Wandering Spark - Part 49
This morning the father went upstairs on the screw. There were no assistants from the village until noon and Varan walked around in a circle all alone.
Nila stayed on highland. What she does there, how she serves - Varan didn’t know. The life of Gorni in the off-season seemed to him an endless bench in a richly decorated cave. The Gorni sit and look at each other. Sometimes they visit their neighbors, in a crevice decorated with precious stones. Sometimes, but very rarely they receive emissaries from the Emperor; those arrive in winged wagons, closed on all sides from the scorching sun. On faces, both men and women wear veils, in order not to burn the skin, inadvertently looking out from under the stone.
Of course, the lord and his close ones spend time more pleasantly. To their service were ready musicians and storytellers. And they also read books, which are typed in thousands in the Imperial capital...
Trying not to think about Nila, Varan remembered the Imperial magician Ler... how was his name? He seems to be bored here in the Round Fang. In punishment purpose, he was sent to in such wilderness?
Above Varan's head gray clouds suddenly appeared with a quaint pattern. The screw came back. Varan stalled the lever, casually wiped sweat from his forehead and prepared to meet his father.
The basket appeared from the clouds almost above the earth itself. Sometimes at such moments, it was possible to see the edge of the sky - but not today. Screw blades, large and small, shook off the sticking fog. In the clouds, there was a seizure, quickly overgrown with mobile gray clubs. The basket crashed hard into the landing pad, built of sand with rotten algae.
The father's face was very calm and pale, as if from pain.
"Did it hurt you?" Varan asked quickly. Father shook his head.
"What then?"
Father got out of the basket and put out empty barrels. Rainwater drained over his face, marble-white in the frame of his black hood.
"They demand you in upland," his father said.
Blades of the propeller, after the flight, couldn’t calm down at all. Droplets of rain fell from the blades chaotically in different directions.
"If they demand it, then I'll come," Varan said.
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