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

high overhead. Soul Fliers could loosen their souls from the body and
send them wheeling through the Dream the way Eagle circled in the
sky.

Sage Ghost had never had the calling to seek Power. A Soul Flier might
know how to free his spirit and sail like Eagle on the winds of Power,
but Sage Ghost had always known he would tumble to the unforgiving
rocks below.

Events'change a man's life. Desperation drives the most resolute to
seek that which he's always avoided. The death of Sage Ghost's
daughter had changed his life, and the life of Bright Moon, his wife.
Stung by the grief in Bright Moon's eyes and the ache in his own soul,
Sage Ghost had raised his arms and called on Power, and Power had led
him south, to spy on this curious camp.

Sage Ghost struggled with an impulse to run, to get away from this land
and this strange people. But to do so would offend the Power that had
brought him this far.
My soul is a bit of thistledown cast loose on the winds. A
shiver--like the prickly sensation of grasshopper feet on flesh--worked
down Sage Ghost's spine.

Evening continued to settle over the warm, dusty body of the earth.
Streaks of reddish cloud flamed in the dying light of the sun. Insects
chirred and clicked in the grass around him; a breeze rustled the
rasping green stems. Mosquitoes hummed irritatingly but without the
annoying persistence of those common to his home country to the north.
Frogs stroked the quiet air with guttural cries.

Inclined hills rose to the west, buff slabs of up tilted mountains
stippled by limber pine and juniper where the trees had knotted thick
roots into the cracked rock. The implacable face of the mountain had
been cut by the three forks of the river in the way a chert knife might
rip through a lodge bottom. The waters ran cool and clear through the
shaded, tree choked canyons. Behind him lay the blue-gray range of
mountains he had crossed on his journey. The northern slopes had risen
gradually until he reached the divide. From there the way had turned
treacherous when rounded caps of weathered granite had dropped off in
precipitous cliffs. A misstep would have meant death. The range
stretched east-west, hemming in this giant basin of rock, sand, and
desiccated clays.

Beyond those mountains, more weeks' travel away--north of the Fat
Beaver and the Dangerous rivers--lay his own familiar rugged steppes.
There, along the many drainages that fed the Bug River, the White Clay
clan of the Sun People struggled to hold their territory. Their grasp
on the rich land continued to be peeled back, a finger hold at a time.
Other clans of the Sun People moved out of the north to drive the White
Clay before them like husks of grass before a powerful wind. Keen-eyed