"Anthony, Piers - Xanth 06 - Night Mare" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

notice. After more than a century of dream duty, during
which time she bad earned and held her designated moon
sea, she wasn't ready for anything else.
"You can learn new work. There are daydreams-"
"Daydreams!" she repeated with contempt.
"I believe you have the inclination."
"Inclination?" She was stunned. "I never-"
"You were recently caught and ridden by a client," he
said firmly. "No night mare can be caught unless she tac-

, Night Mare 5

itiy acquiesces."

"But-"

"Why would you accede to being caught by a client?"
The King held up a hand to forestall her protest. "I will tell
you why. You saw, in the memory of another client long
ago, the image of a rainbow. You were fascinated by this
vision; you wanted to see the reality for yourself. But you
knew you could never do that as a night mare, for the
rainbow shuns the night. It is a phenomenon of day."

"Yes ..." she agreed, realizing it was true. The vision
of the multicolored rainbow had haunted her for years.
But no night mare could go abroad by day; the radiation of
the sun caused her kind to fade rapidly. So it had always
been a futile notion, and she had been quite foolish to let it
distract her.

"As it happens, you possess half a soul," the Stallion
continued. "You carried an ogre out of the fringe of the
Void and accepted in payment half the soul of a centaur,
when all you really wanted was the chance to see a rain-
bow. Logic has never been the strong point of females."

She remembered it well. The ogre had wanted to do her
a return favor, but she had not felt free to converse with
him in dreamlet fashion and had been unable to convey her
interest in the rainbow to him otherwise. He had been a
decent sort, for an ogre and for a male. The two concepts
overlapped significantly.

"As it happens," the Dream King continued, "that soul
has further dulled your edge, interfering with your dream
performance. It is difficult to be truly brutal when you
have a soul; that is contrary to the nature of souls."

"But it's only a half soul," Imbri protested. "A mere fil-