"James C. Glass - Shanji" - читать интересную книгу автора (Glass James C)

her satchel and lowered the roof carefully, smoothing over the seams with a light covering of needles
before slinking away from the edge of the cliff and onto the faint game trail leading away from it. Her
leather-clad feet made no sound. Tengri-Khan would rise in a few hours, and it was a two hour walk to
the temporary ordu Temujin had set up to keep watch on the valley.

She walked easily in the darkness, for the sky was clear, and starlight was sufficient for the eyes of a
Tumatsin woman. But with the blessing of such sight there was danger, for the great cats who hunted the
meadows and crags ahead could mistake her for one of their own, and become territorially aggressive.



The trail rose gradually to a rock fall at the base of a granitic spire, and along a narrow shelf to a skree
field to the south. Toregene stopped there briefly to retrieve the goat-leather bag of fluorescent fungus
from her satchel. The bag was half-filled from collecting along the way to her observing post, but she'd
passed up three glowing clusters of the delicious seasoning under trees bordering the meadows on the
way back to theordu . She would take full advantage of her night travel.

She crossed the skree field, and the trail reappeared, heading down into thick stands of White Bark and
shining Tysk. Above the tree tops loomed the sharp peaks of granite and schist extending tens of
kilometers to the great sea west, hundreds of kilometers north and south. Shanji. The mountain world.
Toregene navigated the trail by feel in the inky darkness of the forest, alert to the slightest sound. An owl
passed over her, and she heard the whisper of its gliding flight. The cry of aShizi from afar announced a
new kill in the night, and brought a flutter to her heart. She came out onto a meadow and circled, quickly
finding the first cluster of fungus she'd passed by, lacy strands glowing blue like magical spiderweb on
needle-carpet beneath a young Tysk.

She brushed away the needles, and pulled the entire plant from soft soil, putting it carefully in her bag so
as not to break any of its fragile tendrils and lessen full flavor. She picked a second clump at the end of
the meadow, where a steep ridge began, then followed the trail upwards among stands of trees clinging
tenaciously to weathered, crumbling rock.

At the summit of the ridge was a grand view both east and west: mountains as far as the eye could see in
one direction, the yellow glow of the Emperor's domed city in the other. Toregene did not pause there,
but hurried on, for the summit was barren and her silhouette visible for miles around. Exposed at the
summit for only a moment, she now felt a prickling sensation at the back of her neck, a sudden sense of
urgency in returning home to report what she'd seen.

She descended to a skree-covered saddle and looked west to see a flickering point of light set between
two spires pinching at the night sky like a thumb and forefinger. The signal fire beckoned her home to the
ordu placed in the canyon behind the spires, still an hour's walk away. She wondered if Temujin would
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be awake to greet her.

She traversed the second summit on the west flank, following the faint groove of a trail made by
mountain goats, skree shifting and chattering beneath her feet. Ahead of her, a dark shape suddenly
appeared, crouched on the trail, eyes glowing yellow in starlight.Shizi .