attempt anything

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at all. If we failed, we died with the world. And even if we succeeded, there was no guarantee we would
survive the effort.

I had been inside the Maze once before, only just inside a shallow edge. Cernaby of the Soul had showed
me one way in and one way out, and now that Peter and I were going in together, it seemed wise to start
by retracing those earlier steps. To get the flavor, so to speak. Or rather, to let Peter get the flavor, since I
was afraid I already had it. A flavor of confusion, mostly. Of connections just out of reach. At any rate,

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after an affectionate and - if we're honest about it -bravely-hiding-our-true-feelings-for-fear-of frightening-
ourselves embrace, we went in hand in hand by the same path I had tried before, an easy path making a
short loop into the Maze and out again, the entrance and exit only a few paces apart along the road.

We took one step . . .

... To find ourselves upon a height, sharp with wind. Below lay a cliff-edged bowl carpeted in spring
green, sun glinting on the western rim of stone, the depths still in shadow. From above came an enormous