— why did you come alone?" Without a brother? Without men? ahani asked, and leaned his right hand on the ground in a futile attempt to stop it from spinning wildly. The blades of grass, cold and rustling in the wind, encircled his hand like small snakes.
the beautiful black-eyed companion stared intently at the swaying young man sitting opposite and hesitated with an answer-apparently choosing words.
"My brother Martan is a strong man —" she said at last, and with trembling fingers she brushed a long black lock of hair from her face, which a gust of wind had flung across her face, and hid it behind her ear. "He doesn't take no for an answer.
Ahani leaned on the swaying ground with his other hand, trying to make sense of the girl's words. Her words seemed to have emerged from somewhere far away in the fog and were now echoing in the back of her head. Nausea began to rise in waves from his stomach to his throat.
My heart was pounding in my temples, and the grass that was already so close to my eyes began to sway from side to side. The strength left Ahani and no matter how much he tried, gritting his teeth, to hold his weakened hands at once, but still he could not do it — his hands gave way.
He fell to the grass, gasping for air like a fish stranded on a beach, his pupils spinning aimlessly and without stopping, oblivious to everything around him. Except for the far northern hill, on top of which numerous black shadows began to appear one after another.
Ahani's mind was filled with strange and frightening, multicolored visions-dreams. He was immersed in their riot of colors and little understood signs and symbols, it seemed that his dreams were mixed with reality, and it was impossible to separate one from the other. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't put his thoughts together.
All that was left was to try to keep his attention on those pictures that seemed real, although the young man could not even remember who he was or where he was. It seemed that he was not a human being, but just someone's thought that rested on the cosmic waves, surrounded by countless cold and prickly, sparkling stars.
At one point, Ahani had a vision of a large number of dark riders passing by him, black horses snorting horribly and icy steam billowing from their nostrils.
At other times, he would see a large flock of ravens circling above his head in the endless black sky, some higher, some lower and closer to him. They flew close to his face, cawing loudly and gutturally in a long, rolling echo right in his face, opening their beaks wide and revealing the glassy interior of their throats with pulsing red tongues.
The eyes of the ravens sparkled with cold, soulless stars, and some of them flew so close to Ahani's face that they brushed his skin with a slight rustle of coal-black plumage, and fluttered his eyelashes with the cold wind of their flight.
At other times, he dreamed of strange animals that he had never seen and strange places that he had never visited. A dense forest with unusual thin trees, tall and flexible, with trunks of different shades of green, intertwined with strange brown ropes. The forest was full of sounds and movements, rustles and strange cries.
Ahani saw a large snake, bigger than any he had ever seen. Her head was the size of the boy's own. She peered into his eyes with small black pupils, hissing and twisting her thick, long body, and sticking out her sharp and thin tongue.
Then he had a vision of a huge black cat, so big that it was the size of a horse, and it had a wild rage and grace. Snarling in her throat, she slowly approached Ahani, baring a large mouth filled with dagger-sharp teeth. Her eyes were arched to the temples and the pupils glowed with a bright green light.
Then the black riders again. Only now they were walking slowly right through the body of Ahani, who felt as if he was floating in the air, feeling neither hands nor feet. The evil horses bared their snow-white jaws, squinted at the young man with their dark eyes, and lashed their sides with their long tails.
the riders were all sullen and focused. A few of them glanced at the young man, but then they looked away and swam past. They were all tall and broad-shouldered, all with long hair and beards. the warriors were dressed in uniform — many in dark leather jackets with plates of copper sewn on, bandages and light helmets on their heads, almost all with swords and bows, and some with spears.
and then half the sky was flooded with a yellow-red light, and black writhing snakes crawled through this light.
Ahani became aware of the sounds of a woman crying as it became very loud. And then he realized that he had heard it for a long time, even when the sound was subtly born somewhere in the depths of his skull. But then he did not attach any importance to it, like a mosquito's squeak. But the sound grew and grew slowly in my head, until it became a deafening roar.
The beautiful faces of the women floated close to Ahani and they seemed familiar to him. Almost all of them were in strange black-and-white patterns, many of them looked sternly at the young man, some of them stretched out their hands to him, as if begging for something.
Ahani's breath caught and his heart began to pound with a vengeance, threatening to jump out of his chest as he saw both the stern face of his mother and the sad face of his little sister, and then Heaney, who also flashed through his vision, in an instant.
Anhra's tall, slender figure blocked out half the sky.
"Ahani! Honey! Ani! - as an echo echoed in the young man's head.
A huge, broad-shouldered man covered the other half of the sky. He was pale and black-eyed, and Ahani recognized Ankhra's brother, Martan. Both figures floated and writhed in the eyes of the intoxicated youth. The sounds came as if from a distant fog.
The brother and sister exchanged short, barely audible sentences, and Martan's brows drew together, and his eyes shone with determination.
The man's hand rested on the silver hilt of his sword, and the mirrored steel reached up, rustling softly against the scabbard like a prairie viper. anhra spun around in a black cloud of long hair and disappeared from view.
The pale face of the indifferent god Soma-moon was reflected on the smooth blade that swung up in front of the numb guy.