"Terry Goodkind - Sword of Truth 8 - Naked Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goodkind Terry)

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CHAPTER1




You knew they were there, didn't you?" Kahlan asked in a hushed tone as she leaned closer.
Against the darkening sky, she could just make out the shapes of three black-tipped races
taking to wing, beginning their nightly hunt. That was why he'd stopped. That was what he'd been
watching as the rest of them waited in uneasy silence.
"Yes," Richard said. He gestured over his shoulder without turning to look. "There are two
more, back there."
Kahlan briefly scanned the dark jumble of rock, but she didn't see any others.
Lightly grasping the silver pommel with two fingers, Richard lifted his sword a few inches,
checking that it was clear in its scabbard. A last fleeting glimmer of amber light played across
his golden cape as he let the sword drop back in place. In the gathering gloom of dusk, his
familiar tall, powerful contour seemed as if it were no more than an apparition made of shadows.
Just then, two more of the huge birds shot by right overhead. One, wings stretched wide, let
out a piercing scream as it banked into a tight gliding turn, circling once in assessment of the
five people below before stroking its powerful wings to catch its departing comrades in their
swift journey west.
This night they would find ample food.
Kahlan expected that as Richard watched them he was thinking of the half brother that until
just recently he hadn't known existed. That brother now lay a hard day's travel to the west in a
place so naked to the burning sun that few people ever ventured there. Fewer still ever returned.
The searing heat, though, had not been the worst of it.
Beyond those desolate lowlands, the dying light silhouetted a remote rim of mountains, making
them look as if they had been charred black by the furnace of the underworld itself. As dark as
those mountains, as implacable, as perilous, the flight of five pursued the departing light.
Jennsen, standing to the far side of Richard, watched in astonishment. "What in the world ...
?"
"Black-tipped races," Richard said.
Jennsen mulled over the unfamiliar name. "I've often watched hawks and falcons and such," she
said at last, "but I've never seen any birds of prey that hunt at night, other than owls---and
these aren't owls."
As Richard watched the races, he idly gathered small pebbles from the crumbling jut of rock
beside him, rattling them in a loose fist. "I'd never seen them before, either, until I came down
here. People we've spoken with say they began appearing only in the last year or two, depending on
who's telling the story. Everyone agrees, though, that they never saw the races before then."
"Last couple of years ..." Jennsen wondered aloud.
Almost against her will, Kahlan found herself recalling the stories they'd heard, the rumors,
the whispered assertions.
Richard cast the pebbles back down the hardpan trail. "I believe they're related to falcons."
Jennsen finally crouched to comfort her brown goat, Betty, pressing up against her skirts.
"They can't be falcons." Betty's little white twins, usually either capering, suckling, or
sleeping, now huddled mute beneath their mother's round belly. "They're too big to be falconsтАФ
they're bigger than hawks, bigger than golden eagles. No falcon is that big."
Richard finally withdrew his glare from the birds and bent to help console the trembling twins.
One, eager for reassurance, anxiously peered up at him, licking out its little pink tongue before