"Van Lustbader, Eric - Pearl 01 The Ring of Five Dragons(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

Kurgan nodded, removed a thin-bladed skinning knife from his belt, held it tip up. "Ready?"
Annon nodded, gritting his teeth. He averted his head as the tip slipped into the wound. He cried out, and again until Kurgan gave him a length of rawhide he used for stringing up his catch. Annon gratefully put it in his mouth and clamped down hard. Three minutes later, he had passed out.
Kurgan splashing water on his face brought him around.
"It's no use," his friend said. "I can gut a gimnopede, but I am no surgeon. The damned thing kept going deeper the more I pried. I cannot go on."
Annon felt wrapped in pain. "Thank Enlil, God of War!"
"I doubt there will be an infection," Kurgan observed. "We've cleaned the wounds thoroughly." He tore the sleeve from his blouse.
"Oww!" Annon cried. "Careful how tight you tie that!"
"Has to be tight. We don't want you bleeding as soon as we start to walk, do we?"
Annon took a couple of tentative breaths.
"How does it feel?"
"I won't die."
Kurgan chuckled. "Spoken like a true V'ornn."
Annon nodded, accepting the compliment. "We had better get going if we want to make it back home before supper."
"I was serious about what I said before." Kurgan put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "Before we leave let's make a pact. Let's swear the seigggon: we will never speak of this afternoon to anyone. Agreed?"
"Agreed," Annon said. They gripped each other's wrist in the seigggon, then allowed their okummmon to touch. A spark arced briefly between them.
Kurgan rose and helped Annon to his feet.
"What do you make of that bird?" Annon winced as they waded to shore. "I've never heard of one attacking a person."
Kurgan jerked his head in the direction of the avian corpse. "Well, one thing's for certain: it won't be attacking anything else."
Annon picked his way along the shoreline until he was standing over the gyreagle. With some difficulty he squatted down. "You're right," he said. "Look here, it's lost one of its talons. And there's fresh blood at the stump."
"To the victor go the spoils," Kurgan said. "Part of that damned bird is inside you now."
Annon stood. He was silent a long time. "To N'Luuura with it." he growled. Then he turned and retraced his steps back to where his friend waited for him.
"That's right" Kurgan threw his head back and laughed. "To N'Luuura with it!"
Together, they went slowly up the creek bank. The sun looked compressed in the thicker atmosphere closer to the horizon. After the cool water, the afternoon seemed hot and sticky and still. Gimnopedes twittered and flitted as they neared the first stand of sysal, but both boys had had their fill of the hunt for one day.
"So you think my father's law against raping Kundalan females is stupid, eh?" Annon said.
"Of course it's stupid. They're nothing more than soulless animals, right? Why shouldn't we take our pleasure from them when and where we please?"
"As stupid as his plans to build Za Hara-at, I suppose."
Kurgan turned his head and spat. "I have heard many V'ornn say that the idea is an abomination." He possessed the watchful eyes of a snow-lynx. Annon knew that he could be every inch the bully that his father was, but he also had the ingenuity of a chь-fox, the small mammal that haunted the middle reaches of the Djenn Marre. "Imagine V'ornn and Kundalan working side by side! Idiotic! It would give the Kundalan the false impression that they are our equals."
"And yet, against all odds, the building is scheduled to begin within weeks." This wasn't the first time Annon had been required to defend the regent's policies, and he knew it would not be the last. But this was Kurgan, his hingatta-mate, his best friend. "You know what I think? I think my father is right. There is more to the Kundalan than we suspect."
"That will be the season!" Kurgan guffawed.
They had reached the trees now, and Annon was obliged to pause. He could not seem to catch a breath without pain flaming through him.
"Shall we take a break?" Kurgan asked.
They sat in silence for a time. Annon was thinking about the Kundalan female. He felt sick at heart. Her beautiful face, that haunted look in her eyes, the expression that had fleetingly passed between them all unspooled in his mind's eye, replaying over and over. He wondered where she had come from, where she was now. He hoped she had not run into a Khagggun pack.
