"Christopher Stasheff - Rogue Wizard 10 - A Wizard In a Feud" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stasheff Christopher)

Alea gave him a sharp look; his face had turned dreamy, and she could hear his
thoughts clicking into place. If he couldn't start a revolution this time, he'd
settle for bringing peace. Somehow, she had a notion that this trip wouldn't be
wasted.
Gar yielded the watch to her, slept four hours, then took up his vigil
again-which was just as well, because the excitement had finally worn off, and
Alea managed a few hours' sleep.
"A nap is better anyway," she told him over their breakfast of journeybread and
coffee. "We'd only been awake ten hours when we landed."
"It will take a day or two to turn our inner rhythms around," Gar agreed. "Well,
let's see what this planet holds, shall we?" They drowned and buried the fire,
then went off down lanes of fir trees with very little underbrush to impede
them. The sun hadn't risen yet, and the forest was still filled with gloom-light
enough to see where they were going, but dark enough to be dusk more than day.
"What's that glow in the air ahead?" Alea asked.
"Probably a rotten tree gone phosphorescent," Gar said, and changed course
toward the luminous cloud. They'd only gone another dozen steps before he
stopped dead, staring. "It can't be!"
Alea's eyes were wider than his. "It is!"
The cloud moved toward them with the angry hum of a dozen wings. The foot high
humanoids hovered before them, six-foot spans of gauzy wings forming a
semicircular wall around the humans, some with arms folded, some with hands on
hips, but all with fists, their faces glowing with anger.


2
"Why come you hither, mortals?" the foremost demanded. "Your mind what madness
fills?"
They looked as humans might have if they had evolved from flying cats, very
small cats with very large wings. Pointed ears poked out of flowing manes atop
their heads, the only hair on their bodies. Their eyes were large with vertical
pupils, noses small and triangular, mouths lipless. Below the leaves and flowers
that served them as clothing, their legs hung flexed by powerful thighs and
calves.
"Know you not that the deep forests are ours?" the leader demanded. "Are not the
rolling meadows and the woodlands enough for you?"
"Actually, we're strangers who don't know our way," Alea said. "We have traveled
far, and didn't know your customs."
"Traveled far! Whence upon this world can you have come and not known of us?"
"Your ancestors crowded into this land unasked," another fairy said, eyes bright
with anger. "Ours were loathe to wreak ill upon others, so they retreated from
the coming of the strangers, then retreated again-but when the human folk began
to bring their golden sickles deep within our forests in search of the oaks and
mistletoe whose seed they had themselves brought, we cried 'Enough!' and taught
them our anger."
"Have you no teachers," the first fairy asked, "that you have not learned what
harm the wrath of the fair folk can bring?"
"I have heard a few stories, yes," Gar said slowly.
"And do you intend as much harm to us as others of your kind have wreaked upon
one another?"