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

"No. But for his sake I would not like to see the boy come to harm. What troubles me now, is that Bektis
must be watching his back trail . . ."
And then they were no longer two, but three. The Icefalcon couldn't even tell how long she'd been there.
She was a diminutive woman, with the black hair that sometimes marked Wise Ones in the Real World.
From babyhood her parents had shaved it off, so she had never learned to regard it. It was hacked off
short now, straight as water and heavy as the hand of fate. When the Icefalcon had seen her last, it had
not yet been touched by gray. Her eyes were black, too.
"Little brother," she said.
"Elder sister." He inclined his head. "You know Loses His Way, our enemy from the Empty Lakes
People."
She nodded. Everyone in the Real World knew everyone else, pretty much, or at least knew of them.
"It pleases me to see that you were not devoured by the Eaters in the Night, o my sister. I had heard that
they singled out the Wise."
She smiled, small but very bright, like a star. "Then I suppose I am not all that Wise."
She picked a pink-edged flower of bindweed and turned it in her fingers, smiling at the silkiness of the
petals under her touch. "Do they still haunt the lands west of the wall of snows, little brother?"
He shook his head. "At the end of that first winter a Wise One there sent them away to the other side of
Night, where no people live and it is night forever. They have not returned again."
"Good," said Cold Death briskly and worked the flower into the end of the Icefalcon's braid among the
bones.
"I thought it must have been something of the kind. Now who is this Bektis, and why does it concern you
that he watches his back trail?" She sat down crosslegged between them and picked the woodchuck's
heart out of the coals, devouring it with an expression of ecstasy. "Was it he who slew five of the Empty
Lakes People and put their bodies in the coulee, or was that you, little brother?"
"It was Bektis," the Icefalcon said a little grumpily because he loved woodchuck hearts with a great,
strong love. "And those with him."
He gave her a quick summary of the events of the past four days, finishing with, "He is a fool, but not so
much a fool that he would not watch his back trail, knowing that he was observed in carrying the boy
away. He knows that the warriors of the Keep will bear stronger amulets against his spells of battle
illusion and battle panic than the warriors of the Empty Lakes People, whose shaman Walking Eyes was
killed by the Eaters seven years ago, yet he displays no concern over the matter. He waits here for
something."
Cold Death tousled the dog's ruff. "For the rest of the black warriors," she said. The dog sniffed at her
and licked her hand.
"T'cha!" scolded Loses His Way amiably. "You kiss your people's enemies, o my brother?"
"He tastes her that he may devour her later," explained the Icefalcon, and the warchief nodded.
"Very well, then."
"Ninety-eight of them are a day south of here," Cold Death went on. "Tonight you'll be able to see their
fires. As for why he shows no concern about pursuit... "
She frowned. She had sharp little flecks of brow, pulling together over a short snub nose.
"There is power in that band," she said. "They have twelve wagons covered in blue canvas, and
surrounding them ... not darkness, but a movement that bends the shape of the air."
She shook her head and tried to shape some kind of meaning with her square brown short-fingered hand.
"There is evil in them, such as I have never before seen. Demons follow them, and the elementals of
water and air and earth. Blue Child follows these warriors and their wagons at a distance."
"And does the Blue Child," asked the Icefalcon softly, "ride these lands?"
"These lands are ours," said Cold Death. "Unto the Night River Country and down to the Bones of God."
Loses His Way hackled like a wolf at the suggestion that the Iarger portion of the Real World did not in
fact belong to the Empty Lakes People, but Cold Death continued unconcernedly, picking another
flower. "It was Blue Child who sent me scouting, to see who or what awaited this dark captain, with the