"Brown,.Mary.-.Unicorn's.Ring.3.-.1995.-.Master.Of.Many.Treasures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Mary)

Master of Many Treasures
Prologue
It was a difficult journey.
Once in the air he had thought the flight would be easy; after all, he would be
flying higher than all but the largest raptors. The thermals, currents of air,
clouds, and winds provided his highways, hills and vales, and the skyscape freed
him from the pedestrian pace of those on the earth beneath. In that other skin
he had once worn ten or fifteen miles a day had been enough, but now he could
easily manage a hundred in one stint, though he usually cut this by half. After
all, there was no hurry.
No problems with the route, either. Like all of his kind the ways of the air
were etched into his brain as a birthright, a primitive race memory he shared
with birds, fishes and some of the foraging mammals.
At first the wind aided him on his way and the sun shone kindly at dawning and
dusk, for he preferred to return to land during the day for food and rest, ready
for the guidance of the stars at night. The sleeping earth rolled away beneath
his claws, and his reptilian hide adapted to the cold better than he had
expected, not slowing him down with his reduced heartbeat as he had feared.
Rivers glinted in serpentine curves beneath the moon, hills reared jagged teeth,
tiny pinpoints of light showed where those wealthy enough burned candles and
tapers in castle or church, and he grew complacent, so much so that when the
Change came, he wasn't ready for it.
It was that comfortable time between moondown and sunrise and he was cruising at
about a thousand feet, ready to do a long glide down in search of breakfast,
when he suddenly became aware that something was terribly wrong. Although his
wings were beating at the same rate, he was losing height rapidly and feeling
increasingly cold.
Glancing from side to side, he was horrified to see that his wings were almost
transparent, were shrinking; his heartbeats were quickening, his legs stretching
in an agony of tendons and muscles, his clawed forefeet turning into . . .
hands?
Then he remembered.
She had kissed him, not once but three times, and so as part of those accepted
LawsЧLaws that until now he had dismissed as mere myth, though he had jokingly
told her of them as truthЧhe would now have to spend part of his life as a
human, earthbound as any mortal.
All right, all right, so he was going to be a man for a minute, two, five, but
why no sort of warning? He was falling faster and faster, but all he could think
about was there should be some way of delaying the Change, or of controlling itЧ
He landed plump in the middle of a village rubbish dump, all the breath knocked
out of him but otherwise unhurt. For a moment he lay dazed and winded, then the
stench was enough to make him stumble to his feet and stagger drunkenly down the
main (and only) street, shedding leaves, stalks, bones and worse. Halfway down
he realized he was not alone.
A small boy, perhaps five years old, clad only in a tattered shirt, was watching
him with solemn brown eyes in the growing dawnlight. By his side was a smaller
child, perhaps his two- or three-year-old sister, in a smock far too short for
her, thumb stuck firmly in her mouth.
He thrust his hands out in a useless gesture of friendship. "Sorry, children:
didn't mean to scare you. Just passing through. . . ."