"David Farland - Runelords 5 - Sons of the Oak" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farland David)

hunted, like the eyes of a stag in the forest.
That is how Fallion, at the age of nine, remembered his fa┬мther. A father he
had not seen now for three years.
Strange then, that on an autumn evening as Fallion rode on a mountain track
outside Castle Coorm with his younger brother Jaz and Hearthmaster Waggit
beside him, and a small contingent of guards bristling front and back, the
im┬мage of his father should intrude so heavily on Fallion's mind.
"Time to turn back," the point guard, a woman named Daymorra, said in a thick
accent. "I smell evil."
She nodded to her right, up a hill where fences of stacked gray stones
parceled out some cowherd's lands and formed a dam that held back the leaning
pine forests of the mountains above. There, at the edge of the forest rose a
pair of barrows, houses for the dead. In the swiftly falling darkness, the
shad┬мows under the trees were black. And above the mountain hovered a haze,
purple and green like a bruise in the sky. Strange lights flashed among the
gauzy clouds, as if from distant lightning.

Fallion's personal guard, Sir Borenson, laughed and said, "You don't smell
evil. It's a storm you smell."
Daymorra glanced back, troubled. She was a rugged woman from beyond Inkarra,
with strange skin as gray as a tree trunk, black hair as fine as flax, and
black eyes that glinted like lightning. She wore a simple outfit of ebony
cot┬мton covered by a supple leather vest, with an ornate steel buckler that
covered her belly, and a slave's collar of silver around her neck. Neither
Fallion nor anyone that he knew had ever seen anyone like Daymorra until she
had shown up at the castle six months earlier, sent by Fallion's father to
join the guard.
"Humans may not smell evil," Daymorra said. "But I've garnered endowments of
scent from a burr. They know the smell of evil. Something is there, in trees.
Evil spirits, I think."
Fallion knew of men who had taken endowments of scent from dogs, but he had
never even heard of a burr. Daymorra claimed to have taken endowments of
hearing from bats, grace from hunting cats, and brawn from a wild boar. The
skill to draw attributes from animals other than dogs was un┬мheard of in
Fallion's land. If her story was true, hers was an exotic amalgam of powers.
Fallion rose up in his saddle, drew a deep breath, and tasted the air. It was
so heavy with water, he could smell to┬мmorrow's morning dew, and the air was
just cool enough that he could feel the first thrill of winter in it.
I do smell something, he thought. It was like an itch, an electric tingle,
across the bridge of his cheek.
Daymorra eyed the barrows distrustfully and shivered. "One should give dead to
fire or water, not leave evil spirits in the ground. We should turn back now."
"Not yet," Waggit argued. "We don't have far to go. There is a thing that the
boys must see.
Daymorra's nostrils flared; she reined in her horse, as if thinking, men urged
it ahead.
Fallion's younger brother Jaz had been watching the side

of the road for small animals. Fallion's first vivid memory had been of
discovering a frogтАФlike a bit of gray-green clay with a dark mask. It had