"Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman - Deathgate Cycle 7 - The Seventh Gate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weis Margaret)

the black and now blood-tinged water.

"There's no other way?" Hugh the Hand was looking at her, at the blue sigla tattooed on her body.

He meant, of course, her magic.

"I might be able to get myself across," she told him. Then again, she might not. She was weakened
in body from yesterday's battle, weakened in her spirit from yesterday's confrontation with Lord
Xar. "But I'd never be able to manage you."

She set foot on the ice, felt its cold strike through to the very marrow of her bones. Clamping her
teeth together to keep them from chattering, she stared at the far shore and said, "Only a short run.
It won't take us long."

Hugh the Hand said nothing. He was staringтАФnot at the shore, but at the ice.

And then Marit remembered. This man, a professional assassin, afraid of nothing in his world, had
come across something in another world he did fearтАФwater.

"What are you scared of?" Marit jeered, hoping to bolster his courage by shaming him. "You can't
die."

"I can die," he corrected her. "I just don't stay dead. And, lady, I don't mind telling you, this sort of
dying doesn't appeal to me."

"It doesn't appeal to me either," she said snappishly back at him, but she noticed she wasn't going
anywhere, had hurriedly snatched her foot back off the ice.

She drew in a deep breath. "You can follow or not, as you please."

"I'm of little use to you anyway," he said bitterly, hands clenching and unclenching. "I can't protect
you, defend you. I can't even protect or defend myself."

He couldn't be killed. He couldn't kill. Every arrow he fired missed its mark, every blow he aimed
fell short, every slash of his sword went wide.
"I can defend myself," Marit answered. "I can defend you, too, for that matter. I need you because
you know Alfred better than I doтАФ"

"No, I don't," Hugh returned. "I don't think anyone knew Alfred. Not even Alfred knew Alfred.
Haplo did, maybe, but that's not much help to us now."

Marit said nothing, bit her lip.

"But you're right to remind me, lady," Hugh the Hand continued. "If I don't find Alfred, this curse
on me will never end. Come on. Let's get it over with."

He set foot on the ice, began to walk across it. His swift and impetuous move took Marit by
surprise. She was hurrying after him before she quite knew what she was doing.

The ice was slippery and treacherous. The bone-numbing cold shot through her; she began