"Julian May - The Pliocene Exiles 04 - The Adversary" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

use her Milieu training to lift Brede into metapsychic operancy,
and the two briefly enjoyed a limited Unity. This was broken
when Brede insisted that she foresaw Elizabeth assuming the
guardian role, and the human woman violently rejected the
responsibility.

Around the beginning of October, the entire Many-Coloured
Land prepared for the annual ritual war, the Grand Combat,
by means of a month-long Truce. Up north, Madame Guderian
and her band of saboteurs made use of the peace to implement
their plans. Madame and Claude, the old paleontologist, went
into hiding close by the time-gate. They planned to wait until
the others--including Felice, Sister Amerie, Basil, and a Native
American leader named Peopeo Moxmox Burke--reached
Muriah and readied a strike against the torc factory inside
Coercer Guild headquarters. The attacks against time-gate and
factory would be made simultaneously.

Felice and the other southbound saboteurs at first hoped to
use the Spear to destroy the factory. They summoned Aiken
Drum to their hiding place and gave him the weapon, which he
promised to recharge and return to them. Actually, Aiken had
no intention of aiding his former compatriots. Encouraged by
both Mayvar and Gomnol, he aspired to become King of the
Many-Coloured Land by defeating Nodonn in the upcoming
Grand Combat. He warned his confederate Gomnol to protect
the torc factory against the saboteurs; then he flew north, disgu-
ised as a bird, in order to thwart Claude and Madame's attempt
to close the time-gate. In this he failed. Sacrificing themselves,
the elderly couple carried a warning back in time to the Milieu
authorities, and the time-gate operation was suspended.

The saboteurs infiltrating the torc factory were surprised by
a force of Tanu knights, members of the Host of Nontusvel,
who had been sent by Nodonn. Of the surviving humans, Felice
was turned over to Culluket the Interrogator for torture, while
Sister Amerie, Chief Burke, and Basil were thrown into a
dungeon to await death during the Grand Combat. The human
Lord Coercer, Gomnol, was mind-blasted to death by the Host
in a subterfuge, and the blame was put on Felice.

As the time of the Grand Combat approached, a number of
crises reached a critical stage. Aiken, deprived of his powerful

ally, Gomnol, found himself endangered by Stein. The big crust
driller had been imprisoned with Sukey, now his wife, and his
sanity was beginning to totter because of the unhealthy effect
of the grey torc he wore. There was a chance that Stein might
inadvertently reveal that Aiken conspired against the Tanu.