"Dave Duncan - The Seventh Sword - 2 - The Coming Of Wisdom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

DAVE DUNCAN
23
ated from the World as she was. Only thus could a slave dare to love a Seventh.
Nnanji's attitude would be very different.
The two men reached the end of the pier and stopped.
"Nnanji, I have a confession to make. I have never lied to you, but I have not
told you the whole truth."
Nnanji blinked. "Why should you? It was you die Goddess chose to be Her
champion. I am honored to be allowed to help. You need not tell me more, Lord
Shonsu."
Wallie sighed. "I did lie to you, then, I suppose. I said my name was Shonsu...
and it isn't."
Nnanji's eyes grew very wide, strange pale spots in his grimy face. No man of
the People could ever look unshaven, but his red hair had been blackened the
previous day with a blend of charcoal and grease. Later adventures had added
guano and cobwebs, road dust and blood. Now thoroughly smeared, the resulting
film made him look comic and ridiculous. But Nnanji was no joke. Nnanji had
become a very deadly killer, much too young to be trusted with either the sword
skill his mentor had taught him so rapidly or the power that came with his new
rank—a swordsman of the Fourth had the potential to do a mountain of damage.
Nnanji would have to be kept under very close control for a few years, until
maturity caught up with his abilities. That might be why the gods had ordered
that he be irrevocably bound by the arcane oath to which the present
conversation must lead.
"I did meet with a god," Wallie said, "and what he told me was this: the Goddess
had need of a swordsman. She chose the best in the World, Shonsu of the Seventh.
Well, he said that there was none better, which is not quite the same thing, I
suppose. Anyway, this swordsman failed, and failed 'disastrously.'"
"What does that mean, my lord?"
"The god wouldn't say. But Shonsu was driven to the temple by a demon. The
priests' exorcism failed. The Goddess took his soul—and left the demon. Or what
Shonsu thought was a demon. It was me, Wallie Smith. Except I wasn't a demon..."
He was not telling this very well, Wallie thought, but he was amused by the
puzzled nods he was being given. Others might mock at so absurd a yarn, but
Nnanji would want very much to believe. Nnanji had a ruinous case of hero
worship. It had suf-
24
THE COMING OF WISDOM
fered an agonizing death the previous day, but then the Goddess had sent a
miracle to support Her champion, and Nnanji's adoration had sprung back to life
again, stronger than ever. He would grow out of it, and Wallie could only hope
that the education would not be too painful, nor too long delayed. No man could
live up to Nnanji's standards of heroic behavior.
They turned together and began to wander landward again.
"Another way of looking at it, I suppose, is as a string of beads—that's one of
the priests' images, A soul is the string, the beads are the separate lives. In
this case, the Goddess broke the rules. She untied the string and moved one of
the beads."
Nnanji said, "But..." and then fell silent.
"No, 1 can't explain it. The motives of gods are mysterious. Anyway, I am not