"Christopher Stasheff - Warlocks Heirs 01 - M'Lady Witch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stasheff Christopher)

The planet of Gramarye was the only place in the Terran sphere of colonized planets where so many espers existed. All the rest of the Terran planets
together had produced only a few rather weak telepaths-so Rod Gallowglass had a very important duty guarding the planet of Gramarye from
invasion and subversion by the agents of dictatorship and anarchy.


SCENT believed that one of the prime factors in keeping a democracy alive was speed of communications. If it takes too long to get a message from
the parliament to the frontier planets, the frontier planets will eventually set up their own governments and break away. The only way to prevent this
is to do away with democracy and resort to some form of government that keeps such a tight hold over its colonies that they can't break away-and
that tight hold always turns into oppression, in one form or another. So to keep democracy viable, the telepaths of Gramarye were going to be
absolutely essential.


Unfortunately, the future totalitarians knew that, tooand so did the future anarchists. Each of them had its own time-travel organization, dedicated to
fostering totalitarian governments (VETO) or to destroying governments altogether (SPITE)-and both were directly concerned with keeping
Gramarye from becoming a democracy.


Which meant they were out to kill Rod Gallowglass, if they could-and his family. Especially his children. They had found out, over the last couple
of decades, that they couldn't kill Rod-no matter how hard they tried, he always fought them off, and where he might have failed, his wife and her
elf-friends and children had beaten off his enemies for him. Together, they were unstoppable-but the Futurians could, at least, make sure his
influence didn't go on into future generations. They were bound and determined to kill his children if they could or, if they couldn't, to at least keep
them from having children of their own.


So far, the new SPITE chief, Finister, had succeeded in giving the eldest son, Magnus, a very unhealthy distaste for sex in any form, and especially
for women as sexual beings. As a result, he had left home to go traipsing around the galaxy, looking for wrongs to right and oppressive
governments to overthrow.


Now Finister had set her sights on Cordelia. How she would prevent Cordelia from ever being married, or even seduced, she didn't know-but she
would improvise. Half the fun of her job, she had decided, was in finding how things came out.




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 M'Lady Witch

So Alain rode through a golden morning, blithely unaware of the Futurian witch who was setting her sights on himself and his beloved. Not
knowing, he was able to delight in the day.


"How shall you greet the lady, Your Highness?" asked young Sir Devon.


"With cordiality and respect, Hall" It was such a pleasure to speak so freely, without all that ridiculous and unnecessary formality that the older folk
used. "Thee" this and "thou" that, when a simple "you" would suffice! "As I would greet any fine lady!"


Sir Devon didn't seem so sure. "Mayhap, Highness, you should treat her in some degree warmer than that."