"Kim Stanley Robinson - Years of Rice and Salt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

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 Robinson, Kim Stanley - The Years of Rice and Salt



The two men dismounted and stood there. Guards came out of the tent, drawing
aside the flaps of the doorway and standing at attention, ready with drawn bows.
Bold's throat was too dry to swallow, and it seemed to him a blue light glowed
from within the great yurt of the Khan.

Temur appeared high in the air, seated on a litter his carriers had already hefted on
their shoulders. He was pale faced and sweating, the whites of his eyes visible all
the way around. He stared down at Psin.

'Why are you back?'

'Khan, a plague has struck the Magyars. They're all dead.'

Temur regarded his unloved general. 'Why are you back?'

'To tell you, Khan.'

Psin's voice was steady, and he met Temur's fierce gaze without fear. But Temur
was not pleased. Bold swallowed; nothing here was the same as that time he and
Psin had escaped the hunters, there wasn't a single feature of that effort that could
be repeated. Only the idea that they could do it remained.

Something inside Temur snapped, Bold saw it -- his asura was speaking through
him now, and it looked as if it was wreaking great harm as it did so. Not an asura,
perhaps, but his nafs, the spirit animal that lived inside him. He rasped, 'They
cannot get away as easily as that! They will suffer for this, no matter how they try
to escape.' He waved an arm weakly. 'Go back to your detachment.'

Then to his guards he said in a calmer voice, 'Take these two back and kill them
and their men, and their horses. Make a bonfire and burn everything. Then move
our camp two days' ride east.'

He raised up his hand.

The world burst asunder.

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 Robinson, Kim Stanley - The Years of Rice and Salt




A bolt of lightning had exploded among them. Bold sat deaf on the ground.
Looking around stunned, he saw that all the others there had been flattened as well,
that the Khan's tent was burning, Temur's litter tipped over, his carriers scrambling,