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

Sandru said. "It's a view, from the Fortress Tower."
"But not realistic?"
"It depends what you mean by realistic," Sandru said. "If you look over the
other sideу" he pointed across the room "уyou can see the delta of the Danube."
Zeffer could just make out the body of water, glittering in the gloom: and closer by
a mass of swampy land, with dozens of inlets winding through it, on their way to the
sea. мAnd there!" Sandru went on, "to the leftу" again, Zeffer followed Sandru's
finger "уat the corner of the room, that rockу"
"I see it."
The rock was tall, rising out of the ocean of trees like a tower, shrubs
springing from its flank.
"That's called the May Rock," Sandru said. "The villagers dance there, on
the first six nights of May. Couples would stay there overnight, and try to make
children. It's said the women always became pregnant if they stayed with their men
on May Rock."
"So it exists? In the world, I mean. Out there."
"Yes, it's right outside the Fortress."
"And so all those other details? The deltaу"
"Is nine miles away, in that direction." Sandru pointed at the wall upon
which the Danube's delta was painted.
Zeffer smiled as he grasped what the artists had achieved here. Down in the
depths of the Fortress, at its lowest point, they had recreated in tile and paint
what could be seen from its pinnacle.
And with that realization came sense of the inscription he'd read on the
threshold.
Though we are in the bowels of Hell, we shall have the eyes of Angels. This
room was the bowels of Hell. But the tile-makers and their artist masters, wherever
they'd been, had created an experience that gave the occupants of this dungeon the
eyes of angels. A paradoxical ambition, when all you had to do was climb the stairs
and see all this from the top of the tower. But artists were often driven by such
ambition; a need perhaps, to prove that it could even be done.
"Somebody worked very hard to create all this," Zeffer said. "Oh indeed.
It's an impressive achievement."
"But you hide it away," Zeffer said, not comprehending the way the room had
been treated. "You fill the place with old furniture and let it get filthy."
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Barker, Clive - Coldheart Canyon
"Who could we show it to?" the Father replied. "It's too disgusting..."
"I see nothingу" he was about to say disgusting, when his eye alighted on a
part of tile-work that he'd cleaned with his arm but had not closely studied. In a
large grove a round stadium had been set up, with seating made of wood. The
perspective was off (and the solution to the perspective changed subtly from tile to
tile, as various hands had contributed their piece of the puzzle. There were perhaps
twenty tiles that had some portion of the stadium represented upon them; the work of
perhaps five artists). The steep benches were filled with people, their bustle
evoked with quick, contentious strokes. Some people seemed to be standing; some
sitting. Two more groups of spectators were approaching the stadium from the
outside, though there was no room for them inside.
But what drew Zeffer's eye, and made him realize that the Father had been
right to wonder aloud who he might show this master-work to, was the event these