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

exploring is what he and Peter and Chance and I had
been doing for some time. He is the only person to
whom Chance has ever given unstinting admiration. So
Peter says, who has known Chance far longer than I.
This admiration is more understandable in that
Vitior Vulpas Queynt and Chance much resemble each
other. Both are brown, muscular men who look a little
soft without being so at all. Both are jolly-appearing
men who seem a little stupid and aren't. And both have
quantities of common sense. As for the rest of it, Queynt
is a Wizard of vast experience and education, while
Chance is an ex-sailor with a fondness for gambling
who was hired to bring Peter up safely and did so -
more or less. Both of them have had a certain tutelary
role in our lives. Peter's and mine, and truth to tell, I
like them both mightily. Even on an occasion like this,
when weariness made it hard to be fond of anyone.
We approached the lanterns. A faint sweetish smell
told me everything I wanted to know about it before
we got there. More dream crystal deaths.
Before we ever started on this trip - after the Battle of
the Bones on the Wastes of Bleer it was, when we were
all remarkably glad merely to be alive - I had known
about dream crystals. My un-mother (the woman who
bore me but did not conceive me, if that makes sense)
had had at least one. It had led her into ruin and ended,
I supposed, by killing her. My much hated enemy,
Porvius Bloster, had had one, and it had done him no
good at all except to make him exceed his limitations
and bring destruction upon his Demesne. Even girls at
school had had dream crystals, assortments of them,
like candies. I had known what they were in a casual


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CHAPTER ONE

way, known enough to stay away from them and
mistrust those who used them, but it was not until this
trip that I had seen them in general use. Misuse.
Whatever. It was not until this trip I had seen them
killing people by the dozens. There, that's plain
enough.
The current situation was a case in point. It was
another of those pathetic encampments we had seen
entirely too many of during the past season.
One couldn't dignify the structures even as huts.
They were the kind of shelter a bored child might build
in a few careless moments; a few branches leaned
against a fallen tree - its trunk loaded with epiphytes