"Doyle, Debra And James D MacDonald - Mageworlds 02 - Starpilot's Grave" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Debra)

"Broiled groundgrubs," Ari heard Llannat murmuring in the dreamy tones of one who has been too long on space rations. "Tusker-ox riblets. Pickled gubbstucker."
"Go ahead," said the CO. "Help yourselves. After all, you're the guests of honor."
Several minutes later, Ari had a heaping plate of Nammerinish delicacies in one hand and a glass of the locally distilled purple aqua vitae in the other. He made his way through groups of well-wishers to the stacks of boxes at the edge of the cleared area. Llannat was already there, working on a dish of the broiled groundgrubs. A bottle of Tree Frog beer rested on a packing crate near her hand, and most of the station's junior officers clustered around her.
Bors Keotkyra lifted his bottle in a toast as Ari approached. "Here's to the returning heroes," he said. "Whatever you did, it must have been exciting."
Ari exchanged glances with Llannat. He was no Adept like his brother Owen, who could see another's ideas almost before they took shape, but it didn't take any particular gift to know that the thoughts behind the young woman's dark eyes were echoes of his own-memories of blood and death and treachery, of his sister Beka reborn as the one-eyed starpilot Tarnekep Portree, of black smoke rising from the Citadel on Darvell.
He blinked hard to clear the images away, and took a long swallow of the aqua vitae.
"Yes," he said to Bors, as the astringent fumes of the liquor chased the last of the pictures back where they belonged. "It was more exciting than it strictly needed to be."

The Adepts' Retreat on Galcen stood on an outcrop of grey rock in the mountains of the planet's northern hemisphere. Over the centuries the massive, high-walled structure had been fortress and storehouse and hermitage by turns, and even among the Adepts, not many knew its true age. Other planets had their Guildhouses, where Adepts could live and study and go about their tasks-but the Retreat on Galcen was the heart of it all.
To study at the Retreat was a privilege granted to very few, to teach there, an honor granted to even fewer. For Owen Rosselin-Metadi, who had done both, the Retreat was home. The longer he had been away, the more its high grey walls seemed to beckon to him on his return, promising shelter and the company of friends and a chance to let go of the everlasting watchfulness that his work demanded.
This time, as always, he left his rented aircar in the valley below and went the rest of the way on foot. He could have stayed in town and called for someone to come get him-the Retreat had excellent aircar and comm link connections, and the hike up from Treslin was an all-day proposition-but he preferred not to advertise his comings and goings.
The apprentice Adept who stopped him at the gate was new since Owen had left for Pleyver, and painfully young-looking. The boy can't be a day over sixteen, Owen thought, forgetting for the moment that he had come to the Retreat himself when he was even younger. Master Ransome is really robbing the cradle these days.
The apprentice couldn't have been long on gate duty, either. He stumbled over the traditional greeting. "Welcome, friend. What is your name, and have you-have you-"
" '-have you come to seek instruction?' " Owen finished for him. "My name's Owen, and I'm an apprentice in the Guild already. Could you tell Master Ransome that I've come back?"
The youth stared at him for a moment. Owen wasn't particularly surprised by the reaction. It wasn't often that an apprentice showed up at the Retreat looking like an out-of-work day laborer and asking for the Master of the Guild by name.
"Uh-right," said the boy after a pause. "You wait here and-I mean, let me call somebody to take you to him."
Owen waited patiently while the apprentice spoke over a comm link to an unfamiliar voice farther inside the Retreat. In time another, somewhat older apprentice showed up. Owen didn't remember her, either.
He let her lead the way through the stone-walled passages to the room that served Master Ransome as an office. Like everything else about the Retreat, the room was immeasurably old-so old that its tall, narrow windows had no panes, not even glass ones. In the wintertime, a force field kept out the driving wind and snow, and a ceramic heat bar glowed on the granite hearth. But this was summer; the hearth was bare, and a cool breeze blew through the chamber unimpeded.
A slight, dark-haired man dressed in tunic and trousers of dull black stood at one of the windows, looking out. The apprentice cleared her throat.
"Master Ransome. An apprentice calling himself Owen is here to-"
She got no further than the name before the man turned. At the sight of Owen, Ransome's face broke into a smile of delight that made him look twenty years younger. He strode forward and clasped Owen tightly by the shoulders.
