"Harrowing The Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

“You might like the sky beyond this. At night it is a mine of lights and hidden knowledge.”

She shook her head. “I like close places, full of fire and darkness. And faces I know. And tales spun out of worm-spoor. If you come with me to the tavern, they’ll tell you where your father is buried and give you lodgings, and then you can leave.”

“I’ll come to the tavern. With a tale.”

Her taper was nearly burned down, and she was beginning to shiver. “A dragon.” She turned away from him. “No one will believe you anyway. ”

“You do.”

She listened to him silently, warming herself with worm-spoor, as he spoke to the circle of rough, fire-washed faces in the tavern. Even in the light, he bore little resemblance to his father, except for his broad cheekbones and the threads of gold in his hair. Under his bulky cloak, he was dressed as plainly as any miner, but stray bits of color still glinted from him, suggesting wealth and distant places.

“A dragon,” he told them, “is creating your winter. Have you ever asked yourselves why winter on this island is nearly twice as long as winter on the mainland twenty miles away? You live in dragon’s breath, in the icy mist of its bowels, hoarfrost cold, that grips your land in winter the way another dragon’s breath might burn it to flinders. One month out of the year, in the warmth of suns-crossing, it looses its ring-grip on your island, slides into the sea, and goes to mate. Its ice-kingdom begins to melt. It returns, loops its length around its mountain of ice and gold. Its breath freezes the air once more, locks the river into its bed, you into your houses, the gold into its mountain, and you curse the cold and drink until the next dragon-mating.” He paused. There was not a sound around him. “I’ve been to strange places in this world, places even colder than this, where the suns never cross, and I have seen such monsters. They are ancient as rock, white as old ice, and their skin is like iron. They breed winter and they cannot be killed. But they can be driven away, into far corners of the world where they are dangerous to no one. I’m trained for this. I can rid you of your winter. Harrowing is dangerous work and usually I am highly paid. But I’ve been looking for this ice-dragon for many years, through its spoor of legend and destruction. I tracked it here, one of the oldest of its kind, to the place where I was born. All I ask from you is a guide.”

He stopped, waiting. Peka, her hands frozen around her glass, heard someone swallow. A voice rose and faded from the tavern kitchen; sap hissed in the fire. A couple of the miners were smiling; the others looked satisfied and vaguely expectant, wanting the tale to continue. When it didn’t, Kor Flynt, who had mined Hoarsbreath for Fifty years, spat wormspoor into the fire. The flame turned a baleful gold, and then subsided. “Suns-crossing,” he said politely, reminding a scholar of a scrap of knowledge children acquired with their first set of teeth, “causes the seasons.”

“Not here,” Ryd said. “Not on Hoarsbreath. I’ve seen. I know.”

Peka’s mother Ambris leaned forward. “Why,” she asked curiously, “would a miner’s son become a Dragon-Harrower?” She had a pleasant, craggy face; her dark hair and her slow, musing voice were like Peka’s. Peka saw the Dragon-Harrower ride between two answers in his mind. Meeting Ambris’s eyes, he made a choice, and his own eyes strayed to the fire.

“I left Hoarsbreath when I was twelve. When I was fifteen, I saw a dragon in the mountains east of the city. Until then, I had intended to come back and mine. I began to learn about dragons. The first one I saw burned red and gold under the suns’ fire; it swallowed small hills with its shadow. I wanted to call it, like a hawk. I wanted to fly with it. I kept studying, meeting other people who studied them, seeing other dragons. I saw a night-black dragon in the northern deserts; its scales were dusted with silver, and the flame that came out of it was silver. I saw people die in that flame, and I watched the harrowing of that dragon. It lives now on the underside of the world, in shadow. We keep watch on all known dragons. In the green midworld belt, rich with rivers and mines, forests and farmland, I saw a whole mining town burned to the ground by a dragon so bright I thought at first it was sun-fire arching down to the ground. Someone I loved had the task of tracking that one to its cave, deep beneath the mine shafts. I watched her die, there. I nearly died. The dragon is sealed into the bottom of the mountain, by stone and by words. That is the dragon which harrowed me.” He paused to sip wormspoor. His eyes lifted, not to Ambris, but to Peka. “Now do you understand what danger you live in? What if one year the dragon sleeps through its mating time, with the soft heat of the suns making it sluggish from dreaming? You don’t know it’s there, wrapped around your world. It doesn’t know you’re there, stealing its gold. What if you sail your boats full of gold downriver and find the great white bulk of it sprawled like a wall across your passage? Or worse, you find its eye opening like a third, dead sun to see your hands full of its gold? It would slide its length around the mountain, coil upward, and crush you all, then breathe over the whole of the island and turn it dead-white as its heart, and it would never sleep again. ”

There was another silence. Peka felt something play along her spine like the thin, quavering, arthritic fingers of wind. “It’s getting better, ” she said, “your tale.” She took a deep swallow of wormspoor and added, “I love sitting in a warm, friendly place listening to tales I don’t have to believe. ”

Kor Flynt shrugged. “It rings true, lass. ”

“It is true,” Ryd said.

“Maybe so,” she said. “And it may be better if you just let the dragon sleep.”

“And if it wakes unexpectedly? The winter killed my father. The dragon at the heart of winter could destroy you all. ”

“There are other dangers. Rockfalls, sudden floods, freezing winds. A dragon is simply one more danger to live with.”

He studied her. “I saw a dragon once with wings as softly blue as a spring sky. Have you ever felt spring on Hoarsbreath? It could come.”

She drank again. “You love them,” she said. “Your voice loves them and hates them, Dragon-Harrower.”

“I hate them,” he said flatly. “Will you guide me down the mountain?”

“No. I have work to do.”

He shifted, and the colors rippled from him again, red, gold, silver, spring-blue. She finished the wormspoor, felt it burn in her like liquid gold. “It’s only a tale. All your dragons are just colors in our heads. Let the dragon sleep. If you wake it, you’ll destroy the night.”

“No,” he said. “You will see the night. That’s what you’re afraid of.”

Kor Flynt shrugged. “There probably is no dragon, anyway.”

“Spring, though,” Ambris said; her face had softened. “Sometimes I can smell it from the mainland, and I always wonder . . . Still, after a hard day’s work, sitting beside a roaring fire sipping dragon-spit, you can believe anything. Especially this. She looked into her glass at the glowering liquid. Is this some of yours, Peka? What did you put into it?”