"Mel Odom - Forgotten Realms - Threat from the Sea Trilogy 03 - The Sea Devils" - читать интересную книгу автора (Odom Mel)

She stood a little more than five and a half feet tall, with copper-colored curls shorn well short of her
shoulders. Seasons spent with the sun and sea had darkened her skin, but a spattering of freckles still
crossed the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. Light from the big stone fireplace that warmed the hostel
against the wet chill of the sea ignited reddish brown flames in her eyes. Her clothing was loose and
baggy, worn that way so it wouldn't draw attention to her femininity.
Beside them, Azla wrinkled her nose in distaste. She held a half-drunk schooner of ale curled neatly
in one gloved hand.
"He means you need to stop looking out that window so much," the pirate captain stated. "You're
going to draw attention." Azla was a half-elf, bearing the characteristic pointed ears and slender build of
her elf parent. Her features were beautiful and dusky, made even darker by a dozen years and more in
the sun and wind. Silky black hair hung just to her shoulders, cut straight across. She wore a green
blouse so dark it was almost black, and leather breeches dyed dark blue.
"The thing that worries me," Sabyna said, "is that he doesn't seem to be himself."
"No," the paladin said, "our young warrior is torn."
 "By what?" Sabyna asked.
She risked another glance at the Bare Bosom, watching a sailor stride drunkenly from the
establishment in the company of a serving wench doing her best to prop him up. The girl's fingers found
the man's coin purse.
"There are things I feel a man should be willing to discuss on his own without having others discuss
them for him," Glawinn answered.
"He could get killed over there tonight," Azla warned coldly.
"True enough," Glawinn replied, "but sometimes you have to rely on faith."
Azla snorted. "Faith isn't as certain as cold steel."
"It is for some." Glawinn's words were soft, but strong.
"Faith has never done well by me," Azla went on. A trace of bitterness threaded through her words.
Sabyna knew the captain hadn't always been a pirate. Azla had grown up in the Dalelands, but
events and her own guilt forced her down to the Sea of Fallen Stars and into a pirate's life. Glawinn had
no way of knowing that.
"The problem could be that you're not supposed to expect faith to do well by you," the paladin said.
"You're supposed to do well by your faith."
"I am a mage," Sabyna said. "My faith is strong enough, but I'm no cleric to be led around by
looking at a chicken's entrails to figure out what my chosen god wants me to do. I believe in knowledge.
Our gods choose what knowledge to put in our paths, but it's up to us to learn it and choose what to do
with it."
"My faith is not that way," Glawinn said. "I choose to let Lathander set me upon a path, trusting in
the Morninglord that I will know what to do when the time comes."
"More men have died from conflicting beliefs than over gold and silver," Azla said. "Trusting a god is
a very dangerous thing."
"On that issue, Captain," Glawinn said gravely, "I fear we'll have to disagree."
Sabyna pulled her cloak more tightly around her against the night's chill. More than anything she
wanted to be up and around, doing something but not knowing what. "He's changed so much since I first
met him," she whispered.
"How so?" Glawinn asked.
Across the street, a handful of cargo handlers deep in conversation walked across the uneven
boardwalk in front of the Bare Bosom. One of them carried a shielded candle hanging from a crooked
stick that barely beat back the night.
"When he first came aboard Breezerunner, there was a quiet desperation in him," Sabyna said. "I
didn't understand that, now I understand his feelings even less after seeing how he handled himself aboard
Breezerunner. He stood up against Vurgrom and his pirate crew in the middle of a maelstrom and never
faltered. Now he seems ..."