"Sheri S. Tepper - Dervish Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

CHAPTER ONE

from haunch to haunch, looking cross the way he does
when he's hungry. 'It doesn't look any different from
any other we've seen. Are you going to sit here all
morning looking at it, or can we go around it and get
back to the road?' Peter was, as usual, impatient.
There was no reason to watch it. Shadow seldom did
anything. When it was angered, and as far as I knew no
one knew what made it angry, it attacked. Otherwise, it
simply lay. Anything that stepped into shadow, of
course, would be better off dead sooner than it died.
Moved by a fleeting curiosity, I took off one boot and
set my bare foot on the ground. There was a tingle
there, very slight, which meant there was a remnant of
the Old Road buried deep beneath us. I'd had the
suspicion for some time that the shadow gathered
mostly where there were remnants of the Ancient
Roads, though I had no idea what it meant. Seeing
Queynt's curious gaze focused on me, I flushed and
put my boot back on.
We led the birds around the shadow patch, though I
think they were fully capable of avoiding it on their
own, and then back up through the meadow to the
road once more, where the stack of shattered trunks
was now blocking the way behind us. Since hearing
those Zoggian brats chant their litany to Storm Grower,
I had a pretty good idea where this kind of damage
came from - not that we could verify it. Ever since we'd
first seen this random destruction, we'd asked about it.
Those we'd asked didn't answer. Since we had no
Demon with us to read minds, we had given up asking,
but we hadn't given up wondering. We went on, with
me still suspiciously looking for shadow as we rattled
along the road.
'There's the city Peter heard,' said Queynt.
We had topped a rise and looked down into a green
valley, a city cupped at the center. The place was
crowned with ostentatious mansions, much carved
stone and lancet windows and so prodigious a display
of banners - which were either excessively pink or
blushed by the sunrise - some festival must have been


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CHAPTER ONE

in progress. I sighed. Towns of any kind seemed to
mean trouble recently, and I was too tired even to fight
for my life.