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

After they finished eating Ri Tal took Moth into the potting compound and daubed him with the seven clays, then taught him the rituals for propitiating the clay spirits.
Moth was not allowed to sleep that night. His father watched over him as again and again he prostrated himself and prayed, "Sartor, All-Highest, Bountiful Creator of All the Gods and Men, I, Sartor-ban-i-Tresh, beg of You Your aid. Lend me Your strength, O Greatest of the Gods. Lend me Your wisdom, O Creator of All Things. "
It was not a long prayer, but as the night wore on Moth found it increasingly difficult to keep the words straight. The moon was not quite full; in the half-light he could see his father's stern face watching him as he stumbled through the litany.
Three times he began to doze, only to be slapped awake.
The night was almost gone before Ri Tal said, "Enough. " He handed Moth a necklace from which hung seven crude disks of unglazed but fired clay. Moth put it around his neck. His father motioned him to follow, and led the way out of the compound, through the house, and into the street.
Dawn found them far from Kyborash. They worked their way upriver, paralleling the Nacre but avoiding as best they could the marshy lowlands adjacent to it. Sometimes they followed paths; sometimes they made their way through brush or forded streams. Once they had to detour around a small lake.
The valley grew narrower, the ground steeper. In late midmorning they came to a place where the valley walls closed in on them, forming a narrow gorge through which the Nacre rushed and foamed. Moth had never seen anything like it.
There was a guardhouse there, manned by the first human beings Moth had seen since leaving Kyborash. He recognized none of the warriors.
Ri Tal spoke to a black-bearded man wearing a copper breastplate and a conical helmet. A coin changed hands and they were allowed to pass.
Moth followed his father up the narrow, cliff-hugging trail. The rock beneath his feet was sometimes damp, even green with slime; he had only to look down to see the waters fighting with the rocks below.
At intervals tiny streamfalls on their way down to the river crossed the path. The first three Moth and Ri Tal encountered were small enough for Moth to leap without trouble and Ri Tal ignored them completely. He stopped at the fourth.
"We'll climb here, " he said, pointing to a faint trail that descended from the heights parallel to the stream. It was the first time he'd spoken directly to Moth since they'd left the compound.
Ri Tal began to climb, Moth following. The going grew rapidly steeper and Moth found himself scrambling for finger- and toeholds on almost vertical cliffsides. He was afraid to look down. His father sent a constant rain of pebbles and dirt showering down on him from above; to his right the stream fell through countless tiny cascades that spattered him with cold spray and turned the dust on his face to mud. The mud ran into his eyes, blinding him and forcing him to let go with one hand for a breathless instant to wipe it away.
Ri Tal maintained a steady pace upward. Moth followed as best he could, but he lagged farther and farther behind.
At last he came out of a particularly difficult climb-the cascade to his right falling free for more than a dozen bodylengths before it crashed onto the rocks below; his father so far above him that he was invisible-to find himself on the edge of a broad, grassy field.
He scrambled up onto it, stood looking around, panting and smiling, then let out a sigh. He was on a plateau, a giant ledge large enough to hold half of Kyborash. The hard part was over.
Grass and tiny red conical wildflowers were everywhere; the stream they had been following was flanked by shrubs and small bushes. Moth's eyes followed the stream back to a distant wall of black rock that stretched upward to the clouds.
Moth and Ri Tal sat and rested awhile, then followed the stream inward. The ground was nearly level, the going easy despite the bushes. The air smelled good. Moth felt happy.
"Spring is the best time to find fresh clay, " Ri Tal said. "The stream spirits reveal it to us. "
The stream forked. They followed the right fork until Ri Tal stopped and pointed to one of the banks. "There. See that reddish, crumbly-looking soil? That's clay. The stream used to flow there'" -he pointed again-"but when it changed its banks it cut away the soil sheltering the clay. The same thing happens every spring. "
"What do we do now, Father?" Moth asked.
"Do you remember the rituals?"
"I think so. "
"Don't 'think so. ' Are you certain?"
Moth ran over the words and gestures again in his mind. "Yes. "
"Good. Repeat the prayer to Sartor seven times, then give thanks to the spirit of the stream for revealing the clay. "
Moth repeated the prayer seven times without stumbling over any of the words, then knelt by the stream and crossed his arms on his breast, left over right. "Hear me, Unslith, Stream-spirit, " he intoned, then hesitated a moment before continuing, "I, Sartor-ban-i-Tresh, thank you in the name of Sartor All-Highest for revealing to me this clay. Accept of me my life's water as proof of my gratitude. "
Opening his hands in the Gesture of Submission, he spat into the stream.
"Now ask the spirit of the clay for permission to dig. "
Moth prostrated himself seven times. "Spirit of the Clay, Lithmar, Child of the Earth Mother, I, Sartor-ban-i-Tresh, beg you in the name of Sartor All-Highest to bestow upon me a portion of your body. I pledge that I will leave enough of your substance with which to regenerate yourself anew in the Earth Mother's womb. I pledge this to you in the name of the Earth Mother, my betrothed, and in the name of Sartor All-Highest. "
Ri Tal took two tightly woven cloth sacks, a shallow white bowl, and a trowel of fire-hardened blackwood from his belt pouch.
"Remove the top layer of soil to a depth of two handswidths over an area an armslength in diameter, " he said. "Then dig a small amount of clay from the center of the area you have excavated and place it in the bowl. Take care that none of the clay falls from the trowel onto the ground. "
When Moth was finished Ri Tal took water from the stream in his cupped hands, thanking the stream-spirit as he did so, and moistened the blob of reddish clay.
"We must allow it to dry, " he told Moth, and sat staring patiently at the red mud until it was dry again.
"Do you see that, Sartor-ban-i-Tresh?" he asked, indicating a thin white scum that had formed on the blob of clay. Moth nodded. "That means the spirits have declared that this clay is not for our use. We must return it to the soil, and ask the spirit's pardon. "
They went back the way they had come until they reached the place where the stream forked. This time they took the other fork.
"Is that clay?" Moth asked almost immediately, pointing.
"Yes. Very good. "
No scum formed when they wetted the clay. "The spirits have granted us their permission to use this clay, " Ri Tal said, "but it still may not be to our purposes. Watch what I do. "

He dug a small mass of clay from the excavated area and, moistening it again with water from the stream, kneaded it until it was all of a uniform consistency. Then he made from it a rope of clay as thick as his little finger and three times the length of Moth's thumb. Placing the clay in the bowl, he bent it into a ring, calling on Sartor in a low voice while he worked.
"It did not crack, " he told Moth presently. "Clay that cracks is not to be taken. But this is excellent; we will bring some of it back with us. "
He turned back to the bed of clay and prostrated himself seven times, praising the spirit's generosity, then used the blackwood trowel to dig more clay from the bed, taking care that each spadeful went directly into one of the cloth sacks.
"You must never remove more clay from the ground than you can carry, " he told Moth. "And once the bag has been lifted free of the ground, you must make sure it does not touch the earth again until you are within a potting compound. "
"Why?"
"The Earth Mother has lost Her child; the spirit its mother. If you reunite them, even for an instant, they will have to undergo the pain of separation all over again, and they will be angry with you. Do you understand?"
"'Yes. " Ri Tal handed Moth one of the sacks. It was very light.
"This is too little, Father, " he said. "I'm strong; I can carry a lot more. "
"Straight down the side of a cliff?"
"Yes. "