"Stackpole, Michael A. - Once a Hero" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stackpole Michael A)

My Twenty-second Birthday

The high-mountain night breezes whipped through the
dark canyons of the Reithrese charnel town and greeted me
with cold razor kisses on my eyes. The chill thin air whis-
tled and moaned as it broke around comers and over the
myriad gargoyles decorating Jammaq. Not for the first time
I wondered why I had traveled so far to put myself in the
heart of a city sacred to a people who, as a race, had sworn
to kill me.

As always, the same answer came to my question: the
sword. And that answer satisfied me. Though I had seen it
only once, and on that occasion had felt its steely caress a
number of times, I knew the blade was meant to be mine.
And if possessing it required me to chase it to the gates of
^ the Cold Goddess's Realm or beyond, I was prepared to go
that far.

I shivered in my stolen clothes and let a steamy sigh get
whipped away by the wind. Obsession breeds foolishness
the way stale water breeds mosquitoes, and folks would

2 Michael A. Stackpole

describe our efforts as foolishness if my Elven companion
and I failed in our quest. Still and all, no one else had ever
done what Aarundel and I had accomplished so far in our
mission, and I took some delight in that fact even if he did
not.

I winked at Aarundel. "Don't go thinking of it as grave
robbing, Aarundel, think of it as ... as mining ore for
bards to refine into golden song."

"I never thought it my destiny to be lauded before ine-
briates in a song titled. The True Death of the Dun
Wolf.'" Aarundel tugged the red scarf away from his
mouth and hunched his shoulders. That trimmed four
inches off his height, making him shorter than I am. The
loose-fitting black natari cassocks we wore added enough
bulk to his slender build to let him pass for a Reithrese,
though both of us were too tall to fool anyone with one eye
open and enough sense to recognize AarundePs pointed
ears poking up through his black hair.

Of course, anyone with that much sense was well away
from here.

The ElPs dark eyes glittered in the wan moonlight. "I