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

"Then at least one of the messages should have reached you," said Mistress Hyfid. "But if it
wasn't my summoning that brought you, why did you come?"
Mael paused a moment to gather his thoughts before presenting them. Llannat Hyfid was the First
of all the Mage-Circles, but she had been born on Maraghai and schooled in Power with the Adepts on
GalcenтАж much about the homeworlds would always be alien to her.
"Let me tell you," he said, "about what happened to me on the way this evening."
"The rufstaffa?"
 "In part. I should have sensed it following meтАж a hunting-beast is a powerful disturber of
patternsтАж but I was caught up in watching the eiran. The cords are tarnished my lady, and decaying."
Mistress Hyfid's eyes were dark and sober. "I know. I've seen them more and more often of late.
That's why I wanted to talk to you."
"The eiran aren't the worst of it." Mael looked from the First to her husband. "Back in the
homeworlds, an ekkannikh has risen up to disrupt the Circles."
"Ekkan-?" Mistress Hyfid stumbled on the unfamiliar word.
"In the old stories," said Mael, "a hungry ghost. But among those who work with Power, it is the
word for someone among us who has too much strength and too much will-or too much anger-to let
himself die completely."
"I don't like the sound of that," said Ari Rosselin-Metadi. He stood up and fetched the decanter
of purple liquor from the side table, then refilled all their glasses to within a hair of the brim. "Because the
only dead man I can think of with that much of that kind of power is Errec Ransome."
Errec Ransome. Master, once, of the Adepts' Guild, and teacher of Mistress Hyfid when she
first came to learn the ways of Power. The Breaker of Circles, they had called him in the homeworlds,
for what he had done at the end of the First War. Traitor, they called him now, on both sides of the old
border zone, and schoolchildren from one side of the civilized galaxy to the other made an insult of his
name.
Mael tipped a splash of the purple liquor onto the smooth-planed boards of the veranda-a ritual
gesture, of little worth against a determined adversary, but the habit of a lifetime could not be shed that
easily. "You said the words, not I."
"I'm right, then."
"Yes," said Mael. "So far, the creature has not killed-it hasn't yet recovered enough identity to be
that powerful. But the Circles on Cracanth have felt its touch these five months and more, and someday
soon it-he-will cross the threshold."
Mistress Hyfid frowned. "Why Cracanth, of all places?"
Mael fell silent for a moment, the better to choose his words before he spoke. Not all the history
of the First War was common knowledge in the Adept-worlds-especially history from the Eraasian point
of view-but some matters were more ticklish to deal with than others.
"The story is obscure," he said finally, "and all those with direct knowledge of it are long since
deadтАж but it was told to me when I was young that Errec Ransome had once been a prisoner among us,
and that Cracanth was the world on which they held him."
"Now that," said Rosselin-Metadi, after another silence, "is something nobody mentioned when I
was growing up." He took a long drink of the purple liquid in his glass. "I wonder if they even knew."
"It makes sense, though," Mistress Hyfid said. "The way he hated the MagelordsтАж"
Mael said, "Yes. The stronger the ekkannikh grows, the more he will remember. When he
remembers enough, he will know that it was not the Circles who defeated him in the end. And Errec
Ransome was a man who devoted his whole life to crushing the ones who had injured him."

Chapter II.
Galcen; Maraghai, Hesat
┬л^ ┬╗
Klea spent the rest of the day worrying about how to handle her latest commission from Owen