"Jennifer Roberson - Karavans 01 - Karavans" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberson Jennifer)

To anywhere other than where he had been.
Alisanos.
Human?
Was he?
Could he be, after dwelling in Alisanos?
He stopped walking. Stretched out his arms, and gazed upon them. Began to tremble.
At the end of his arms, in place of his hands, wasтАФ other.
He screamed.
Human?
No.
Not he.
Screamed and screamed and screamed.
ILONA AWOKE ABRUPTLY to the sound of a scream resounding within her skull. For that moment of shock,
the initial instant of confusion caused by a sudden awakening out of deep sleep, she heard it. And then
realized the sound had not been a true scream but merely the futile attempt of her sleep-fettered body to cry
out. She had managed at most a moan.
Her wagon was dark. She had dropped the oilcloth sides of the roof canopy and blown out the last lantern
hours before. The karavan encampment, wagons gathered within a sprawling grove of wide-crowned trees at
the edge of a haphazard tent settlement, still slept, save for the occasional yip or bark of a dog, the restless
wuffling of picketed draft animals, the ceaseless metallic scraping of insects known as nightsingers.
She lay awake in the narrow cot beneath the roof ribs of her tall, high-wheeled wagon, recalling the scrambled
flashes of dream-born images. Confusion, mostly: scarlet lightning, a roaring wind, black skies, steaming
rain, the glimpse of a womanтАЩ s profile, a Hecari warrior with warclub raised, a karavan turning back. None of it
made sense.
Ilona closed her eyes and rubbed the lids with her fingers, stretching them out of shape. Jorda, the
karavan-master, had never turned back in all his years on the roads throughout Sancorra province. His
reputation was for always getting his people where they paid him to go. It made no sense that Jorda would
turn back.
Voice hoarse from sleep, Ilona chastised herself. тАЬ You read hands, remember? Reading dreams is not your
gift.тАЭ
But she could not shake the images, the memory of panic. Red lightning, a roaring wind, black skies, a
woman, inexplicably steaming rain, and a karavan turning back.
Not JordaтАЩ s karavan, then. Perhaps nothing more than a dream construct, false images conjured from the
back of her mind.
Ilona turned onto her side, resettling blankets over her upper shoulder. She was a diviner, yes, but the omens
and auguries she read lay always in a human palm, not in images fed to her in the darkness. Her dreams
were merely dreams, albeit some more dramatic than others. Nightmares, however, only rarely plagued her.
But she could not remember experiencing the violence of such dreams on the day before the karavan was to
leave. Usually those dreams were filled with the minutiae of departure, the nagging concerns that she might
forget some chore, neglect to pack things she needed for the journey, be not quite ready when Jorda gave the
order to the karavan to follow him out of the grove. It didnтАЩ t matter that she had been with Jorda for years and
on numerous trips; she always worried something would be lost or forgotten in the confusion of departure.
Ilona sighed and stroked a strand of hair out of her face. Diviners were not immune to such omens as she
read in hands. If she had time the next day, perhaps she could consult with a dream-reader in the tent
settlement. It would do no good if one of JordaтАЩ s three karavan diviners ignored her own future while she read
those of others.
THOUGH RHUAN WAS a karavan guide, a man hired to ride out ahead of the column of wagons to scout the
safety of the roads and water holes, that duty also included providing protection to the folk joining JordaтАЩ s
karavan. In the nights immediately before departure, he and Darmuth, the other guide, rode the perimeter of
the grove in which more than thirty wagons had gathered. The draft animals, mostly horses and a few mules,