"Hambly,.Barbara.-.Darwath.3.-.Armies.Of.Daylight.e-txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

unbroken on the long and desperate trek from Gae to the Vale of Renweth.
"At one time I considered leading the Gae reconnaissance myself," the old man
went on, and Rudy cast him a startled, protesting glance. "But aside from the
fact that, as the head of the Wizards' Corps, I could ill be spared, I do take a
rather academic and refined interest in the preservation of my own skin. Since
the Dark are hunting me—for whatever reason—I would be in twice the danger of
detection within the Nest. It would be folly to tempt them."
"It would be sort of pointless to get yourself killed on a routine mission,"
Rudy admitted.
Ingold smiled. "Precisely," he agreed. "I'm sending Thoth to head the
reconnaissance of Penambra—he knows that city from his early days as a healer
there. And I'm having the Raider shaman. Shadow of the Moon, take a couple of
scouts to the Nest in the Vale of the Dark, some twenty miles north of here. She
knows woodcraft—among other things."
In the black wall of woods to their right, branches stirred suddenly, rustling
in dark, aimless winds. Clouds were moving down from the glacier-locked
mountains that loomed above them to the west, swallowing the few remaining
stars. Cold cut through Rudy's coat like a skinning knife.
"Kara of Ippit will go with you and Saerlinn to Gae," Ingold went on. "She's had
the most formal training as a mage. Unless one counts the Chancellor Alwir's
Court Mage Bektis, of course."
Rudy sniffed. He did not like Bektis. "If he's out here tonight, I'll eat my
boots without even scraping the mud off 'em."
"If that's the case, I regret to inform you that you're going to miss a meal."
Ingold sighed. "Bektis knows Gae, too. But I'm sure that his ever-pressing
duties will not permit…"
He looked up suddenly, the words dying on his lips. A scream split the mountain
stillness, a hopeless, echoing shriek that scaled up to a frenzied pitch of
horror, then jarred and broke. Rudy sprang to his feet, the hair prickling on
his neck, and was instantly arrested by the iron grip on his arm.
"Be still, you fool."
A figure broke from the edge of the woods on the far side of the valley, black
and tiny against the hoarfrost landscape. A man, Rudy thought, watching the way
he ran, young and slender, stumbling over his own cloak in his terrified haste.
A swirl of darkness passed like a whirlwind over the snow. The fugitive screamed
again as he ran, his arms outstretched, plunging blindly down the hill toward
the black monolith of the Keep of Dare. Darkness swelled from the trees behind
him, a strange shifting of images that even the dark-sight of a wizard could not
pierce. Something flashed, wet and sticky, and a last piercing cry rang out, as
if ripped from the dissolving flesh. Then there was silence, and something
scattered over the half-melted snow.
Even at this distance, Rudy could smell the blood on the backwash of the erratic
winds.
"Who was it?" Rudy asked.
His voice was pitched low, audible only to certain beasts, or to another wizard.
But still his words sounded sacrilegiously loud in the horrible stillness of the
hillside.
Ingold straightened up from the sodden, stinking mess in the torn snow. Even the
bones they had found had not only been stripped of flesh but seemed strangely
deformed, as if the bone tissue itself had been melted. Nauseated, Rudy looked