"Tim Lebbon - Dusk 02 - Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lebbon Tim)

like a proud Krote come to conquer and claim. Its half-life is less than a hawkтАЩs shit, but you are
linked to it now by this touch. And Angel withdrew from her mind, leaving that link in place.

Lenora took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She was looking directly at the machine where it stood
awaiting her touch. She sensed its unnatural shade drawing back in fear.

The machine moved.

The Krotes gathered across the harbor gasped.This is the first time theyтАЩve seen magic, Lenora
thought. She was the only one here, other than the Mages, who had been alive during the Cataclysmic
War. These other Krotes were fifth- or sixth-generation descendants of those who had fled Noreela, tall
or short, dark-skinned or light, the blood flowing in their veins merged with that of the many tribes they
had found on DanaтАЩMan and its satellite islands. They were fighters, warriors, true to the Mages and
faithful in their pledges. But they had only ever heard of magic, never seen it. Nevertouched it.

Lenora looked around at her captains and saw their fear, and realized that this was a defining moment in
the history of the land. Everything had changed when the Mages caught the boy, took his magic and
stripped his soul, and now that change was about to envelop the whole of Noreela. What she did now
would dictate her own part in that change, and what would follow.

Lenora walked forward, approaching what she perceived to be the front of this machine. As she drew
closer she saw that it had the semblance of a face. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When
she opened them again, the machine was staring at her.

It had several eyes, placed at various points around its bulbous head. Two of them were looking at her.
It was too dark to see their color, but she knew that they were not the eyes of a hawk. She lifted her chin
and glared back.

The machine lowered itself, stone underside settling on the ground, and Lenora climbed onto its back. It
stank of something more elemental than scorched flesh. It smelled, Lenora realized, of magic.

She sat astride the machineтАЩs back and rested her hands on two bony protuberances on either side of its
head.Stand, she thought, and the machine raised itself on several stone legs. It shivered beneath her, the
vibrations traveling up her thighs and into her stomach. It gave a strange sexual quality to her fear, tingling
her skin and causing her old wounds to ache as if craving the knife, the blade, the arrow once again.
Walk, she thought, and the machine took its first hesitant steps. She could feel its inner workings
throbbing beneath her: no heartbeat, but something that felt like a fire being stoked; no breathing, but
gasps as gas was blown out and air sucked in.Turn, and the machine paused at the edge of the harbor, a
step away from tumbling into the sea, and rotated to face her Krotes.

The Mages watched. Even SтАЩHivez seemed to be smiling.

Lenora sensed the power at work beneath her. This was not just a thing of stone and flesh and blood, it
was also imbued with the MagesтАЩ magic, awash with a deadly potential that she had yet to realize. The
possibilities were thrilling.Fire, she thought, and a ball of flame formed from one of the machineтАЩs mouths.
She held it there, its roaring echoed by the gasps from the assembled warriors. Then she turned the
machine and flung the fire far out to sea. It seemed to burn even as it sank, and for a few seconds the
whole harborтАЩs surface was illuminated from beneath.

My gods,she thought,what have you created?