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

As I looked at her, fear robbed me of strength. The clay pit lay miles from Handred, and Mera had no
hat on, nothing to protect her from the noonday sun. Her hair was wild and wind-blown; perhaps she had
even run. Her face and hands were burned to fiery pink already and her pale eyes were shot through with
blood.

I stood up, shaking. How foreign and hostile the world seemed to me at that moment.
“Where is Arain?” I asked.

Mera smiled briefly, as if it hurt. “Arain is going away. I thought you would want to say good-bye to her.”

“Away?”

“Jana came today. Arain is going to the temple.” Mera took my hand. “We shouldn't tarry, or we will
miss her.”

We started up one of the wooden ladders that stood along the edges of the pit. She climbed up first,
groping for each rung and slipping often. She had been out in the sun so long that its light had nearly
blinded her.

“What happened to your hat?” I asked.

“I have mislaid it,” she said.

But I doubted the truth of that. I was certain that she had forgotten it. A deadly coldness spread around
my heart, deep as the snow of winter. Mera felt the coldness, too; felt it so powerfully that it had
distracted her from a lifelong habit—the hat, the simple tool of survival for one with colorless skin. Our
sister Arain would be celebrated. The citizens of Handred would bow to her in the streets. But when she
had passed by, they would speak behind their hands. For always with the Service of Feder came early
death. Arain must not go to the temple. The sun itself shouted it from the silent, blue sky.

“Why is she going? And for how long?” I asked when we reached the top. Mera held onto my arm as
we started down the road.

“It is an honor, Kirth. Arain thirsts for knowledge, for the secrets of the temple. And Jana has promised
them to her.”

“But ... but it's wrong. You should not be apart.” I clung to this thought as a drowning creature to a
broken branch.

“We are two people. We want different things,” said Mera, but her voice shook and she did not look in
my direction.

“But she will die!” I cried.

“Be still, Kirth. Why do you say such things?” she whispered. But even as she admonished me, her grip
on my arm tightened.

“I am afraid,” I replied.