"Doranna Durgin - Wolverine's Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Durgin Doranna)

gods marked their lands with stranger environs: Rema, a land of herbs, forests, and simple folkтАФher
mother's land; and Dryden, where there was nothing but sand and snakes and lizards; and Siloga, from
whence came the darkest mages, and a slight people with handsome features and nut-brown skin.

She'dheard .

Now she was going to see for herself.

She didn't have the coin to stay at the travelers' houses along the road, but no one kicked her out for
quietly warming herself by the fire as she passed through. She spent time at the little inns if the keepers
found work for her, usually carrying heavy loads or cleaning noxious stalls and pitsтАФthough she quickly
learned the hazards of that duty if she let her concentration slip.

Pit farming, feh. Not for the occasionally clumsy.

But the woods provided plenty of shelter themselves, as well as much more kindling and game than
Kelyn was used to having at her disposal. Even when the trees thinned to day-wide areas of rolling
plains, Kelyn slept out under the stars, always finding enough of a hollow in the tough, stalky grasses that
the wind whistled over her as she slept. The wind was never as cold as that which swept through her
foothills, anyway, and she was just as content making her own fire and roasting her own kill as sharing
someone else's of either.

She took her time, lingering where she had a chance to pick up the languageтАФfor almost everyone
disdained to know hersтАФor to study the people. She practiced with the strange knives she'd taken from
the looter, and soon learned to flick them into targets as she would skip a stone across a pond. By the
time she neared the Atlian border, the winds were turning warm and less insistent, and she slept where
she would, oiled and waxed cloak pulled over her head against the frequent, gentle spring rains.

It was in one such rain that she found herself sprawled on her stomach at the top of a slight rise, cloak
hood drooping over her forehead as she chewed on the stem of one of last year's grasses and considered
the town before her. The huddle of buildings rose cleanly from the cleared ground around it, and the path
leading into them was wider than any of the meandering traders' roads that Kelyn had followed so far.
There were even the beginnings of a stout wood wall around it.

She had the feeling that this town would teach her moreтАФor provide her with more challengesтАФthan
had any of the little way stations and trading spots she'd hesitated in before. She also figured it would
take coin if she wanted to stay there long, and so faced a decision that would only become more
imperative as she moved away from Ketura: finding a way to earn that coin. The skills she had were
things that anyone might be good at, but she knew she didn't want to spend much more time doing the
things no one else wanted to do . . . like cleaning pits.

Kelyn made a face and spit out the grass stalk. What was the point of gathering people together in such
populations that their food had to be carried in, their shelters all crammed together, and their waste
carried out? Why, when the wind shifted, she could smell the town from here!

Perhaps she'd just stay out in Orrick's mild lands for a while, and walk into the town each day to learn
what she could. That plan seemed most sensible. Kelyn climbed to her feet and scouted a wide circle
around the town, taking note of gaps in the wall and finding an area downwind of the garbage heap
where she definitely wouldn't choose to sleep. She found a spot that satisfied her just inside the nearest
tree lineтАФtoo close, but all right for tonightтАФand turned toward one of the gaps, not hesitating until she