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

was to come.
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Soli kicked off his skis and led him inside the circle of
skulls. At the circle's centre, oriented east to west, was a
platform of packed snow. 'When we begin,' Soli said, 'you must
lie here facing the stars.' He explained that it was
traditional for the initiate boy to lie on the backs of four
kneeling men, but since the men had all gone over, the
platform would have to do. Around the platform were many piles
of wood. Soli held a glowing coal to each pile in turn, and
soon there were dozens of fires blazing. The fires would keep
Danlo from freezing to death.
'And now we begin,' Soli said. He spread a white shagshay fur
over the platform and bade Danlo to remove his clothes. Night
had fallen, and a million stars twinkled against the blackness
of the sky. Danlo lay down on his back, with his head toward
the east as in any important ceremony. He looked up at the
stars. The lean muscles of his thighs, belly and chest were
hard beneath his ivory skin. Despite the fires' flickering
heat, he was instantly cold.
'You may not move,' Soli said. 'No matter what you hear, you
may not turn your head. And you may not close your eyes. Above
all, on pain of death, you may not cry out. On pain of death,
Danlo.'
Soli left him alone, then, and Danlo stared up at the deep
dome of the sky. The world and the sky, he thought тАУ two halves
of the great circle of halla enfolding all living things. He
knew that the lights in the sky were the eyes of his ancestors,
the Old Ones, who had come out this night to watch him become a
man. There were many, many lights; Soli had taught him the art
of counting, but he could not count the number of Old Ones who
had lain here before him because it would be unseemly to count
the spirits of dead men as one did pebbles or shells by the
sea. He looked up at the stars, and he saw the eyes of his
father, and his father's fathers, and he prayed that he would
not break the great circle with cries of pain.
After a while he began to hear sounds. There came
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sharp, clacking sounds, as of two rocks being struck together.
As the fires burned over him, the rhythm of the clacking
quickened; it grew louder and nearer. The sound split the
night. Danlo's right half knew that it must be Soli making this
unnerving sound, but his left half began to wonder. He could
not move his head; it seemed that the eyelight of the Old Ones
was streaming out of the blackness, dazzling him with light.
The clacking hurt his ear now and was very close. He could not
move his head to look, and he feared that the Old Ones were
coming to test him with terror. Suddenly, the clacking stopped.
Silence fell over him. He waited a long time, and all he could
hear was his deep breathing and the drumbeat of his heart. Then