"Norton, Andre - No night without stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Andre Norton)

fought, yes, mainly to save his own life. But the flame that he knew burned in
Fanyi, the implacable dedication to vengeance, he could not quite understand.
Perhaps had it been his people who had been so handled, he thought, he would
have felt differently.



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"What weapons do you believe might be stored in a Before Place?"
"Who knows? The old tales are many. They say that once men slew with fire and
thunder, not with steel or dart. It may be that such stories are only tales. But
knowledge is a weapon in itself and such a weapon as I have been born to use."
That Sander could accept. He discovered that he had unconsciously quickened pace
a little, as if the very thought that such a storehouse of the Before Days might
exist had urged him to hurry to find it. But they dared not, he was certain,
count on too much. The churning of the earth during the Dark Time had changed
the whole of the land. Could they be sure that anything from Before endured?
When he mentioned this, Fanyi nodded. "That is true. But still the Traders have
their sources. And so there must be something remaining. I have this--" Both
hands were now clasping her breast where the pendant lay hidden. "I am of a
clan-line of Shamans. From mother to daughter, time and again past reckoning,
has descended our learning. There are secrets that can be understood only when
one is in the presence of that which hides them. What I wear is in itself a
secret. Only I can read its message when I hold it in my hand. For no other will
this charm work. I seek with it a certain wall--"
"And this wall lies northeast--"
"Just so. Long have I wanted to search for it. But my duty was to my people.
Their ills, both of mind and body, were mine to ease. Now it is that same duty
which drives me at last--so that I may repay blood for blood."
Her face became such a secretive mask that Sander ventured no more questions. So
they journeyed in silence, the fishers playing scout, Rhin trotting at his
shoulder.
At noon they halted, and Sander made a small fire while Fanyi stirred together
some of the meal he had taken from the village, moistening it with water from
his leathern bottle and spreading the result as a thin paste upon a small metal
griddle she took from one of her own bags, which she then set to bake before the
fire. In a few minutes she dexterously swept off a sheet of near-bread. Sander
roasted the birds he had brought down, while Rhin, stripped of riding pad and
burdens, went hunting on his own, as Fanyi said her fishers would also do.
The fare was better than the dried fish he had eaten the night before. Fanyi
held the water bottle to her ear and shook it vigorously.
"Water," she said. "That we shall need by nightfall."
Sander laughed. "Rhin shall find it. His breed does that very well. I have seen
them dig into a bare stream-bed and uncover what no man would believe existed
below. They come from a parched land--"
"Yours?"
Sander shook his head. "Not now, before it was. The Rememberers say we were all
from the south and west. When the sea came in, all fled before it, even though