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

thought he suspected it.
He glanced down, then back into the wagon where
his Wizard's kit was. I knew he was considering getting
out his own bow or taking time to set a protection
spell, evidently deciding against it. We'd learned to
trust the instincts of Yittleby and Yattleby in times of
danger, and neither of the two tall krylobos pulling the
wagon seemed overly disturbed. Their beaks were
forward, their eyes watchful as we came around a curve
at the crest of a hill, but neither of them showed any
agitation. We came out of the jungle at the top of a
long, sloping savannah, dotted with dark, crouching
bushes and half-lit by a gibbous moon. I could see all
the way to the bottom of the hill where the forest
started again and two twinkling lanterns, amber and
red, moved among the trees near the ground. That had
to be Peter and Chance. They'd been riding ahead and
had evidently found something, disturbing the bird at
the time. Queynt clucked to the krylobos, and we
began the slow descent toward the lanterns with him
looking remarkably alert for such an old man.
Vitior Vulpas Queynt is over a thousand years old.
Everything I have learned about him indicates this is
really true and not some mere bit of rodomontade. He
hadn't made a special point of claiming to be that old,
mind you; it simply came out as we went along. Peter
and I had met him a couple of years before, or rather,
he had picked us up on the road - he and his
remarkable tall-wheeled wagon and the two huge birds
that pulled it. He had picked us up and made use of us
and we of him, all in a fit of mutual suspicion, and
when it was over we found ourselves quite fond of one
another. And the birds, too, of course. Krylobos are
very large - tailless, as are all native creatures of this
world, with plumy topknots and somewhat irascible
tempers. They like me since I can talk to them, and I
like them because they dislike the same things I do.


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CHAPTER ONE

Bathing in very cold water, for example. Or eating fruit
that isn't quite ripe. They don't have teeth to set on
edge, but the expression around their beaks is quite
sufficient to evoke sympathy.
Which is beside the point. Queynt has a fondness for
fantastical dress and ornamental speech and enjoys
being thought a fool. He says he learns a great deal that
way. He is an explorer at heart, so he has said, and