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

influence."
Chaka laughed, a breathy hoo-hoo noise. *No, she doesn't. She just thinks that I make your
cousin act more like a Forest Lord than he already is.*
"Comes to the same thing."
"Not really," said Faral. "If Mamma didn't like Chaka, she'd have fixed it so that the wrinkleskins
threw her off-planet as soon as she was blooded."
Privately, Jens doubted that his aunt would ever make a tactical error of that magnitude-but Faral
and Chaka weren't likely to be convinced by his arguments. Older, wiser people than the two of them
had made the mistake of thinking that just because Llannat Hyfid was quiet and kindhearted, she didn't
have a firmness of purpose that the rocks themselves would envy.
When Aunt Llann decides that she wants Faral to go off-planet, he thought, the
wrinkleskins will trip over themselves to send him there. But not before.

Mael Taleion reached the top of the valley trail shortly before sunset. The path that led away
from it into the deeper forest was little more than a narrow track marked by white blazes cut into the
trees on either side.
He quickened his pace-the woods of Maraghai were no place for an off-worlder to linger at
night. The predators on this planet came in sizes to match the towering vegetation that covered the
mountain slopes all around him, and local custom held that none of them should be slain with any weapon
besides the hunter's own strength. Humans, being weak and thin-skinned compared to the dominant
Selvauran population, were allowed the use of knives and clubs in cases of dire emergency.
Mael didn't want to find out the hard way how dire the emergency had to be before a Magelord's
staff counted as a permissible weapon. Simpler by far, he thought, to avoid catching anything's
attention, and let the question go unanswered.
The sinking sun brought a rapid darkness under the great trees. The gloom made the trail harder
and harder to pick out, and the ground was by turns rocky and boggy underfoot. It would not do, Mael
reflected, for him to get lost. He took his staff from his belt and called the pale green witchfire to cling
around it. The blazes on the tree trunks glimmered with its reflected light, but the shadows it cast between
the stones and roots below were inky black, so dark that he couldn't tell whether they were truly
shadows or ankle-twisting potholes. The going got slower.
Then, off to the left, Mael saw another light flickering among the trees.
Is that the place? he wondered. Have I been going in the wrong direction all this time?
It was possible, he knew. He'd never followed this trail by night before. If he'd mistaken the way
in the dark, or missed a branching side path, then he might keep on walking far into the high country until
weariness or disaster overcame him. At the best, he'd have to backtrack, shamefaced, in the morning;
and at the worstтАж
The temptation to leave the path and strike out across country was almost stronger than he could
resist. He told himself that it was folly. He was no countryman, though his first teacher had been, but he
knew that anywhere off the trail he risked becoming stuck in a bog, or walking across the lip of a cliff. He
wished now that he'd waited overnight at the transit hub before starting, or that his legs had been younger
to carry him faster over the ground.
He walked onward. The night was deep; the wind made little whispering noises under the trees,
and Mael fancied he heard footsteps behind him that matched his own, and far-off voices calling out his
name. Anywhere else, he would have rejected such fantasies out of hand-but not here, and not when the
night had grown so thick with Power that a man need no more than half-close his eyes to see the threads
and colors of it like a tapestry against the dark.
The light off to the left was bobbing like a lantern or a hand torch. Mael halted and turned toward
it.
"Hello!" he called out.
The light stopped moving for a few seconds, then changed its course to intercept him. Mael