"Hambly, Barbara - Dragon's Bane UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

was Battlehammer. In spite of his exhaustion and the pain
of his roughly bound wound, Gareth made a move to offer
her totally unnecessary assistance in mounting. As they
reined up over the ragged stone slopes to avoid the corpse
in its rank-smelling puddles of mud, Gareth asked, "IfЧ
if you're a witch, my lady, why couldn't you have fought
them with magic instead of with a weapon? Thrown fire
at them, or turned them into frogs, or struck them blind..."

She had struck them blind, in a sense, she thought
wrylyЧat least until he shouted.

But she only said, "Because I cannot."

"For reasons of honor?" he asked dubiously. "Because
there are some situations in which honor cannot apply..."

"No." She glanced sidelong at him through the aston-
ishing curtains of her loosened hair. "It is just that my
magic is not that strong."

And she nudged her horse into a quicker walk, passing
into the vaporous shadows of the forest's bare, over-
hanging boughs.

Even after all these years of knowing it, she found the
admission still stuck in her throat. She had come to terms
with her lack of beauty, but never with her lack of genius
in the single thing she had ever wanted. The most she had
ever been able to do was to pretend that she accepted it,
as she pretended now.

Ground fog curled around the feet of the horses; through
the clammy vapors, tree roots thrust from the roadbanks
like the arms of half-buried corpses. The air here felt
dense and smelled of mold, and now and then, from the

10 Barbara Hambly

woods above them, came the furtive crackle of dead leaves,
as if the trees plotted among themselves in the fog.

"Did youЧdid you see him slay the dragon?" Gareth
asked, after they had ridden in silence for some minutes.
"Would you tell me about it? Aversin is the only living
DragonsbaneЧthe only man who has slain a dragon. There
are ballads about him everywhere, about his courage and
his noble deeds... That's my hobby. Ballads, I mean, the
ballads of Dragonsbanes, like Selkythar the White back
in the reign of Ennyta the Good and Antara Warlady and