"Myst - 01 - The Book Of Atrus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Rand)

"But you didn't name him," she said quietly, holding the baby tight against her.
"You didn't even name him...."

* * *

Wthin the great volcano's shadow, the desert floor was fractured. There', in a
crack some eighty feet by fifteen, the darkness was intense. The casual eye
might, indeed, have passed on, thinking it no more than a natural feature, but
for the strange lip-a wall of stone some five or six feet high-that surrounded
it.

For a moment all was still, and then a tall, cloakless figure climbed up onto
the lip of the cleftwall, stepping out into the dawn light.

All was silence; a silence as only such desert places possess. In the cool of
the desert dawn, a mist rose from the warm heart of the volcano, wreathing it in
a faint, mysterious veil. Anna watched as the tall cloakless figure climbed the
volcano's slope, the mist swirling about him, concealing then revealing him
again. The heavy lenses he wore gave his head a strange, yet distinctive shape.
For a moment he stood there, his head turned, looking back at the dark gash of
the deft a mile below him, his tall, imperious shape backlit by the sun that
bled through the shifting layers of haze. Then, with a dreamlike slowness, "like
a' specter stepping out into nothingness, he turned and vanished.



CHAPTER 1

The sandstorm had scoured the narrow rock ledge clean. Now, all along the
sculpted, lacelike ridge, shadows made a thousand frozen forms. The rock face
was decorated with eyes and mouths, with outstretched arms and tilted heads, as
if a myriad of strange and beautiful creatures had strayed from the dark safety
of the caldera's gaping maw, only to be crystallized by the sun's penetrating
rays.

Above them, in the shadow of the volcano's rim, lay the boy, staring out across
the great ocean of sand that stretched toward the mountainous plateaus that were
hazed in the distance. The only thing larger than that vast landscape was the
clear blue sky above it.

The boy was concealed from watchful eyes, his very existence hidden from the
traders who, at that moment, had stopped their caravan a mile out on the sands
to greet the old madwoman. The patched and dirty clothes he wore were the color
of the desert, making him seem but a fragment of that arid landscape.

The boy lay perfectly still, watching, the heavy lenses he wore adjusted for
long-sight, his sensitive eyes taking in every tiny detail of the caravan.

The storm had delayed the caravan two days, and while two days was as nothing in
this timeless place, for the boy it had seemed a small eternity. For weeks