"Baker,.Scott.-.Ashlu.2.-.1987.-.Drink.the.fire.from.the.flames" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Scott)

"I don't know, husband. Why ask me?"
"Kuan, I stay in my compound, I work with my pots-I know nothing of these things. I do not want to know. But sometimes... "
"Sometimes one needs to know. "
"Yes. Kuan, your father might know. "
"He wouldn't tell me anything. He takes his responsibilities as the King's Weaponsmith even more seriously than you do yours as a potter. But Tas Et has also been doing some work for the Palace. Maybe he's told Pyota something. "
"Ask her. I'll bury the spare grain. Far away from the house, where Snae Tka won't think to look for it. "
"Couldn't you just put it inside the compound?"
"No. It's against Sil law. "
"Still-"
"No. "
Moth fell asleep wondering what a war would be like, and why his mother had lied to him about it. But the next morning all Kyborash was talking about the King's secret visit.
Soon all the other children had forgotten the lion.

Chapter Three

Moth's eighth birthday was only six days away, but despite the obvious momentousness of the occasion Kuan refused to relieve him of his usual duties. He had no choice but to spend the morning helping her weed the gardens where garlic, onions and leeks, mint and saffron, coriander, rue, thyme, gourds, and multicolored melons grew in their separate patches.
His back ached from working hunched over. The date palms and apricot trees provided some shade, but not enough, and it was a hot, hot day, so he was only too happy when Kuan sent him to work in the family barley field. There, naked except for a necklace of azure-glazed cylindrical beads, a blade of chipped flint in his hand, he waded knee-deep through the muddy water of the irrigation ditches, cutting back the bright blue reeds that threatened to choke the channels. It was a day like any other.
But the next day the Sil Astrologer proclaimed the beginning of the Spring Inundation, and Kuan let Moth join his friends on the bank of the river-though she did not neglect to inform him that he would have to work twice as hard later to make up for the work he was missing.
Moth made his way to the river and climbed the high bank of piled earth that kept the river from washing out and drowning the city.
"Already up three bodylengths, " Yeshun said. Moth looked down at the swollen, silt-laden waters. He could actually see the water level slowly creeping higher.
"Maybe the banks won't be high enough this year, " Rafti suggested. "Maybe we'll have a flood. "
"I'd like to see a flood, " Shuner, Yeshun's brother, said.
"That's stupid, " Golgin said. "The river could still rise another eight or nine bodylengths without overflowing. "
"What if it rises twelve?" Rafti asked. "Or thirty-six?"
"There hasn't been a flood for... for I don't know how long, " Golgin said.
"You don't?" Multas asked. Her father was a Warrior of the Voice.
"No. "
"It was in King Chargon's time, " Multas said. "But that was just a little flood. "
"Maybe this time it'll be a big flood, " Moth said.
"There won't be any flood, " Golgin insisted.
"Probably not, " Multas agreed.
"Would you like to hear about King Beduis and the great flood that drowned the world?" Alrabanas asked. His father was one of the city's most renowned sellers of songs.
"Yes, " Moth said.
"I've heard it, " Golgin said.

"So?" Tramu demanded. "We all have, but I'd like to hear it again. "
"So long as you promise not to try to sing it, " Rafti finished.
They all listened as Alrabanas told of the gods' anger against all mankind and of how King Beduis had sacrificed his son to Sartor so that Sartor would chain the gods' flood demon, Bvaicara, between the Nacre's banks.
"You'll make an excellent seller of songs, " Ye-shun told Alrabanas, and Moth nodded.
"If you ever learn to sing, " Rafti said, but when Alrabanas's face fell she quickly added, "since you already tell them so well, " and he looked happy again.
But the river stayed within its banks. So Kel Vaq Sil, the High Astrologer, dug the first channel in each bank; others soon followed his example, and the waters flowed out to drown the fields and cover them with new, rich soil.
Then the breaches were closed and the waters subsided, leaving the fields glistening expanses of rich yellow mud. But the heartiest weeds still poked up through the thin layer of new soil while other weeds waited unharmed just beneath the surface, so shod oxen were let loose to trample the ground, stamping out the weeds and leveling the surface.
While this was going on in the Temple fields, Moth was working with his family in their own small field. The Siltemple had awarded Ri Tal a certain amount of barley seed, and the Potters' Sil had granted him a certain amount more; in preparation for the sowing, Ri Tal guided their ox through the field while Moth and Kuan followed in his wake breaking up clods of earth with handleless stone pickaxes. Then the three together further smoothed the earth with a heavy wooden drag.
But before Ri Tal had a chance to till his field he was called away, leaving the task to his wife and son while he, like every man of Kyborash not of the Higher Mysteries, spent three days laboring in the Temple fields.
While he was gone Moth wore his beads and was head of the household. The previous year he'd told his mother that, since he was the head of the family, it would be demeaning for him to share in work fit only for women and children, and for three days he had done nothing. Kuan plowed the field with the shukil and bardin plows, harrowed and raked it three times, attached the seeding-funnei to the bardin plow and sowed the barley seed, then went over the ground a last time with a pickaxe to pulverize the clods the plowing and seeding had turned up. The memory of his father's return, however, was enough to keep Moth from repeating the experience this year.
While Moth and Kuan worked down by the river, on the opposite shore Ri Tal was working naked alongside coppersmiths and weavers, barbers and traders, stone carvers, field slaves, chisel workers, entrail readers, leather workers, and potterpariahs, for in the Temple fields all distinction of rank was set aside and all men worked for the Warriors of the Hand and Voice.
But at the end of the third day Ri Tal returned home to reclaim the beads his son had worn in his absence. Kuan applied a poultice of river mud, beer, ground turtle shells, and tanglethorn sap to
the whip marks on her husband's back, and while he lay on his belly letting the remedy soothe him she prepared a special dinner-spiced fish, melons, fig and clam pastries, and palm wine instead of the customary flatbread, onions, and barley beer.
"Eat well, " Ri Tal told Moth. "You will have to fast tomorrow. "
"Because it's my birthday?" Moth asked. But his father just smiled.