"Alex Irvine - Wizard's Six" - читать интересную книгу автора (Irvine Alexander C)

syrup in PaulusтАЩ throat. The boy with the stick in his hand had fallen without a
sound, face still bearing traces of his smile at seeing PaulusтАЩ swordтАФyet Paulus
knew that in the dying reaches of the boyтАЩs brain had been the knowledge of his
murder. He found that he could not bear the idea of Sophia dying with that same
knowledge. Her name, he thought. If I had not learned her name....
тАЬLet me tell you a story,тАЭ Paulus said, and then he fell silent because he
couldnтАЩt remember any stories. He remembered the sound of his fatherтАЩs voice
telling him stories when he was a small boy, but he couldnтАЩt hear any of the words.
тАЬThere was a little girl who dreamed that she was a bird,тАЭ he began, and he let his
voice follow the idea of that bird until Sophia was asleep. In the morning he buried
the crusts of the bread with her, and burned the coat over her grave. As he climbed
out of the canyon into sunlight, a wind sharp with snow raised gooseflesh on his
arms. He filled his lungs and held his breath until the edges of his vision faded into
red, then exhaled slowly, slowly, feeling his mind start to fade. At the point of
unconsciousness he let himself breathe again, deeply and freely. He did not
remember where he had learned the exercise, but it cleared his mind, and as his
horseтАФBrownтАФpicked his way across frosted scree below a peak like the head of a
boil, Paulus let his mind wander. During the short time he had slept the night before,
he had dreamed of being a dog, in a warm room with thick rugs and two great stone
chairs too high for him to leap onto. There had been a kind woman and an old, old
man, and another man who would not look at him but spoke gently. O queen, he
thought; and after that, O brother.
The motion of a hare bounding between rocks drew his attention. He slipped
an old throwing knife from its sheath at the small of his back and waited for it to
move again, thinking that now he was over the first high ridge of peaks and in this
expanse of alpine valleys, game would be more plentiful. In the high country, above
treeline, was nothing but pikas and the occasional adventuresome goat. He wished he
had brought a bow, but the truth was that no one had ever mistaken him for a skillful
archer; his boyhood circus training, though, had served him well where knives were
concerned. When the hare made its move, Paulus flicked his wrist. Simple. Five
minutes later, the hare was dressed and dangling from his saddle. He rode on, trying
not to think of sopping up the hareтАЩs fat with SophiaтАЩs bread. Skill with knives or
no, Paulus knew that hunger was going to be a close companion as he moved farther
from settled regions. The hermits and occasional isolated hamlets huddled in the
valleys would not all be as hospitable as the Brancheforts had been.
Sparser settlement also meant that it would be harder to track
MyrosтАФalthough Myros would have his own problems, chief among them finding
four more children to collect. Paulus had no doubt that all six of MyrosтАЩ collection
would be children, and the certainty had come so quietly that he was reluctant to
examine it too closely. He mistrusted his own intuition, feeling that it was often
fueled by whatever it was he had paid the wizard to make him forget, and he feared
breaking the spell by looking too closely at the workings of his mind.
There was the problem, too, of where Myros was goingтАФand why. Moving
north as fast as feet could carry him, moving deeper and deeper into the winter that
had already left the lowlands, Myros fled as if frantic to go backward in time. If he
kept heading north, he would reach the marshes and tundras that gave onto the
ice-choked Mare Ultima. What would Myros want with the tribes who followed the
whales and caribou?
A stirring in PaulusтАЩ mind set his fingers tingling with more than the cold. I
can block the memories of your mind, the wizard had said, but the bodyтАЩs memories