"Van Lustbader, Eric - Sunset Warrior 05 Dragons On The Sea Of Night(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

One: Sea-Change
Two: Miira's Mirror
Three: The House of Annai-Nin
Four: Shadows
PART TWO: MU'AD
Five: Spirits Rising
Six: Belly of the Beast
Seven: Duk Fadat
Eight: Red Veil
Nine: Satellite
PART THREE: SYRINX
Ten: White Lotus
Eleven: Eve
Twelve: Bjork
PART FOUR: SIN'HAI
Thirteen: Dragon
Fourteen: Cloudland
Fifteen: The Great Rift
Sixteen: House of the Holy
Epilogue: On the Sea of Night

This is for my father,
Who asked for more tales.
The world is more -
Once we understand there is
Only this, we have woken
From the Dark.
From the Tablets of the Iskamen
That which is known as Magic
Was once the progeny of ignorance.
Ancient Shinju saying
PREFIGURE
KILL RHYTHM
'He is coming!' Qaylinn, the chief Rosh'hi of the Bujun, gripped the wooden balustrade of the terrace that ran the entire length of the top floor of the temple of which he was the master. His old, lined face shone in the deep russet glow of the huge, oblate sun as it began to sink over the marshes where geese rose and alit as they had from time immemorial.
'I told you he would come!'
'Yes,' the voice said from behind him, 'but will he listen to what we have to say?'
Qaylinn, who had been trained since infancy to intuit intent from the nuances of the human voice, turned to face the other man - a tall, stately figure with a halo of steel-gray hair. Even so long from the battlefield, he is still the soldier inside, Qaylinn told himself. 'You are afraid,' he said quietly.
'Are you not?'
Qaylinn shook his head. 'You forget. I have met the Dai-San. I know him.'
The tall man shook his head. 'I, too, have met the Dai-San in the presence of the Kunshin, our sovereign, and my private opinion is that he is allowed too near the Dragon Throne,' he said. 'I think it is foolish to delude oneself into believing that he is knowable. Can one know a god? I think not.'
'Whatever he may be now, he was a man, once,' Qaylinn said steadily. 'And I assure you he has no designs on the Dragon Throne. He has bonded with the Kunshin; they are closer than brothers.' It was important to keep the minister's fear in check. Should it spread to the other members of the council... In any event, their faith in the Dai-San must not be shaken. His work was not yet done, and he was their only hope. 'From the womb of woman he came and so in his mind - whatever he has now become, whatever magic has been worked on him - he remains at his core a man.'
High Minister Ojime grunted. 'Would that I had your faith, sayann.' Sayann, a Bujun term for extreme respect, was not often used, and even less by Ojime. 'I, too, know that our fate -and the fate of the entire world of man - rests in the hands of the Dai-San.'
A wind was rising, unnatural and unsettling. It caused Qaylinn's deep saffron robe to swirl about his bare feet, ruffled Ojime's oiled cotton and cured leather coat which was the color of indigo, connoting his senior rank within the Sekkan, the council of Bujun.
Of course Ojime is frightened, Qaylinn thought. He is a political animal; he has been taught to fear and covet power that is greater than his own. It is how he came to don the cloth of indigo. Qaylinn wondered how many of the other high ministers feared and envied the Dai-San his godlike powers. His bald pate tingled. There was danger here, he knew, over and above the pressing reason he had summoned the Dai-San to Shinsei na-ke Temple in Haneda, Ama-no-mori's capital. It was a danger closer to home, the viper hidden in the breast of those who would have you believe they were friends. Ojime - and, indeed, all the high ministers - would need constant surveillance.
He looked to the west, where it seemed the lavender clouds were parting and, if he squinted, he could just make out a black speck near the horizon. The wind blew in his face and he felt the kind of electricity in the air one experiences during a lightning storm.
'I see him,' Ojime whispered from just behind Qaylinn. 'He answered your call, after all.'
'As I knew he would,' Qaylinn said without inflection. 'He is the Dai-San.'
'Even so,' Ojime said, 'he is not going to like what you have to tell him.'
'What the snow-hare's feet have told me!'
The Rosh'hi had whirled around, his voice uncharacteristically tense. 'When I speak to the Dai-San - when I tell him what I must - I will merely be a messenger of the kami, the spirits who reside in Ama-no-mori and protect it from harm.'