"Chalker, Jack L - Changewinds 3 - War of the Maelstrom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

"It's that girl! The one you have failed after all this time to
locate, let alone kill. She invades my sleep and creeps in
comers of my mind."

"Your twin, in fact," he responded, nodding. "1 agree
that she is at the root of this, but not in the way you think.
She has the same power as you, but it is untrained, armed
only by emotion, and would be no match for you. No, it's
something else- A new factor has been added to the equation,
and. yes, you are right, our inability to nail her hide to the
wall is the root of our problem. Somehow she, or fate, or,
more likely Boolean, has come up with something we failed
to anticipate, some new equation that is challenging the neat
and ordered set we were dealing with. Do not be too hard on
me, my dear. I have killed you in a hundred worlds a hundred
times; it was inevitable that I'd miss at least one of you. The
problem was that there were too many of you in various
worlds of the outplane; our very attempt at insurance drew
attention to what we were doing and allowed Boolean to
finally figure it out. Forget recriminations. We must now deal
with what conditions we have."

"And just what are those conditions?" she demanded to
know. "Am I losing my powers or what? And, if so, what
comes of all our planning, all our schemes, all the blood and
hopes of our vast but fragmented army and the oppressed
people all this would liberate?"

He sighed. "You aren't losing your powers, but they are
being diluted, almost as if yet another version of you was -- "

4 jack L. ChaSker

He snapped his fingers. "No! Blast me for a fool! It's so
obvious that it never once occurred to me! In spite of my
precautions the worst happened anyway! Blast!"

He was clearly angry as hel! with himself, and even she
grew a bit nervous when he was this way. He didn't like to
show that he still had a human side left to anyone. Under
normal circumstances she might have left him for a while to
coot down, but this was a unique circumstance. It was her
powers that were in question here, and her powers were all
she had.

She would never have believed that she had a near total
immunity from his true rages; at least, she would never have
believed why she did. He needed her very much, simply
because he needed someone he could talk to, rant and rave
to, just interact with, who wasn't so terrified of him that they