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

a son or near-son of his own. Pain was the most potent of
mnemonics; pain had awakened him to record the rise and fall
and each liquid vowel; pain, and the intensity of pain, had
prepared his mind and spirit to remember perfectly.
'All animals remember ...' Soli sang out, and his voice began
to tremble and crack. 'All animals remember the first morning
of the world.' He stopped suddenly, rubbing the back of his
neck. His face had fallen as grey as old seal grease. He
licked his lips and continued with difficulty. After a while,
he came to the first of the Twelve Riddles, chanting: 'How do
you capture a beautiful bird without killing its spirit?'
Danlo waited for Soli to supply the answer in the second
line of the couplet, but Soli could not speak. He groaned and
clutched at his stomach and looked at Danlo.
'Sir, what is wrong?' Danlo asked. He didn't want to speak
because he sensed that the uttering of words would remove him
from the dreamtime. But Soli suddenly heaved over gasping for
breath, and he had to find out what was wrong. Now that he knew
the way, he could make the journey into the dreamtime whenever
he must. 'Sir, here, let me loosen your hood's drawstring – it
is too tight.'
It was obvious that Soli was gravely ill. Sweat beaded on his
forehead, and his nose was bleeding. His eyes were the eyes of
a whale caught unexpectedly in the freezing
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ice of the sea. Danlo stood up, and the rush of blood into his
cut membrum was agony. He helped Soli lie down on the bloody
platform where he had so recently surrendered up his childhood
flesh. The Alaloi are not an ironic people, but he appreciated
the deep irony of their reversed positions.
'Sir, are you all right?'
'No,' Soli gasped, 'never ... again,' He regained his wind,
and spoke slowly. 'Listen, Danlo, you must know. At a boy's
passage, one of the men must be the Beast. The Beast ... the
mask.'
With difficulty he bent over and stuck his hand into the
leather bag. He removed a mask made of glued-together bones,
fur, teeth and feathers. He rattled the mask in front of Danlo.
'But it is sometimes hard to become the Beast,' Soli said.
'If the boy moves or cries out ... then he must be slain. It
is hard to become the Beast by wearing the mask alone. Help is
needed. For some men, help. On the afternoon before the boy's
passage, the liver of the jewfish must be eaten. The liver
gives terrible vision, terrible power. But it is dangerous, to
eat it. Sometimes the power is too great. It consumes.'
Danlo took Soli's hand; even though he himself was cold and
half-naked, with only a shagshay skin draped loosely across
his shoulders, Soli's hand felt colder still. 'What can I do?
Is there no cure? Should I make some blood-tea to give you
strength?'