"Joan D. Vinge - The Storm King" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vinge Joan D)

THE STORM KING
By Joan D. Vinge
Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

****

They said that in those days the lands were cursed that lay in the shadow of the
Storm King. The peak thrust up from the gently rolling hills and fertile farmlands like
an impossible wave cresting on the open sea, a brooding finger probing the secrets
of heaven. Once it had vomited fire and fumes; ash and molten stone had poured
from its throat. The distant ancestors of the people who lived beneath it now had
died of its wrath. But the Earth had spent Her fury in one final cataclysm, and now
the mountain lay quiet, dark, and cold, its mouth choked with congealed stone.

And yet still the people lived in fear. No one among them remembered having
seen its summit, which was always crowned by cloud. Lightning played in the
purple, shrouding robes, and distant thunder filled the dreams of the folk who slept
below with the roaring of dragons.

For it was a dragon who had come to dwell among the crags: that elemental
focus of all storm and fire carried on the wind, drawn to a place where the EarthтАЩs
fire had died, a place still haunted by ancient grief. And sharing the spirit of fire, the
dragon knew no law and obeyed no power except its own. By day or night it would
rise on furious wings of wind and sweep over the land, inundating the crops with
rain, blasting trees with its lightning, battering walls and tearing away rooftops;
terrifying rich and poor, man and beast, for the sheer pleasure of destruction, the
exaltation of uncontrolled power. The people had prayed to the new gods who had
replaced their worship of the Earth to deliver them; but the new gods made Their
home in the sky, and seemed to be beyond hearing.

By now the people had made Their names into curses, as they pried their
oxcarts from the mud or looked out over fields of broken grain and felt their bellies
and their childrenтАЩs bellies tighten with hunger. And they would look toward the
distant peak and curse the Storm King, naming the peak and the dragon both; but
always in whispers and mutters, for fear the wind would hear them, and bring the
dark storm sweeping down on them again.

****

The storm-wracked town of Wyddon and its people looked up only briefly in their
sullen shaking-off and shoveling-out of mud as a stranger picked his way among
them. He wore the woven leather of a common soldier, his cloak and leg-gings were
coarse and ragged, and he walked the planks laid down in the stinking street as
though determination alone kept him on his feet. A woman picking through baskets
of stunted leeks in the marketplace saw with vague surprise that he had entered the
tiny village temple; a man putting fresh thatch on a torn-open roof saw him come out
again, propelled by the indignant, orange-robed priest.

тАЬIf you want witchery, find yourself a witch! This is a holy place; the gods
donтАЩt meddle in vulgar magic!тАЭ