"Jude Fisher - Fool's Gold 01 - Sorcery Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fisher Jude)

Ahead of them, the dark shape began to resolve itself further so that tiny dots of color
against the stark black gradually revealed themselves to be brightly-hued pavilions, the
more vivid pinpricks of light between them as campfires. As they sailed into the sound,
they could see a whole host of other vessels bobbing quietly at anchor off the shore.
"Istria: can't you smell it? That's the smell of a foreign land, Katla; that's the smell of the
Southern Empire."
All Katla could smell was salt and sea and the sweat of bodies that had lived for a
half-month in close quarters without fresh water to spare for washing, but she wouldn't
say so.
"A foreign land . . ." she whispered, awed.
"Aye, and a load of bastard Istrians," Fent said under his breath.
"To the south, sweet and fair
They lie, slumbering and fat
Ripe meat for the wolf."
He didn't need a knotted string for that one. How his father could be so blithe at the
sight of the old enemy's land, he could not understand. A pulse beat violently in his head,
at the very thought and he turned to make further comment, but Aran was already
calling for the rowers as he ran back along the deck, nimbly skirting the boxes of cargo,
the cookfire; the startled crew. With a dark look at Katla, Fent followed his father and
took up his place at the oars with the others.
Katla watched as the great striped sail was taken down and furled as they came into
the shallower waters. All over the ship, men leaped to their tasks. She saw her father take
his customary position at the steerboard to guide them in through the reefs and the long,
gray breakers and turned her face back to the new land.
The Moonfell Plain.
A place from legend.
***
It had taken hours, it seemed, to make camp. By the time they had unshipped the two
skiffs and put in to shore, the Navigator's Star was shining brightly in the sky. Lying on
the strangely still ground, tired to the bone, Katla had been unable to sleep for the sheer
novelty of it all. She'd heard about the Allfair for as long as she could remember—all the
lads' tales of horse fights and boulder throwing and swordplay; the gossip, the trading
stories, the marriage makings, the lists of extravagant-sounding names and internecine
political allegiances. And she'd seen with her own eyes the intricate silver jewelry her
father brought back for her mother when trading had gone well for him: and the
monstrous, shaggy yeka hides that covered their beds at home in the winter months—but
this was her first Allfair and she could not wait for it to begin.
Wrapped in a sealskin with the pelt turned to the inside for warmth, she peered over
the snoring bodies toward the distant campfires of the fairground and gazed again in awe
at the great rock that rose steeply from the plain, illuminated by the flickering light. That
was what she had felt, all those miles out at sea; she knew it now, twisting around to stare
at its massive presence. It must be, she realized with a little thrill of excitement, Sur's
Castle: hallowed ground. It was here—according to her folk, the Eyrans, the people of the
north—where their god Sur had first taken his rest (having fallen from the moon onto the
surface of Elda) and surveyed his new domain. And having contemplated the whole great
vista and found it sadly wanting, he had waded into the sea, thinking that by following the
track of the moonbeams on the waves he might somehow find his way back home. The
moon path, Katla thought, remembering Fent's verse. Poor Sur, lost and lonely in an
empty land. The god had marched right across the Northern Ocean, skimming stones on
his way to take his mind off the numbing cold (and of such great size were the stones that