"Mercedes Lackey - Vows And Honor 1 - The Oathbound" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

Vows And Honor Book 1: The Oathbound
by Mercedes Lackey

Introduction

This is the tale of an unlikely partnership, that
of the Shin'a'in swordswoman and celibate
Kal'enedral, Tarma shena Tale'sedrin and the nobly-
born sorceress Kethry, member of the White Winds
school, whose devotees were sworn to wander the
world using their talents for the greatest good. How
these two met is told in the tale "Sword Sworn,"
published in Marion Zimmer Bradley's anthology
SWORD AND SORCERESS III. A second of the accounts
of their wandering life will be seen in the fourth
volume of that series. But this story begins where
that first tale left off, when they have recovered
from their ordeal and are making their way back to
the Dhorisha Plains and Tarma's home.

One

The sky was overcast, a solid gray sheet that
seemed to hang just barely above the treetops,
with no sign of a break in the clouds anywhere.
The sun was no more than a dimly glowing spot
near the western horizon, framed by a lattice of
bare black branches. Snow lay at least half a foot
thick everywhere in the forest, muffling sound. A
bird flying high on the winter wind took dim notice
that the forest below him extended nearly as far as
he could see no matter which way he looked, but
was neatly bisected by the Trade Road immedi-
ately below him. Had he flown a little higher (for
the clouds were not as low as they looked), he
might have seen the rooftops and smokes of a city
at the southern end of the road, hard against the
forest. Although the Trade Road had seen enough
travelers of late that the snow covering it was packed
hard, there were only two on it now. They had
stopped in the clearing halfway through the forest
that normally saw heavy use as an overnighting
point. One was setting up camp under the shelter
of a half-cave of rock and tree trunks piled together—
partially the work of man, partially of nature. The
other was a short distance away, in a growth-free
pocket just off the main area, picketing their beasts.

The bird circled for a moment, swooping lower,
eyeing the pair with dim speculation. Humans some-