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

sick.
It was weak, like the little kids. He was seven and a half. With the deaths of Geppy and Thya and Brit
and all the other older children in the Summerless Year, he had stepped into a position of semicommand
in the games of the younger.
Tears stung his eyes, remembering his friends. Remembering Rudy.
"There's no shame in it, being afraid." Hethya's big fingers toyed gently with his hair, separating it into
locks on his forehead, as his mother sometimes still did. "Even great kings and heroes get afraid. And
sometimes that happens, after you've been real afraid."
Tir was silent, trying to sort out what he had felt clinging to the limb of the tree. He was still sweating,
though under his furry jacket he felt icy cold, and his stillness alternated with waves of shivering that he
could not control.
"You did well," she said.
In fact, when Bektis had spun around and cried out "Raiders!" and the three Akulae whipped their
curved southern swords from their sheaths, from those dark hollows in his mind Tir heard someone else's
voice, one of those other people, say as if thinking it to himself, Get out of everybody's way.
Lying on the branch of the tree, he had felt curiously little fear. Too many memories of killing men
himself-of those other boys killing men-lay too near the surface. Memories of terror in battle, memories
of grief and remorse, memories of the grim rush of heat that drove in the knife, the spear, the sword.
Watching Hethya, watching the Akula, cutting and hacking at the men and women who ran stumbling
from Bektis' unseen illusions filled him with emotion that he could not name, closer to sadness and horror
than fear. But strong. Horrifyingly strong.
The emotion, whatever it was, left him wrung out, shaken, sickened, so that as soon as the fighting was
over he slid down the cottonwood's trunk and vomited, not even knowing what it was that he felt. He
could see the faces of the dying men still. Their faces, and the faces of all those others who had died in
ages past by the hands of those whose memories he touched.
One day he might have to kill somebody himself.
His face still buried in Hethya's shoulder, he heard Bektis' sonorous voice repeating summoning-spells,
then the soft scrunch of hooves on leaves and the whuffle of horses' breath.
Looking up, he saw Akula leading two beautiful bay stallions by the bridles, so beautiful they took his
breath away. The Keep boasted few horses. Four more stood, eyes rolling, among the trees. Another
Akula was tethering them.
This Akula had a bleeding wound on one arm. Hethya made a little exclamation under her breath and,
with a final quick hug, released Tir and stood. "Here," she said, going to the man. "Let me get that
covered."
"My dear young lady." Bektis strolled over to her through the trees, stroking his long white beard and
considering the six horses with a self-satisfied smirk.
The jeweled device still covered his right hand. He was seldom without it, even if he had no magic to
work, and he seemed to enjoy just looking at it, turning it reverently to catch the sunlight, like a vain
adolescent admiring a mirror.
During the fight Tir had seen how lightning and fire had flowed out of it, how strange smokes and rainbow
lights seemed to leap from it around the heads of the White Raiders, making them cry out and slash at
things only they could see, making their dogs attack one another or bite the legs of the Raiders' horses.
Tir had been badly scared by the Raiders' dogs.
"It's scarcely worth your time. The man will be dead before the wound heals."
Hethya opened her mouth to retort, then glanced down at Tir and shut it again. The Akula looked from
Bektis' face to Hethya's without much comprehension, a thick-muscled man with grim pale eyes. Tir
wondered if Akula-any of them-knew enough regular speech to understand what had just been said.
He'd just begun to learn the ha'al language of the Empire of Alketch and could say Please and Thank you
and a number of prayers, though since God presumably spoke all languages he couldn't imagine why he
had to learn, with great difficulty, what God could just as easily understand in the Wathe. But his mother,