"Barbara Hambly - Sun Wolf 2 - Witches of Wenshar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

that mean nothing to me, and I don't know whether they're right or will
lead me to a quick death and the Cold Hells. Sometimes I wish by all
the spirits of my ancestors I'd been born like my father, just a great
crafty beast; and other times ... " He shook his head, with the nearest
admission to helplessness Starhawk had seen from him in all the years
since they had met.
Impulsively, she leaned across to him and put her hand on his; his
fingers closed warm and rough around hers, accepting a comfort
neither of them would even have considered a year ago. His hoarse
voice was like the scrape of blown sand in the gloom. "There's a vision
in me of myself, from long before I came to my powers-one I had as a
child, though I couldn't speak of it then. But it's come back to me since
I passed through the Great Trial. It's a vision of looking at a great
blazing fire and wanting to grasp the core of the flame in my bare hand,
knowing it will hurt-but knowing that when the flesh is all burned off, I'll
be able to wield that core like a sword."
Behind the long bar of sleeve-polished pine, the owner of the
Longhorn was lighting candles-dented tin lusters throwing back a rancid
light. Outside, shadows of the spur-ranges of the Dragon's Backbone
had covered the town, the hem fringe of the garment of night. Miners,
townsmen, and those who rode herd on the tough, long-horned cattle
were coming in, dusty and cursing from work. They were mostly the
fair-skinned, blond, or red-haired stock of the north, whence the
Middle Kingdoms had acquired their slaves, but with a fair sprinkling of
the dark-haired people of the Middle Kingdoms themselves, and the
black folk of the long, golden coastlines of the southern Megantic.
Among them, striking in their white robes and head veils, were the
swarthy shirdar, the desert dwellers, who recognized not the King of
Wen-shar, but the Ancient Houses of the old Desert Lords. Voices
jostled in the warm dimness against the smells of old sweat of
work-soiled garments, of white or amber liquor, and of the milky
sweetness of beeswax. A round-shouldered little black man in his
sixties, the tracks of some ancient battle overlying old ornamental
scarring on his face, his body hard as twisted ebony from work in spite
of the richness of his clothes, ordered drinks for everyone in the place
to thunderous applause.
As the owner's boy and girl began circulating with a tray of beer
and whiskey, the little man raised his hands. Candle flame caught on his
rings. Starhawk, though never much of a looter in her years as a
mercenary, had acquired a professional soldier's quick eye; she
reckoned each of them at five gold pieces, a staggering sum to be
carrying around on one's hands, particularly on the cordillera. In a voice
several times the size of his tough little body, the man bellowed, "This
drink is for the honor of the Princess Taswind! We'll serve it and we'll
fight for it, come what may!"
Though Starhawk had no idea who the Princess Taswind was, she
took a blunt pottery cup of liquor the color of henna from the tray the
barboy offered her. Sun Wolf shook his head at the offer of another
beer. After passing through the Great Trial, it had been months before
he'd been able to touch alcohol at all. There was a chorus of cheers,