"C. S. Friedman - Coldfire 1 - Black Sun Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friedman C. S)

colonists. Witness the monsters that Damian had fought in the Dividers, shards
of man’s darkest imaginings given fresh life and solid bodies, laying traps for the
unwary in the icy wilderness.
Witness the Forest.
“Sheer concentration makes the fae there too strong to tame,” she told him.
“Manifestial response is almost instantaneous. In plainer English, merely
worrying about something is enough to cause it to happen. Every man that’s
dared to walk in those shadows, regardless of his intentions, has left some dark
imprint behind him. Every death that’s taken place beneath those trees has
bound the fae to more and greater violence. The Church once tried to master it
by massive applications of faith - that was the last of the Great Wars, as I’m sure
you know - but all it did was give them back their nightmares, with a dark
religious gloss. Such power prefers the guarded secrets of the unconscious to the
preferences of our conscious will.”
“Then how can man thrive so close to it? How can Jaggonath - and Kale, and
Seth, and Gehann - how can those cities even exist, much less function?”
“Look at your map again. The Forest sits at the heart of a whirlpool, a focal
point of dark fae that draws like to like, sucking all malevolent manifestations
toward its, center. Most things that go in never come out again. If it were
otherwise we could never live here, this close to its influence.”
“You said that most things never leave.”
She nodded, and her expression darkened. “There’s a creature that lives
within the Forest - maybe a demon, maybe a man - which has forced a dark sort
of order upon the wild fae there. Legend has it that he sits at the heart of the
whirlpool like a spider in its web, waiting for victims to become trapped in its
power. His minions can leave the Forest and do, in a constant search for victims
to feed to him.”
“You’re talking about the Hunter.”
“You know the name?”
“I’ve heard it often enough, since coming east. Never with an explanation.”
“For good reason,” she assured him. “Merely mentioning the name opens a
channel through the fae . . . people are terrified of such contact. It’s more than
just the Hunter himself. He’s become our local bogeyman, the creature that lurks
in dark corners and closets, whose name is used to scare children into
obedience. Easterners are raised to fear the Hunter more than any other earthly
power, save the Evil One himself. And don’t take me wrong - he is, genuinely,
both powerful and evil. His minions hunt the shadows of the eastern cities for
suitable prey, to take back to the Forest to feed to him. Women, always; mostly
young, inevitably attractive. It’s said that he hunts them like wild animals there,
in the heart of that land which responds to his every whim. A very few survive -
or are permitted to survive, for whatever dark purpose suits him. All are insane.
Most would be better off dead. They usually kill themselves, soon after.”
“Go on,” he said quietly.
“It’s said that his servants can walk the earth as men, once the sun is gone.
For which reason you’ll rarely see women abroad alone after dark - they walk
guarded, or in groups.”
“You call it he,” he said quietly. “You think it’s a man.”
“I do, myself. Others don’t.”
“An adept?”
“He would have to be, wouldn’t he?”