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

blush and breathe as though I'd been running. I fur-
nished every grove with likely spots for dalliance, and
lately I'd taken to crossing off every day that passed,
counting the ones that remained until the season my
oath of celibacy would be done.
Queynt had been watching me; I caught his kindly
stare and blushed. 'Troubled about your oath?" he
asked me sympathetically.
He caught me unaware. One of the things that
bothered me about Queynt was his habit of knowing
what I was thinking. He wasn't a Demon. He had no
business just knowing that way. 'Yes.' I turned red


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CHAPTER ONE

again. It wasn't any of his business, and yet. .. 'By the
Hundred Devils and all their pointy ears, Queynt, I
can't understand the sense of it. They said it was to let
me study the art without distractions, but I'm not
studying the art! I'm traveling. Trying to keep my skin
whole. Trying to locate Dream Miner and Storm
Grower and find out why they want me dead. Praying
Peter keeps on being fond of me at least until the oath
runs out. Celibacy doesn't seem to make a lot of sense!'
'Oh,' he said mildly, 'it does, you know. If you
examine it. For example, you've been doing summons,
haven't you?'
Well, I had, of course. A few. I might have called up
an occasional water dweller to provide a fish dinner.
Or maybe a few flood-chucks, just to help us get
through some timber piles on the road. I admitted as
much, wondering what he was getting at.
'Well, if you've been doing summons, have you ever
stopped to think what an unconsidered pregnancy
might do to the practice of the art?'
An unconsidered pregnancy - or even a considered
one - was about the furthest thing from my mind at the
moment. But this was something not one of the dams
had mentioned to me, not even the midwife, Tess
Tinder-my-hand, who would have been the logical one
to do so. My jaw dropped and I gave him an idiot look.
'Well, let's say you're pregnant and you summon up
something obstreperous in the way of a water dweller.
Then you go through the constraints and dismissal, but
the water dweller considers the child in your belly was
part of the summons. That child has neither con-
strained nor dismissed. So, time comes you give birth
to something that looks rather more like a fish than