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

and fallen beams, caved-in cellars and old wells shrouded thick in
greedy vegetation. He had been expecting something, from the smell,
but, even so, what he saw filled him with a loathing he could not explain.
The door of the little adobe workshop had been torn off years ago
by the killer sandstorms of the desert; most of the roof tiles had blown
away, though rafters barred the open, warming sky. The walls were
streaked with years' worth of dove droppings, where they were not
painted over with splashes of blood.
White and gray feathers were stuck in it and in the puddles on the
floor that were still slick and only tacky-dry. From where he stood in
the doorway, the Wolf could see the curled, pink feet and torn-off
heads of the birds thrown into the corners, already half-invisible under
swarming clots of ants.
He made a move to step into the room, but then drew back. There
was something loathesome here, foul and utterly evil-a psychic stench
that drove him back in fear, although he knew that whatever had done
this was gone. He had sacked cities from the Megantic Sea to the
Western Ocean and, when it was necessary to make his point, had cut
men and women up alive. He did not know why that small cube of
adobe-walled dawnlight and rafter-crossed sky, silent but for the
persistent humming of flies, should turn him sick.
Only three or four doves were dead, less than he'd eat for supper.
It was, he reminded himself, no business of his who had killed them, or
why.
But he was a good enough tracker to see, with even the most
cursory examination, that there were no footmarks, either entering the
room or leaving it.

CHAPTER 3
"Damned woman." Osgard Antivak, king of Wenshar and nominal
Lord of all the K'Chin Desert, propped himself up on the low ebony
divan and impatiently shoved aside the blue silk pillow from beneath his
left knee. "Says she won't be responsible if the wound opens up again.
Damn her, I'll be responsible! I'm not going to lie here like a maiden
lady with the vapors all day!" The tray of silver-traced copper on the
delicate, jointed shirdar camp table beside the couch contained a
decanter of wine, but, pointedly, only one wine cup.
The King fished beneath the divan's pillows and produced a
second one, which he slopped full. "Sit down, Captain, and drink up.
You can, even if I'm not supposed to. Damned woman." Against the
vivid reds and blues of the loose bed-robe he wore over shirt and
breeches, he still looked gray from loss of blood, save for where the
slight flush of fever colored his pouchy cheeks, "I could stand her when
she was just the damn librarian. She kept her place, then."
Sun Wolf took the indicated chair-like the divan, of heavy,
gilt-trimmed ebony-looted fifty years ago from the Governor's Palace
and recently reupholstered in a local red wool. The King's solar was a
big room, built out of the end of the Hall, and lined with windows on
two sides. The ever-present storm shutters had been thrown open, and
morning sunlight poured through, dazzling on the glass-smooth marble