"Mercedes Lackey - Heralds of Valdemar 1 - Arrows Of The Queen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

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Copyright ┬й 1987 by Mercedes R. Lackey.

All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Jody Lee.

DAW Book Collectors No. 702.

Dedicated to Marion Zimmer Bradley

and Lisa Waters

who kept telling me I

could do this . . .

First Printing, March 1987 5 6 7 8 9 10 II 12

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the tree, but the young girl seated
beneath it did not seem to notice. An adolescent of thirteen or thereabouts, she
was, by her plain costume, a member of one of the solemn and straight-laced Hold
families that lived in this Borderland of ValdemarтАФcome there to settle a bare
two generations ago. She was dressed (as any young Holdgirl would be) in plain
brown breeches and a long, sleeved tunic. Her unruly brown curls had been cut
short in an unsuccessful attempt to tame them to conform to Hold standards. She
would have presented a strange sight to anyone familiar with Holderfolk; for
while she sat and carded the undyed wool she had earlier cleaned, she was
reading. Few Hold girls could read, and none did so for pleasure. That was a
privilege normally reserved, by longstanding tradition, for the men and boys of
the Holdings. A female's place was not to be learned; a girl readingтАФeven if she
was doing a womanly task at the same timeтАФwas as out of place as a scarlet jay
among crows.

If anyone could have seen her thoughts at that moment, they would have known her
to be even more of a misfit than her reading implied.

Mercedes Lackey

Vanyel was a dim shape in the darkness beside her; there was no moon, and only
the dim light of the stars penetrated the boughs of the hemlock bushes they hid
beneath. She only knew he was there by the faint sound of his breathing, though
they lay so closely together that had she moved her hand a fraction of an inch,
she'd have touched him. Training and discipline held her quiet, though under
other circumstances she'd have been shivering so hard her teeth would have
rattled. The starlight reflected on the snow beneath them was enough to see byтАФ-
enough to see the deadly danger to Valdemar that moved below them.