"Morris, Janet - Kerrion Empire 03 - Earth Dreams UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

the sybil had scattered to the winds, robes hiked up,
switching their oxen dementedly while their toddlers
clutched the wagonboards and youths trotted quickly be-
side complaining wheels.

It made no difference that some enchanters now
worked their spells in the name of Kerrion and fought
those who had ruled Earth under the Orrefors banner for
over two hundred years. Innocents died daily while the
mages warred. And tonight was Halloween, no time to
attract the notice of sorcerers. So, despite the fame and
elusiveness of the oracle (come again among them as it
had been whispered by the prophets that she would), the
people had fled—all but a scout who hid high above the
cave.

From behind a sheltering boulder, the youth whose
face and arms were smeared with mud and browned with
weather had watched while one enchanter rode straight

2 JANET MORRIS

up to the cave, dismounted, and strode within. Whatever
the hated opressors wanted with the people's oracle,
boded ill. Cluny Pope's commander would not be pleased
to hear that evil had befallen the seeress whom he had
marched his men far out of their way to consult. With
painstaking care the scout scrabbled back among the
rocks until he could round the ridgetop. Out of sight, no
longer fretful that a dislodged stone might give him away,
he sprinted for his pony tethered in the pines.

"All speed, horse," he urged it, his seat not fully
gained before he reined it about and off toward his
band's encampment. Those heroes, from south of Troy,
from west of Ilhaca, from every family in New York who
remembered honor, would not fail to rally to so desper-
ate a cause.

To Chaeron Ptolemy Ken-ion, stepping out of the
ground-to-space multidrive on Earth had been like step-
ping into antiquity. Finding his wife, Shebat, dispensing
portents from a cave like Delphi's long-vanished
priestesses only heightened his sense of the illusory. At
any moment, it seemed, she would pull out a sprig of bay
leaves, shake it at him, chew one, and tell him his
destiny. . . .

But no, it was A.D. 2251 and he was here to uplift the
masses, in default of which task he could never return to