Читать онлайн «Foreigner: Book Three of the Quintaglio Ascension»

Others

Captain — sailor

Jawn — teacher

Morb — security chief

Taksan — eggling

Prologue

Historically, there have been three great blows to the Quintaglio ego.

First, Afsan delivered the cosmological blow by taking God out of our skies and moving us from the center of the universe to one of its countless backwaters.

Then, Toroca dealt us the biological blow, showing that we were not divinely created from the hands of God but rather had evolved through natural processes from other animals.

And, finally, Mokleb administered the psychological blow, proving that we were not rational beings acting on lofty principles but are in fact driven by the dark forces that control our subconscious minds.

— Briz-Tolharb, Curator

Museum of Quintaglio Civilization

*1*

Afsan couldn’t see the sun, but he felt its noontime heat beating down. With his left hand he held the harness attached to Gork, his large monitor lizard. They were moving over paving stones, Afsan’s toeclaws making heavy clicks against them, Cork’s footfalls echoing that sound with a softer ticking. Afsan heard metal-rimmed wheels rolling over the roadway, approaching from the right.

Afsan had been blind for twenty kilodays. Det-Yenalb, the Master of the Faith, had pierced Afsan’s eyeballs with a ceremonial obsidian dagger. The priest had rotated the blade in each socket, gouging out the empty sacks.

The city had changed since then. The landquake of kiloday 7110 had destroyed many roads and buildings, and the replacements were often different from the originals. The growth and redevelopment of the city had left their marks, too. Still, Afsan always knew where he was in relation to the Central Square. Even now, having to walk through it made him anxious. But today’s journey would take him nowhere near…

Roots!

Suddenly Afsan felt his middle toeclaw catch on something — a loose paving stone? — and he found himself pitching forward, his tail lifting off the ground.

Gork let out a loud hiss as Afsan, desperately trying to right himself, yanked hard on the lizard’s harness.