"Barbara Hambly - Sun Wolf 2 - Witches of Wenshar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

spells, I can reach the deepest parts of the mind. The mind is all, if the
body is pure-all magic comes from the purified intellect. I can wake
powers in anyone, even in those who are not mageborn, if they are
willing, honest, and pure." She cast another chilly look up and down his
big, heavily muscled form, as if seeing through his dusty clothes and
disapproving of what she saw. Her glance moved past him, touched
Starhawk, and the lines of disapproval pinched a little deeper at the
corners of her mouth. "That's something you'll have to learn to accept, if
you wish to enter into your powers."
Anger heated in him, as she had no doubt meant it to; words
crowded to his lips about frustrated spinsters who made a virtue of the
fact that no man would tumble them on a bet. But, with a physical
effort, he closed his muscles around those words like a fist. To buy the
bread, he thought, you couldn't insult the baker-and in any case,
what she thought about magic was none of his business.
But he'd be damn lucky, he thought dourly, looking at that pale,
fine-boned face in the torchlight, if he didn't end by strangling the
woman with her own long, red hair.
In his long silence, she studied him appraisingly. She had expected,
he realized, some other reaction. After a moment she went on, "If you
feel you have the strength and willingness to follow that path, come to
me where I teach in the public gardens tomorrow afternoon."
She inclined her head with a graciousness that made Sun Wolf
long to slap her and prepared to move off. Down in the Hall, the old
laundress called out to her, "I'll bet you're pleased to have him join
you-as a change from boys and women!"
Kaletha's face flushed with anger as she turned. Around the dirty
old hag, the other laundresses and grooms were bellowing with
laughter. As in the garden that afternoon, Kaletha was momentarily
speechless with anger. In a flash of insight, Sun Wolf realized that,
having no sense of humor, she was unable to slide from beneath this
kind of indignity, unable even to understand it. And she must, he
thought, have had to put up with it daily since she had announced her
wizardry to the world.
All this went through his mind in an instant; as Kaletha drew breath
to stammer some reply, he cut in over her words, "It's the sow in rut
that squeals the loudest."
The old crone and her friends went into even louder guffaws.
"Come down to the laundry and see, you old boar!"
He gave an elaborate shrug. "I haven't got all night to stand in the
line."
The laundress laughed so hard he could easily have counted her
teeth, had she possessed any. He turned back to Kaletha and said
quietly, "I'll be there tomorrow, my Lady, after I've seen the King."
As he and Starhawk walked from the hall, he was aware of
Kaletha's speculative gaze upon his back.

The empty quarter of the fortress of Tandieras lay beyond the
stables, a picked gray skeleton in the wan monochromes of dawn.
From where he lay on the wide bed of waffle-crossed latigo and