"Jude Fisher - Fool's Gold 02 - Wild Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fisher Jude)

"Just beneath the surface of the water there lies a chain forged of iron
and blood and seithers' charms," the mummer's chief explained. "It's
attached at either side to two great winches in the towers. Our ships are
shallow-drafted enough to skim the chain, but any southern vessel that by
some miracle made it across the Northern Ocean would ground upon it?
one word from the watchmen and up it goes, tipping them over into the
Sound. And then? "
"What?"
Tarn shook his head. "Won't speak of that," he said, making a
superstitious gesture. He looked past her into the channel ahead. Behind
them, the oars dipped and rose quietly and the steerboard man made
delicate adjustments to their approach, so that the Snowland slipped into
the lee of the eastern pillar and was swallowed by the cold shadow cast by
the rising moon.
There was a low grating noise, then the soft sound of water parting
cleanly, and a moment later they were inside the inner harbor. Here, they
changed course so that the ship angled to hug the land ever more closely?
though as far as Katla could see, the middle way in to the docks was wide
and clear? so closely that Katla could see the gleam of green weed,
swathes of limpets and barnacles, splashes of white guano on the rocks.
They rounded a small headland, and suddenly Halbo spread itself before
them. The hills rose sharply from the water, so that street after street of
little, low-built stone houses seemed to have been piled one on top of the
other. Candles glowed in windows. Curls of cooking smoke spun up into
the night air. In the midst of all this domesticity and order rose the pale
walls of Halbo's fortress, the High Castle, home of the Eyran kings since
they first made the mainland their home. Squat and bleak, it was not
beautiful, to Katla's eye at least: but there was no denying that it was
imposing. Thick turrets rose at the corners of the building, and the walls
were pierced through with eyelets so that archers might lay waste an
approaching enemy from the safety of the interior. The battlements were
crenellated, and a steep bank rose up to the foot of the castle walls: it
looked a difficult stronghold to overcome. Rows of barracks led away from
the castle down to the harbor where they met a jumble of wharves and
jetties and a harbor full of vessels. On the far western strand a great
bonfire had been constructed to light the work of a hundred men, all of
whom were stripped to the waist and covered from head to toe in the
sheeny red of something that must surely be blood. Before them on the
beach lay a huge shape from which protruded great white staves amid
dark and glistening slabs of meat. Even from here, the stench was
appalling.
"By Sur," Katla whispered, "they look like the goblins that brought down
the Giant Halvi to end the Battle of the Sun."
Tarn laughed. "Haven't you seen men butcher a whale before, Katla
Aransen?"
"A whale? But it's vast! No whale that I have seen has been a quarter
the size of that monster!"
"Ah, the Westman Isles, where even the whales are as minnows! Sur was
not smiling on your ancestors when he blew their settlement ship in to
Rockfall, my dear."