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

concerning the Wise One, Antlered Spider.
"Noon raised me as much as you did, when Cattail and the Yellow Butterfly were killed." He named their
parents, as was the way a mong the Talking Stars People. "As much for what Blue Child did to me on
that day, I owe her for what she did to him. His death was in his face when he came to me in the
firelight." He hesitated a moment. "when did he die?"
"The following summer," she said. "At the Place Where the Rocks Look Like Grapes. He grew too ill to
keep up with the hunt and drank black hellebore, after giving his amulets and his horses to Blue Child."
The Icefalcon was silent, seeing again the old man as he stepped out of the night, hand outstretched,
fingers shaking around the white shell, sorrow beyond sorrow in his sky-blue eyes.
"The Stars told our Ancestors," went on Cold Death quietly, "to send messengers to them at certain
times. The bravest and the strongest, strong enough to pass through the Long Sacrifice without flinching
or fleeing. They called you a coward."
"Blue Child did, I expect." His voice turned hard. "They all did."
The Icefalcon said nothing, staring straight ahead past his horse's ears to a rumpled wall of cottonwood,
noting automatically the shape of limbs, the thickness or paucity of leaves.
"How could Noon abide when the one he raised as his son refused to undertake the journey to the other
world for his people's sake?" She spoke reasonably, though he knew Cold Death had for all the years of
adulthood absented herself from the Summer Moots, when the Long Sacrifice was made. "Without the
messenger, our people would be at risk all the winter."
"Did disaster befall?"
"O my brother," she sighed, "there are always disasters. No, the people passed safely through the winter,
save for the old men and the children, who died as old men and children always die. But with each death,
Noon grieved. He was a man staked between two fires, my brother, glad that you lived and yet ashamed
of that joy."
"I was not chosen," the Icefalcon said stubbornly.
"He thought you were." She watched all around her as she spoke, aware of every circling hawk, every
basking lizard, every bobbing blade of grass.
The three horses moved within the aura of her spells and so were able to travel swiftly without much fear
of being seen, but neither Cold Death nor the Icefalcon neglected the common cautions of travel in the
Real World: covering their tracks, holding to the cliff walls, speaking in the soft-murmuring hunting voices
in which all the children of the peoples of the north were raised.
As the Icefalcon had seen in Sarda Pass, no matter how powerful a shaman one kept company with,
there was always a stronger waiting somewhere.
Her black eyes slid sidelong to him, and he could see reasons within reasons there, for asking what she
asked.
At length he said, "I could prove nothing. I didn't know how it had been done. But Blue Child knew. And
Blue Child was always my enemy, even before the death of Dove in the Sun at the Place of the Three
Brown Dogs. The Dove perished through her own weakness, and no deed of mine could have saved her,
but Blue Child blamed me for her death. And before that time, Blue Child always considered herself
Noon's successor. It was in her eyes, o my sister. You were gone at the time of the Summer Moot, or I
would have sought you out. Indeed, I thought of doing so, only after the Summer Moot, Noon and
Watches Water and all of the others pursued me, and I had to flee."
Still Cold Death said nothing, her small brown hands resting easy on her muscled thighs, speaking to her
horse with her mind as Wise Ones did. Winds slewed and cried among the crossing water courses, and
the high hills cut off visibility, making the Icefalcon prickle with nervousness, as he did wherever he did
not have a clear view of his surroundings.
"I expected to be challenged at the Summer Moot," he said. "I was a match for Blue Child's strength
even in those days, though she is nearly ten years older than I. Had she attacked me from ambush, or put
poison in my food, or come on me when I slept, it would have been better than what she did. Not only
did she cast me out of the people, o my sister, and not only did she rob me of the right to lead them