"Doranna Durgin - Seer's Blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Durgin Doranna)

Taken possessed by the Annekteh,nekfehr .




1
The world spread out before thenekfehr , the slight curve of the horizon partially obscured by hazy
clouds. Unlike the flat plains directly before the possessed vesselтАФa raven, black, sleek, and
intelligentтАФthishorizon rose in a nubbled, broken line.

South.

They would go south.

It hadn't worked out well, last time; so many years, spent just in recovery. The hill folk had been waiting
and ready, forewarned by their seers . . . seers once grown thickly in that nurturing land.

The Annekteh had lost that fightтАФbut they had made sure the next generations of the hills had no such
guidance. They had burned the seers' painstaking recordsтАФgenerations of wisdom, lore, and
observationsтАФevery one. They'd ransacked houses, stripping all charms, all the protections that could be
copied and used even without a seer's understanding.

Every one.

And the seers themselves . . . dead. Or fled.

The raven's wings caught a thermal; the bird adjustedтАФa shift of feather, a tilt of wingтАФand the
annektehr within barely noticed. That was what thenekfehr , the vessels, were for; to do the things the
Annekteh could not. To see, to fly . . . to feel. Theannektehr тАФone of many, so consumed by the
Annekteh whole it didn't even understand the concept of individualityтАФstared at that bare hint of the
mountains, letting the bird mind control their flight.Yes. It shared the image among the whole, among the
Annekteh, even as it maintained awareness of each of its fellowannektehr at work in other vessels.
Human bodies, mostly, supervising the insignificant, unTaken individuals that served the Annekteh.
Yes.

South. Where the lumber was not only abundant, but was imbued with the natural magic of the
mountainsтАФthe same subtle magic of the plains, distilled and amplified and then submerged to run deep
along the ridges. Magic that would protect the Annekteh, so deep that the humans barely knew it was
there.

But the Annekteh knew.

And the Annekteh intended to have that magic, and that land, for their own.




2
Blaine tugged on her soft leather boots in quick succession, her mind already in the mountains and on the
newly arrived traders, the ones no one else had seen yet. Moving quietly in the near darkness of the