"Terry Goodkind - Sword of Truth 8 - Naked Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goodkind Terry)

deciding to rest a tiny black hoof in his palm. With a thumb, Richard stroked the kids spindly
white-haired leg.
A smile softened his features as well as his voice. "Are you saying you choose not to see what
you've just seen, then?"
Jennsen smoothed Betty's drooping ears. "I guess the hair standing on end at the back of my
neck must believe what I saw."
Richard rested his forearm across his knee as he glanced toward the grim horizon. "The
races have sleek bodies with round heads and long pointed wings similar to all the falcons I've
seen. Their tails often fan out when they soar but otherwise are narrow in flight."
Jennsen nodded, seeming to recognize his description of relevant attributes. To Kahlan, a
bird was a bird. These, though, with red streaks on their chests and crimson at the base of their
flight feathers, she had come to recognize.
They're fast, powerful, and aggressive," Richard added. "I saw one easily chase down a prairie


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falcon and snatch it out of midair in its taons."
Jennsen looked to be struck speechless by such an account. Richard had grown up in the vast
forests of Westland and had gone on to be a woods guide. He knew a great deal about the outdoors
and about animals. Such an upbringing seemed exotic to Kahlan, who had grown up in a palace in the
Midlands. She loved learning about nature from Richard, loved sharing his excitement over the
wonders of the world, of life. Of course, he had long since come to be more than a woods guide. It
seemed a lifetime ago when she'd first met him in those woods of his, but in fact it had only been
little more than two and a half years.
Now they were a long way from Richard's simple boyhood home or Kahlan's grand childhood haunts.
Had they a choice, they would choose to be in either place, or just about anywhere else, other
than where they were. But at least they were together.
After all she and Richard had been through—the dangers, the anguish,the heartache of losing
friends and loved ones—Kahlan jealously savored every moment with him, even if it was in the heart
of enemy territory.
In addition to only just finding out that he had a half brother, they had also learned that
Richard had a half sister: Jennsen. From what they had gathered since they'd met her the day
before, she, too, had grown up in the woods. It was heartwarming to see her simple and sincere joy
at having discovered a close relation with whom she had much in common. Only her fascination with
her new big brother exceeded Jennsen's wide-eyed curiosity about Kahlan and her mysterious
upbringing in the Confessors' Palace in the far-off city of Aydindril.
Jennsen had had a different mother than Richard, but the same brutal tyrant, Darken Rahl, had
fathered them both. Jennsen was younger, just past twenty, with sky blue eyes and ringlets of red
hair down onto her shoulders. She had inherited some of Darken Rahl's cruelly perfect features,
but her maternal heritage and guileless nature altered them into bewitching femininity. While
Richard's raptor gaze attested to his Rahl paternity, his countenance, and his bearing, so
manifest in his gray eyes, were uniquely his own.
"I've seen falcons rip apart small animals," Jennsen said. "I don't believe I much like
thinking about a falcon that big, much less five of them together."
Her goat, Betty, looked to share the sentiment.
"We take turns standing watch at night," Kahlan said, answering Jennsen's unspoken fear. While
that was hardly the only reason, it was enough.
In the eerie silence, withering waves of heat rose from the lifeless rock all around. It had