"Janet Morris - Thieves World - Beyond Sanctuary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

fled. As he felt the points enter into his skin and begin to suck at the thread binding him to life, his
mortification marshaled his talents: he cleared his vision, forced his eyes to obey his mind's
command. Though he was a great sorcerer, he was not omnipotent: he couldn't manage to make his
lips frame a curse to cast upon her, just watched the free agent Cime—who had slipped, disguised,
into so many mages' beds of late—sip the life from him relishingly. So slow she was about it he had
time to be thankful she did not take him through his eyes. The song she sings has cost her much to
learn, and the death she staves off will not be so kind as his. Could he have spoken, then, resigned
to it, he would have thanked her: it is no shame to be brought down by an opponent so worthy.
They paid their prices to the same host. He set about composing his exit, seeking his meadow,
starshaped and evergreen, where he did his work when meditation whisked him into finer
awarenesses than flesh could ever share. If he could seat himself there, in his established place of
power, then his death was nothing, his flesh a fingernail, overlong and ready to be pared.
He did manage that. Cime saw to it that he had the time. It does not do to anger certain kinds of
powers, the sort which having dispensed with names, dispense with discorporation. Some awful
day, she would face this one, and others whom she had guided out of life, in an afterlife which she
had helped populate. Shades tended to be unforgiving.
When his chest neither rose nor fell, she slid off him and ceased singing. She licked the tips of
her wands and wound them back up in her thick black hair. She soothed his body down, arranged
it decorously, donned her party clothes, and kissed him once on the tip of his nose before heading,
humming, back down the stairs to where Lastel and the party still waited. As she passed the bar,
she snatched a piece of citrus and crushed it in her palms, dripping the juice upon her wrists,
smearing it behind her ears and in the hollow of her throat. Some of these folk might be clumsy
necromancers and thrice-cursed merchants with store-bought charms-to-ward-off-charms bleeding
them dry of soul and purse, but there was nothing wrong with their noses.
Lastel's bald head and wrestler's shoulders, impeccable in customed silk velvet, were easy to
spot. He didn't even glance down at her, but continued chatting with one of the prince/ governor
Kadakithis' functionaries, Molin Something-or-other, Vashanka's official priest. It was New Year's
holiday, and the week was bursting with festivities which the Rankan overlords must observe, and
seem to sanction: since (though they had conquered and subjugated Ilsig lands and Ilsig peoples so
that some Rankans dared call llsigs "Wrigglies" to their faces) they had failed to suppress the
worship of the god Us and his self-begotten pantheon, word had come down from the emperor
himself that Rankans must endure with grace the Wrigglies' celebration of Us' creation of the world
and renewal of the year. Now, especially, with Ranke pressed into a war of attrition in the north,
was no time to allow dissension to develop on her flanks from so paltry a matter as the perquisites
of obscure and weakling gods.
This uprising among the buffer states on Upper Ranke's northernmost frontier and the inflated
rumors of slaughter coming back from Wizardwall's mountainous skirts all out of proportion to
reasonable numbers dominated Molin's monologue: "And what say you, esteemed lady? Could it be
that Nisibisi magicians have made their peace with Mygdon's barbarian lord, and found him a path
through Wizardwall's fastness? You are well-traveled, it is obvious… Could it be true that the
border insurrection is Mygdonia's doing, and their hordes so fearsome as we have been led to
believe? Or is it the Rankan treasury that is suffering, and a northern incursion the cure for our
economic ills?"
Lastel flickered puffy lids down at her from ravaged cheeks and his turgid arm went around her
waist. She smiled up at him reassuringly, then favored the priest: "Your Holiness, sadly I must
confess that the Mygdonian threat is very real. I have studied realms and magics, in Ranke and
beyond. If you wish a consultation, and Lastel permits—" she batted the thickest lashes in
Sanctuary "—I shall gladly attend you, some day when we both are fit for 'solemn' discourse. But
now I am too filled with wine and revel, and must interrupt you—your pardon please—that my
escort bear me home to bed." She cast her glance upon the ballroom floor, demure and