"Cook, Glen - Darkwar 01 - Doomstalker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

"Marika."

She glanced back. Kublin looked disturbed, but not in the usual way. "What?"

"There's something in there."

Marika waited for an explanation. She did not mock. Sometimes he could tell things that he could not see. As could she . . . He quivered. She looked inside for what she felt. But she could not find it.

She did feel a presence. It had nothing to do with the cave. "Sit down," she said softly.

"Why?"

"Because I want to get lower, so I can look through the brush. Somebody is watching. I don't want them to know we know they're there."

He did as she asked. He trusted her. She watched over him.

"It's Pohsit," Marika said, now recalling a repeated unconscious sense of being observed. The feeling had left her more wary than she realized. "She's following us again."

Kublin's immediate response was that of any pup. "We can outrun her. She's so old."

"Then she'd know we'd seen her." Marika sat there awhile, trying to reason out why the sagan followed them. It had to be cruel work for one as old as she. Nothing rational came to mind. "Let's just pretend she isn't there. Come on."

They had taken four steps when Kublin snagged her paw. "There is something in there, Marika."

Again Marika tried to feel it. This sense she had, which had betrayed Pohsit to her, was not reliable. Or perhaps it depended too much upon expectation. She expected a large animal, a direct physical danger. She sensed nothing of the sort. "I don't feel anything."

Kublin made a soft sound of exasperation. Usually it was the other way around, Marika trying to explain something sensed while he remained blind to it.

Why did Pohsit follow them around? She did not even like them. She was always saying bad things to Dam. Once again Marika tried to see the old meth with that unreliable sense for which she had no name.

Alien thoughts flooded her mind. She gasped, reeled, closed them out. "Kublin!"

Her littermate was staring toward the mouth of the cave, jaw restless. "What?"

"I just . . . " She was not sure what she had done. She had no referents. Nothing like it had happened before. "I think I just heard Pohsit thinking."

"You what?"

"I heard what she was thinking. About us-about me. She's scared of me. She thinks I'm a witch of some kind."

"What are you talking about?"

"I was thinking about Pohsit. Wondering why she's always following us. I reached out like I can sometimes, and all of a sudden I heard her thinking. I was inside her head, Kublin. Or she was inside mine. I'm scared."

Kublin did not seem afraid, which amazed Marika. He asked, "What was she thinking?"

"I told you. She's sure I'm some kind of witch. A devil or something. She was thinking about having tried to get the Wise to . . . to . . . " That entered her conscious mind for the first time.

Pohsit was so frightened that she wanted Marika slain or expelled from the packstead. "Kublin, she wants to kill me. She's looking for evidence that will convince Dam and the Wise." Especially the Wise. They could overrule Skiljan if they were sufficiently determined.