"Jennifer Fallon - Second Sons 01 - The Lion of Senet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fallon Jennifer)

he was like this. He was sitting cross-legged on the cliff top as if he was carved from the rock itself.

Neris knew she was there. He was mad, but he wasn’t deaf.
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“Have you ever noticed,” the madman remarked as she came up behind him, “that the only time we get
truly spectacular sunrises is when there’s been trouble somewhere? There’s a moral in that, I think.”

“What do you mean?” Tia asked cautiously. Although he sounded rational, she knew him too well to be
fooled.

“It’s like life,” he mused. “If nothing bad ever happened, you would have perfect skies every day, and
you’d be bored witless. But this...” he said, waving his arm to encompass the magnificent, fiery skies,
“this comes from a disaster. Somewhere out there, the Goddess has spoken.”

Tia halted in her approach. It was never a good sign when Neris began to speak of the Goddess. “It’s
just a volcano, Neris.”

“The Goddess has spoken.”

“You don’t believe that.”

The madman shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter whether I believe it or not. Millions of people all over
the world will climb out of bed this morning and look at this sky and think the Goddess is trying to tell
them something.”

He was right, Tia knew, but she didn’t want him dwelling on it. That line of thought was just a step away
from Neris recalling his own contribution to what people believed about the Goddess and that was an
extremely dangerous thing, particularly as he was sitting on the edge of a cliff with a drop of some eight
hundred feet below him.

“People choose to believe or not believe,” she shrugged. “If they want to have faith in a stupid myth,
that’s their problem, not yours.”

Neris turned to look at her. Dark hollow circles ringed his eyes, his pupils were contracted, his eyes
unnaturally bright. He was high on poppy-dust, she realized, which meant he might stay calm for a while,
or he might fall into the depths of depression, or he might suddenly launch himself off the cliff in the
mistaken belief that he could fly.

For a fleeting moment, she wished she’d thought to bring Reithan along. Reithan was much better at
dealing with Neris than she was. Tia was too impatient, too angry.

“What is faith?” Neris asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Which is why you’ll never understand the power of the Goddess and her minions.”