"Hambly,.Barbara.-.Darwath.1.-.Time.of.The.Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

She took one look at Rudy and stopped, her eyes filled with suspicion and distrust. Then Ingold stepped down the bank toward her, both hands held out in welcome. "Gil," he said. "This is Rudy Solis. He thinks I'm crazy. RudyЧGil Patterson. My contact in this world."
They regarded each other in silent animosity.
Gil would almost have preferred the Highway Patrol. This character had "biker" written on him in letters a foot tall: greasy jeans, grubby white T-shirt, scarred boots. Dark hair faintly tinged with red fell loosely on either side of a long widow's peak almost to his shoulders; cocky darkblue eyes under sharply backslanted black brows gave her an arrogant once-over and dismissed her. She noted the bump of an old break on his nose. RUDY was tattooed on a banner across a flaming torch on his left wrist. A real prize.
Kind of tall and scrawny, but not bad-looking, Rudy decided, checking her out. Bitchy, though, I bet. A real spook. Beyond that he noted the worn jeans, blue checkered shirt, lack of make-up, unworked hands and bitten nails, and cool, pale, forbidding eyes. Where'd Ingold dig her up?
Ingold went on, "Rudy's been stranded here with car trouble. Could you take him back with you as far as he needs to go when you leave, Gil, as a favor to me?"
Her eyes went warily from Ingold to Rudy, then back to the wizard's face. Ingold rested a hand briefly on her shoulder and said quietly, "It's all right. He doesn't have to believe me, Gil."
She sighed and forced herself to relax. "All right," she agreed.
Rudy had watched all this with curiosity bordering on annoyance. "Well, don't do me any favors."
Those pale gray eyes grew colder. But Ingold's hand tightened almost imperceptibly on Gil's bony shoulder, and she said, in a more natural voice, "No, it's all right."
Rudy, in turn, relaxed and meant it when he said, "Thank you. UhЧcan I give you a hand with that?" for Gil had turned back to the car and was fetching out assorted provisions, including canned beef stew and diapers, from the back seat. He dropped back a pace to walk beside her as they followed Ingold up to the cabin, however, and as soon as the old man was out of earshot Rudy asked softly, "Who is he?"
She regarded him with those pale schoolmarm eyesЧold-maid eyes in the face of a girl his own age. "What did he tell you?"
"That he was some kind of a wizard from another universe."
When Gil was embarrassed, she became brusque. "That's his story."
Rudy refused to be put off. "Where'd you meet him?"
Gil sighed. "It's a long story," she said, falling back on Ingold's usual explanation. "And it doesn't matter, not really."
"It matters to me," Rudy said, and glanced up ahead of them to where Ingold was just vanishing into the shadows of the little house. "You see, I like the old guy, I really do, even if he isn't playing with a full deck. I'm just worried some land of harm will come to the kid."
They stopped at the foot of the rickety steps, and Gil looked carefully for the first time at the young man's face. It was sun-bronzed and sensual, but not a crass face, nor a stupid one. "Do you think he'd let any harm come to Tir?"
Rudy remembered the old man and the child together, Ingold's gentle competence and the protectiveness in his voice when he spoke to the baby. "No," he said slowly. "NoЧbut what are they doing out here? And what's gonna happen when he goes wandering back to civilization like that?"
There was genuine concern in his voice, which Gil found rather touching. Besides, she thought, if I hadn't had the dreams, I'd probably think the same,
She shifted her burden from one hand to the other. "It will be okay," she assured him quietly.
"You know what's going on?"
She nodded.
Rudy looked down at her doubtfully, not quite satisfied and sensing something amiss. Still, in one real sense this girl was Ingold's contact with reality, which in spite of his obvious shrewdness and charm the old man sorely needed. And yetЧand yetЧTroubled visions of the old man stumbling out of a blazing aura of silver light returned to him as he started up the steps, Gil climbing at his heels. He swung around on her abruptly, to ask, "Do you believe him?"
But before Gil could answer, the cabin door opened again, and Ingold re-emerged onto the narrow porch, a flushed, sleepy infant in his arms. "This is Prince Altir Endorion," he introduced.
Gil and Rudy came up the last few steps to join him, the question left unanswered. On the whole, Gil disliked children, but, like most hard-hearted women, she had a soft spot for the very young and helpless. She touched the round pink cheek with gingerly reverence, as if afraid the child would shatter on contact. "He's very beautiful," she whispered.