"It's good to see you home," he said.
Owen returned the hug. "Believe me, sir, it's good to be here."
The apprentice spoke up again, somewhat diffidently. "Will you need anything else?"
"Not at the moment," Ransome told her.
As soon as she had left, the Master of the Guild drew Owen over to a pair of chairs beside the empty hearth. The momentary happiness that had passed across Ransome's features was already fading, leaving his face as somber and weary as before.
Owen saw the change come and go, and felt a chill, like the feather of some dark bird drawn across the back of his neck. Errec Ransome was a good ten years younger than Owen's father, but there was something about him these days that made him look all of General Metadi's years and more.
"I'd almost given you up for dead this time," Ransome said as soon as they both were seated. "And Jos was starting to ask some awkward questions."
All trace of welcome was gone now. If Owen hadn't seen the Guild Master's momentary change of expression and felt the strength of his embrace, he would have stiffened himself to endure a spectacular tongue-lashing, as befitted an apprentice who'd fallen below his expected standard.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I almost got caught."
He looked away for a moment at the bare stone of the hearth-some of the memories from Pleyver were still vivid enough to be painful-then turned his head back to meet Ransome's dark, inquiring gaze. "I did get caught, in fact. My own stupid fault, and if Beka hadn't been in town I'd never have gotten away. I couldn't make it off-planet, though; I had to hide out dirtside until everybody forgot about me. It took a while."
Ransome smiled, a quirk of the mouth that scarcely touched his eyes. "That's an understatement," he said. "We have apprentices at the Retreat who've never seen your face-two seasons' worth of them at least."
"I know; I met a couple of them just now. A bit young, aren't they?"
"No more than the usual," Ransome told him. "You, of course, are about to grow a long grey beard."
Owen gave a short laugh. "After the last few months, I feel like it."
He paused, hating to destroy the Guild Master's good humor, however faint-but it had to be done. He drew a breath and went on. "They were Magelords, you know, on Pleyver."
Master Ransome's features grew very still, and his dark eyes seemed to focus on something long ago and far away. "So," he said. "It begins again."
"I'm afraid so," Owen said. "We're not dealing with half-trained agents smuggled through the Net to do a bit of spying, or with a few talented locals who've put together a Mage-Circle out of what they've seen in the holovids. At least one of them on Pleyver was a Great Magelord in the old style-as strong by himself as any Adept I've ever known, even without the power of the others to back him."
"The First of their Circle, he would have been," said Ransome. "If they're working as they did in the old days." His voice sounded as though he had tasted something bitter. "How did you slip past?"
Owen shook his head. "I didn't. I spent the past two seasons on Pleyver working as a cargo handler down at the spacedocks. Eventually the First gave up looking for me, and the rest of them weren't strong enough to give me any trouble."
"The First gave up looking for you," Ransome said. "Do you have any idea what happened to make him stop?"
"No," Owen said. "But the whole time he was looking for me I could feel it, even in my sleep. Once or twice he backed off a bit, trying to fool me into making a run for the port, but he was too strong to be very good at hiding. Then one day he just wasn't around anymore."
"Off-planet?"
Owen sighed. "I don't know. Maybe. But Pleyver wasn't a total loss, anyway. I still have this."
He pulled the datachip out of the breast pocket of his coverall and handed it to Master Ransome.
"I thought about smuggling it out to you," he said, "but I couldn't think of any way safer than carrying it myself."
Ransome's hand closed over the coin-sized slice of plastic. Another time, Owen thought, he would have looked pleased; but now he barely seemed to notice that he held it. "Is the information still good?"
"Most of it, I think." Owen leaned back in his chair and gave a tired sigh. The datachip had weighed on him more than he'd known. This was the first time in months that he didn't have it somewhere on his person, and its absence left him feeling almost light-headed. "There's a lot of trade and economic data-it looks like we've got stuff crossing the border zone into the Mageworlds that would give the Grand Council fits if they knew about it-plus a bunch of encrypted files I didn't have time to break."
He paused. "There were some other files that had to do with what happened to Mother. I gave those to Beka."
"Was that wise?" Ransome asked. "Your sister is headstrong, to say the least. The rumors I've been hearing say a good deal more than that."