"Gray, Julia - Guardian 03 - The Crystal Desert" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gray Julia)

'Until he wakes up?' Mlicki asked quietly.
'Or until he lets you know that you're to be his successor.'
'No!' the boy responded fiercely. 'I'm no shaman.' He glanced at Vilheyuna's ceremonial headdress, which hung from one of the tent poles, waiting for its old owner - or a new one - to claim it.
'He chose you as his assistant,' Terrel reminded him.
'And anyway, how could he let me know?' Mlicki asked, looking back at the unmoving figure.
'Perhaps in a vision.'
'The winds control those.'
'Maybe Vilheyuna is now in a place where he can talk to the winds.'
Mlicki was obviously surprised by this suggestion. Then he shook his head, dismissing it.
'There's more chance of the elders making you the tribe's shaman,' he said. 'They can't wait for ever, and at least you can heal, even if you can't lead the wind-dances.'
'Not with this leg,' Terrel agreed, glancing down at his twisted limb. 'Besides, you're not without talents yourself. We both know that.'
The two young men regarded each other steadily. Mlicki was the only person Terrel had ever met whose eyes were perhaps as strange as his own. The irises of Terrel's eyes were like pale diamonds, their only colour coming from brief flashes buried within their crystalline depths. But although his eyes were frequently the cause of amazement and alarm when he met someone for the first time, at least they were perfectly matched. Mlicki's were completely different. His good eye was a deep, soft brown. His left eye, however, was surrounded by a patch of very pale skin, which ran diagonally across the bridge of his nose and his cheekbone, and enclosed most of his left temple and part of his forehead. Within its distinct boundary, the flesh seemed to be stretched tight, distorting the shape of the eye into a sloping crescent, and the eyebrow was pure white. Most disconcerting of all, the half-hidden iris was a delicate shade of rose pink.
From an earlier conversation, Terrel knew that Mlicki was practically blind in that eye, and could only sense blurred outlines and shifting patches of colour - except when he went 'beyond the wind' and saw into another time or another world. Then his sight was perfect. He had no control over what he saw and when, and it was something he was reluctant to talk about. The fact that he had discussed it with Terrel after such a short acquaintance was testimony to the kinship the two had felt right from the beginning. And that had begun with a connection between two minds.
When Terrel had first encountered the concept of psinoma - invisible words - he had treated it with great suspicion. The idea that he could listen to another's thoughts, or even plant suggestions in another mind -
without the recipient being aware of it - had struck him as dangerous and wrong. However, in the years since his exile from Vadanis, he had come across many strange languages, and although he still felt guilty about such prying, he had used psinoma to enable himself to learn those tongues in a relatively short time. During his journeying, the ability to communicate with those around him had been vital - sometimes a matter of life or death - and so he'd set aside his scruples until he was fluent enough to speak normally with the local people.
When Terrel had joined the Toma, he had realized almost immediately that Mlicki shared his ability to use psinoma - albeit unwittingly at first. After the boy's initial fear and suspicion were overcome, Mlicki had been able to assist actively in the learning process, the first time this had ever happened. Although they no longer needed their instinctive telepathic link, the knowledge of its existence tied them together in a bond of mutual regard which was fast maturing into a genuine friendship.
'Why are you here, Terrel?' Mlicki asked now.
'Why are any of us here?' he replied, deliberately misunderstanding the question.
'I mean why did you come here?' Mlicki said patiently. 'You could have gone anywhere.'
'Perhaps it was so I could meet you,' Terrel replied, knowing that his companion wouldn't take his answer seriously - in spite of the fact that it was quite possibly true.
'Very funny,' Mlicki said. 'I've never met anyone from outside Misrah before, and I don't know why anyone would want to come here. Especially now.'
'The truth is, I don't know what brought me here.' Trying to explain the vagaries of his fateful bargain would have been much too difficult.
'Is your home very far away?'
