"Holly Lisle - World Gates 01 - Memory of Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

get home.

She listened to the speech of the men who drove the wagons, and she could understand it flawlessly—
but if she forced herself to listen to the words, they were vowel-rich and liquid, and they didn’t have the
shape of English. The hands on her arms had felt wrong in ways besides their heat, their dryness, their
thinness. When she closed her eyes and stilled her breath and forced herself to remember, those hands
had gripped her with too many fingers. And when she’d been fighting, her elbows had jammed into ribs
where ribs weren’t supposed to be.

When the sun came up or they got to a place with lights, Molly had a feeling that she wasn’t going to
like getting her first clear look at her kidnappers. Because when she let herself really think about it, she

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had the feeling that she wasn’t on Earth anymore—and that her captors weren’t human.

She had her makeshift boots in place, her blanket poncho wrapped and knotted. But she wasn’t going
anywhere. Not yet. She was ready to run when she got the chance—but not into a cold, dark, trackless
forest with a snowstorm going on and no signs of civilization anywhere.

She leaned back into the straw, and let the warmth and the rocking of the cart and the voices all around
her lull her into a near-sleep.




The sound of someone running and voices raised in anger snapped her out of her half-doze. An argument
—she wished she had someplace to run because an argument would make perfect cover for her to slip
away into darkness. But then someone jumped into the back of the cart with her.

Someone pulled the covers away from her face. Darkness unrelieved by moon, by stars, or by any form
of man-made light offered her nothing that she hadn’t been able to see under the blanket. Snow blew
into her face and her hair with a steadiness that suggested a pending blizzard.

“Vodi—oh Vodi—I bring you my child,” he said. He knelt in the straw by Molly’s side, and she made
out the outline of a white-wrapped bundle in his arms. Small. Still. Silent.

He laid this bundle beside Molly, and pressed his forehead to the straw-covered floor of the cart. “She
dies, Vodi,” he said. “You can save her with a word. With a single touch.”

Molly could have said nothing. She could have turned her face away. But sudden fury enveloped her,
and she shouted, “You people have kidnapped me; bound me; kept me prisoner in the back of this cold
cart without food or water all day and part of the night! And you ask me to help you? Who’s going to
help me?”

The man said nothing. Instead, he reached out to her and with trembling fingers touched her hand. “My
other four children are dead these last three days. Ewilla is my last. A word from you is all I ask. A
single word to heal her, to save her, that my mate and I will not lose everything we love. Curse me and I
will bear the weight of your curse gladly—even if it be death. But spare a single word for a dying child.”