"Barbara Hambly - Sun Wolf 1 - The Ladies Of Mandrigyn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

"I ran," the Hawk continued unemotionally. "I was very young, I'd never seen one before, and I
thought that, since it didn't have any eyes, it couldn't follow me. I must have thought at first
that it was just an eyeless man. But it came after me, groaning and slobbering, crashing through
the woods. I never looked back, but I could hear it behind me, getting closer as I came out of the
woods. I ran through the rocks up the hill toward the Convent, and Sister Wellwa was outside,
sweeping the path as she always was. And sheтАФshe raised her handтАФ and it was as if fire exploded
from her fingers, a ball of red and blue fire that she flung at the nuuwa's head. Then she caught
me up in her arms, and we ran together through the door and shut and bolted it. Later we found
places where the nuuwa had tried to chew through the doorframe."

She was silent; if any of the horror of that memory stirred in her heart, it did not show on her
fine-boned, enigmatic face. It was Fawn who shuddered and made a small, sickened noise in her
throat.

"It was the only time 1 saw her do magic," Siarhawk continued after a moment. "When I asked her
about it later, she told me she had only grabbed me and carried me inside."

Across the rim of the untasted cup. Fawn studied the older woman for a moment more. Rumor in the
camp had it that the Hawk had once been a nun herself, before she had elected to leave the Convent
and follow the Wolf. Though Fawn had never believed it before, something in this story made her
wonder if it might be true. There were elements of asceticism and mysticism in Starhawk; Fawn knew
that she meditated daily, and the tent was certainly as barren as a nun's cell. Though a cold-
blooded and ruthless warrior, the Hawk was never senselessly brutalтАФbut then, few of the handful
of women in Wolfs troop were.

It was on the tip of Fawn's tongue to ask her, but Starhawk was not a woman of whom one asked
questions without permission. Besides, Fawn could think of no reason why anyone would have left
the comforts of the Convent to follow the brutal trail of war.

Instead she asked, "Why did she lie?"

"The Mother only knows. She was a very old lady thenтАФ she died a year or so after, and I don't
think anyone else in the Convent ever knew what she was."

THE LADIES OF MANDR1GYN 9

Fawn's tapering fingers toyed with the cup, the diamonds of her rings winking like teardrops in
the dim, golden light. Somewhere quite close, a drunken chorus in another tent began to sing.




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"All in the town of Kedwyr, A hundred years ago or more, There lived a lass named Sella..."

"I have often wondered," Fawn said quietly, "about wizards. Why is Altiokis the only wizard left
in the world? Why hasn't he died, in all these years? What happened to all the others?"