"Modesitt, L E - Corean Chronicles 3 - Scepters v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

of the soaring winged figures had meant change—and usually
trouble.

He cast forth an inquiry. What now?

The soarer vanished without a response. One instant, she was
there. The next she was not. While she had not felt familiar, Alucius
had not been close enough long enough to tell for sure if the
soarer had been the one who had instructed him during his brief
captivity in the hidden city.

His hand touched the hilt of the sabre at his belt. He glanced down
at the rifle in its leather saddle case. Even with the massive
cartridges used in a herder rifle—with casings bigger than the
thumb of a large man—rifles were usually not all that effective
against the kind of trouble she foreshadowed. Rifles were most
useful against sandwolves and, sometimes, against sanders—and
necessary, since both would prey on lone nightsheep… and
especially on ewes and lambs. Rifles were useless against ifrits,
but Alucius had never seen one near a stead—not surprising, since
he'd only seen two in person in his life, three if he counted the
Matrial, and he had not really even seen her.

A soarer above Westridge in the morning, reflected Alucius, was
so infrequent that he almost wanted to turn back to the stead to tell
Wendra about it. But what could he tell his wife, except that a
soarer had appeared, then vanished without a word or gesture?

Outside of the Iron Valleys, soarers—and even sanders—had
already become a myth for most of Corus, one told in tales that
included the Myrmidons and alectors of the long-vanished
Duarchy—the millennium recalled by most of Corus as one of
peace and prosperity. Both the duration of that reign and the
prosperity and fairness of the Duarchy had been lies and
exaggerations of the cruelest sort, as Alucius had discovered in his
battles as a Northern Guard officer, but since he had no way to
prove what he had discovered—except by revealing his Talent in a
world that feared and mistrusted it—the lie lived on, a comforting
tale of a golden past. Some folk—especially the savants from
Tempre—said the soarers were never there at all, that they were
but mirages created by light and the fine, mirrorlike dust worn off
the quartz ridges that lined the natural parapets of the Aerial
Plateau by the endless winds. Alucius knew better. So did any of
the double handful of nightsheep herders around Iron Stem.

Alucius nodded as he glanced back at his flock. Two of the
nightrams edged toward each other. Their curled black
horns—knife-sharp on the front edges, and strong enough to bend
a sabre—glittered in the morning sun. Red eyes shone out of black
faces, and the black wool that was tougher than thick leather, more