Title:A Song of Stone
Author(s): Iain M. Banks
Publisher(s): Abacus
Pages: 280
Year: 1998
Format:EPUB
Language: English
**************************************************************************************
Download
The random article:
It was, I think, for my transgression. Between gun dog and child, I become briefly a pack animal, ordered to carry the heavy, warm sacks of dead birds and a broken gun on our way back home by the same steep route.
Behind me, the lieutenant talks on, regaling you with her life; another broken home. A mean start in less troubled times, modest victories at school and sport building a dawning self esteem and leading to a slow and self determined struggle up from the rest of the herd. There followed a stint at some college then ~ with the coy hint of a disappointment in love the decision to enlist, some time before the onset of the present hostilities.
Tiresomely, then, one of those for whom such troubles are in truth a liberation, providing the making of the individual character within the theatre of this greater destruction; a contrarily minor eddy of creation in these fiercely corrosive times. Our lieutenant’s is a spirit freed by the re ordering implicit in this general disorder; a beneficiary, so far, of the conflict. That which has dragged us down has buoyed her up, and, in the castle, we meet, mirrored, and perhaps pass.
I might like to hear more of our captor’s story, but seeing my opportunity I drop my precious cargo. On the first bridge across the stream I slip and clutch at the damply greasy rail, letting the bulky sacks drop from me, with the gun, so all the lieutenant’s catch goes flying down to the rapids far below. The gun just disappears without a fuss, its own splash lost within the endless foaming rush of that steep stream. The sacks fall more slowly, hit a swirling pool and let forth their dead. The birds sail out, the foaming water fills with feather, lead and flesh, and the wet birds water skinnied even further float and circle and peel off and race away in that airy torrent.
I rise slowly, wiping green slime from my hands. The lieutenant comes up to me, grim faced. She glances over the side of the bridge at the noisy, eddying surge below, as all her booty speeds away. $prime;That was careless, Abel,’ she tells me through lips like a grey pink wound and teeth which seem disinclined to part.
$prime;Perhaps I chose the wrong shoes,’ I offer, apologetic. She looks down at my brown brogues; reasonably rustic in aspect but with poor soles for such terrain.
$prime;Perhaps,’ she says. I do believe I am frightened of her, just for this moment. I could believe that she is capable of blowing a hole in me with her shotgun, or putting a bullet from her pistol through my head, or even just having me thrown over this wooden parapet by her men. Instead she takes one last glance at where the birds have disappeared within the rocky race and, in that cataract losing sight of them, has the soldiers load me with the remaining guns. $prime;I really wouldn’t lose those, Abel,’ she says, sounding almost sad. $prime;Really.’ She turns away. $prime;Watch our friend carefully,’ she tells the man behind me. $prime;We don’t want him slipping again. That would be too terrible. Eh, my lady?’ she asks as she passes you. We tramp on, and leave the river’s roar buried in its chasm.
I am closed within a high and unused room, a silted backwater in the east tower’s highest floor. Cluttered, it is, jumbled with all the froth of our living, like our fond remembered attic. The small windows are mostly smashed, their sills spattered with bird droppings. The fractured panes let in chill rain; I stuff some old curtains into the spaces. In the cold grate I light a fitful fire from bound, collected volumes of old and yellow paged magazines, some of them dealing with hunting and other rural matters; it seems appropriate.
This theme continues. I cannot believe the good lieutenant memorised the castle’s every room on one tour round, so I conclude it is just luck that she has me confined here, with these old journal collections, and in glass cases trophies of previous hunts. Animals, birds and fish stare out, glassy eyed and stiffly posed, like awkward ancestors in paintings. The cases are locked; I look for keys in vain, so force a few of these glass sarcophagi, splintering the wood and fracturing the glass.
Regarding the stuffed fowl, the gutted fish, the glass eyed fox and hare, I tap their hard, dead eyes, sniff their dustless plumage and stroke their strange dry skins. Feathers and scales stay with my hand. I hold them up to the candelight, trying to see their link, the time slow change from sea to air, from scale to feather, tail to tail, iridescence to iridescence that these ends unravel back to, expressing evolution’s glacial, erratic continuity. The scale, so small, stays too great, however, and remains unseen.
- Рубрика: Фантастика
- Перейти на Главную
- Похожие книги:
- Королевская кровь — Эллен Шрайбер
- Клуб бессмертных — Эллен Шрайбер
- Танец смерти — Эллен Шрайбер
- Вампирвилль — Эллен Шрайбер
- Темный рыцарь — Эллен Шрайбер
- Поцелуй вампира. Начало — Эллен Шрайбер
- Карантин — Малицкий Сергей
- Камешек в жерновах — Малицкий Сергей
- Вакансия — Малицкий Сергей
- Цена крови — Таня Хафф
- След крови — Таня Хафф
- Проклятие крови — Таня Хафф
- Дым и тени — Таня Хафф
- Дым и пепел — Таня Хафф
- Дым и зеркала — Таня Хафф
- Долг Крови — Таня Хафф
- Договор крови — Таня Хафф
- Холодная ночь — Клаудия Грэй
- Звездная ночь — Клаудия Грэй
- Вечная ночь — Клаудия Грэй