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

"Company at dinner, I think," said Faral. "I spotted somebody down on the valley trail."
 "Let's have a look."
Jens sat up and joined Faral near the edge of the bluff. The cousins were much of an age, but
otherwise resembled each other very little. Faral Hyfid-Metadi was dark-skinned, stocky, and heavily
muscled, with sleek, close-trimmed black hair. A polished animal claw almost a handspan long hung from
a leather cord around his neck. Jens, by contrast, was lean and fair-skinned, gone a pale biscuit golden
from the sun. His yellow hair, tied back with a scrap of rough twine, hung in a loose tail between his
shoulder blades. Like Faral, he wore boots and trousers, but-on this day in midsummer-no shirt.
From up on Graksha's Bluff, the valley trail looked like a darker line drawn against a background
of green. Now and again, a flash of sunlight reflecting off clear water marked where the stream at the
bottom of the valley ran parallel to the trail for a short distance before diverging again into the trees. A
group of black specks swirled upward from the tree-tops far away.
"Let me have a look," Jens said, and Faral passed him a pair of binoculars.
He watched the trail below for some time. "You're right," he said finally. "Something sure
disturbed all the rattlewings along that stretch."
"Something on the ground," Faral said, "and coming this way at a walking pace. Offworlder,
maybe."
"Maybe," agreed Jens. The local fauna wouldn't disturb the noisy fliers, and none of the
neighbors-in the generous High Ridges sense of the word-would bother walking the valley trail. Most of
them lived far enough away to make taking an aircar more practical; the few who lived closer came and
went by hidden deep-woods tracks. Even somebody from elsewhere on planet would have known to
rent a tree-skimmer in Ernalghan. "I wonder who it is."
"Somebody who didn't send word ahead, that's who." Faral sounded disapproving.
"That lets out most of the people we know." Jens considered the possibilities for a moment.
"Maybe it's somebody who doesn't like talking on the public links."
"What kind of person is that?"
"A private one, at a guess. One of Father's relatives, maybe, if they wanted to be rude."
"What for?" Faral asked. "Mamma never notices-and Aunt Bee would give them hell if she ever
found out. Not even a Khesatan would go through all that trouble for nothing."
"You don't know 'em, coz. There's one or two in the crowd who'd slit their own noses if they
thought they could get at Father that way." Jens looked down again at the solitary figure on the trail
below. "But you've got a point. I can't imagine any of them going so far as to hoof it all the way uphill
from Ernalghan."
*If it's a blood feud,* cut in a third voice, *do I get to help out?*
The speaker was a young Selvauran female whose scaly hide was decorated in whorls of red and
blue body enamel. She scrambled up onto the bluff and unslung a bulging backpack from her shoulders.
Chakallakak ngha-Chakallakak- known as Chaka for short-stood over a head taller than Jens, which
put her at medium height for one of the Forest Lords, and her scales under the body paint were a mottled
bluish green. She set down the backpack and joined the two young men at the edge of the bluff.
"If I ever get in a blood feud," Jens promised her, "you'll be the first to know."
Faral, meanwhile, was eyeing the patterns in Chaka's body paint. *You get thrown out?*
Chaka grinned-courteously, with no teeth showing-and said, *Finally. I thought they'd never get
around to it.*
"We know how you feel," said Jens. "The elders haven't decided what they're going to do with
Faral yet, and it's been almost a year."
*Do like I did,* Chaka advised. *Pack your bag yourself and leave it sitting in the middle of the
floor until they get tired of walking around it and take the hint.*
Faral scowled. *I mightтАж I've tried everything else. Any idea where you're going to go?*
*Away somewhere. There's no good fighting anyplace, worse luck.*
"Don't let Aunt Llann hear you talking like that," said Jens. "She already thinks you're a bad