"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 06 - A Time Of Omens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

the sun laid a road of gold across the water. She waded out into the gentle waves, seemed to step onto
the golden road, and disappeared like mist vanishing in the glare of sun. She apparently knew the trick, as
Evandar had called it, of traveling to the home of the three mothers of all roads.

Jill allowed herself the luxury of a brief moment of envying her, then made herself concentrate on the job
at hand. The wildfolk were still clustering round, undines thronging all silver in the breaking waves, sylphs
and sprites hovering overhead, crystal glimpses in the strong sun. At the head of a pack of warty green
and purple gnomes, her faithful gray fellow was wandering around, poking at the sand with a piece of
stick. When Jill called him, he trotted over, the others straggling slowly after.

тАЬNow look, I need your help. You know who the Elder Brothers are.тАЭ

The gray gnome nodded and grinned, revealing a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. The purple fellows
were suddenly all attention.

тАЬWell, somewhere around here they have a city, somewhere away from the shore, most like. I need to
know where it is.тАЭ

With a scatter of sand they all disappeared, leaving her to hope theyтАЩd understood her.

Sticking to the hard-packed sand at the waterтАЩs edge, Jill headed down the beach, keeping the cliffs to
her leftтАФgoing south, she finally decided, once the sun had moved enough for her to judge that it was
setting, not rising. It was a long time before she could see the specks wheeling and diving that Dallandra
had noticed, and longer still before those specks did indeed resolve themselves into white birds. At that
point she realized as well that the land was sloping ever so gently down, and that the cliffs rose lower and
lower, finally petering out ahead in a last curve of broken hill. She could also see a brownish surge of
water heading out from land and flowing across the ocean. So Dallandra had found her a river, indeed,
and Jill was glad of it. In the blazing heat she wanted a swim in fresh water as badly as she was beginning
to need the shade of the trees that bordered it.

Unfortunately, when she reached the shallows of the estuary, she found crocodiles, piled on a tumble of
gray rocks or flopped onto each other as they lazed on the mud among stands of water reeds. Although
Jill started to count them, she gave up after fifty. While the creatures blinked and drowsed in the
afternoon sun, little brown birds walked among and over them without the crocodiles even noticing, but
Jill had no desire to try the trick herself. She got one of her water bottles out of her pack and had a long
swallowтАФwarm, tasting of leather, but at least it was wet. If, as seemed likely, the river got deeper and
ran faster upstream, sheтАЩd be able to find a safer spot to drink later.

By then the sun was sinking off in the west, and with the

cooler air of evening came swarms of insects, rising like a mist from the riverbanks. Deep in the jungle
ahead birds began to call back and forth. With a yawn and a grunt, a few of the crocodiles scrambled out
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of the pack and flopped into the river. Birds screeched a warning and flew. Jill decided that sheтАЩd be
better off with a good stretch of dry land between her and them. Rather than face the night jungle she
hurried back to the beach and went back the way sheтАЩd come for some hundreds of yards. Well above