"Nancy Etchemendy - The River Temple" - читать интересную книгу автора (Etchemendy Nancy)

My sisters stood facing each other before the fire, Mera half dressed and Arain clad only in her boots.
Taud stood in the corner near his pallet, shirtless and flushed.

“I want him again,” said Arain in a low and frightening voice. “It isn't fair. He has given the seed to you
twice.”

“Be still, Arain,” said Mera softly, glancing in my direction. “Kirth has just returned. The matter is
unimportant.”

But Arain remained standing with her arms bent at her sides and her body strung as tightly as a bow. I
could see that she was barely able to restrain herself from striking Mera.

“But I want ... I want...” cried Arain, in a voice so full of pain that it hardly seemed to belong to her.

“But you want a child, Arain? You and I are barren,” replied Mera quietly.

I do not think that Arain's rage was meant so much for Mera as it was for the thing of which Mera had
spoken. Arain was blinded by some passion that I will never fully comprehend. She raised her arm to
strike Mera. But Mera caught her by the wrist. They were perfectly matched.

“Yes! I want a child. How can you say it is of no importance? How can I live with the knowledge that no
man, no matter how many times I take his seed, will ever give me a child?” Then Arain's fury left her, and
tears spilled down her cheeks and she sank to her knees on the earthen floor.

She wept quietly, and Mera held her for a long time, stroking her fine, white hair, her own cheeks
glistening with tears as well.

I was not old enough to understand much of what I had seen. I knew that live, healthy infants were a
treasure and a blessing from the gods. But I did not understand Arain's grief. I knew nothing of a
woman's craving for children. And because so many of our women were barren, neither did I know that
barrenness was not natural, and that made it all the more frightening.

***

Friend, I will tell you of that strange and distant land where I became a man. My people lived
beside the Umbya for more than a thousand years. We dwelt there even before the War of Four
Cities in which Makna took our part by rocking the mountains and causing the river to change its
course so that it flowed nearer his temple. Since then, the river above the temple has been wide
and blue, and the flood plains lush and bountiful. But below the temple the river's name is Dred.
At the confluence of the Dred and the Senek there once stood three great cities. They have long
since fallen to ruins, our ancestors who lived there having fled up the Senek to Nupask. For since
the War of Four Cities the Dred has been a river of poison, and its banks and flood plains a
desert. Nothing lives there long.

***

A day came when I glanced up from my digging in the pit where we foraged for potter's clay, and found
Mera standing over me. It was the first time I had ever seen either of my sisters without the other.

“Kirth, would you come with me for a little while? We must take a walk,” she said.