'Yes,' Terrel replied heavily. He was not even sure he had a home any more. The Floating Islands had begun to seem like a distant memory. Then he thought of Alyssa, lying motionless in a basement cell of Havenmoon, and knew that no matter how comfortless the notion was, that dismal place was the closest he had to a home. The oath he had sworn to return to her still bound him - even though the possibility of his ever getting back there seemed a remote prospect at the moment.
'Is it true you crossed an ocean to get here?'
'Actually I crossed two.' Terrel recalled both the ship which had brought him to the southern shore of Misrah and the makeshift raft on which he had been exiled from Vadanis.
Mlicki was staring at him in awe.
'Two?' he breathed. 'I can't imagine so much water, so much life.' He seemed lost in a kind of reverie. 'Is it true that sea water is full of salt?'
'Yes. If you try to drink it, it only makes you more thirsty. Or sick.' Terrel spoke from painful experience.
'That happens to some of the wells here,' Mlicki said thoughtfully. 'The camels can drink it, but we can't.'
This information did not come as much of a surprise to Terrel. When he had first set eyes on a camel, all he could think of was what a ridiculous looking animal it seemed. However, he was beginning to appreciate just how remarkable the creatures were - and how valuable to the nomads. Being reminded of them now jogged a vague memory, something he could not place but which nagged at his subconscious.
'Of course some of the wells are completely dry now,' Mlicki went on. 'Since the river disappeared . . .' His voice died away, and Terrel saw painful memories reflected in his mismatched eyes.
Terrel knew the story of Mlicki and his sister - or at least as much of it as the boy had chosen to tell him. He and Kalkara had once been part of a different nomadic clan, but after a ferocious raid upon their camp - part of a tribal dispute, apparently - when their parents had been killed along with the rest of the clan, they had been left alone to fend for themselves. Through a combination of luck and resourcefulness that was remarkable in one so young, Mlicki had led Kalkara to a riverside village called Bahriya, where they had been taken in. Later, as events in Misrah took another turn for the worse, they had been banished from there, and had eventually joined up with the Toma.
'That changed everything,' Mlicki said softly.
Terrel guessed that the boy was still talking about the mysterious disappearance of the Kullana River, and decided against asking any further questions. He concentrated on the present instead.
'You and Kala are part of the Toma now though, aren't you? This is your home.'
'Yes,' Mlicki conceded. 'For the time being. But life is getting harder for them - us - too. If it gets too bad, who's to say they won't turn their backs on us? Especially as Vilheyuna was the one who adopted us. He's not in any position to defend us, is he?'
Terrel could understand the nature of Mlicki's argument, but he believed there was little chance of the siblings being forced into exile once more. He was about to say as much when his companion spoke again.
'You never told me why you left your family. What happened to your parents?'
Even though this question had been asked and answered - albeit mostly with evasions or outright lies -several times during his travels, Terrel was never prepared for the emotions it raised within him. It had been almost three years now since he'd learnt the truth about his parentage, and he still could not come to terms with it. Even if he had done so, no one - not even Mlicki - would have believed his tale.
'I never knew my parents,' he said, coming as close to the truth as he dared.
Mlicki regarded him thoughtfully, obviously aware that Terrel was holding something back. For a moment it seemed as though he would want to know more, but then he evidently thought better of it. Even so his next question was almost as discomforting.
'Do you have any sisters or brothers?'
Terrel was about to shake his head, no, but memories of the mocking laughter that haunted his dreams - and his waking mind if he let himself become vulnerable -made him change his mind. He would not grant Jax that small victory by denying his existence.
'I have a brother,' he replied, 'but I've never met him.'
'That's sad.'
'It wasn't my choice.'
'I'd be dead now if it wasn't for Kala.' As always, Mlicki's face softened when he spoke of his sister.
'I thought you were the one who looks after her,' Terrel remarked, glad of the chance to change the subject.
'I am. The point is, without her, I would've given up any number of times. My bones would've been picked clean by hubaras by now, somewhere out there. But I can't let her down, can I?'