"Anthony, Piers - Adept - 02 - Blue Adept" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

After grazing, Neysa came to the edge of the rock and
stood snoozing. Stile mounted her, as she had intended,
and slept on her back. She was warm and safe and smelled
pleasantly equine, and there was hardly a place he would
have preferred to sleepЧunless it were in the arms of the
Lady Blue. That, however, was a privilege he had not yet
earned, and might never earn. The Lady was true to her
real husband. Stile's double, though he was dead, and in no
way did she ever mistake Stile for that other man.




12 Blue Adept

Next morning they were off again. They cantered gently
until noon, when they spied the herd. It was grazing on a
broad slope leading down to an extensive swamp. Beyond
that swamp. Stile remembered, lay the palace of the Ora-
cle, who answered one and only one question for any per-
son, in that person's life. The Oracle had advised Stile to
"Know thyself"Чand despite the seeming unhelpfulness of
it, that had indeed been the key to his future. For that self
he had come to know was the Blue Adept.

A lookout unicorn blew a trumpet blast, and the mem-
bers of the herd lifted their heads, then trotted together to
form a large semicircle open toward the two approaching
unicorns. Perceiving that formidable array of horns. Stile
was glad he was not approaching as an enemy. Neysa had
drilled him in the use of his rapier by fencing with her
horn, and he had come to appreciate what a deadly
weapon it could be. This was another respect in which
unicorns were fundamentally different from horses: they
were armedЧmore properly, hornedЧand were as likely
to attack as to flee. No sensible tiger, for example, would
attempt to pounce on a unicorn.

They trotted into the open cup of the semicircle. The
Herd Stallion stood in the center, a magnificent specimen
of equine evolution. His body was pearly gray deepening
into black legs, his mane and tail were silver, and his head
golden. He stood some eighteen hands tall, and was splen-
didly muscled. His horn was a glinting, spiral marvel: truly
a shaft to be reckoned with. He played a melodic ac-
cordion chord on it, and the circle closed in behind the
new arrivals.

Stile felt his weight increasing. He saw his arms before
him. His spells of lightness and invisibility were abating,