"Hambly,.Barbara.-.Darwath.5.-.Icefalcons.Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

He remembered to sound scared, so they wouldn't think he'd gone down to the body.
She appeared at the top of the bank and held out her hand for him, big and strong and warm. He pointed down the bank. It wasn't hard to fake fear; he was trembling all over and could hardly breathe, but he managed to say, "He's dead!"
Then Hethya did a strange thing.
She clicked her tongue-" Tsk!"-and shook her head a little and took his hand. "Let's get back to camp, sweetheart."
And that was all.

The Icefalcon crouched near the cave's entrance under the chokecherry bushes-it was too low to stand straight-while his sister marked out the four corners of the narrow place with guardian wards, then knelt to burn a pinch of the powder of dried olive leaves on which certain marks had been made to cleanse the air.
Ideally, when a scout undertook to shadow-walk-as scouts did occasionally in war, when the other family or band had a particularly powerful Wise One in their midst-he or she would lie on earth and under open sky, where neither the demons of the air nor the elementals that imbued the ground could dominate.
Given Cold Death's strength as a shaman the icefalcon did not doubt that he would be safe from elementals. Still, the damp place, closed in, green-dim, smelling of earth and foxes, made him uneasy.
The Icefalcon had never shadow-walked. It was not considered safe for boys to make the venture before they reached full manhood, and he had left the Talking Stars People in his seventeenth year. He had seen it done only twice before in his life, when the Talking Stars People had been at war with Black Pig's family of the Salt People.
On the first occasion, the shadow scout had returned safely, with information about the layout of Black Pig's summer hold in the Cruel River Country that could not be ascertained by ordinary observation.
The second time, six or seven years later during another war, the scout's friends-it was the same man who had gone before, who had experience-and Cold Death had waited by the body through three nights and two days, Cold Death weaving such spells as would draw back the scout's spirit to the empty and silent flesh.
After that the tribe had had to move on for fear of being raided by Black Pig. The next time the Talking Stars People had camped in that place Cold Death and the Icefalcon-who was sixteen then-and three or four of the scout's friends returned to the place where the body had lain and seen a few of the man's bones. What became of his spirit they never knew.
Thus it was with a certain degree of trepidation that the Icefalcon lay himself down between the four cold balls of spirit-fire that Cold Death summoned from the air and watched her drawing out Circles around him.
There was a Circle of Protection, to keep at bay the elementals and the demons that would have taken over his still living body once his spirit was no longer in residence.
"You have to watch out for them while you're walking," Cold Death said, once she had completed the marks and stood wiping ocher and blood from her fingertips. "They'll try to distract you, to get you lost once you're out there. They feed on fear and pain."
There was a Circle of Ancestors. "Do our Ancestors actually guard us when they are summoned to a Circle?" He was drowsy now with the growing effect of the spell and with the warmth of the heat spells she'd called to keep his body from dying in its sleep. He and Cold Death had watched by turns through the previous night, and neither had slept after midnight.
"I've never seen them." She leaned over him to paint the first lines of the Circle of Power across his face, his hands, his breast under the wolf-hide tunic, in a paste of mud and powdered wildcat blood.
She wove his name into them, and the image of the pilgrim-bird that dwells in the high cliffs near the glaciers, overlaid with sigils of protection.
These signs were repeated, over and over, in the lines that spiraled out from him to form the anchoring power-curves of the Circle, running up the wall and, it seemed to him in his half-dreaming state, away into the earth around him, like shining roots.
The sharp air from the cave's low opening filled the tiny space with fog, through which the wan blue spirit-fires glowed like tiny suns on a day drowned in mist. Sleepiness closed over his mind.
"You'll want to stop and look at everything." Her fingertip was cold over his hands. "Don't. You're vulnerable to everything-demons, elementals, rain, wind. The sight of the sun itself. If you get lost, you'll never find your way back. Look for the ground first. Don't forget to watch your back trail."
Back trail, he thought dreamily. Like tracking in strange country. He tried to remember what that long-ago scout had told him.
"No one is ever really prepared for what it's like." She stuck blades of grass and twigs of the elder tree-whose ancestor was one of the Fifteen Dream Things-into the crossings of the lines. "Not the first time, not the tenth time, not the twentieth. You will be terrified. You have to remember what your flesh was like, every moment, and there will be many things to make you forget. You cannot become unconscious, and you cannot sleep. Do you understand?"
He murmured, "I understand."
"Take three deep breaths, then," she said, sounding very far away. "And on the third your spirit will go out of your body. Remember that I'm here waiting."
One. Two.
He was alone, hanging in the brilliant air. Sunlight pierced him like lances, needles of pain. He was colder than he could ever remember being, empty, and terrified.
He couldn't breathe. (Of course, you fool, you have no lungs) But having no lungs did not mean that he did not feel as if he were trapped underwater in that final second before the lungs give out and inhale death. Only that second went on and on.
It was like being naked in bitter winter.
It was like the first moment after one has been thrust from the only home one has ever known, the curses of those inside ended only by the silence of the closing door.
It was like falling, only he did not seem to be getting any closer to the ground.
Look for the ground first. But the first thing he saw was the sun. It stood just above the eastern horizon still, but filled the dry air with powdered gold. He found he could look at it without injury to his eyes (You have no eyes), and the novelty of that sensation kept him looking, drinking in its light, shaken to his heart by the dense glory of its fire.
He watched it rise. Grandly, slowly, calmly ...
No wonder they didn't let young adolescents do this.
He was the Icefalcon, he thought. He was the Icefalcon. He had to rescue Tir.
He had to meet Blue Child in battle, when all was done. He had to return to his people.
Look for the ground.
He looked down and was swept by wonder and delight. The world was a jewel of topaz, sepia, and a thousand breath-fine gradations of burning green. Threadlike silver lace marked the bottom of the little water cut, the greater water into which it flowed a jumble of diamond-sewn brown silk down the coulee's heart.
Every leaf and twig of the chokecherry bush over the cave-mouth blazed clear and individual, as if incised, and the tiniest, most fragile wisps of the mists from the heat-spell were each an infinite enchantment to be studied, reveled in, adored.
The grasslands were a wonderment beyond wonderment, shape and texture and scent that made him want to rub his face against them as against velvet, the bison shaggy houses with frost in their curly fur. Far off, minute and perfect, lay the exquisite ring of a prairie-dog town.
The twelve blue wagon-tops made a circle in the emerald grass, the horses, streaming out from the opening, a school of brown and black and golden fish. Foreshortened warriors in bronze or sable leather milled about the pale daytime cook fire.
The black tent was a square of horror against the wagon's square of midnight blue.
Ah.
Then like silver fire a demon struck him, an eel blazing out of invisibility to rip his flesh from his bones. The Icefalcon cried out, thorned ropes of pain tearing through his heart.
A human's bones protected a spirit. Flesh and muscle were armor, and he had none now. The demon pierced him as the sunlight had done, the pain coring him, dizzy, smothering ...
They feed on fear and pain.
He could feel them eat. Smoky shapes, toothed fantastic horrors encircling him, he was falling, plunging, dying ...
What happens when I hit the ground? I have no bones. Cold-headed reasonableness came back. I have no flesh. The pain is an illusion.
It was a lifelike one.