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

had a chance to think why, she had tickets and a visa for Ophel in her possession and was on her way,
with hardly time to inform the local Guildhouse that she wouldn't be needing a bed there after all.
Not until the pressure of the shuttle's lift to orbit eased did self-doubt assail her. Was this, then,
the way such tracking and finding was done-following half-understood promptings and faint glimpses out
of the corner of the mind's eye, with no reason to do so that she could in honesty give?
Propelled forward as much by the fact that she'd already paid for her tickets as by any deep
conviction that what she did was likely to bear fruit, she went on through with the transfer. Once on
board the packet ship, she checked into her small cabin, strapped in, and went to sleep.
We'll see what happens, she thought as the dreams claimed her. If Ophel isn't where the
universe wants me to be, I can always try again for Maraghai from there.

Jens Metadi-Jessan D'Rosselin hummed the Fifth Mixolydian Etude under his breath as he left the
unroofed summer porch behind the house in the woods. Getting his younger cousins-Kei, Dortan, and
'Rada-the-brat-to finish their dinner and clean up after the meal hadn't been particularly difficult.
"If you don't eat what's put out here for you and let Aunt Llann have her talk with Gentlesir
Taleion without being interrupted," he'd told them, "then I won't show you the right way to kill a rufstaffa
with a table knife."
That had calmed them in a heartbeat, and Faral had obligingly played the role of the rufstaffa
when the time came for Jens to fulfill his part of the bargain. After that, with the dishes and the leftovers
cleared away, the back-porch dinner had ended with wrestling and horseplay until all the parties
concerned were exhausted enough to retire quietly to bed- even 'Rada-the-brat, whom Jens suspected
on occasion of not sleeping at all, but merely withdrawing to plot mischief in private.
"And now," Faral said after his younger sibs had departed, "you can tell me what's going on with
our visitor."
"I can? Why me?"
"You're the one who met him down on the trail." Faral leaned against the porch railing. "And
whatever he's here for, I'll bet we're mixed up in it somehowтАж Mamma wouldn't have sent us off to have
our dinner with the sibs if she wasn't worried."
"She isn't worried," Jens said. "She wants us out of the way so that she and this Taleion person
can talk about Circle business at the dinner table without warping our young and impressionable minds in
the process."
His cousin laughed. "Too late for that. You've been warped ever since Aunt Bee took you to
Khesat to meet the relatives and the relatives sent you back here in disgrace."
"That," said Jens, "was because I wasn't warped enough."
"Sure, it wasтАж I wish I'd been there to see it."
Faral sounded a bit wistful. He'd never been off Maraghai, since Jens's Khesatan relatives had
made it plain that the extended family didn't extend to foster-siblings.
Jens had thought at first that the Jessani were trying to cast a slur on Llannat Hyfid and Ari
Rosselin-Metadi-as if anybody could!-but then he'd figured out that his own parents were the actual
target of their spite. It was his reaction to that insight, as much as anything else, that had finally disgraced
him enough to succeed in making them send him home.
"Someday," said Jens, "I'll have to see if anyone on Khesat took pictures. As for Gentlesir
Taleion-if his errand has anything to do with us, we'll hear about it in the morning." He yawned. "In the
meantime, I'm for bed. Your sibs are an exhausting lot."
"Night, then."
"Night."
Jens yawned again and padded off to his room-and, he hoped, a good night's sleep. The back
hallways of the house were dimly lit by low-power glows, and untroubled by any but the usual nighttime
noises. Elsewhere, he knew, his aunt and uncle were still conferring with their visitor from the other side
of the Gap Between.