"Anderson,.Poul.-.Flandry.12.-.A.Stone.in.Heaven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

A STONE IN HEAVEN - Poul Anderson
I
Through time beyond knowing, the Kulembarach clan had ranged those lands which
reach south of Lake Roan and east of the Kiiong River. The Forebear was said to
have brought her family up from the Ringdales while the Ice was still
withdrawing beyond the Guardian Mountains. Her descendants were there on the
territory she took when traders from West-Oversea brought in the arts of
ironworking and writing. They were old in possession when the first Seekers of
Wisdom arose, and no few of them joined the College as generations passed. They
were many and powerful when the long-slumbering fires in Mount Gungnor awoke
again, and the Golden Tide flowed forth to enrich this whole country, and the
clans together established the Lords of the Volcano. They were foremost in
welcoming arid dealing with the strangers from the stars.
But about that time, the Ice began returning, and now the folk of Kulembarach
were in as ill a plight as any of their neighbors.
Yewwl had gone on a long hunt with her husband Robreng and their three youngest
children, Ngao, Ych, and little Ungn. That was only partly to get food, when the
ranchlands could no more support enough livestock. It was also to get away, move
about, unleash some of their rage against the fates upon game animals. Besides,
her oath-sister Banner was eager to learn how regions distant from Wainwright
Station were changed by cold and snow, and Yewwl was glad to oblige.
The family rode east for an afternoon and most of the following night. Though
they did not hurry, and often stopped to give chase or to rest, that much travel
took them a great ways, to one of the horn-topped menhirs which marked the
territorial border of the Arrohdzaroch clan. Scarcity of meat would have made
trespass dangerous as well as wrong. Yewwl turned off in a northwesterly
direction.
"We will go home by way of the Shrine," she explained to the others—and to
Banner, who saw and heard and even felt what she did, through the collar around
her neck. Had she wished to address the human unheard by anybody else, she would
have formed the words voicelessly, down in her throat.
The alien tone never came to any hearing but Yewwl's; Banner had said the sound
went in through her skull. Eighteen years had taught Yewwl to recognize trouble
in it: "I've seen pictures lately, taken from moon-height. You would not like
what you found there, dear."
Fur bristled, vanes spread and rippled, in sign of defiance. "I understand that.
Shall the Ice keep me from my Forebear?" Anger died out. For Banner alone, Yewwl
added softly, "And those with me hope for a token from her—an oracular dream,
perhaps. And … I may be an unbeliever in such things, because of you, but I
myself can nonetheless draw strength from them."
Her band rode on. Night faded into hours of slowly brightening twilight. The
storminess common around dawn and sunset did not come. Instead was eerie quiet
under a moon and a half. The nullfire hereabouts did not grow tall, as out on
the veldt, but formed a thick turf, hoarfrost-white, that muffled the hoofbeats
of the onsars. Small crepuscular creatures were abroad, darters, scuttlers,
light-flashers, and the chill was softened by a fragrance of nightwort, but life
had grown scant since Yewwl and Robreng were young. They felt how silence
starkened the desolation, and welcomed a wind that sprang up near morning,
though it bit them to the bone and made stands of spearcane rattle like
skeletons.