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

Both had told him of their former home many times, but still he could not picture it, other than thinking it
uncomfortable, crowded, noisy, and utterly lacking in sense. Gil-Shalos was a woman whose heart was a
sealed fortress, able to survive any loss, but this man was as much family as any she had in this world.
Under her hand, his fingers moved.
The week preceding had been fine and dry. The snowstorm, magically summoned, had not lasted long
enough to soak the fallen branches in the crevices and rock chimneys along the walls of the gorge. The
Icefalcon made a dozen trips, digging under deadfalls and dragging tinder to the shelter of the overhang,
where he piled branches to catch the snow and so form a protective wall, as his people did in
wintertime.
While he did this Gil probed and manipulated the broken bones and smashed ribs, ascertaining damage
and making sure Rudy could breathe easily. The Icefalcon was personally a little surprised that the young
wizard had survived the fall at all.
By the light of Gil's fire he could see the side of Rudy's face was scorched, as it had been in last autumn's
explosion in Ingold's laboratory. His gloves were burned away completely, and his clothes blackened and
torn.
"I doubt the Guards will be here until day." The Icefalcon sat back and pulled on his gloves again. "The
wind's fallen, but it's snowing more heavily now. In a few hours the pass will be utterly blocked."
Gil said nothing for a time, but her eyes seemed very blue in the firelight. Stars of snow spangled her
ragged black hair around her face. She and the Icefalcon regarded one another, each knowing the other's
thought and what had to be done.
"Will you be well here until dawn comes, o my sister?" She nodded.
"It stinks," she said, and her breath blew out in a jeweled sigh. "I'm sorry, Ice."
"I shall do what I can to leave a trail in case some do make it through. And I shall at least be on hand to
help should the boy attempt to flee."
"That's good to know." She was already sorting out possessions: the lantern, most of Rudy's arrows, and
his bearskin overmantle as well, for the niche was warm now from the fire and there was wood to last
well into the next day. She offered him part of her own rations, which at his advice she had started
carrying whenever she left the Keep, but he shook his head:
"We cannot know what will befall, o my sister. Your own life may depend on it."
"Myself, I think Tir has too much sense to run for it once they get to the other side of the pass," she said,
adding a fish hook and a couple of her own hideout knives to the Icefalcon's already formidable
collection. "He's only seven and a half. There anybody I should pray to?"
"To your Straight God of civilized people." The Icefalcon adjusted the last of his accoutrements, his mind
already on the ice-rimed rocks beyond the waterfall, the angle of wind in the pass. "He is the guardian of
Tir's Ancestors, and of those who shelter in the Keep. The knowledge Tir carries may very well be the
saving of them, should some peril arise in the future."
"And what about your Ancestors, Ice?"
He'd spoken of them to her, Black Hummingbird and Holds Lightning, and all those silent others whose
blood stained the carved pillars of the crumbling Ancestor House at the foot of the Haunted Mountain.
Had spoken of those ki that could be felt there in the close silences, or heard when the wind stirred the
hanging fragments of bone and hair and wood.
Noon, the warchief who had raised him, and the shaman Watches Water had spoken of their deeds
around the fires of the winter steadings, with the eyes of the dogs glowing like lamps, for they listened,
too.
He was fond of Gil but was not sure she would understand how it was with Ancestors.
"My Ancestors would think it only right that I pay for my stupidity with my life," he said in time.
And Rudy's. And Tir's. And the lives of everyone in the Keep. That was the way Ancestors were-or the
Icefalcon's Ancestors, anyway.
"But I have not prayed to my Ancestors in eleven years," he went on slowly. "Nor would they listen now
to supplication on my behalf. I sinned against them and against my people. And so I departed from the