"Barbara Hambly - Sun Wolf 3 - Dark Hand of Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

him pinned over their tunnels ...
He saw the ants-and there were quite a lot of them-hesitate and draw back.
He knew he couldn't keep it up, couldn't maintain the illusion and work spells
on the ropes at the same time. A wave of sick weakness clouded his thoughts,
and he fought to keep them clear, fought both the pain and the panic he could
sense tearing at the edges of his concentration. Either would kill him; if the
ants actually started on him he'd never keep his thoughts clear ...
Blood, he thought; the juices of sweat and terror; meat sugary-sweet for the
tasting ... He had never tried a double illusion like this, but it was that or
wait for the single spell to outlast his physical ability to remain conscious.
Like a smell he twined this new illusion around the ropes that held his
outspread hands and feet, and shut his teeth hard on a scream as the ants
swarmed greedily forward. They would eat the rawhide, he told himself, they
would not touch his flesh-they thought his flesh was fire-his flesh WAS fire-
it was the rawhide that was his flesh ...
He closed his fists and turned up his hands as much as he could, though the
merc effort of that made his arms shake with weakness. Ants clotted the
rawhide ropes on the stakes in threshing, glittering blobs. They kept a few
inches from the backs of his knuckles, and from his heels, as if his flesh
were in fact the fire he projected. If he could keep it up ...
There was a shrill cry of rage, and the muffled thunder of hooves in the
ground. The shirdar, he thought, in some floating corner of his awareness. Of
course they'd stayed to watch from a safe distance. He moved his head, slowly,
holding his concentration on the double spell, his whole body drenched now
with sweat in the dawn cold.
The riders whirling toward him seemed to come in a slow-motion bellying of
white cloaks, shouting with fury, lances raised. He thought detachedly that he
probably wouldn't be able to maintain his concentration on either spell with
three spears in his belly; death would take almost as long with them as
without. But he held to the spells anyway, weirdly fascinated with the merc
technique of it, as if these weren't going to be the last few seconds of his
life, too taken up with his concentration as the nearest warrior raised his
spear ...
The rider's head snapped back, his body contorting as an arrow appeared
suddenly in the middle of his breast, red blossoming over the white of his
robe. Sun Wolf thought, The Hawk must not have been killed. He couldn't care,
couldn't let himself feel joy or fear or anything else which would distract
him from a mental exercise he only barely understood. Dizziness swept him.
Ants swarmed all around him now, racing back and forth over the pale earth or
crawling in heaving swarms on the ropes and stakes, centimeters from the backs
of his hands. Other hooves shook the ground under his back, but he dared not
break the tunnel of his vision, the wordless images of the spells ...
Hurry it up, damn you, Hawk!
Someone screamed, a death cry of agony, at the same moment the ropes parted.
Sun Wolf rolled over, shaking, aware again of the scores of open cuts, the raw
flesh of his wrists and the shredded wounds on his knees beneath his torn
breeches, aware of the cracked rib he'd gotten in Wenshar, the swollen, dust-
clotted hole where the arrow had been pulled out, and the half-healed demon
bites-another souvenir of Wenshar-on his hands. He tried to stand and fell
immediately, his mind plunging toward unconsciousness. The ants swarmed