The Verdant Passage

Начало книги

The great ziggurat towered above the squalor of the sun-baked city. Each level of the terraced pyramid was finished in glazed brick of a different color: gleaming violet at the base, then indigo, azure, green, yellow, orange, and, finally, blazing scarlet. In the center, an enormous staircase ran straight from base to summit, reaching for two pale yellow moons that hovered overhead in the hazy, dust-laden sky.

Dawn had barely broken, yet thousands of slaves already swarmed over the pyramid. Clad only in breechcloths, they toiled to the rhythm of snapping whips, using a web of ropes and pulleys to hoist crates laden with fired bricks up the sheer walls of each terrace.

At the base of the ziggurat stood a diminutive man wearing a long purple robe. Upon his head was a golden diadem, the crown of the king of Tyr. A wispy fringe of gray hair hung beneath the circlet, but his pate was bald and scaly with age. Deep lines of hatred creased his brow, and a thousand years of bitterness burned in his gaze. Pallid, wrinkled flesh dangled from his jawline. It looked as if the man had been fasting for a hundred years, and for all anyone knew, he had.

Читать дальше →