"Janet Morris - Silistra 3 - Wind from the Abyss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

winged, fanged and clawed, are the servants of the dharen. I had had no need
to fear. Yet, I thought as I gathered the arrar Carth's scattered papers, they
are fearsome. Perhaps if I had been able, as others are, to hear its mind's
intent, I would have felt differently. My fingers, numb and trembling, fumbled
for the delicate sheets.
One in particular caught my eye. It was in Carth's precise hand and headed:
"Preassessment monitoring of the arrar Sereth. Enar fourth second, 25,697."
I had met, once, the arrar Sereth. Upon my birthday, Macara fourth seventh, in
the year '696 had I met him, that night upon which my child had been
conceived. I had read of his exploits. He frightened me, killer of killers,
enforcer for the dharen, he who wore the arrarтАФchald of the messenger. Sereth,
scarred and lean and taut like some carnivore, who had loved the Keepress
Estri, my namesake, and with her brought great change upon Silistra in the
pass-Amarsa, 25,695тАФyes, I had met him.
I sat myself down cross-legged upon the Galeshir carpet, papers still strewn
about, forgotten, and began to read:
WIND FROM THE ABYSS 3
The time is approximately three enths after sun's rising, the weather clouded
and cool, our position just south of the juncture of the Karir and Thoss
rivers. I highly recommend that you look in upon the moment.
The arrar Sereth, on the brindle hulion Leir, touched his gol-knife. It was
the first unnecessary movement he had made in over an enth. My presence,
alongside upon a black hulion, disquieted him. The brindle, gliding at the
apex of its bound, snorted. He touched its shoulder, and the beast, obedient,
angled its wings and began its descent.
When its feet touched the grass, he set it as a grounded lope. I followed
suit, bringing my black up to pace him.
Sereth regarded me obliquely. I, as he, served the dharen, he thought, and
touched his hulion to a stop.
We had been riding all the night, up from Galesh, where I had met him with the
two beasts. He had served dharen, most lately, in Dritira. And before that, in
the hide diet, and before that upon the star world M'ksakka had he dealt death
and retribution at Khys's whim. And dealt them successfully, though those
tasks had been fraught with deadlier risk than a man might be expected to
survive. His thought was wry, recollecting.
"How did you find M'ksakka?" I asked, to key him, to bring something else
above the impenetrable shield he has constructed. My hulion growled at the
brindle he rode, and that one answered.
"1 will make a full report to Khys," he said, slipping off the hulion's back.
"Let us rest them."
I joined him where he lay upon the grass, staring at the sky.
"I missed this land," he said. "The sky there is dark and ominous, always
clouded. M'ksakkan air stings eyes and lungs. Everything is covered with a
fine black dust. I would not go again off the planet."
4 Janet E. Morris
"Perhaps he will not send you," I conjectured.'
He saw M'ksakka, and that seeing was colored by his distaste, both for the
world and the work he had done there. The methods he had employed displeased
his sense of fitness. The value of the M'ksakkan's death was to him obscure. I
saw the moment: the adjuster's surprised eyes, wide and staring as Sereth's