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

Then like silver fire a demon struck him, an eel blazing out of invisibility to rip his flesh from his bones.
The Icefalcon cried out, thorned ropes of pain tearing through his heart.
A human's bones protected a spirit. Flesh and muscle were armor, and he had none now. The demon
pierced him as the sunlight had done, the pain coring him, dizzy, smothering ...
They feed on fear and pain.
He could feel them eat. Smoky shapes, toothed fantastic horrors encircling him, he was falling, plunging,
dying ...
What happens when I hit the ground? I have no bones. Cold-headed reasonableness came back. I have
no flesh. The pain is an illusion.
It was a lifelike one.
Damn the lot of you. Starve and die. It was hard to say it, but he was-he reminded himself-the Icefalcon,
who would have been warchief of his people, and he made himself say it, and believe.
He was still falling, but now he stopped himself from doing so, as he sometimes could in dreams, and
walked down the air as down a flight of steps. A demon bit his foot, the pain exactly as if he'd trodden a
dagger-blade, but his mind remained locked on the shape of his body and bones, waiting for him in the
cave.
Starve and die, he told them again.
They spit at him and swirled away. He knew they'd be back. The smell of grass and sod met him as he
reached the ground, a great intoxicating earthy rush. He saw the ants creeping between the grass blades,
sunlight on pebbles like reflective glass.
He could distinguish the separate perfumes of needlegrass, squirreltail grass, buffalo grass, the scents of
each flower one from another-even the differing odors of clay and mold and rock. A madness of beauty
as intense as the terror of the pain before.
A man came up out of a bison wallow (flesh, clothes, sweat, leather), carrying the dead body of one of
the Empty Lakes People over his back, and walked ahead of the Icefalcon toward the camp. The
Icefalcon followed him, feeling naked, as if every man among those wagons could see him clearly.
As they approached the circle of wagons the Icefalcon understood why Cold Death had kept her
distance from the place and had told Blue Child to do the same. Even as the demon had been visible to
him, certain things looked different now, and he was almost certain that it was not a mage that had kept
Cold Death from seeing into the camp.
Some of the demon-scares-not all-blazed with ugly radiance, the air between them latticed with spells of
pain. Past them he beheld the black tent and the wagon against which it stood, lambent with an unhealthy
glow, a living rot that pulsed like a heart. Cold Death had told him that her spells would guard him against
the demon-scares, but the fear of them still grew as he walked up to their line: he would be trapped,
shredded, lose himself ...
But if he was the icefalcon, he could and would endure. Another man walked past him. A golden-skinned
Delta Islander, carrying over his shoulder the body of Long-Flying Bird. Not permitting himself to think,
the Icefalcon followed him into the camp, pain dicing him, disorienting, breathless ...
But he was through.
The camp stank of magic. The very air there was dark, and moved. All about him warriors saddled,
harnessed, rolled blankets, unfastened the chains from the wagon-beds.
Boxed up gourd bowls and trudged up from the coulee with barrels black-wet and slopping over with
flashing frigid springwater. Checked their gear and got it and themselves into marching order.
It was hard not to lose himself in the clamor and noise, hard to remember why he was here and what he
needed next to do.
White Mustaches was explaining something patiently to a paleskinned warrior from the White Coasts:
how to harness the mules. The Icefalcon caught words he knew: ". . . same ... both sides . . ." He was
demonstrating the strap lengths. "Balance." The pale warrior only stared, puzzled, from him to the
half-harnessed mule and passed a hand over his slick pate. White Mustaches demonstrated again:
"balance."