"ab Hugh, Dafydd - Jiana 02 - Warriorwards" - читать интересную книгу автора (ab Hugh Dafydd)

"WellЧhonest, no, they just look like horses. Should I be seeing snakes?" Jiana started to inhale again, changed her thoughts and put the stem down; she had already flown too far and worried about finding her way back.
"Snakes?"
"I mean souls. Why did I say snakes? I drove them out. I drove Tooqa the Nameless Serpentine out of the water and out of this sphere. Where is It now? With Toq in his wretched ivory city? Is my God hissing with Sleeping Tifniz?"
'"You re babbling. Let the talker go. Give your stomach over to the listener for a while."
"What should I listen to?"
She wished her eyes worked. She wished she could see the Tunk, for she thought he might have shrugged,
"What should you not listen to? The buzzbees, the water waves lap lapping against the planks, the cre&king of the timbers. Your heart beating. Your stomach thinking. That voice inside of youЧwhat is its name?"
"Jianabel. Haven't heard her much lately. Haven't heard her at att for nearly a futt turn."
"But who is the One who makes the grass green?"
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Dafydd ab Hugh
"Perhaps she needs listening to."
'"You're a sword-whore, not a billboard!" A familiar familiar would have laughed.
"O Jianabel, you have such a gentle and understanding view." The Voice was silent, but Jiana heard her own thoughts, filling in for that separate part of her. "1 call the coin the way it falls," Jianabel would have rejoined. As it was, she did not need to; Jiana answered from her own Wolf Self.
"What do you see? Now?" asked the Tunk. He asked in Jiana's dreamtime as she drifted armless and legless in the timeless.
Saw herself step to the window in answer; saw herself naked, fling wide the shutters. Saw the pane, frozen sugar as if spun by a candy spider. Pushed she did and out it popped, to fall to the cobblestones and brittle into a thousand thousand thousand thousand pieces.
"Bricker it is," she snarled, thinking of her coiling god the Nameless Serpentine. "My (Tunk), my teacher, what is this crumbly bricker I've been smoking?"
But already through the window, already leaning way, way out the empty, looking down, down, down the distance. Sill presses against her stomach, gouged by the latch, splinter in her wrist. Slowly stretching until fingers grip sill, sharps of pain through the knuckles, feeling center now panting over three and twenty man-stands, three and twenty times, say, six feet equaling well more than one hundred twenty to fall. Strains, pulls back at last, too late; overbalanced; falls. . . .
Slowly do the fingers give.
Strange, She thinks, how not to be afraid; strange to look Old Death the Barber in the eyes, if eyes is the word. Old Him that I shit on so many times and laughed at, and not to feel fear. What's on the other side? I don't care. I just don't care care,
Slips. Fingers slip.
Х Sees cobblestones. Harder than a prince's heart, she thinks. The fingers slip.
FallsЧa long moment heart in mouth, light as a feather, gossamer ladder. Ground rushes up. Hands outstretched,
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reaction, bypassing even the stomach and a scream rips out of her face like skin torn from the skull.
March march marches time to the beat of a snail drum. First the hand strikes, savage wrench up the arm culminates in a horror of pain at the elbow tells her att she needs to know that her arm has shattered.
But still her body pushes down, feeling as if it is pushing up 'gainst a cobblestone ceiling. Now the arm folds under her and the horror rushes up to her shoulder.
Face strikes, the moment slows yet further. First the left then the right, feels the front teeth smashed, snapped clean out o/jaw. Jaw, faceplate of skull collapse inward.
The body has its own agenda, momentum pushing back and over, folding body in half to snap neck like a poorly-made sword with too much carbon. Bibs snap one by one by one, though that surely is the least of hers.
Thighs counter-rotate to grind kneecaps into powder.
(BUTЧshe reached around and bit his neck, not quite hard enough to break the skin. She ran her tongue lightly across the fold of flesh stretched tight by her teeth.
Dilai took hold of her buttocks, sinking his fingers inside, touching the tiny, black hairs. Almost despite his intentions, he grew excited, and rubbed himself against her thigh.
She spat out the powder and kissed him again. He responded, and their tongues entwined. At the edges of her hearing the trumpets sounded, still tod feint, but louder than before. Closer, the circus turned back. A memory? Of the future?)
Coughs, spits, drags again oh the pipe, looking again at tent walls and a figure in the smoke.
"What do you see? Now?" he asks againЧor is it the first time still?
"One future, from many; not mine I think. Another's, or another's present. What do you see?"
(BUT SHE SEESЧShe was inside of him, even as he was inside of her. The future memory continued. She looked out through Dilai's eyes, heard with his ears the warpipes that called him up, called him out.
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Dafydd ab Hugh
He rises. Rises up out of his body. Rises up, the him-ness of it; looks downЧJiana my love, farewellЧmy timeЧ learned what it is to have, learned what it is to lose.
Rising, rising above her (me) and what was once mine. Rising, and across the room, they stretch out their hands to me. Pipes, I hear you! I hear them!
In the end, in the last days. In the truth. Rising, and I walk across the room, drifting in smoke, drop in the ocean. She is behind me; Dilai is behind me.
The door opens, and I pass through.)
"I see certain," says the Tunk, "war woman on road to Ruoy Oudin, meeting the eyes of slave girl."
"What slave girl? What are you talking about?"
"Not know, but you will, when meet her. She very important. Your next step."
"There are no slaves in Bay Bay."
"Slaves everywhere. Get goose out of bottle. She your next mountain."
"There are no mountains in Bay Bay."