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

mountains spewed fire from their bellies. Some men lived, and later Rhin's
people came. They were small once, it is said. But who knows now--so much is told
of the Before Time."
"Perhaps there are records." Fanyi licked grease from her fingertips, imparting
to that gesture a certain fastidiousness. "Marks like this--" She plucked a long
grass stem and with its tip drew lines in the dust.
Sander studied her pattern. He thought he could see a certain resemblance to
similar lines that Traders made on bleached skins when his father had described
kinds of metal he wanted them to bring up on their next trip.
"See--this means my name." She pointed out the marks she had made.
"f-a-n-y-i--That I can write. And certain other words. Though," she added with
truthfulness, "the meaning of all I do not know. But it was part of my learning
because it is of my Power."
He nodded. The smith words were part of his learning, along with the work of his
hands. The metal did not run nor harden nor work unless one chanted the right
words--all men knew that. Which was why a smith allowed only his apprentice to be
with him during certain parts of his labor--lest those without the right learn
the work-words of his art.
"Even if you find such marks," Sander asked, "what if they cannot be read?"
She frowned. "That would be a mystery one must master, even as one learns the
healing art and how the moon works upon men and women, how to call the fish, or


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speak with animals and birds. It is one of the Shaman learnings."
Sander stood up to summon Rhin with a whistle. Shaman learning did not greatly
interest him. And whether smith mysteries had ever been reduced to such
markings--that he would not believe unless he saw them before his eyes. They were
still a goodly distance from the forest, and he had little liking to camp out in
the open another night.
[05]
He stamped out the last coals of their small cooking fire, kicking earth over
the ashes carefully as any plainsman would. The fear of grass fires in the open
was one danger that was more real in his mind than such raids as had been made
on the village. He had seen the results of such devastation and known the horror
of finding two clansmen who had been caught in such and died in the red fury no
man could escape.
They plodded on. The fishers were not in sight, though Rhin had returned
promptly at Sander's call to assume pad and bags. But Fanyi seemed unconcerned
at the absence of her animals. Perhaps they always traveled so.
It was close unto evening when the trees loomed ahead behind a screen of brush.
Sander came to a stop, for the first time wondering about the wisdom of his
choice. It looked very dark and forbidding under that spread of green that was
already beginning to be touched by the flames of fall. Perhaps it would be best
to stay in the open for tonight and enter in the morning, rather than blunder
into such a gloomy unknown in the dusk.
"Where are Kai and Kayi?" he asked the girl.
She had squatted on her heels and now she glanced up. "They go about their own