Читать книгу The Face of Heaven - Brian Stableford - Страница 5

Chapter 1

The stars stood still in the sky, as they always had, as they always would. They shone with a steady pearl-white light. Each one was perfectly round. They were not evenly distributed in the sky. They clustered above the land that was called Shairn, and they grew hardly less dense towards the east, where the lands of the Men Without Souls stretched away from Cudal Canal farther than the eye could see from Amalek Height. To the north of Shairn was the Swithering Waste, and in those skies the stars were set farther apart, and farther still as one went west of north, skirting the great wall of iron. Ultimately, in the far west of north, were the blacklands, where no stars shone at all except for a single line which curved away into the darkness: a road of stars. No one followed the road of stars, not because no one was curious as to where it might lead and why, but because the blacklands sheltered creatures which preferred to stay away from the lightlands and from men of all kinds, and the men were afraid of them.

To the west and southwest of Shairn the stars shone brightly enough, but those were bad hills, stained with poison and incurable disease. There were nomad paths—allegedly safe paths—across the hills, but only the Cuchumanates dared use them unless need forced fugitives to take the risk. To the south itself was more good land—the land called Dimoom by the Children of the Voice.

Chemec was crouched on top of the hill called Clauster Ridge, sheltering beneath the umbrella of a sourcap from the light of the stars. Clauster Ridge was by no means the impressive peak that Amalek Height was, but it brought Chemec far too close to the stars for him to feel truly comfortable. He felt that, as he watched the Livider Marches which stood unused between the ridge and Cudal Canal, so the stars kept watch on him. But someone had to keep watch—someone always had to keep watch in these troubled times. Old Man Yami was getting old, and the young Ermold across the canal was aching for a fight and a chance to take a few skulls. For any reason, or for no reason at all.

In fact, with the sourcaps all around him, Chemec could hardly watch at all, but he took a liberal interpretation of his duty, and he had every faith in his nose. The fashion these days was to train eyes rather than noses, but Chemec could never really come round to the idea of counting the stars his friends in the great war of life. They were, at best, neutral. Whereas odors....

He was also listening for movements in the fields of asci which carpeted the gentler slope of the ridge behind him. If anything edible went by, he might as well catch it, and he definitely did not want to be caught unawares by one of his own people. The wind—a gentle enough wind—blew direct from Walgo. It always had and it always would.

When he caught the signal, it came sharp upon the wind, like a tiny stab in his sinuses. It was a cold smell, and a weird smell. A smell that was distinctly alien. It came to him with such a shock that he imagined a shadow rushing on him from the east, and he leapt to his feet, swinging his stone axe out of the cradle of his arms and into readiness for attack. But the shadow was nothing.

He moved with a strange sideways shuffle, something like a crab. One of his legs was bent, the bone having been broken when he was very young. He had learned to live with the deformity. He had the reputation of being a lucky man. When he wanted to move quickly he scuttled like a spider, and one could never quite judge his direction while his head was bobbing and his shoulders weaving.

The sharp smell was a liar. Nothing was close at hand. Whatever it was, it was out of sight. But it was coming, slowly. Chemec waited, wondering and worrying, ready to stay or run as the event might demand.

Something new, to him, meant something terrible.