"Briggs, Patricia - Sianim 2 - Steal the Dragon.text" - читать интересную книгу автора (Briggs Patricia)

Rialla dreamed that night of a foreign land inhabited by people who looked like
the strange slave girl. They spoke a language that she had never heard before, but
understood in a way that her empathic abilities had once allowed her. It was a
nightmarish dream with feverlike images that randomly appeared and disappeared
without warning.

She awoke in a cold sweat with a screaming pain in her chest. Leaping quickly
off the bunk, she took a step toward the strange girl's bed, but it was too late.

From somewhere the other slave had found an eating knife that she'd used to
stab herself in the chest. Rialla gasped harshly with the pain of the slave's wound,
feeling as if something had torn through the barrier that had blocked her abilities for
more than a decade. The dull knife's work had been made even more painful
because the girl didn't know where to stab herself. Still, her amateurish attempt
worked after a fashion. Even as Rialla watched, the girl took a last breath and
smiled.

Rialla looked at the body of the girl that she now knew almost as intimately as
she knew herself. The young slave had been an empath strong enough to project her
fears past Rialla's mental scars and into her dreams.

Rialla knew the slave's name and that she was fifteen summers old. She knew that
somewhere in a foreign land the girl's family thought that she was serving the godsЧ
a position of highest honor. They had let her go with sadness, but she had gone
gladly as the servant of Altis had requested.

Rialla could feel the echoes of the girl's horror and disgust when she found out
what her duties were going to be. She could tell without looking that the girl's back
would be covered with fresh whip marks and that the inside of her thighs were
bruised badly enough that it would show even on her dark skin.

Rialla tightened her jaw and carefully stepped around the blood that was pooling
on the floor. A slave avoided attracting unpleasant attention. By the time the body
was discovered, there would be no slave left in the quarters and none would admit
sleeping there last nightЧbut only the knowledge that the slave trainer would


probably be sleeping allowed Rialla to start up the stairs that led to the main part of
the keep.

She entered Laeth's sleeping chamber quietly, without waking him. She sat on the
hard-sprung sofa near the bed and stared into the darkness, waiting for the dawn.

CHAPTER THREE


"I thought that you were going to sleep in the slaves' quarters last night." Laeth
spoke softly, but Rialla jumped anyway.

She hadn't been thinking, just staring into the shadows in the corner of the room;