"Barbara Hambly - Darwath 5 - Icefalcons Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

over Gil's useless tales of enchantment and romance. The Icefalcon could no more have been mistaken
than he could have thought that a prairie chicken's feather belonged to a red-tailed hawk.
Three of the four bandits had wrapped their feet in the same way, and the hide wrappings were thin
enough to show him that they all walked in the same fashion as well. Not just that they all toed in slightly,
but that they all put their weight on their heels in the same way. Had all worn boots, the pattern of wear
on the soles would have been identical.
Brothers?
No brothers he had ever encountered had been that similar. Save for those of the bandit he had killed, all
turned upstream. There was a path along the gorged mountain flank that would take them to Sarda Pass
and the little-used way that led down into the plains and badlands of the West.
Why that way? He couldn't be sure, for the light was more and more uncertain, but he thought the hide
wrappings were new. The dead man's were, without ragged edges or the blurring of long wear.
Disquieted, the Icefalcon got to his feet and drew the bandit's dagger from his belt. Alketch work,
beautifully tooled and quite old. He called to mind the bandit's clothing, yellow coat and crimson
breeches, slightly too big, looted from an earlier wearer. Boots were expensive and required more work
to accommodate to another size.
Then he realized what it was that had tugged at his mind about Linok, what it was about him that he had
recognized, or thought he recognized.
It was too dark to see tracks in the meadow now, and in any case there might be very little time. Turning,
he made his way toward the Keep at a run.
The Icefalcon was one of the tallest men in the Keep, long-boned and rangy, and he ran fast. He was still
a mile from its walls when he saw blue witchlight dance in the meadow by the stream, and voices carried
to him, too far to make out words, but recognizable in their timbre and pitch. He turned aside, his heart
cold in him with dread. There was only one reason people would be outside the Keep after nightfall.
Though the Dark Ones had been gone for seven years, the trauma of their coming ran deep. Almost no
one who had passed through that horror would willingly remain outside of shelter once twilight gathered.
Moreover, with the Sunless Year had come changes in the world.
Huge patches of slunch emitted a sicklied radiance all along the valley's floor, and the mutant creatures
that grew from it were not all harmless. Even without such beings, there were always the perils of the
mountains themselves: dire wolves, saber-teeth, the bears that were coming out of hibernation, now thin
and hungry and angry.
Fog lay in the low ground of the meadows, dense and white. The moon would not rise for some hours.
The voices came clearer, and the magefire showed him the faces of the man and woman scanning the
damp earth for tracks.
"Sometimes he goes exploring where the old road used to run along the west foothills," said the voice he
recognized as Rudy Solis'.
They're talking about Tir.
"He says sometimes he remembers things there."
Gil-Shalos. In seven years they had almost completely dropped the tongue of their own world, even
when speaking to one another, save for words that had no translation in the Wathe, like tee-vee and car
and Academy Awards
"You think he might have gone out with Hethya? I saw her talking to him."
"He might have, if she described something he thought he recognized."
"Yeah, but why wouldn't I have..."
Even as Rudy was speaking the words, the Icefalcon was thinking, Why would Rudy need to search?
He's a Wise One. He has his scrying stone. He should be able to call Tir's image ...
Unless Tir is with another Wise One.
He'd guessed before, but the confirmation was like taking an arrow in the chest.
"It's Bektis." He stepped out of the trees. Gil-Shalos was already turning. No fool, she.
"Bektis?" She looked nonplussed as she spoke the name of the Court Mage who had years ago sold his