The Demon King. Cinda Williams Chima
Читать онлайн.| Название | The Demon King |
|---|---|
| Автор произведения | Cinda Williams Chima |
| Жанр | Эзотерика |
| Серия | |
| Издательство | Эзотерика |
| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 9780007353248 |
The Demon King
Cinda Williams Chima
For my father, Franklin Earl Williams
Table of Contents
Chapter Two Unintended Consequences
Chapter Four A Dance Of Suitors
Chapter Seven In The Glass Garden
Chapter Eight Lessons To Be Learned
Chapter Twelve Bread And Roses
Chapter Fourteen On The Wrong Side Of The Law
Chapter Fifteen Strange Bedfellows
Chapter Sixteen Demons In The Street
Chapter Seventeen Party Warfare
Chapter Eighteen On The Borderland
Chapter Twenty-One Blood And Roses
Chapter Twenty-Two Desperate Measures
Chapter Twenty-Three Name Day 2
Chapter Twenty-Four Unholy Ceremony
Chapter Twenty-Five The End Of Days
Chapter Twenty-Six Secrets Revealed
Han Alister squatted next to the steaming mud spring, praying that the thermal crust would hold his weight. He’d tied a bandana over his mouth and nose, but his eyes still stung and teared from the sulfur fumes that boiled upward from the bubbling ooze. He extended his digging stick toward a patch of plants with bilious green flowers at the edge of the spring. Sliding the tip under the clump, he pried it from the mud and lifted it free, dropping it into the deerskin bag that hung from his shoulder. Then, placing his feet carefully, he stood and retreated to solid ground.
He was nearly there when one foot broke through the fragile surface, sending him calf-deep into the gray, sticky, superheated mud.
“Hanalea’s bloody bones!” he yelped, flinging himself backward and hoping he didn’t land flat on his back in another mudpot. Or worse, in one of the blue water springs that would boil the flesh from his bones in minutes.
Fortunately, he landed on solid earth amid the lodgepole pines, the breath exploding from his body. Han heard Fire Dancer scrambling down the slope behind him, stifling laughter. Dancer gripped Han’s wrists and hauled him to safer ground, leaning back for leverage.
“We’ll change your name, Hunts Alone,” Dancer said, squatting next to Han. Dancer’s tawny face was solemn, the startling blue eyes widely innocent, but the corners of his mouth twitched. “How about ‘Wades in the Mudpot’? ‘Mudpot’ for short?”
Han was not amused. Swearing, he grabbed up a handful of leaves to wipe his boot with. He should have worn his beat-up old moccasins. His knee-high footwear had saved him a bad burn, but the right boot was caked with stinking mud, and he knew he’d hear about it when he got home.
“Those boots were clan made,” his mother would say. “Do you know what they cost?”
It didn’t matter that she hadn’t paid for them in the first place. Dancer’s mother, Willo, had traded them to Han for the rare deathmaster mushroom he’d found the previous spring. Mam hadn’t been happy when he’d brought them home.
“Boots?” Mam had stared at him in disbelief. “Fancy boots? How long will it take you to grow out of those? You couldn’t have asked for money? Grain to fill our bellies? Or firewood or warm blankets for our beds?” She’d advanced on him with the switch she always seemed to have close to hand. Han backed away from her, knowing from experience that a lifetime of hard work had given his mother a powerful arm.
She’d raised welts on his back and shoulders. But he kept the boots.
They were worth far more than what he’d given in trade, and he knew it. Willo had always been generous to Han and Mam and Mari, his sister, because there was no man in the house. Unless you counted Han, and most people didn’t. Even though he was already sixteen and nearly grown.
Dancer brought water from Firehole Spring and sloshed it over Han’s slimed boot. “Why is it that only nasty plants growing