"Liz Williams - Debatable Lands" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Liz)

seen.

That night, he dreamed he was back in the marshes. It was afternoon,
the day glowing, but when he looked up he could see the stars and he knew
that the glow was not coming from the sun. The beast came out of the light,
walking on two legs like a man, but the rest of its legs were coiled around it,
drifting like seaweed in the shining air. Curlew reached for the iron spear
but it was no longer by his side and anyway, there was no need. His fear
had drained into the light, leaving him empty and calm.

“What are you?” he said, and the beast replied with that belling cry
that seemed to be made of words. He had the sudden glimpse of a great
plain, grey and shivering with grasses, mountains in the distance that were
the color of old ale. Home, but not his. Then it was gone and the beast and
the dream with it.

Next morning, nine warriors rode to the marsh, leaving their
rough-coated ponies restless at the water’s edge. Curlew went with them,
but did not follow them into the reeds. Instead, he waited, standing
alongside the oak-man as the sun came up through the alder groves.

“That boy, the one they call Lamb,” the oak-man said. “You know
him?”

Curlew nodded. “I’ve seen him at the court.”
 “He is older than he looks. Lamb is his child-name; he has not yet
seen his totem.”

“Perhaps this will be it,” Curlew said, with an idleness that he did not
feel, for suddenly the back of his neck prickled like nettle-sting. The
oak-man gave him a sharp glance.

“I will be surprised if he comes back.”

“Do you know of this thing, this quest beast?” Curlew asked, echoing
the previous day.

“No. I told you truth,” the oak-man said. “But I have heard of things like
the thing you have seen. They come after dark stars; war comes in their
wake, and famine. They love the blood of men. There were a lot of things
like that, in the wake of the great comet that swept the land a hundred years
ago, bringing iron cold, disease. This is why I will be surprised if Lamb
comes back on his own two feet.”

“I will be sorry,” Curlew murmured.

“If Lamb dies, it could lead to war.”

“Why so? Is he a warlord’s son?”