"C. S. Friedman - Coldfire 2 - When True Night Falls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friedman C. S)

for Working," he added. "Not even for me."

"But soon."

"Soon," he agreed. "And if there are people here-" He
left the thought unfinished. But hunger echoed in his voice.

You'll feed, Damien supplied silently. Torturing and
killing women here, as you once did in the Forest. How
many innocents will suffer because I brought you here?
Because I convinced you to come?

But for once the guilt echoed emptily inside him,
without its accustomed force. Because when he looked at
the Hunter now, he saw not only a creature who fed on the
fear of the living, but a sorcerer who had committed
himself body and soul to a dangerous undertaking. And he
remembered the storm that had overtaken them in mid-
journey - hearing its winds lash the decks anew, seeing the
storm-driven waves curl over the prow, angry froth
cascading down forty, fifty, sixty feet to smash onto the
deck with a tsunami's force - and he remembered thinking
then that it was all over, that they had taken one chance too
many, that this monster of the equatorial regions would
surely devour them before nightfall. And then Tarrant had
emerged. Daring the unnatural darkness of the storm, his
skin reddened by the few spears of sunlight that managed to
pierce the cloudcover. Fine silks whipped and torn by the
wind, long fingers tangled in the rigging for support. And
then his sword was drawn - that sword - and a Working
born of pure coldfire blazed upward, into the heart of the
storm. The next wave that struck the ship became a wall of
sleet as it slammed into the deck, coating the planks with
ice as it withdrew. Overhead a rope cracked with a sound
like a gunshot, and fragments of it fell to the deck like
shattered glass. To the Hunter they were mere distractions.
Frost rimmed his hair like a halo as he forced the Worked
fae upward, higher and higher, into the heart of the storm -
seeking that one weak spot in its pattern which would allow
him to turn it aside, or to otherwise lessen its fury. It was an
almost impossible feat, Damien knew - but if anyone could
do it, Tarrant could.

And slowly, incredibly, the storm abated. Not banished,
by any means - a storm of such ferocity could hardly be
unmade by a single Working - but altered in its course, so
that the worst of it passed to the north of them. Icy waves
no longer broke over the deck. Torn rigging hung limply,
rather than whipping about in the wind. And Tarrant-