"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Dus 4 - Book of Silence" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

returned, Garth could do as he pleased.
There was nothing else, however, that he felt any need to do, and so he
stayed in Skelleth, alternately wandering aimlessly through the streets and
sitting silently somewhere, glowering at the village, as he now sat in the
King's Inn and glowered at the quiet marketplace.
The Forgotten King was there as well, seated at his usual table. His
presence there, at almost any time the tavern was open for business, was so
reliable that he was thought, of by the villagers not so much as a regular
patron, but as a permanent fixture, like the dark wooden paneling of the walls
or the heavy oaken tables. Day after day the old man sat alone, unmoving and
silent, in the back corner beneath the stairs, wrapped in his ragged yellow
mantle, his face hidden by his tattered cowl.
As he had a hundred times before, Garth turned away from the window and
its view of the square and stared instead at the ancient human.
The King gave no sign that he was aware of the overman's scrutiny, but
Garth had no doubt that he knew he was being watched.
Half a dozen more ordinary humans were in the tavern and they had all
certainly noticed the overman's presence. Most had seen him turn away from the
window as well. Overmen were unmistakable, and highly distinctive in Skelleth.
Garth's size, quite aside from any other details, marked him as something
different from the common run of humanity; he stood almost seven feet in
height, but was so heavily muscled as to look almost squat. He dwarfed the
chair he sat upon and seemed out of proportion with the entire taproom, though
in truth he was of only average size among his own species. His eyes were
large and red, the oversized irises bright blood-red, though his pupils were
as round and black as any human's. Unlike human eyes, no white showed, only
black pupil and red iris.
His hair was dead straight, dead black, coarse, and thick; it reached
his shoulders and no farther, though he had never cut it. Sparse black fur
covered his entire body, save his hands and feet and face. Where no hair or
fur hid it, his skin was leathery brown hide, like that of no other species
that ever existed and certainly unlike anything human.
His face was as beardless as a woman's; overmen grew no facial hair, and
his body fur stopped well short of his chin. His cheeks were sunken by human
standards, normal to his own kind. He had no nose, but two close-set slit
nostrils. To human eyes, a healthy overman bore an unsettling resemblance to a
human skull; the hollow cheeks, missing nose, great red eyes, high forehead,
and hairless jaw all contributed.
Garth's hands, too, were unlike a human's. Rather than having a single
thumb at one side, his hands had both the first and fifth fingers opposable,
making possible acts of manipulation that humans had trouble even imagining.
It was hardly surprising that men and women feared overmen, as they
feared anything that seemed monstrous and strange. Nor was it startling,
therefore, that the other patrons of the King's Inn should glance occasionally
in Garth's direction, wary of what he might do. Garth in particular, of all
overmen, they feared; the possibility of a new berserk rage such as those
brought on by the Sword of Bheleu was always at the back of the villagers'
minds.
When he turned away from the window, therefore, to look across the
taproom at the yellow-clad figure at the back table, what little conversation