"02 - Faery Lands Forlorn 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

and the throng of soldiers milling around in the thin gray light. There was no
sound, only the vision in the glass.
"See?" the sorceress muttered. "No sign of your lover."
"He was not that! Merely a loyal subject!"
"Hah! He'd have been slobbering all over you as soon as he got the chance. They
all do. But I don't see the goblin, either; nor one of the set. "
Inos blinked tears from her eyes.
"And look here!" Rasha said. The scene lurched sideways and steadied again.
Several of the legionaries were leaning out the great south casement, staring
down. "Either they had the sense to jump," Rasha said, "or they just got thrown.
Thrown, I expect."
The scene blurred as the tears won over the blinking.
Rap and Aunt Kade-only two of her father's subjects had stayed loyal to Inos.
And now there was only Kade.

3
Eastward, a faint glow rising from the sea was washing the stars from the sky,
playing on waves that rolled in monotonously from the dark to lap a beach
already shining like hammered silver. Westward, behind Rap, the jungle was
wakening into carillons of birdsong. He had never heard melody like that.
He had never breathed such air-warn and affectionate on the skin, sweet with
scents of sea and vegetation. The humidity stole his breath away. It made his
head spin, seducing him like a hot bed. It felt decadent. He distrusted such
air, and the soft warm sand, also.
Morning was coming, and he had not slept at all. His eyelids kept drooping, no
matter how fiercely he told them to behave themselves. Not that he needed his
eyes, for his farsight told him that no danger lurked nearby. Nothing larger
than a raven stirred within that dense foliage, and whatever those jeweled birds
might be, they were not ravens. He had already scanned carefully as far as he
could reach, satisfying himself that the forest was not merely deserted, it was
impenetrable, a tangle of lush vines, succulent leaves, and nasty fleshy
flowers. It teemed with bugs and snakes. He had never known trees so huddled,
nor so varied.
Three young men stranded on a beach ... Oppressed by the sticky warmth after the
brittle chill of Krasnegar, they had all stripped off their heavy clothes. Imp
and faun sat with aims on knees; the goblin was stretched out on his back. They
had established that they had nothing-no money and no weapon except Little
Chicken's stone dagger. They had no idea where they were.
Rap had just finished telling Thinal of his two earlier encounters with Bright
Water, witch of the north. He was certain that it had been the voice of the old
goblin woman that had summoned Little Chicken to the casement and thus brought
all three of them here-wherever here was.
Thinal made a shivery noise. "She's not around now, though, is she? I mean, you
can't farsee her?"
"No. But she doesn't always show to my farsight, even when my eyes can see her.
" Rap brooded a moment, and then said, "Is it true she's mad?"
Thinal squealed. "Don't say such things! " He whimpered. "Why not? She's either
not here or she's spying on us, and that's not polite. "
"Polite? Rap, witches and warlocks don't give a spit about polite! "
"But do sorcerers lose their power as they grow old? If she's three hundred