"Van Lustbader, Eric - Pearl 01 The Ring of Five Dragons(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

A Tom Doherty Associates Book New York
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
THE RING OF FIVE DRAGONS Copyright й 2001 by Eric Van Lustbader
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Design by Jane Adele Regina
Map by Ellisa Mitchell
A Tor Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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Library of Congress Cataoging-in-Publicaton Data
Lustbader, Eric.
The ring of five dragons / Eric Van Lustbader.Ч1st ed.
p. cm.Ч(The pearl saga ; bk. 1) "A Tom Doherty Associates book." ISBN 0-312-87235-6 (acid-free paper) I. Title.
PS3562.U752 R56 2001 813'.54Чdc
First Edition: May
Printed in the United States of America


For Victoria, always and forever


THE RING of FIVE DRAGONS

PROLOG:

The Lorg

When they were fifteen years old, Giyan and Bartta found a lorg. It was hiding, as lorgs are wont to do, beneath a large flat rock of a golden hue lying like a wart on the belly of a bone-dry gully. Konara Mossa, their Ramahan guardian and teacher, had told them to keep a sharp eye out for lorgs, for lorgs preнferred the thin, kuelLo-fir-scented air that drifted along the shoulders of the Djenn Marre. Beware the lorg, she warned them with a frightening sweep of a gnarled forefinger, for lorgs are evil creatures, ensnaring the souls of dying infants, hoarding them like grains of milled oat grass. Suнperstitious nonsense, Giyan thought privately. The lorgs might be ugly to look at, but they seemed harmless enough; in fact, they were benнeficial inasmuch as they ate stydil larvae, and everyone knew how deнstructive those insects could be to the oat grass and glennan crops.
It was Lonon, the Fifth SeasonЧthat eerie time between High Sumнmer and Autumn when the gimnopedes swarmed; when, on clear nights, all five moons, pale green as a dove's belly, could be seen in the vast black bowl of the sky; when The Pearl had been misused; when the V'ornn had come to Kundala.
Giyan and Bartta, both Ramahan novices, had had the enormous misfortune of being born twins, an evil omen among the mountain Kundalan, a certain sign of bad luck that their mother tried to rectify by winding their own umbilicals around their soft pink necks. Their father, entering the birthing chamber, had cut the cords with his own hunting knife. While they squalled their first breath of new life, he had had to slit the throat of the scheming midwife, who had whispered goading superstitions in their mother's ear, egging her on to commit infanticide.
They had learned all this years later from their father, just before he left home for good. Their father and mother never should have married, that was the truth of it. Their father was a no-nonsense trader who saw the world in a straightforward manner, while their mother was entanнgled in the dark skein of magic, superstition, anxiety. They had no basis to form a connection, let alone to fall in love or even to discover a comfortable tolerance.
Cheated out of her attempt to mend her ill fortune, their mother brought the twins to the Abbey of Floating White as soon as they were old enough. In a most unseemly manner, she begged Konara Mossa to train the twins to be Ramahan, praying that their wholesale devotion to the Great Goddess would spare them the usual fate of twins.
And so they were made fluent in the Old Tongue, they were taught from the scraps of Utmost Source, The Five Sacred Books of M№na, memнorized and set down over the decades by successive konara after it was lost. They were taught the creation myths, the legends of The Pearl, the seventy-seven festivals of M№na, the importance of Lonon, the Fifth Season, M№na's time, the season of change. They learned the ways of phytochemistry, of healing with herbs and mushrooms, of divining porнtents, of seeking with opals, and, most importantly, they were taught the Prophesy of the coming of the Dar Sala-at, the Chosen One of M№na, who would find The Pearl and use it to free the Kundalan from their bondage to the V'ornn.
It was curious how two sistersЧtwins at thatЧcould absorb the same lessons and arrive at different conclusions. One saw the vessel half-full, the other saw it half-empty. For Giyan, life at the abbey had brought alive the rich history of her people, where sorcerous beings like Dragons and narbuck and Rappa and perwillon mingled freely with the Kundalan, males and females sharing equally in every facet of life, where those with the Gift were trained to use Osoru sorcery well and wisely, where each festival was an excuse for music, dancing, singing, the fervent excitement of being alive. Now, it was said, only the fearful perwillon remained, slumbering deep in their caves. For Bartta, the history lessons told another storyЧof what had been taken from them by the V'ornn, of the diminishing of Ramahan power and influence, of the rise of the new Goddess-less religion, Kara, of the violence of the male Ramahan and the betrayal of the Rappa, of a need to break with the old sorcerous waysЧknown only to those born with the GiftЧthat had come back to haunt the Ramahan, of the Kundalan being abanнdoned by their Great Goddess, who had quailed at the coming of the V'ornn, had been rendered irrelevant by the aliens' superior techno-mancy. Of the failure of the past, of Osoru, of those with the Gift, of M№na's teachings as they had been originally set forth to protect Kun-dala against invasion.
