"David Zindell - Requiem of Homo Sapiens 01 - The Broken God" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zindell David)

them could stand up without breaking through the top of the
little snow dome. In the half-darkness, Danlo moved carefully
lest he knock against the snow blocks that formed the hut's
walls. He spread his sleeping furs atop his bed of hard-packed
snow. Soli added chunks of seal blubber to the oilstone, a bowl
of scooped stone which was always kept burning, however
faintly. The blubber melted and caught fire, and Danlo gazed at
the small pearly flame floating on a pool of dark oil. Soon the
curved white walls of the hut glowed with a warm, yellow light.
'Yes, what to do now,' Soli said. The oilstone grew
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hotter, and he began boiling water in a small clay pot. It was
his habit to drink some blood-tea before sleeping.
Danlo thought he was a strange man, at heart a wild man like
himself, or rather, like he would be if he ever became a man.
He felt an affinity to this wildness. Hadn't Soli's
great-great-grandfather left the tribe a few generations ago to
journey across the southern ice? Hadn't Soli and his now-dead
family returned from the fabled Blessed Isles with fantastic
stories of air so warm that the snow fell from the sky as
water? It was told that Soli had once journeyed across the
eastern ice to the Unreal City where the shadow-men lived in
mountainous stone huts. Danlo wondered if these stories were
true, just as he wondered at the secret, wild knowledge of
numbers and circles that Soli had taught him. He thought Soli
was a mysterious, wild man, and then a startling idea came to
him: perhaps this is why the slow evil had avoided him, too.
Danlo scooped some frozen seal blood out of a skin and
dumped the blackish, crystalline mass into Soli's pot. He said,
'We will have to journey west to Sawelsalia or Rilril, won't
we? We have many far-cousins among the Patwin, I have heard it
said. Or perhaps the Olorun тАУ which of the tribes do you think
will welcome us, sir?'
He felt uncomfortable talking so much because it was
unseemly for a boy to talk so freely in front of a man. But he
was uncertain and afraid for the future, and in truth, he had
always liked to talk. Especially with Soli: if he didn't
initiate conversation, Soli was likely to remain as silent as a
stone.
After a long time, Soli said, To journey west тАУ that may not
be wise.' He took a long drink of blood-tea. Danlo watched him
hold his cup up to his mouth; it seemed that his eyes were
hooded in steam off the tea, and in secretiveness.
'What else can we do?'
'We can remain here on Kweitkel. This is our home.'
Danlo held his hand to his eyes and swallowed hard
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against the lump in his throat; it felt like a piece of meat
was stuck there. 'No, sir, how can we remain here? There are no
women left to make our clothes; there are no more girls to grow