"Sara Douglass - Redemption 3 - Crusader" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Sara)

No!
DareWing made a supreme effort, his shoulders and breast belly aching with the effort of
staying within the thermal.
But now he was spiralling downwards, not up.
The speed of his fall increased, and DareWing screamed at the ground. He would never
allow himself to be ground bound! He was a creature of the air, of the sky, of the stars!
The ground rushed towards him, and DareWing screamed in rather than anger. Not fear at
death or even pain, but fear that he would be ground bound, that he would never fly
again, never soar, never again be the proud Icarii warrior ...
He hit the ground with a force that should have killed him outright, but the worst injury
DareWing felt was a bruised shoulder and thigh. He scrambled to his feet, and almost
overbalanced.
He kept to his feet only with a sustained effort. Why was his balance so out? Why was
everything so heavy?
DareWing halted, horrified.
His wings had become a burden. For the first time in his long life, DareWing realised that his
wings were a burden. They hung like great stone weights from his back, and he could barely move
them, let alone will them to lift him into the sky.
"No! Damn you! Give me my grace back! My balance! Give me back —"
My Icarii pride, he thought, and halted, amazed. Have I always been so arrogant?
So contemptuous of the ground?
So blind?
"What do you want of me?" he whispered. "How can I redeem myself?"
"Relinquish your arrogance," the ground replied, "for that is what made the unwinged resent
you in ages past."
Relinquish my wings? DareWing thought, and anger surged through him. No birdman
relinquishes his wings!
The ground was silent, and DareWing hung his head in shame.
His wings hung heavy behind him. A burden, not of weight, but of arrogance.
DareWing turned his head slightly so he could regard them. His wings were creations of
majesty and beauty, feathered in glossy black, powerful, graceful, the physical manifestation of
the Icarii "otherness", the means by which the Icarii believed they were the creatures of the stars.
The Star Dance loved the Icarii for their beauty, and for their ability to fly.
"Wrong," said the ground. "The Star Dance has tolerated your beauty and your flight skills,
but it has loved you for other reasons."
"Really?"
"Your inner beauty, which thrives despite your arrogance —"
DareWing winced, and hung his head.
"— as well your courage to dare. You and your people are composed of jewel lights,
DareWing. Don't hide them behind your arrogance."
DareWing nodded. Courage, he thought, is not required for what I do now. It is boundless
humility.
And so DareWing turned his shoulders, and lifted his arms, and he took hold of one of his
wings. He took a deep breath, flexing the powerful flight muscles of chest and shoulder.
Then he tore the wing out.
He screamed, and doubled over, sobbing in agony, still gripping the wing. Blood
poured down his back, obscuring the brief glint of bone.
DareWing dug his teeth into his lips, fighting to remain conscious, then he threw the wing
aside.
It landed some two paces away, a useless appendage of flesh and feather.