"Coldheart Canyon (preview edition)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive - Coldheart Canyon)

Zeffer studied him with new eyes; with a kind of envy. Surely it was a
blessed state, to be unable to find words for the terribleness of certain deeds. To
be mute when it came to atrocity, instead of gabbily familiar with it. He found his
curiosity similarly muted. It seemed distastefulуnot to mention pointlessуto press
the man to say more than he expressed himself capable of saying.
"Let's change the subject. Show me something utterly out of the ordinary,"
Zeffer said. "Then I'll be satisfied."
Sandru put on a smile, but it wasn't convincing. "It isn't much," he said.
"Oh sometimes you find beauty in the strangest places," Zeffer said, and as
Page 8
Barker, Clive - Coldheart Canyon
he spoke the little face of Katya Lupescu came into his mind's eye; pale in a blue
twilight.
TWO
Sandru led the way down the passageway to another door, this one rather
smaller than the oak door they'd come through to get to this level. Out came his
keys. He unlocked the door, and to Zeffer's surprise he and the priest were
presented with another flight of steps, taking them yet deeper into the Fortress.
"Are you ready?" the Father asked.
"Absolutely," Zeffer said.
Down they went. The stairs were steep, the air becoming noticeably more
frigid as they descended. Father Sandru said nothing as they went; he glanced back
over his shoulder two or three times, to be sure that he still had Zeffer on his
heels, but the expression on his face was far from happy, as though he rather
regretted making the decision to bring Zeffer here, and would have turned on his
heel and headed back up to the relative comfort of the floor above at the least
invitation.
At the bottom of the stairs he stopped, and rubbed his hands together
vigorously.
"I think before we proceed any further we should take a glass of something
to warm us," he said. "What do you say?"
"I wouldn't say no," Zeffer said.
The Father went to a small cubby-hole in the wall a few yards from the
bottom of the stairs, from which he brought a bottle of spirits and two glasses.
Zeffer didn't remark on the liquor's proximity; nor could he blame the brothers for
needing a glass of brandy to fortify them when they came down here. Though the lower
level was supplied with electricity (there were 19 lengths of electric lamps looped
along the walls of the corridor) the light did nothing to warm the air nor comfort
the spirit.
Father Sandru handed Zeffer a glass, and took the cork out of the bottle.
The pop echoed off the naked stone of walls and floor. He poured Zeffer a healthy
measure of the liquor, and then an even healthier measure for himself, which he had
downed before Zeffer had got his own glass to his lips.
"When I first came here," the Father said, refilling his glass, "we used to
brew our own brandy, from plums we grew on our own trees."
"But not now?"
"No," the Father said, plainly saddened at the fact that they were no longer
producers of liquor. "The earth is not good any longer, so the plums never ripen
properly. They remain small and sour. The brandy made from such fruit is bitter, and
nobody wants to drink it. Even I will not drink it, so you can judge for yourself