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

they’ve opened hell beneath me, and bound me to it by the very power I taught
them how to use . . . Too many prayers, Almea! Too many minds condemning
my work. This planet is fickle, and responds to such things. I need time,” he
repeated, as though that explained everything. As though that justified killing
their children.
He raised a long knife into her field of vision, even as his slender hand
stroked the hair gently out of her eyes. “You go to a far gentler afterlife than I
will ever know,” he said softly. “I apologize for the pain I must use to send you
there. That’s a necessary part of the process.” The hand dropped back from her
forehead, and the glittering blade was before her eyes.
“The sacrifice is not of your body,” he explained. His voice was cold in the
darkness. “It is . . . of my humanity.”
Then the knife lowered, and she found her voice. And screamed - his name,
protests of her love, a hundred supplications . . . but it was too late, by that
point. Had been too late, since true night fell.
There was no one listening.
 CITY OF SHADOWS

One

Damien Kilcannon Vryce looked like he was fully capable of handling
trouble, for which reason trouble generally gave him a wide berth. His thick-set
body was hard with muscle, his hands textured with calluses that spoke of
fighting often, and well. His shoulders bore the weight of a sizable sword in a
thick leather harness with no sign of strain, despite the fact that the dust stains
on his woolen shirt and the mud which caked his riding boots said that he had
been traveling long and hard, and ought to be tired. His skin had tanned and
scarred and peeled and tanned again, over and over again with such constancy
that it now gave the impression of roughly tanned leather. His hands, curled
lightly about the thick leather reins, were still reddened from exposure to the
dry, cold wind of the Divider Mountains. All in all a man to be reckoned with . . .
and since the thieves and bravos of Jaggonath’s outskirts preferred less
challenging prey, he passed unmolested through the crowded western districts,
and entered the heart of the city.
Jaggonath. He breathed in its dusty air, the sound of its name, the fact of its
existence. He was here. At last. After so many days on the road that he had
almost forgotten he had a goal at all, that there was anything else but traveling .
. . and then the city had appeared about him, first the timber houses of the outer
districts, and then the brick structures and narrow cobbled streets of the inner
city, rising up like stone crops to greet the dusty sunlight. It was almost enough
to make him forget what it took to get here, or why they had chosen him and no
one else to make this particular crossing.
Hell, he thought dryly, no one else was fool enough to try. He tried to picture
one of the Ganji elders making the long trek from westlands to east - crossing
the most treacherous of all mountain ranges, fighting off the nightmare beasts
that made those cold peaks their home, braving the wild fae and all that it chose
to manifest, their own souls’ nightmares given substance - but the diverse parts
of such a picture, like the facets of a badly-worked Healing, wouldn’t come
together. Oh, they might have agreed to come, provided they could use the sea
for transport . . . but that had its own special risks, and Damien preferred the