"And very wet," Ingold replied, and led the way back into the house.
It was Rudy who ended up doing the changing as the only one with experience in the task, while Gil made a lunch of beef stew and coffee on the kerosene stove, and Ingold investigated the light switches to see how electricity worked. Rudy noticed that, among other things, Gil had brought an extra can of kerosene; though, if he recalled, the little stove had been out of sight beneath a counter when he'd first come in, and there had been no signs that the house had been entered in years.
How had Ingold known?
Gil came over to him and set a styrofoam cup of steaming black liquid on the floor at his side. She watched Rudy playing tickle-me with Tir for some moments, smiling, then said, "You know, you're probably the first man I've ever seen who'd volunteer for diaper duty."
"Hell," Rudy told her, grinning. "With six younger brothers and sisters, you get used to it."
"I suppose so." She tested one of the wobbly chairs, then sat in it, her arm resting over the back. "I only had the one sister, and she's just two years younger than I am, so I never knew."
Rudy glanced up at her. "Is she like you?" he asked.
Gil shook her head ruefully. "No. She's pretty. She's twenty-two and already getting her second divorce."
"Yeah, my next-next younger sister's like that," Rudy said thoughtfully, fishing in the pocket of his discarded jacket for his motorcycle keys, which Tir received with blissful fascination and proceeded to try to eat. "She's seventeen years old, and she's been around more than I have." He caught Gil's raised eyebrow and askance look, and followed her eye to the decoration on the back of his jacketЧskulls, roses, black flames, and all. "Aah, that," he said, a little embarrassed at it "Picasso had a Blue Period. I had my Pachuco Period."
"Oh," Gil said distastefully, not believing him. "Are you in a gang?"
Rudy sat back on his heels, hearing the tone in her voice. "What the hell do you think I do, live in Fontana and go out on raids?"
Since that was exactly what she thought he did, she said, "No. I meanЧ" She broke off in confusion. "You mean you painted that yourself?"
"Sure," Rudy said, reaching over to spread out the offending garment with its elaborate symbology and multiple grease stains. "I'd do it better nowЧI'd have different lettering, and no fire; the fire makes it look kind of trashy. That is, if I did it at all. It's kind of tacky," he admitted. "But it's good advertising."
"You mean you make your living at that?"
"Oh, yeah. For now, anyway. I work at Wild David Wilde's Paint and Body Shop in Berdoo, and painting's a hell of a lot easier than body work, let me tell you."
Gil contemplated the jacket for a moment longer, her chin resting on her folded hands on the back of the chair. Though morbid, violent, and weird, the design was well executed and argued a certain ability and sensitivity of style. "Then you're not a biker yourself?"
"I ride a motorcycle," Rudy said. "I like bikes, work on them. I'm not in a gang, though. You can run yourself into real trouble that way." He shrugged. "Those guys are really heavy-duty. I couldn't do it."
Ingold came back in, having traced the power cables to their sources and explored the land around the little house as if seeking something in the dusty silence of the groves. Gil dished up canned beef stew and bread. As they ate, Rudy listened to the girl and the wizard talk and wondered again how much this thin, spooky-looking woman believed the old man, and how much of her conversation was tactful humoring of an old, well-loved, and totally crazy friend.
It was impossible to tell. That she was fond of him was obvious; her guarded stiffness relaxed, and with liveliness her face was almost pretty. But it was Ingold who dominated and led, she who followed, and there were times when Rudy wondered if she was as crazy as the old man.
"I never understood that about the memories," Gil was saying, blowing on her coffee to cool it. "You and Eldor talked about it, but I don't understand."
"No one really understands it," Ingold said. "It's a rare phenomenon, far rarer than wizardry. To my knowledge, in all the history of the Realm it has appeared in only three noble houses and two peasant ones. We don't know what it is or why it works, why a son will suddenly recall events that happened to his grandfather, when the grandfather never exhibited such a talent in his life, why it seems to descend only in the male line, why it skips one generation, or two, or five, why some sons will remember certain events and be ignorant of others that their brothers recall with exacting clarity."
"I could be like a double-recessive gene," Gil began thoughtfully.
"A what?"
"A genetic trait ... " She stopped. "Jeez, you people don't understand genetics, do you?"
"As in horse breeding?" Ingold asked with a smile.