"Tanya Huff - Victoria Nelson - 03 - Blood Lines" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

The freight elevator stopped on five, the doors opened, and Dr. Van Thorne beamed genially in at them.

"So, you're back from your shopping trip, Elias. Pick up anything interesting?"

Dr. Rax managed a not very polite smile. "Just the usual sorts of things, Alex."

Stepping nimbly out of the way as the preparators rolled the crate from the elevator, Dr. Von Thorne
patted the wood as it passed; a kind of careless benediction. "Ah," he said. "More broken bits of pottery,
eh?"

"Something like that." Dr. Rax's smile had begun to show more teeth. Dr. Shane grabbed his arm and
propelled him down the hall.

"We've just received a new Buddha," the curator of the Far East Department called after them. "Second
century

BC. A beautiful little thing in alabaster and jade without a mark on it. You must come and see it soon."

"Soon," Dr. Shane agreed, her hand still firmly holding her superior's arm. Not until they were almost at
the workroom did she let go.

"A new Buddha," he muttered, flexing his arm and watching the preparators maneuver the crate through
the double doors of the workroom. "Of what historical significance is that? People are still worshiping
Buddha. Just wait, just wait until we get this sarcophagus open and we'll wipe that smug temple-dog
smile off his face."

As the doors of the workroom swung closed behind him, the weight of responsibility for the sarcophagus
lifted off his shoulders. There was still a lot to do, and any number of things that could yet go wrong, but
the journey at least had been safely completed. He felt like a modern day Anubis, escorting the dead to
eternal life in the Underworld, and wondered how the ancient god had managed to bear such an
exhausting burden.

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He rested both hands on the crate, aware through the wood and the packing and the stone and whatever
interior coffin the stone concealed, of the body that lay at its heart. "We're here," he told it softly.
"Welcome home."

The ka that had been so constant was now joined by others. He could feel them outside the binding,
calling, being, driving him into a frenzy with their nearness and their inaccessibility. If he could only
remember…

And then, suddenly, the surrounding ka began to fade. Near panic, he reached for the one he knew and
felt it moving away. He hung onto it as long as he could, then he hung onto the sense of it, then the
memory.