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

alley, an open gate, something that would let him escape from that whine that came
closer and closer to him.

Tears clogged his throat, and the air that fought its way through the narrowed
passage burned in his lungs. He thought his heart might stop on its own before the
guards behind him could touch him. Everything was closed. Locked. Impenetrable.
And the next intersection was so far away, it might as well have been on the moon.

Then, as he bolted toward one great house, he saw that its owners had not worried
about a physical gate with bars and spikes. Instead, the archway lay open. No doubt
the invisible gate would be as formidable to most people as one of the tangible ones—
but not to Wraith. He put on a burst of speed and threw himself through the opening.
Cool fires of a hundred hues played across him, as they had earlier when he’d entered
the gate that led to the Aboves—but those fires did nothing to him.

A boy of about his own age—stocky, blond, elaborately dressed—had been
entertaining himself in that yard, sitting in a comfortable chair with his feet propped
up, making three gold balls and a bit of rope spin through the air. The boy jumped at
the flashing lights, and stared as Wraith lunged at him and said, “Hide me.”

The boy gave one startled glance at the gate. But then he nodded and pointed
Wraith to a tiny house with its own cloud-spun path that hung in the air almost against
the wall.

Wraith didn’t ask questions. He didn’t let himself look down. He just ran.

The little house had, thank all the gods, a real floor. It held a table and four chairs,
shelves full of books and jars and paraphernalia that Wraith couldn’t begin to identify,
and on the floor dozens of dolls and brightly colored blocks and wheels and balls. It
consisted of one room, a door, and four small round windows set a little lower than
Wraith’s eye level. He crouched, and through the window that faced back the way he
had come, he watched the boy, pointedly not looking at the little house, return to his
activity of making all three balls hover in the air while the string braided itself
between them.
 The guards stopped outside the gate. Two of them stared at the little house. The
third glowered at Wraith’s unexpected ally. “Where is the little bastard?” the head
guard asked.

The boy rose, not yet acknowledging any of the guards, and pointed to the
translucent yard. All three balls spun neatly downward and settled into a line there.
When he had summoned the rope to himself and it had wound itself around his arm as
if it were a living thing, he turned and slowly walked to the gate. “Perfann, do you
know to whom you are speaking?”

The guard ignored the question. “Master Faregan told me to catch that little thief
and—”

“My name is Solander Artis,” the boy interrupted. “Son of Rone Artis. Artis,
perfann—which should have some meaning even to one of Faregan’s men. And this is
Artis House. So . . . now that you know to whom you are speaking, would you like to