"Continuing Time - 98 - Lord November" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

slowly; her eyes, unfocused and remote, met TyrelТs. She spoke in a voice
distant and gentle:
УThey come down out of the mountains, to where the circle of his fire is burning
against the night. And you see the young man he speaks to them then, at the foot
of the mountains while the living diamonds hunt them in the darkness, and tells
them that the old promises will be fulfilled, the old dreams realized, the old
wrongs made right. And then, together,Ф the girl said, looking away from Tyrel
and abruptly fixing one of her companions with a fierce gaze, Уtogether they
march back through the Traveling Waters, and go back together to the city on the
hill and drive out the enemy.Ф
The rooftop faded and vanished; and one of the girlТs companions, the
dark-haired man, vanished with it. Tyrel found himself on a mountainside at
night, near what he recognized as the north end of the Dragonback; the vast bulk
of Prometheus, NovemberТs primary, blotted out the stars above them.
The girl stood facing him, with the young blonde man at her side, and Tyrel knew
who they had to be: Denice Castanaveras, dead near four centuries; and Trent the
Uncatchable, who had vanished from the Continuing Time longer ago than that.
Blue fire flickered across the girlТs skin, pulsed around her skull.
Trent the Uncatchable spoke. УWhere are we?Ф
УWatching,Ф said Denice Castanaveras. УWatching the fire burning out. They
forgot to bank TyrelТs fire when they all left together. It flickers and then
the cold kills it, and all thatТs left is theЧdarkness.Ф

In the first light, on the morning of the seventh day, the searchers came.
At first Tyrel was not certain they were not a hallucination. They moved slowly,
covering roughly the centerline of the heading Tyrel had left on file at
College: five cars, with the blue on black mandala of United Earth Intelligence
emblazoned on them. He watched them coming, bringing his breathing and heartbeat
back to normal, increasing the flow of blood to his extremities, and prepared to
move.
Tyrel scaled the rifle down to its lowest setting, and when the nearest car was
within range, pinged a shot off its side.
The reaction was what he had expected; the car veered off wildly, and the four
flanking it dropped out of the sky like stones, down beneath the cover of the
trees.

Tyrel waited patiently; if he had learned nothing else at College, he had
learned patience. It is the first axiom of nightways that there are only
necessary actions, and mistakes. By the reactions of those in the search
vehicles he knew them for shivatad, night faces, and they would know his shot
for what it had been, a warning of danger and not any serious attack.
He heard the first screams of approaching spacecraft only a few minutes after
his warning shot. He let his skin go black, highlighting himself against the
pale bluff; and then for much of the morning watched the spacecraft track back
and forth across the sky above him. Finally, just before noon, one of the cars
Tyrel had seen earlier made its way up the river, floating only a few meters
above the surface of the running water, and came to a halt on the near bank. A
night face Tyrel did not know got out of the car, looked up to where Tyrel lay
on the bluff, and called up, УYou can come down now.Ф