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

'Yes,' Soli said. 'Very hard.'
'Even a man might not complete such a journey тАУ Totunye, the
bear, may hunt him, or the Serpent's Breath might strike him
and kill him with cold, orтАУ '
'Yes, the journey will be dangerous,' Soli broke in.
 'What if I were left alone to find the City?' Danlo asked
softly. 'Or if the slow evil found you at last out on the ice?
What if the shadow-men in the Unreal City do not know halla?
Maybe the shadow-men would kill you for your meat. If you died
before my passage, sir, how would I ever become a man?'
For Danlo, as for every Alaloi boy, the initiation into
manhood is the third most important of life's transformations
and mysteries, the other two being birth and death.
Soli rubbed his temples and sighed. He was very tired but he
must have clearly seen the logic of Danlo's argument, that he
would have to make his passage a year before his time. He
smiled at him and said, 'Do you think you are ready, Danlo?
You are so young.'
'I am almost fourteen.'
'So young,' Soli repeated. 'Even fifteen years is sometimes
too young. The cutting is very painful, and there have been
many boys older than you who were not ready for the pain of
the knife. And then, after the cutting ...' He let his voice
die off and looked at Danlo.
'And then there is the secret knowledge, yes? The Song of the
Ancestors?'
'No, after the pain, there is terror. Sheer terror.'
He knew that Soli was trying to frighten him, so he smiled
to hide his fear. The air inside the hut was steamy from the
boiling tea and from their rhythmic exhalations;
24
it was selura, wet cold тАУ not as absolutely cold as white cold,
but cold enough to lap at his skin like a thirsty seal and make
him shiver slightly. He pulled himself down into his furs,
trying to keep warm. All his life, from the older boys and
young men, he had heard rumours about the passage into manhood.
It was like dying, Choclo had once said, dying transcendently,
ur-alashara; it was like going over, not to the other side of
day, but going over oneself to find a new, mysterious world
within. He thought about what it would be like to go over, and
he tried to sleep, but he was too full of death and life, too
full of himself. All at once, his whole body was shivering
beyond his control. He had an overwhelming sense that his life,
every day and night, would be supremely dangerous, as if he
were walking a snowbridge over a crevasse. He felt wild and fey
in anticipation of making this eternal crossing. And then, deep
inside, a new knowledge sudden and profound: he loved the dark,
wild part of himself as he loved life. Ti-miura halla, follow
your love, follow your fate тАУ wasn't this the teaching of a
hundred generations of his people? If he died during his