"Justin Stanchfield - Sisterhood of the Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stanchfield Justin)

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Sisterhood of the Stone
by Justin Stanchfield
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Copyright (c)2004 by Justin Stanchfield


Clocktower Books
www.clocktowerbooks.com

Science Fiction


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No wind shook the wispy, crimson-hued trees that ringed the mud-brick
town. Overhead, a blue-white sun rolled lazily toward the jagged skyline while
thunderheads shadowed the summits, black against the pale sky. Sean Kells
watched the shifting dance of lightning beneath their purple bellies. Bored,
he took a sip from the brown-clay tumbler the arthritic barman had placed on
the sun-faded table. Fire ripped down his throat. Across the table his
drinking companion, an enormous man with a beard as red as the vines creeping
up the tavern walls, laughed.
"I should have warned you," Diese Ammons said. "The local brew can be a
bit potent."
"Potent? Gods, man. Is there anything on Alkas that doesn't have
peppers in it?"
Ammons shrugged. "I thought peppers were the reason you came here?"
"They are," Kells said sullenly. He lifted the tumbler again, a little
too fast, unused to the planet's light gravity. A few drops sloshed over the
rim. He took another, more cautious sip of the peppered _voka_. "But I would
trade a ship-load of them right now for a cold beer."
His gaze drifted down the crowded street that wound past the open-air
cafe, drawn by a commotion outside a cloth vendor's stall. A line of women in
robes so blindingly white they burned the eye, danced toward them. They seemed
to flow, graceful as they accepted the coins and bits of tightly rolled paper
people dropped in the simple brass bowls they carried. At the head of the
dancers a girl, younger than the rest and robed in blue, her copper-colored
hair loose around her slim shoulders, swirled in mad patterns. Her feet
scarcely brushed the dusty street.
"Set your sights lower, my friend." Ammons took a long drink from his
own tumbler and wiped the oily drops from his mustache with the back of his
hand. "I've seen that look before."