Читать книгу The Serpent Bride - Sara Douglass - Страница 17

Lake Juit, as old as the land itself, lay still and quiet in the dawn. The sun had barely risen, and broad, rosy horizontal shafts of soft light illuminated the gently rippling expanse of the lake, and set the deep reed beds surrounding the lake into deep mauve-pocked shadow.

A man poled a punt out of the reed beds.

He was very tall, broad-shouldered and handsomely muscled, with a head of magnificent black tightly-braided hair that hung in a great sweep to a point mid-way down his back. He wore a white linen hipwrap, its simplicity a foil to the magnificent collar of pure gold and bejewelled links that draped over his shoulders and partway down his chest and back.

He was Isaiah, Tyrant of Isembaard, and the lake was surrounded by ten thousand of his spearmen, while on the ramshackle wooden pier from where he’d set out waited his court maniac, the elusively insane (but remarkably useful) Ba’al’uz.

Ba’al’uz narrowed his eyes thoughtfully as he watched his tyrant. One did not expect one’s normally completely predictable tyrant to suddenly decamp from his palace at Aqhat, move ten thousand men and his maniac down to this humid and pest-ridden lake, saying nothing about his motives, and then get everyone up well before dawn to watch their tyrant set off by himself in a punt.

Ba’al’uz had no idea what Isaiah was about, and he did not like that at all.

Isaiah poled the punt slowly and steadily forward. He did not head out into the centre of the shallow lake, but kept close to the reed beds. Occasionally he smiled very slightly, as here and there a frog peeked out from behind the reeds.

As Isaiah got deeper into the lake, he watched the dawn light carefully, waiting for the precise moment.

He poled rhythmically, using the regular movements of his arms and body to concentrate on the matter at hand. What he was about to do was so dangerous that if he allowed himself to think about it he knew he would turn the punt back to the wharf and the watching Ba’al’uz.

But Isaiah could not afford to do that. He needed to concentrate —

At one with the water.

— and he needed to focus —

On the Song of the Frogs.

— and he needed to draw on all the power he contained within his body —

And allow it to ripple, to wash, and to run with the tide.

— and he needed today to be successful, because without that which he’d come for, Isaiah knew the task of the Lord of Elcho Falling would be nigh to impossible, and the land itself would fail.

Besides, he knew this would annoy Ba’al’uz, and annoying Ba’al’uz always brightened Isaiah’s day.

Above all, Isaiah was here because he needed something from the lake very, very badly, and he did not think the world would survive if he did not get that for which he’d come.

The sun was a little higher now, and nerves fluttered in Isaiah’s belly, threatening to break his concentration. His hands tightened fractionally on the pole, and he forced himself to focus.

The air, clear a few minutes ago, was now damp with mist seeping out from the reed banks.

Frogs began to sing, a low, sweet melody, and one or two of them hopped onto the prow of the punt.

Isaiah closed his eyes briefly, overcome with the sweetness of their song.

Then, hands tightened once more, eyes opening, he drew down on the deep well of power within himself.

Isaiah spoke the words that were needed, and the moment the last one dropped from his mouth the air about the entire lake exploded in sound and movement as millions of pink- and scarlet-hued juit birds rose screaming into the dawn light.

On the wharf, Ba’al’uz crouched down, arms over his head, and shrieked together with the birds.

About the lake, ten thousand men thrust their spears into the air, and screamed as one with Ba’al’uz.

On the lake, Isaiah poled into the reed banks, into magic and mystery, and into the strange borderland between worlds. Then, while the air still rang with the harsh cries of bird and man, as the frogs screamed, and as the sun suddenly topped the horizon and flooded the lake and reed beds with light, Isaiah dropped the pole, reached down into the water, and lifted a struggling, naked man into the punt.