"Holly Lisle - Secret Texts 4 - Vincalis the Agitator" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

The man, strangely, laughed. In the next instant, blinding white light surrounded
Wraith, making the air around him crackle and sing, and scaring him so badly that he
dropped the food. He didn’t dare stop to pick it up; the man hadn’t hurt him, but the
wizard’s next attack might be more than fancy lights and noises.

Racing for the nearest of the little side streets that fed the square, Wraith ventured a
glance over his shoulder, and got a bad shock. The square had been full of people. In
just an instant, impossibly, they were gone, and only five remained: the man, the
woman who had called out that he was a thief, and three gray-suited guards. The
wizard’s oily voice carried clearly as Wraith darted down his chosen street. “That’s
the one. When you catch him . . . bring him to me. I want to take him apart and see
what he’s made of.”

Something in the wizard’s voice told Wraith that if the wizard caught Wraith, he
would kill him. But over a basketful of food? In this place of such plenty, where
people chose what they wanted and took it freely?

“We will, Master,” one of the guards said in a voice that sounded as frightened as
Wraith suddenly felt.

He heard the hiss and whisper of the guards’ skimmers behind him, and he looked
for cover. They could fly faster than he could ever hope to run, and with three of them
after him, he probably didn’t have much chance.

His feet pounded over the translucent pavement, and he did not let himself look
down to the ground far below. They could throw him off the road and he would die of
terror long before he smashed into the pavement in the Belows.

He wished as he ran that he had not dared to chance the gate that led upward on the
spiraling, spun-glass road. He wished he had stayed firmly on the ground where he
belonged. There, at least, he might have found food that would keep Jess and Smoke
alive a little longer. He would have managed, somehow, to provide for his friends the
things they could not provide for themselves. But if he died here, the two of them
would be lost; they would either starve to death or return to the hell of Sleep, from
which he would never dare awaken them again.

He had to live. He had to.
 The street down which he ran was a neighborhood thoroughfare. Behind the glass
wall that edged the thoroughfare, houses built on clouds stood inside secondary walls
blocked off by high, gracefully deadly gates. The translucent white walls of the
houses gleamed with inset stones and metals, and the light that shone through them
made them look as evanescent as soap bubbles, and as lovely. The inhabitants had
spun their gardens of diamonds and stars that glittered and gleamed in stunning
configurations. And singing fountains and streams that ran burbling and chuckling
between invisible banks served as destinations for the gossamer paths that led from
the gates to the houses.

Wraith thought it all very lovely, and all horrifying. He saw no place to hide, for
even if he could climb a wall, he could not hide in a yard made of air and decorated
by floating lights. He would be visible from any of the paths. And he didn’t see an