"Janet Morris - Kerrion Empire 03 - Earth Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

muzzle, "Who am I, sibyl? Tell me that if you see so
far," He was clad in a quilted leather vest and old trou-
sers. Like his men, he was bearded and unkempt. But his
squint told her stories and Shebat's tongue, oracular
beyond control in the face of this specter from her
Earthly past, named who he must be: "Child of a magical
bed, no Earthbom father spawned you, Jesse Thome.
But do not trade upon the trident."

The men with the flowing-haired fellow muttered, but
their leader, nodding, understood: he had had a trident
pendant, once; his mother had always told him he was an
enchanter's son. And, too, he had come a long and dan-
gerous way to consult the oracle, whose cult was bom in
the razing of Bolen's town and had grown fierce and
strong in the ensuing years. At worst, she was a clever
fraud; were it so, his men believed in her healings and
her auguries, and that made her useful enough. But
though he vaguely recalled a churlish child who swept
Bolen's floors and served his patrons, he too, wanted to
believe that one of his own kind had gone up to heaven
and returned, bearing the spark of salvation, which revo-
lution might fan into a blaze to scour all the Earth. His
war with enchanters, were she not what she seemed, was

9

EARTH DREAMS
foredoomed, merely a chance to choose a better death
than craven servitude's. Should she give a portent favor-
able to the ragged militia's cause, it would spur them on
to heroic effort, where now every one of them, himself
included, was resigned to eventual failure, shuffling on-
ward, uncaring toward that "better" death. In the face of
the casual ravaging of scattered human enclaves during
the year past while enchanters fought among themselves
for unfathomable advantage, the pastoral communities
subsisting on their sufferance had fared worse, not bet-
ter, than before. Seeking his sign, some word of endorse-
ment, he spoke too quickly, without making himself
clear: "Little mother, what will be the ending of this
war?"

"When the best of the Kerrions quarrel, Chaeron will
prevail on Earth." She answered the larger question, not
the part of it he had in mind.

The man silhouetted by the setting sun behind him
rubbed his nose. "And we?"