"Ann Maxwell - Fire Dancer 3 - Dancer's Illusion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maxwell Ann)

--3 Dancer’s Illusion (1983)




THE SHIP’S COMPUTER HAS CHOSEN—and now Rheba the fire dancer and her
Bre’n mentor Kirtn must fulfill the next part of their ongoing mission—to return a
shipload of fellow ex-slaves to their widely scattered home planets. Their current
destination—Yhelle, a world where reality is far too fleeting for anyone but a master
illusionist to grasp. Yhelle is considered the most civilized place in the galaxy and their
brief stopover should be pure pleasure. But it doesn’t take Rheba, Kirtn, and their two
Yhelle crewmates long to discover that beneath the paradise-like surface of this society
lurks an evil that is growing more powerful each day, a seductive darkness that feeds on
love and kills with ecstasy....



I

The tension in theDevalon’s crowded control room was as unbearable as the air. The
ship’s life-support systems were overloaded. Passengers and crew were being kept alive,
but not in comfort. Rheba wiped her forehead with the back of her arm. Both arm and
face were sweaty, both pulsed with intricate gold lines that were visible manifestations of
the power latent within her.

She looked at her Bre’n. Rivulets of sweat darkened Kirtn’s suede-texturcd skin. The
fine, very short copper fur that covered his powerful body made the control room’s heat
even more exhausting for him than it was for her.

“Ready?” she said, wiping her face again.

“Yesss,” hissed Fssa, dangling his head out of her hair. His thin, infinitely flexible body
was alive with metallic colors. He loved heat.

“Not you, snake,” Rheba muttered. “Kirtn.”

The Bre’n smiled, making his yellow eyes seem even more slanted in their mask of
almost invisibly fine gold fur. “Ready. Maybe it will be an ice planet,” he added
hopefully.

Rheba looked around the control room at the sweaty races of Fourth People she had
rescued from a lifetime of slavery on Loo. Some were furred, some not. They had as
many colors as Rainbow, the Zaarain construct that was at the moment a necklace
knocking against Kirtn’s chest.

AH of the passengers had two things in common: their past slavery on Loo and their
present hope that it would be their planet’s number that would be chosen by theDevalon’s
computer in the lottery. The winner was given the best prize of all—a trip home.

The owners of the ship, Rheba and Kirtn, were not included in the lottery. Their home