"Robin Hobb - Liveship 1 - Ship of Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)

The Totem
The EJ Bruce
The Free Lunch
The Labrador (Scales! Scales!)
The (aptly named) Massacre Bay
The Faithful (Gummi Bears Ahoy!)
The Entrance Point
 The Cape St. John
The American Patriot (and Cap'n Wookie)
The Lesbian Warmonger
The Anita J and the Marcy J
The Tarpon
The Capelin
The Dolphin
The (not very) Good News Bay And even the Chicken Little
But especially for Rain Lady, wherever she may be now.


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank Gale Zimmerman of Software Alternatives,
Tacoma, Washington, for rendering swift and compassionate aid in stamping out
the computer virus that nearly ate this book.


PROLOGUE - THE TANGLE

MAULKIN ABRUPTLY HEAVED HIMSELF OUT OF HIS WALLOW WITH A WILD THRASH THAT
LEFT THE ATMOsphere hanging thick with particles. Shreds of his shed skin
floated with the sand and muck like the dangling remnants of dreams when one
awakes. He moved his long sinuous body through a lazy loop, rubbing against
himself to rub off the last scraps of outgrown hide. As the bottom muck
started to once more settle, he gazed about at the two dozen other serpents
who lay basking in the pleasantly scratchy sediments. He shook his great maned
head and then stretched the vast muscle of his length. "Time," he bugled in
his deep-throated voice. "The time has come."
They all looked up at him from the sea-bottom, their great eyes of green
and gold and copper unwinking. Shreever spoke for them all when she asked,
"Why? The water is warm here, the feeding easy. In a hundred years, winter has
never come. Why must we leave now?"
Maulkin performed another lazy twining of himself. His newly bared scales
shone brilliantly in the filtered blue sunlight. His preening burnished the
golden false-eyes that ran his full length, declaring him one of those with
ancient sight. Maulkin could recall things, things from the time before all
this time. His perceptions were not clear, nor always consistent. Like many of
those caught twixt times, with knowledge of both lives, he was often unfocused
and incoherent. He shook his mane until his paralyzing poison made a pale
cloud about his face. He gulped his own toxin in, breathed it out through his
gills in a show of truth-vow. "Because it is time now!" he said urgently. He
sped suddenly away from them all, shooting up to the surface, rising
straighter and faster than the bubbles. Far above them all he broke the