"Ann Maxwell - Timeshadow Rider" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maxwell Ann)

come to take her to the Eyes of Za’ar as custom and tabu decreed, a four or a six leading the chosen five
to death or greater life. Then she would take up the Eyes and would either live as the new Kiriy of
Za’arain or unravel among the endless, rippling timeshadows of the universe.
No one came, neither four nor six. All that reached Sharia was a distant sense of fear and
triumph—and then the massed Kiri minds writhed in agony and despair as they sheared away from each
other, unable to maintain civilized unity without the guiding Eyes. Kiri minds slid backward down the long
darkness of linear time while savage atavism glided upward to meet them on deadly clawed feet.
The Eyes of Za’ar closed.
The gem in Sharia’s cupped palms blazed fiercely, as though freed from a stifling veil. Blinded by
alien light and compelled by the dead Kiriy’s Za’ar imperative, Sharia called to Kane from every level of
her unique mind. She called while ordinary Za’arains became mobs that rose and flooded the streets in a
frightened, destructive tide, leaving only shards of civilization in their wake. She called while the city’s
psi-dependent machinery was first damaged, then destroyed. She called while Kiri atavisms burned into
sudden life, Kiris looking out at the world from savage violet eyes.
And as she called she felt fives die one by one, each death sending dark ripples through the colors of
her timeshadow until finally the last fives of Za’arain were dead. Save one. And still that one called out to
Kane.
Only Sharia’s own need to survive ended the channeling of herself into the call. The jewel finally
slipped from hands too weak to hold it. The crystal swung heavily on its chain, gorged with light and
colors and life. Slowly Sharia realized that with the death of the city’s machinery, both food and water
had stopped coming to her isolated rooms. If she were to continue calling Kane, she must care for
herself. She must put aside customs and tabus engrained into her almost as deeply as the need to drink.
But the Za’ar imperative the Kiriy had thrown like a spear into Sharia’s mind was deeper, more
urgent, than mere thirst.
She pried open the door and went out into corridors of the Kiriy compound that had been tabu to
her since the onset of her fertility ten years ago. She held her five-fingered hands before her, an
unequivocal proclamation of Za’ar tabu.
The six- and four-fingered Kiris flinched away from her, squeezing against the wall to allow her free
passage, no chance of touching. Part of their reaction was custom; while fives were not always expressly
tabu to fours or sixes, Kiris simply did not touch mature fives at all unless the Eyes declared one to be a
five-fingered Kiriy’s mate. If custom weren’t enough to hold back the Kiris in the compound’s rainbow
halls of glass, there was always primal fear. At the darkest levels of their minds, the Kiris knew that a five
unbridled by the Eyes was a thing of deadly power.
Water was just beyond Sharia’s room, which faced the Kiriy’s courtyard. Though the capital city of
Za’aral was disintegrating around her, the massive, artesian dance of the sacred fountain would not
waver. She would walk into those drenching crystal mists and fill herself with water.
But even as she went from Kiriy halls to the fountain’s sacred white courtyard, she found the water’s
silver beauty bleeding into horror. The dead and the dying were everywhere, timeshadows knotting and
writhing, silent screams shredding her control. She fought against the lure of riding the agonized
timeshadows down to the knotted beginnings of disease and unraveling that knot, bringing health in the
wake of her ride.
The farther she went into the fountain’s mists, the more strongly timeshadows called to her in all their
tangled colors. After a decade of isolation as a mature five, the timeshadows had an elemental allure to
her. She knew the feel of the disease’s energy, knew that she could cure its dark draining of life. Weeks
before the Kiriy had spoken hugely in Sharia’s mind, she had healed the onset of the disease in her own
body, riding her own timeshadow back to the moment of incubation and outbreak, and then she had
delicately smoothed out the tangles until life flowed unhindered and her timeshadow shimmered with
vitality once again.
A wave of wounded timeshadows broke over her. Suddenly she could no longer turn aside from
their desperate colors. A single thought freed her translucent hair from its discipline. Silver hair flowed