"Claremont, Chris & Lucas, George - Chronicles of the Shadow War 02 - Shadow Dawn - part02" - читать интересную книгу автора (Claremont Chris)

sponded more quickly than their more settled counterparts. By the
same token, though, they took a fiercer toll.
Especially of one not so practiced as her mentor in shielding herself
from those negative effects.
She heard her name called but couldn't find the wherewithal to re-
spond.
"Good thing we're in a valley," noted Bastian. 'Put her on a moun-
taintop, she'd be mistaken for a star."
"Whuzzat?" she wondered, her attempt to speak coherently fore-
stalled by a yawn so huge it threatened to crack her jawbone loose.
The Daikini matched her from his pallet, move for move.
"You're glowing," Rool said simply.
She wished she could see herself through their eyes but lacked the
strength to cast forth her InSight. It took all her focus to laboriously
make her way along all the connections she'd established between
herself and the Daikini and pull them loose, a task that proved as ex-
haustive as saving him had been. No less necessary, though, if she was
to keep herself safe.
"Elora," Rool called to her again, the wonder in his voice giving
way to thin-edged urgency, "by the living host, what have you done
here?"
A mist had grown off the river while she worked to coat the slopes
and hollows of the town, shrouding the brutal remnants of the mas-
sacre and giving the scene a false seeming of peace and tranquillity.
Cruel realities were blurred and softened, the boundaries erased be-
tween what was and should have been.
"Something moves in that fog," Rool reported.
"I see it. Put up your bow, Rool, they mean us no harm."
"You'll wager your soul on that?"
"It's what I'm here for."
She rose to her feet with a sleek grace that was totally at odds with
a body that moments before felt as though it had been cast from lead.
There were lights visible through the mist, a scattering across the hill-
sides that corresponded with the locations of all the houses. The
structures themselves took on a more coherent form, trampled gar-
dens resumed a vestige of their former beauty.
Figures appeared. Ghosts at first, for that was what they were, dis-
cernible by the way they stirred the mist with their movements. They
were spots of darker gray against the lighter background that gradu-
ally assumed a tangible form.

10

At the sight of them, Rool groaned. For all their bad behavior and