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

hideously plunging out of the east. He looked up, gasped, almost fell as I pulled him down into the hole . .
.

. . . Into the great, gray temple I remembered from last time. Outside the walls, the menacing roar of many
voices. Above us, a great vacancy, an enormous height. Smoke rising. Somewhere doors opening and
closing, the sound far away and vague, as though heard inattentively. Shadowy forms moving around us,
back and forth across the immense nave. Two pedestals were toppled against the wall, the lamp that had
evidently rested on one of them lay at my feet. Beside the other fallen pedestal was a great book, its
leaves crumpled.

Before I could stop him, Peter broke from my side and ran to a carved stone monument that loomed
beneath one of the high windows. He was up in it in a moment, neck craned to peer through the opening. I
remember being surprised that he Shifted a little as he went, making spidery arms and legs for himself.
Somehow I had felt our Talents would not work in the Maze. There was no time to consider it. I cried out,
'Peter, don't. ..." afraid he would through into some other place. He heard the tone of panic in my voice, if
not the words, came scurrying back. My heart was pounding; every muscle was tight. I could barely
breathe among the feelings of apprehension and horror. We fled around the low curbing of an empty pool
toward the stairs and the altar. From high above came the dreadful breaking sound that I remembered half
hearing the time before, a sound like a great tree breaking, tearing apart in an agony of ripped fibers. . . .

We stepped behind the altar and out onto the path in the Maze. It opened to our right onto the same road
we had left.

'Wah.' Peter gasped, breathless. 'Gah. Oh. That wasn't what I expected.'

9

I tried to take a deep breath, choking myself in the effort. Horror. Sheer horror. After a time the feeling
diminished. I managed to ask, 'What did you see out the window?'



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'Eesties. I mean, I guess they were Eesties. I've never seen them, but Mavin has. And Queynt saw them, of
course. I don't know what else they could have been. Star-shaped. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them,
all roaring at the building we were in. Why did you yell at me like that?'

'I was afraid you'd slip through. Cernaby said each "place" has many ways out. That's what makes it a
maze. If you'd gone somewhere else, I'm not sure I could have found you.'

'Is it all like that?'

'I think so. Places. No, not exactly places. More like events. Did you notice that first one we were in? ..."

'It was the Base. The place the Magicians called the Base. I've seen that ship before. I've been there.'

'Have you really!' Somehow this was astonishing to me. Even though I knew Peter had had a life before