"Joel Rosenberg - 04 - The Heir Apparent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenberg Joel C)

But, as always, it warmed her while it healed him.

The split and shattered pieces of bone welded themselves together, while torn muscle and snapped
sinew flowed gently back into their proper places around the now-reassembled substructure,
joined by nerves and blood vessels snaking their way in and assembling themselves.

The last was the blood itself. Crushed red blood cells andтАФworse, more difficult, more
drainingтАФshattered platelets reassembled themselves and then flowed through capillary walls,
until they stood waiting, poised in place in veins and arteries, a column of soldiers waiting for the

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command to march to be given.

The command was given: The blood flowed; the healing continued until the horrid, deathly pallor
left the man's face and his consciousness gradually returned to him.

"Very nicely done, Doria," Elmina said. She laid a finger across the farmer's dry, cracked lips, still
flecked with dried blood and vomit. "Be still, friend. You are under the care of the Hand, and all
will be well with you."

She turned to Doria.

"As it will be with you, sister, in one manner or another." Doria nodded. What the Matriarch
called her "feel for the way of things" was growing daily, and that feeling pointed to a
confrontation. At least one.

And then there was the memory of the Matriarch speaking to Karl: Never will the Hand aid you
again, she had said. Never will the Hand aid you again.

"I understand." Elmina nodded. "But for now, we must..." She swallowed and swayed for a
moment, then strengthened, her wan, almost transparent skin seemingly gaining thickness while it
gained color. "For now," she said, her voice gaining force, "we must restore our powers. Both of
us. And we will continue to do so, but perhaps someday, we will do so far different reasons, is it not
so?" Doria nodded. "It is so."

A Few Tendays Before, Just Outside of the Old Warrens:

Ahira and Walter Slovotsky

"I'm worried about Karl," Ahira said, leaning back in his rocking chair, squinting against the
setting sun.

"You worry too much. Do more; worry less." Slovotsky glared as the dwarf eyed Karl's latest
letter. Again.

Not that there wasn't enough to worry about.

For one thing, it had recently occurred to Ahira that Walter Slovotsky's daughter Janie was