"Cook, Glen - Black Company 09 - Glittering Stone 03 - Water Sleeps" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

2



They call me Sleepy. I was withdrawn as a child, hiding from the
horrors of my childhood inside the comfort and emotional safety of
daydreams and nightmares. Any time I did not have to work, I went
away in there to hide. The evil could not touch me there. I knew no
safer place till the Black Company came to Jaicur.



My brothers accused me of sleeping all the time. They resented
my ability to get away. They did not understand. They died without
ever understanding. I slept on. I did not waken fully till I had been
with the Company for several years.



I keep these Annals today. Somebody must and no one else can,
though the Annalist title never devolved upon me formally.



There is precedent.



The books must be written. The truth must be recorded even if fate
decrees that no man ever reads a word I write. The Annals are the
soul of the Black Company. They recall that this is who we are.
That this is who we were. That we persevere. And that treachery,
as it ever has, failed to suck the last drop of our blood.



We no longer exist. The Protector tells us so. The Radisha swears
it. Mogaba, that mighty general with his thousand dark honors,
sneers at our memory and spits on our name. People in the streets
declare us no more than an evil, haunting memory. But only
Soulcatcher does not watch over both shoulders to see what might
be gaining ground.



We are stubborn ghosts. We will not lie down. We will not cease to
haunt them. We have done nothing for a long time but they remain
afraid. Their guilt cannot stop whispering our name.