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

She appeared at the top of the bank and held out her hand for him, big and strong and warm. He pointed
down the bank. It wasn't hard to fake fear; he was trembling all over and could hardly breathe, but he
managed to say, "He's dead!"
Then Hethya did a strange thing.
She clicked her tongue-" Tsk!"-and shook her head a little and took his hand. "Let's get back to camp,
sweetheart."
And that was all.

The Icefalcon crouched near the cave's entrance under the chokecherry bushes-it was too low to stand
straight-while his sister marked out the four corners of the narrow place with guardian wards, then knelt
to burn a pinch of the powder of dried olive leaves on which certain marks had been made to cleanse the
air.
Ideally, when a scout undertook to shadow-walk-as scouts did occasionally in war, when the other
family or band had a particularly powerful Wise One in their midst-he or she would lie on earth and under
open sky, where neither the demons of the air nor the elementals that imbued the ground could
dominate.
Given Cold Death's strength as a shaman the icefalcon did not doubt that he would be safe from
elementals. Still, the damp place, closed in, green-dim, smelling of earth and foxes, made him uneasy.
The Icefalcon had never shadow-walked. It was not considered safe for boys to make the venture
before they reached full manhood, and he had left the Talking Stars People in his seventeenth year. He
had seen it done only twice before in his life, when the Talking Stars People had been at war with Black
Pig's family of the Salt People.
On the first occasion, the shadow scout had returned safely, with information about the layout of Black
Pig's summer hold in the Cruel River Country that could not be ascertained by ordinary observation.
The second time, six or seven years later during another war, the scout's friends-it was the same man
who had gone before, who had experience-and Cold Death had waited by the body through three nights
and two days, Cold Death weaving such spells as would draw back the scout's spirit to the empty and
silent flesh.
After that the tribe had had to move on for fear of being raided by Black Pig. The next time the Talking
Stars People had camped in that place Cold Death and the Icefalcon-who was sixteen then-and three or
four of the scout's friends returned to the place where the body had lain and seen a few of the man's
bones. What became of his spirit they never knew.
Thus it was with a certain degree of trepidation that the Icefalcon lay himself down between the four cold
balls of spirit-fire that Cold Death summoned from the air and watched her drawing out Circles around
him.
There was a Circle of Protection, to keep at bay the elementals and the demons that would have taken
over his still living body once his spirit was no longer in residence.
"You have to watch out for them while you're walking," Cold Death said, once she had completed the
marks and stood wiping ocher and blood from her fingertips. "They'll try to distract you, to get you lost
once you're out there. They feed on fear and pain."
There was a Circle of Ancestors. "Do our Ancestors actually guard us when they are summoned to a
Circle?" He was drowsy now with the growing effect of the spell and with the warmth of the heat spells
she'd called to keep his body from dying in its sleep. He and Cold Death had watched by turns through
the previous night, and neither had slept after midnight.
"I've never seen them." She leaned over him to paint the first lines of the Circle of Power across his face,
his hands, his breast under the wolf-hide tunic, in a paste of mud and powdered wildcat blood.
She wove his name into them, and the image of the pilgrim-bird that dwells in the high cliffs near the
glaciers, overlaid with sigils of protection.
These signs were repeated, over and over, in the lines that spiraled out from him to form the anchoring
power-curves of the Circle, running up the wall and, it seemed to him in his half-dreaming state, away