"David Zindell - Requiem of Homo Sapiens 01 - The Broken God" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zindell David)

Everyone knew, of course, that owls were thallows, just as
they knew that God was a great thallow whose body
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made up the universe. But among the Alaloi elders, from tribe
to tribe, there was a dispute as to whether God was a silver
thallow, or the blue thallow, or the rare white thallow whom
children referred to as the snowy owl.
'Ahira is my doffel,' Danlo said.
'Very well,' Soli said. Then he magically produced a musty
leather bag stuffed with various objects. He rummaged around in
the bag and removed a single, white feather. He gave it to
Danlo, placing it between his folded hands. This is the wing
feather of the white thallow,' he said. The white thallow is
your doffel.'
Danlo looked down at the feather. Its whiteness was as pure
as snow. Along its edge it was rough and fuzzy, the better to
muffle the sound of Ahira's beating wings. Ahira was a
magnificent hunter, and he could swoop down toward his prey in
almost total silence. With a little bone clip that Soli gave
him, Danlo fastened the feather to his long hair. Soli began to
chant, then, and a world whose snowfields were pure and vast
opened before him. Danlo entered into the dreamtime, into the
altjiranga mitjina of his people. The shock of pain and terror
(and his newfound ability to overcome his attachment to terror)
had hurled him into this world. He listened to Soli chant,
listened as the Old Ones began to speak to him. New knowledge
was revealed to him, secrets that only a man may know. Soli
chanted the lines of the Song of Life. The Song was a new way
of structuring reality, a system of symbol and meaning
connecting all things of the world to the great circle of
halla. There are four thousand and ninety-six lines to this
song; Soli chanted quickly, his deep voice rasping out the
music. He told of how the lesser god, Kweitkel, had created the
world from single pieces of rock and ice. He told of Kweitkel's
wedding with Devaki, and of their children, Yelena, Reina and
Manwe. Danlo learned that on the third morning of the world,
wise Ahira had befriended Manwe and taught him to love flying,
hunting, and mating, and the other things of life. Manwe and
Ahira – the Two
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Friends, two of the oldest of the Old Ones. Danlo listened to
the Song of Life, and he joined them in the dreamtime. The
dreamtime was now, the shall-be and always-was. The dreamtime
occurred in the Now-moment, the true time in which the world
was forever created anew.
'Ali wos Ayeye,' Soli chanted. 'God is a great, silver
thallow whose wings touch at the far ends of the universe.'
Danlo listened to the Song of Life's sixty-fourth line. Now,
and over the next three days, he must learn every line exactly
as Soli chanted it because someday he would repeat the Song to