"Jo Walton - Relentlessly Mundane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Walton Jo)

what happened, Kay wandered away from us, we didn't see anything untoward."


"I wonder if it is a murder, this time," Tharsia mused, her eyes on the hanging
crystals that fractured the light. In Porphylia looking at a crystal like that would
have given her vivid visions and she would have begun at once to prophecy in
powerful and unstoppable verse. "Or if maybe that boy has somehow found a
way into Porphylia."
"But if they needed anyone it would be us!" Jane said. "We're ready. We
understand it! We promised to go back if--"


"They didn't need someone who understood it and was ready last time," said
Tharsia. "They told me in the High Temple to come back here, that our own
world needed me more than Porphylia. I didn't realise I'd only have this shadow
of my magic." Jane and Mark exchanged glances, their minds as perfectly in
accord as they had been fifteen years before when their lives had depended on
each other. They remembered how impossible it had been to console Tharsia for
the complete loss of all magical ability when they got home. "But what they
needed to save the world was children, raw power, innocence.... I do wonder
where that child is."


"I do hope I'm not going to be put in prison for murdering him," said Mark.


"They could never prove anything with Kay," Jane said. She looked past
Tharsia's drapes out of the window at the world so real and hard and sharp
edged and ambivalent. She sighed, and wished for the millionth time that she had
stayed, like Kay. Then for the first time she really entertained the possibility that
Mark might, after all, be right, and they might never be going back. She shook
her head. It couldn't be true. If she really thought this was all there was ever
going to be, that life was never going to be for anything again, then what
purpose was there in going on?


"I wonder," said Tharsia, still looking at the fractured light, "I wonder if there
might be a way to save this world." Mark made a noise with his tongue and Jane
started to ask from what, but Tharsia ignored them and went on, "Not by a
sword, not by a word ..." and then suddenly collapsed in tears. Jane got up and
put her arms around her friend and rocked her.


"Put the kettle on for more tea, Mark," Jane said. Somehow, she felt fifteen
again, she felt like Sir Jana and not like Jane. As soon as he had left the room
she bent and whispered to Tharsia "That was real, I know it was, don't cry, I can
tell the difference. We can do it. We did it before. Yeah, it'll be harder without a
temple and an army and swords and things, but you know I'll help. If you tell me
what."