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

you, get down, and tell me who has dared the sancitity of
these grounds. If you men are bent on evil, do it
elsewhere. This is a free zone, where enchanters do no
magic and soldiers make no war. You!" She pointed out
the man who had spoken. "I need no fire to see your
face, no cave to reveal you. Someday, you will look into
a stream and cower at what you see. Now, you wish to
hear that you are right, that you are fated. Well, make
no peace, man of Ithaca, and you will see that you are
not right, but truly fated. Follow your heart, instead, and
live to see your grandchild play."

The man stopped at his horses's head, stroking its
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