"Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman - Dragons of Spring Dawning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weis Margaret)

I draw back, away from the broken stone column with its rainbow of jewels. I,
too, am beginning to feel something frightening and evil about this place. But
the jewels are so beautiful! Even as I stare at them, they glitter and sparkle
in the sunshine. No god is here. No god cares about them. No god will miss
them. Embedded in some old column that is crumbling and broken.
I reach down to pry the jewel out of stone with my knife. It is such a rich
green, shining as brilliantly as the spring sun shines through the new leaves
of the trees. ...
"Berem! Stop!"
Her hand grasps my arm, and her nails dig into my flesh. It hurts... I grow
angry and, as sometimes happens when I grow angry, a haze dims my vision and I
feel a suffocating swelling inside of me. My head pounds until it seems my
eyes must burst from their sockets.
"Leave me be!" I hear a roaring voice-my own!
I shove her...
She falls...
It all happens so slowly. She is falling forever. I didn't mean to ... I want
to catch her... But I cannot move.
She falls against the broken column.
Blood... blood...
"Jas!" I whisper, lifting her in my arms.
But she doesn't answer me. Blood covers the jewels. They don't sparkle
anymore. Just like her eyes. The light is gone....
And then the ground splits apart! Columns rise from the blackened, blasted
soil, spiraling into the air! A great darkness comes forth and I feel a
horrible, burning pain in my chest....
"Berem!"
Maquesta stood on the foredeck, glaring at her helmsman.
"Berem, I told you. A gale's brewing. I want the ship battened down. What are
you doing? Standing there, staring out to sea. What are you practicing to be-a
monument? Get moving, you lubber! I don't pay good wages to statues!"
Berem started. His face paled and he cringed before Maquesta's irritation in
such a pitiful manner that the captain of the Perechon felt as if she were
taking out her anger on a helpless child.
That's all he is, she reminded herself wearily. Even though he must be fifty
or sixty years old, even though he was one of the best helmsmen she had ever
sailed with-mentally, he was still a child.
"I'm sorry, Berem," Maq said, sighing. "I didn't mean to yell at you. It's
just the storm ... it makes me nervous. There, there. Don't look at me like
that. How I wish you could talk! I wish I knew what was going on in that head
of yours-if there is anything! Well, never mind. Attend to your duties, then
go below. Better get used to lying in your berth for a few days until the gale
blows itself out."
Berem smiled at her-the simple, guileless smile of a child.
Maquesta smiled back, shaking her head. Then she hurried away, her thoughts
busy with getting her beloved ship prepared to ride out the gale. Out of the
corner of her eye, she saw Berem shuffle below, then promptly forgot about him
when her first mate came aboard to report that he had found most of the crew
and only about one-third of them were so drunk as to be useless . . .
Berem lay in the hammock slung in the crew's quarters of the Perechon. The