"Michael McCollum - Who Will Guard the Guardians" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

"Later!"

"I'm awfully hungry. I stopped in the village. When I told them I was looking for you, they turned away."
She hesitated as she noticed the flare of anger in Fria's eyes. She gulped loudly before continuing. "You
were expecting me, weren't you? I mean, you knew I was coming? The elders said you knew!"

Fria nodded angrily. "I knew all about it. Stop dawdling and disrobe!"

Amber had removed her sodden dress and stood before Fria in a loose fitting camisole. Her lower lip
quivered and she shook her head in a curt negative. Fria lifted the candle to where it was even with
Amber's eyes and leaned forward until their noses were mere inches apart.
"Now that you are here there can be no refusals. I must be sure. Your life depends on it."

The girl whimpered as she lifted the soaked camisole over her head. The firelight reflected off her body
in flickering shadows. Fria grabbed the girl by the shoulders and spun her around. The tattoo was
precisely where it should have been. The number bore the crisp, machine-produced look of an
Examiner. No human hand could have forged it. And if that wasn't sufficient, the number tallied with the
simple, unbreakable code that Fria had used when she gave out the chrome and steel Examiner boxes a
dozen years earlier.

The girl had been rightfully chosen, rightfully marked.

After the verification was over, Fria stepped back and let her eyes rove over the rest of Amber's body.
What she saw was a young girl on the verge of womanhood. The signs of incipient puberty were
everywhere, from the slight swelling of the hips, to a hint of breasts to be. Fria let her eyes drop to the
bare triangle between Amber's legs. She was reminded of another girl four centuries earlier who had
shyly covered herself as other hard eyes had surveyed her.

She was reminded of what she had lost.

"Don't get dressed. Lay your clothing on the hearth to dry. You will find a blanket to wrap yourself up in
the loft. After that, I'll give you food."

With that, she turned her back as the girl followed her instructions. It was not until she heard the soft
scrabbling of bare feet on straw in the loft that Fria began to shake.

#

Fria recognized that her mood would allow her no further sleep. She waited silently for Amber to eat her
fill, and then saw her bedded down. She waited until a quiet, regular breathing could be heard from the
loft before wrapping a wool blanket tightly around her shoulders and stepping out into the moonlit night.
The mountain air was cold - uncomfortably so, even for her - yet the tiny stabbing pain that accompanied
each inhalation seemed to clear her head and calm her emotions.

She did not walk far. Four centuries of residence among the high crags had taught her feet the path to
the outcropping of granite that overlooked her meadow of flowers. She was barely conscious of her
progress, or of the dark shadows of the dogs that followed closely behind.

Fria found her perch and pulled her knees to her chest, drawing the blanket about her. Below, the field
of flowers rippled eerily in the moonlight, as though it was some far sea whipped by storm winds. She