"Debra Doyle & James MacDonald - Mageworlds 05 - The Long Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Debra)

Prologue
Maraghai

The last part of the journey he had to make on foot.
He'd come a long way, beginning in the Eraasi Sector and finishing with a suborbital hop to the
long-range hoverbus that ran upcountry from Ernalghan-or South Landing, as the speakers of Galcenian
Standard would have it. Not even the locals bothered to call the loose collection of warehouses and
transport terminals a city, even though it was the second-largest built-up area on Maraghai. As far as
Mael could determine, nobody actually lived in Ernalghan. They lived outside of it, strung out along the
dozens of obscure roads and narrow footpaths that led away from the hoverbus route into the deep
wilderness that covered so much of this planet. The house he was looking for was a half-day of steady
walking beyond the last stop on the route.
He could have hired an aircar at South Landing-most people did-but he lacked the skill to fly
one. The Eraasi of his childhood had lost the means of making such vehicles in the aftermath of the First
Magewar. Mael could drive a ground-hugging flivver, and he could take a combat-equipped scoutship
into hyperspace and out again, but he'd never picked up the knack of handling the nullgrav-assisted
atmospheric craft that were commonplace on this side of the Gap Between.
He'd come to the opportunity too late, he supposed. He'd been a man full-grown when the
Second War ended and the barriers between the homeworlds and the rest of the galaxy came down at
last. He was more than happy to let the young people-the ones who remembered neither war nor
deprivation-enjoy the new technologies without him.
The walk was long, but not difficult for anyone who had grown up on Eraasi in the days of the
Republic's occupation. Mael wasn't young-his straight black hair had long since gone mostly to iron
grey-but he came of hardy stock, and kept a steady pace on the uphill path. This wasn't the first time he'd
made the journey from Eraasi to the house in the high reaches of Maraghai's southern continent, but it
was the first time in almost twenty years.
The passage had given him less trouble in those earlier days. Twenty years ago-the recent war
notwithstanding- most people on the Republic's side of the Gap Between had never met a genuine
Eraasian. More and more, however, prosperity and ease of travel were giving people the chance, and not
all of them had forgotten the war. Life spans were long on the Adept-worlds; some of the men and
women Mael encountered had memories that went back farther than his own, to the Sack of Ilarna and
the destruction of Entibor.
He might have experienced less trouble, he thought, if he had left behind the short ebony staff that
marked him out as not merely a Mageworlder, but a Mage in truth. But that would have felt disloyal, to
abandon the training of a lifetime-and the legacy of a friend and teacher-just to avoid hostile stares and
bureaucratic entanglements.
And Mael Taleion was, above all things, a loyal man.

Chapter I.
Maraghai; Galcen
┬л^ ┬╗
Up on Graksha's Bluff the air was cool, but by late afternoon the sun had warmed the bare rock
to basking temperature. The wind that sighed and rustled through the trees on the slope below brought
with it a smell of conifers, sharp and resinous, underlaid with the dry granite smell of the mountain itself.
Jens Metadi-Jessan lay on his back half-dozing, his eyes closed against the brightness of the sky
overhead, and heard the faint scrape of boot leather on stone as his cousin Faral shifted position a few
feet away.
"Noisy, coz," he said without opening his eyes. "Too noisy by half."
"Be grateful I decided to wake you up gently, thin-skin."
"Your skin's no thicker than mineтАж what's up?"