He looked over at Kurgan, who was sharpening one of his bolt points. "You know, if I was Gyrgon, I probably wouldn't need this bandage. I'd already have found a way to heal the wound."
"The Gyrgon are technomages," Kurgan said, "not sorcerers."
"But aren't they always trying to beat death? I mean, there's that saying of theirs: 'The mystery of death can only be solved by the mastery of life.'"
"And you think you know what that means?"
"The Gyrgon are Great Caste just like us, only they have been genetically altered before birth, their genes realigned, their flesh and blood and bone embedded with tertium and germanium circuits. They're all hooked into one gigantic biomatrix, that's why they call themselves the Comradeship."
Kurgan laughed. "Stories, lies, half-truths. Don't kid yourself, my friend, no one knows a thing about the Gyrgon. Not that I wouldn't give a couple of fingers to find out what they're up to. They're far too secretive. I bet they're a complete mystery even to your father, and he's the only one I know of who actually has any direct contact with them. All they do is experiment in their laboratories all day. And what if you're right?" He shuddered. "Do you really want to share your thoughts with every other member of your caste? Ugh!"
Together, they rose and headed off. As they reached the first straggle of sysal trees, Kurgan picked up the pace. "What are they working on, that's what I want to know? Some grand plan, but it's all a big mystery. If I were regent, I'd find some way to make the Gyrgon tell me their secrets."
"You know," Annon said, "if there were no castes, the Gyrgon wouldn't have the power, and we could all share their secrets."
Kurgan grunted. "More Kundalan subversion from your nanny." He picked up his two-brace of gimnopedes, waited while Annon retrieved his longbow and yanked his string of ice-hares off a tree branch. "Castes are synonymous with civilization. They create order out of chaos. Just imagine if the Khagggun could become Bashkir. What would military men know of the fine art of being a merchant-banker? Or if the Mesagggun wanted to become Khagggun. What do engineers know of waging war? Or if Genomatekks, our physicians, wanted to be Bashkir? It's ridiculous! And, to take the most extreme example of all, what if the Tuskugggun wanted to become Gyrgon? I mean, women making the laws for all V'ornn? It's unthinkable! What do women know of laws, governing—or of business, for that matter? They bear children, they rear them, help educate them. This is what they were made for."
"They also compose our music, create our artwork, our books. They make the clothes—even forge the armor the Khagggun wear."
"I'll grant you all that, Annon. But so what? When was the last time you listened to music or looked at a piece of art?" Two nights ago, Annon thought, when Giyan took me to her workroom when I could not fall asleep. I saw the sculptures she creates when she is not tending to me or to my father. "Can you picture a woman wearing the armor she made?" Kurgan continued. "I, myself, would laugh myself into a stupor at such a ridiculous sight!"
"But see, here's the thing," he continued, as they made their way through the thick copse of sysal trees. "You're looking at the problem from the wrong end of the telescope. Being realistic, the only way to find out their secrets is to gain control of the Gyrgon themselves."
"Oh, really? And how would you go about doing that?"
"I have no idea. But there's got to be a way."
When Annon laughed his rib cage ached, but that scarcely stopped him. "That so? Send me a message in about three hundred years when you've figured it out."
Laughing together, the two friends disappeared into the dense western quadrant of the forest, heading back to Axis Tyr.
The city, white-pepper residences, cinnamon palaces, cinnabar warehouses, shops and ateliers of brilliantly colored floating cloth canopies, was laid out in both a logical and an artistic fashion fanning northward from the Sea of Blood. Gripped now in a mighty mailed fist crackling with ion energy. Music stilled, theaters dark and empty, festivals banned—a culture snuffed out like a flame. Walled, densely populated, churning, chained, and bound. The erosion from Kundalan to V'ornn wearing down Axis Tyr like a magnificent edifice half-buried in a hail of sand.
"Annon, your father wants you to spend the evening with him at the palace," Giyan said, as soon as the boys came through the door. It was as if she had been waiting anxiously for his return. Not that he noticed.