"Ann Durand - Flight of the Gryphon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Durand Ann)

balance and sense of control, but realized he was losing the battle as his tongue, in a disobedient gesture,
flicked out of his mouth and darted into hers.

He heard a soft moan glide from her throat. Then she pulled back, her hands pushing on his chest. She
looked into his eyes. Her own were misty, her face flushed. What in the world was she doing to him? He
did not want to quit and bowed his head to find her lips again. He kissed her harder this time, revealing
his urgency, and pulled her closer, tighter. Ah, it had been so long…so long…

She was pressing her hands against his chest again. What?

"Mikolen." She pushed harder. "Mikolen, stop."

Mike let go, feeling dazed. "Katera…"

She stepped back with a bewildered look on her face. "Mikolen, I have to go…now." She opened her
mouth to say something else, then closed it, looking uncertain. "Good-bye," she blurted, and darted for
the chamber opening.

Mike watched her scurry away into the tunnel, feeling confused. He dropped his head, struggling to quell
his raging emotions.

Then he saw it. The Orb sat in the middle of his workbench. The Orb…she'd forgotten it.

"Katera! Wait!" he called, snatching it off the bench. And then, he said the strangest thing. He hadn't
planned to say it, but when he did, he knew that he meant it. "I'm coming with you," he shouted, dashing
into the tunnel after her.

Chapter Ten
Katera stumbled through the cave in her haste to find the exit. Warm, moist drafts of air from the hot
springs blew into her face as she fumbled past the entrance to it. She groped the rock walls with her
hands. Every so often, she passed a lanadik-lit chamber adjacent to the tunnel and used the light inside to
guide her more swiftly, until her path dissolved into the blackness again, forcing her to return her hands to
the tunnel wall. Her pounding heart felt large and disembodied in the blackness, as though she were inside
it listening to its thumping sounds echo back at her. Here in the dark, everything seemed hidden, except
for her thoughts and feelings.

Why ? She felt like crying. Why must I feel this way? He is leaving Parallon, and I will never see
him again. Why do I care?

A shaft of light fell on the wall ahead, and she raced to it. She followed it around a corner and into an
antechamber that led outdoors. Two hoshdels were tied to a post in the antechamber, their noses stuffed
into bags on the ground that were filled with the delicate shafts of the Kilpantra plant. One lifted its nose
out of the bag and snorted at Katera. Working swiftly, she hoisted the saddle off the horizontal bar
constructed over the posts and tossed it up onto the hoshdel's broad back. It straightened its woolly
head, bleating and stamping its feet. Struggling against a deluge of tears, Katera fumbled with the cinch
under the animal's round belly.

Why? she wondered again, in a state of disbelief. Why now?

Before she'd run into Miloken, she had been prepared to die…prepared to sacrifice herself in an effort to