The twins were hiking north of their home in Stone Border, on the steep and narrow path that led to the Ice Caves. On either side, the brittle sepia-colored land fell away from them, pitching downward to the green-and-blue fields that carpeted the broad, fertile valley far beнlow. Brown kuello-fir needles crunched beneath their cor-hide sandals. Forever after, this soft, dry, intimate sound, so like the rustling of wicked blackcrows' wings, would send a tiny thrill through them, for it was forbidden for anyone but Ramahan priestesses, like themselves, who dwelled in the nearby Abbey of Floating White, to tread this danнgerous path.
Giyan paused on the path to stare upward at the immense, jagged, ice-crusted pinnacles of the Djenn Marre. And as she paused, so did Bartta. Giyan was the twin blessed with height, beauty, a slender figure. Even worse, from Bartta's point of view, she had the Gift and could be trained in Osoru sorcery. What did Bartta have save her fierce desire to lead the Ramahan?
"To think," Giyan said, "that no one knows what lies beyond those mountains."
"Just like you," Bartta said sourly, "to be thinking of questions that cannot be answered. Your foolish diversions are why I will be promoted to shima, to priestess, next year while you will no doubt stay a leyna, a novice."
"I am M№na's servant just as you are," Giyan said softly. "We each serve the Great Goddess in our own way."
Bartta grunted. "Well, I'll tell you something. It has become embarнrassing to be your sister. YourЕ perverse views are the talk of the abbey."
"Perverse, sister?" Giyan's whistleflower-blue eyes reflected the sting of the rebuke.
Bartta nodded emphatically, happy to have scored a point. "Our world is a simple one. We are good, the V'ornn are evil. How you can distort such an obvious black-and-white truth is beyond me."
"You misunderstand me," Giyan said. "I do not question the evil of the V'ornn's deeds; I merely question this so-called truth of Good and Evil. Nothing in this life is so black-and-white. When it comes to the V'ornn we know them not at all. I sense there is a mystery there we cannot yet fathom."
"Oh, yes. You sense. Your accursed Gift has spoken to you, I supнpose."
Giyan turned away, her gaze lost in the snowcapped mountain peaks. She was remembering the hideous vision she had had three years ago. It had coincided with the onset of puberty, on a brilliant summer afнternoon in a courtyard of the abbey. One moment, she had been plant- ing herbs and the next the world, around her had disappeared. At first, she thought she had gone blind. She found herself enclosed in darkнnessЧnot the darkness of night or even a cave, but utter blackness. Voices rustled like the wings of birds, but she could not make out what they were saying. She was terrified; even more so as the vision took shape. With breathtaking clarity, she saw herself from above. She was dressed oddly, in the pure white of mourning. She was standing on the wishbone of a narbuck, the two prongs in front of her. At the end of the right prong stood a Ramahan in the persimmon-colored robes of a member of the Dea Cretan. At the end of the left prong was a fierce-looking V'ornn in battle armor. She saw herself walking to the base of the prongs, knew there was a dreadful choice to be made, a fork in the path of her life. The V'ornn raised his arms and in them she saw a shining star, which she knew was the Dar Sala-at, the prophesied savior of her people. In her vision, she watched herself walk to the left, toward the Dar Sala-at, toward the V'ornnЕ What did it mean? She could not know, and yet she could not forget the power, the sheer force of the vision. She had never dared share it with anyone, not even Bartta. But it had haunted her ever since, and was surely at the core of her unique, conflicted feelings about the aliens she knew she should loathe.
"The V'ornn have enslaved us, maimed us, tortured us," Bartta was saying now. "They kill us at their whim in games of sport. Though the resistance exists and continues to fight back, it is no match for the V'ornn. The aliens have driven us from our cities, forced us to find shelter in the hillsides and mountains until we have become strangers in our own land. They have slaughtered thousands of Ramahan. Our own abbey is the only one left intact. You know this as well as I do."
Giyan turned back from the peaks of the Djenn Marre, from the latent image of her vision. Her thick copper-colored hair flew in the wind. She put her hand tenderly on her sister's shoulder. "I hear the pain and fear in your voice. We have prayed to M№na for eighty-five long, terrible years without hearing a response."
Bartta shook herself away. "I feel no pain or fear."
"But you do," Giyan said even more softly. "It is your deep and abidнing fear that in Her wrath M№na has left us in the hands of the V'ornn forever. You told me so yourself."