《The Lion in his Attic 》作者： - Larry Niven【EPUB】

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The Lion in his Attic by Larry Niven Before the quake it had been called Castle Minterl, but almost nobody outside Minterl remembered that. Small events drown in large ones. Atlantis itself, an entire continent, had drowned in the tectonic event that sank this small peninsula. For seventy years the seat of government had been at Beesh, and that place was called Castle Minterl. Outsiders called this drowned place Nihilil's Castle, for its last lord, if they remembered at all. Three and a fraction stories of what had been the south tower still stood above the waves. They bore a third name now: Lion's Attic. The sea was choppy today. Durily squinted against bright sunlight glinting off waves. Nothing of Nihilil's Castle showed beneath the froth. The lovely golden-haired woman ceased peering over the side of the boat. She lifted her eyes to watch the south tower come toward them. She murmured into Karskon's ear, "And that's all that's left." Thone was out of earshot, busy lowering the sails; but he might glance back. The boy was not likely to have seen a lovelier woman in his life, and as far as Thone was concerned, his passengers were seeing this place for the first time. Karskon turned to look at Durily and was relieved. She looked interested, eager, even charmed. But she _sounded_ shaken. "It's all gone! Tapestries and banquet hall and bedrooms and the big ballroom ... the gardens ... all down there with the fishes, and not even merpeople to enjoy them ... that little knob of rock must have been Crown Hill ... Oh, Karskon, I wish you could have seen it." She shuddered, though her face still wore the mask of eager interest. "Maybe the riding-birds survived. Nihilil kept them on the roof." "You couldn't have been more than ... ten? How can you remember so much?" A shrug. "After the Torovan invasion, after we had to get out ... Mother talked incessantly about palace life. I think she got lost in the past. I don't blame her much, considering what the present was like. What she told me and what I saw myself, it's all a little mixed up after so long. I saw the traveling eye, though." "How'd that happen?" "Mother was there when a messenger passed it to the king. She snatched it out of his hand, playfully, you know, and admired it and showed it to me. Maybe she thought he'd give it to her. He got very angry, and he was trying not to show it, and that was even more frightening. We left the palace the next day. Twelve days before the quake." Karskon asked, "What about the other -- ?" But warning pressure from her hand cut him off. Thone had finished rolling up the sail. As the boat thumped against the stone wall he sprang upward, onto what had been a balcony, and moored the bowline fast. A girl in her teens came from within the tower to fasten the stern line for him. She was big as Thone