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

The place flashed at once to the Icefalcon's mind, and he realized that what Loses His Way said was
true. Noon had taken him there a hundred times in his childhood and told him of the properties of the
low-growing, innocuous-looking vine: how it was prepared by the warchief on the mountain and what it
did.
"The Antlered Spider said that Blue Child took powdered elfroot and had him lay words on it, so that
when the powder was mixed with water and painted on the pods of the vine, the face that Noon would
see in his vision at the Summer Moot would be yours. And it was your face that Noon saw, wasn't it?"
"How do you know this?" The cold in him deepened, a dream remembered and repressed-the old man's
face impassive, eyes dead, empty with grief.
The Icefalcon, and his cousin Red Fox, and their friends Stays Up All Night and Fifty Lovers, sitting by
the Moot Fire, the talk soft and nervous as it always was at such times. Then Noon walked out of the
night into the red world of the firelight, the white shell held out stiffly in his hand and death in his eyes.
Always just stepping into the firelight. Always just holding out his hand.
"My son..." My son.
But he had known almost before Noon spoke what he was going to say. They had all looked at him, his
kindred. Looked at him, and moved away.
The cold crystallized within him to a core of ice, as the cold had then.
"Why did he tell you this?" It astonished him how normal his voice sounded. But he was the Icefalcon,
and it behooved him not to show his feelings, particularly not to one of the Empty Lakes People.
"He was dying," said Loses His Way. "Fever Lady had kissed him at the winter horse camp. The snow
was deep outside, and I could not leave."
"What was he doing in your horse camp?" The Icefalcon drew a deep breath. Far off over the badlands,
thunder rolled, soft with distance. The scent of the storm came rushing at them on the blue-black cloak of
the wind.
"He wasn't really one of Plum's family." Loses His Way shrugged. "He was the son of my maternal aunt's
husband's stepbrother. The Empty Lakes People drove him out in the Year of the Crows for putting a
barren spell on his sister because she had more horses than he did. No one liked him. Blue Child took
him in."
"Blue Child took in a Wise One of your people?" The Icefalcon was shocked to the marrow of his
bones. "Took him in and had him put a spell on the chief of her own people?"
Loses His Way nodded. The Icefalcon was silent. Winter-night silence. Death silence. The silence in the
eyes of an old man who has just been told by his Ancestors that the boy he has raised from childhood,
the young man he looked upon as his successor, is the one They want, the one They have chosen to bring
a message to them written in the crimson extremities of pain.
The torture sacrifice, the Long Sacrifice of summer, that the people may live through the winter to come.
Lightning flared, purple-white against the nigrous mountains of cloud. Gray rain stood in slanted columns
over distant hills. The wind veered: Bektis, at a guess, witching the weather to turn the storm away.
Shamans of the Talking Stars People generally didn't care if they got wet.
The Icefalcon observed it all, staring into distance, feeling nothing. "I don't know whether Gsi Kethko
told anyone else of this," said Loses His Way, after a time, stroking his long mustache. "But for two years
now I have been watching for you, waiting to see if you will return to your people and claim your due."

"Are you all right, honey?"
Tir sat back on his heels, trembling, small hands propped on his thighs. Hethya ran a competent palm
over his clammy forehead, then helped him to his feet and led him away from the little puddle of vomit
among the ferns at the base of the big cottonwood tree. Some distance off she knelt down again and
took the boy in her arms.
She was a big woman, like the farmwives and blacksmiths in the Keep. Her arms were strong around
him and the quilting of her coat smooth and cold under his face, and her thick braids, tickling his chin,
smelled good. Tir rested his head against her shoulder and tried not to feel ashamed of himself for getting