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

EARTH DREAMS

"And about the brigand, sweet Thome of Ithaca?"
asked Chaeron, and Tempest, not liking the look of it,
took their plates and walked out into the stark pale
morning.

Shebat gazed after him, past the camouflaged inflata-
bles where fine-fettled enchanters' horses snorted on
their line, stamping and whickering for food, to the long
vistas of autumn coming down on the hills and the river,
and back to Chaeron, lounging in the cave's mouth, half
in sunlight, half enshadowed. He seemed untroubled by
the stone under him or the flies buzzing desperately
about his head- She had never seen him in natural light,
she thought, because the sullen sensuality her prejudiced
eye expected was not in his face today. Instead, his
haughty bones casting shadows down from his cheeks and
brow and nose to meet the stubble on his unshaven jaw
roughened him. He seemed aged more than his nearly
twenty-six years could warrant. What had been an au-
daciously beautiful youth was becoming an austerely
handsome man by virtue of the changes a mind can make
in the flesh that sustains it. Muscles had learned to knot
and skin to fold. Across his brow a long line like a deep
scratch showed, and never truly smoothed away. Shebat
thought, looking at him, that the six years separating
them loomed like a lifetime; her own days had not yet
begun to speed, but merely passed-

"Shebat," he prodded, "you have not answered me
about this Jesse Thorne. If you invited him to come
again, there must be a reason."

She blushed and looked away, for he had caught her
staring at himЧand knew why, from the way he raked
his curls with an exasperated hand. "ThomeЧof Troy,
not Ithaca," Shebat corrected, "though I called him thus,
since he lives there now. The story goes that Gottfried
Orrefors, youngest son of Richter and far away down the
line of succession, came to Earth to commit suicide, and
begot Jesse upon a widowed farm wife on his way
through Troy. Some enchanter had her, for he left his
stallion there as brideprice, and gave her a trident pen-
dant, symbol of the house of Orrefors, before he disap-
peared. Gottfried Orrefor's body was never recovered,
but he did slate into the record that he was exercising his

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