"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 10 - The Black Raven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

as she often had, of Demet. Tonight she saw him standing on the far shore of
the pale turquoise water. Her boat sailed steadily forward, but the shore just
as steadily receded. At last she saw him turn and walk away into the white
mists, and her dream faded.
In the middle of the night she suddenly woke. Kiel's bed lay empty. She could
guess that the noise he'd made leaving to go on watch had wakened her. She got
up, went to the tiny window, and pulled back the thick hide that kept the wind
out. By craning her neck she could just see over the rooftops of Citadel,
falling away down to the lake. A sliver of moon hung over the town, and she
realized that soon the moon would go into its dark time. It had been full when
they'd laid Demet's dead body out in the forest for the wild things. A half
turn of the moon gone, she thought, and my grief rules me still.
All at once she heard someone come into the room. She turned, smiling,
expecting to see Kiel, returned for some forgotten bit of his gear. No one was
there. The cold draught from the window ran down her back and made her gasp,
but she held the hide up nonetheless for the little light the moon gave her.
In their pens the ferrets suddenly began rustling the straw. She could
recognize Ambo's chuckle of warning; as their hob he would defend his pack.
Someone, something stood in the doorway across the room. She was sure of it,
could see nothing - but Ambo must have smelled it, whatever it was. He began
to hiss in little moist bursts of sound like a sucked-in breath.
Her danger-warning grew stronger. His hissing turned into one long threat. She
could hear him rushing around the pen and scattering straw as he searched for
this unseen intruder.
Suddenly the presence vanished. Ambo stopped hissing. The other ferrets
chuckled, then fell silent; she could hear them all moving in the straw again.
The icy air from the window was making her shiver so badly that she let the
oxhide fall. In the dark she made her way back to bed and lay down, huddling
and shivering under the blankets. She knew that she should wake the house and
run to Werda, but the cold had got into her bones, or so she felt, and she
couldn't make herself get out of the warm wrap of her bed.
'The jeopard, it be gone.' The voice was Werda's, but Niffa heard it only in
her mind. 'You may sleep, child.'
Niffa sobbed once. Slowly the ferrets quieted. For a long while she lay
shivering, sure that she would stay awake the entire night.
But suddenly she woke to morning and the sound of her mother and father
talking in the room just beyond her door. She sat up and looked around. The
ferrets lay piled on top of each other, asleep in the straw. Had she dreamt
their ghostly visitor and Ambo's hiss?
'I do dream so many strange things,' she muttered to herself.
But Werda's voice, she knew, had been real, no matter how hard she tried to
explain it away. She said nothing to her kinsfolk, but all that morning she
noticed them watching her as she sat in her corner by the hearth with one or
another of the ferrets in her lap.
Werda returned near mid-day, her arms full of bundles wrapped in rough
sacking. Athra trailed after, carrying a big covered kettle. The kettle went
by the fire to warm, whilst the bundles got set down carefully on the plank
table.
'The warding black, it does contain pitch,' Werda said, pointing at the
kettle. 'In this cold weather, it does grow too stiff to use after a bit.' She