"Kathleen O' Neal & Michael W. Gear - People 3 - People Of The Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Neal Kathleen)

Power had brought Sage Ghost to hide here among the thick clumps of
giant wild rye along the river. Here he could spy upon the Earth
People's dirt-covered lodges. The vision had told him that the Earth
People would kill him if they caught him. He glanced around anxiously,
peering through the tall grass as he sought to place every potential
escape route in his memory. If someone sounded an alarm, where could
he run? He didn't know this country, didn't have that feeling for the
way the land lay, or how the trails ran.

Sage Ghost carefully straightened his leg where it had begun to cramp.
He lay on his muscular belly, curled around tussocks of grass like a
human snake. The thick black hair over his forehead had been pulled up
in a roach and pinned with a buffalo-scapula clip; the rest hung down
his back in a tumbled, gleaming stream. A line of five black circles
had been tattooed across his forehead. Wide cheekbones gave his face a
craggy look, the skin sun-darkened and weathered. His long nose
sprouted like an eagle's beak over a broad-lipped mouth. From under
heavy brows, keen eyes studied the camp of the Earth People. Broad
shoulders rippled with muscle, as did his arms: muscles to power the
gleaming darts gripped in his callused right hand and the atlatl--a
choke cherry shaft as long as his forearm, with a curved antler hook in
the end. The atlatl acted as an extension of the arm to increase the
power of a cast dart by as much as two hundred percent. The deadly
dart--as long as a man was tall--consisted of two parts: the
stone-tipped fore shaft which detached upon impact, and the fl etched
shaft that bounced back and could be retrieved, quickly fitted with a
new fore shaft and thrown again.

Fear slipped along his spine on feet of ice.

The vision brought me here. Led me over the long trail to this place.
He raised his eyes, whispering as loudly as he dared, "Where is the
child? Haven't I proven myself worthy?"

He gazed into the deepening blue of the late-afternoon sky. Sage Ghost
had always felt a healthy respect for Power--but he'd never sought it
the way some did. He'd been content to hunt, to raise his family and
love his wife. Calling on Power left him uneasy; Power and fire were a
lot the same. They could be managed and manipulated when treated with
respect, or, if treated casually, they could scorch the world or sear
the life from an unwary man's body.

And here I am, far from my people and the land I love. Where is the
child? Or has the Power turned against me? Am I about to be
destroyed? Burned up and turned to ashes, with no one to mourn my
soul?

Power was the business of the shamans--the Dreamers and Soul Fliers.
They knew the ways of Power as eagles knew the ways of the air currents