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

concerns. I do not rule them, as I have said. This woodland," she pointed ahead
with an uplift of her chin, "would be to their liking. They are not usually
creatures of the open--but have a taste for trees."
Well, if that was the way of it, what did it matter to him? Still, the more
Sander looked into that darkness ahead the less he wanted to enter it with only
failing daylight to guide him.
"We'll stay here for the night," he decided, then wondered at once if she would
refuse his guidance.
"If you wish," was all she answered, as she got to her feet to lift her bags
from Rhin's back.
In turn Sander stripped the pad and his own bags from the koyot, and Rhin padded
into the night for the food he would hunt on his own. Neither of the fishers had
returned, and Sander began to wonder if Fanyi's control over the beasts was as
complete as he had believed. But the girl showed no signs of concern. Instead
she slipped out of her drab overdress, and the first flickers of the fire flames
turned both her girdle and massive necklace into bands of glitter.
Once more she made the cakes of meal and set them to bake on the thin griddle,
while Sander checked his supply of darts carefully. He wanted to enter the dark
bloom of the forest with a weapon ready. Then he gathered a pile of wood,
gleaned from the edge of the woods, a supply he hoped would last the night.
As she watched her baking, Fanyi began to croon to herself. The words were
strange. Now and again Sander caught one that had a meaning, but the rest--it was
as if she sang in some tongue that was hers alone.
"Have your people always been by the river?" he asked abruptly, breaking the
somnolent spell that her crooning produced in him.
"Not always--what people has lived always in any land?" she asked in return.
"Were we not all shaken, dispersed, sent wandering by the Dark Time? Our story
is that we were on a ship upon the sea--driven very far, carried inland by the
waters that swept the world. Many of those aboard died or were dragged away by
the lick of the waves. But some survived. When the sea withdrew, their ship was
left rooted upon land. That was in the day of Margee, who was mother to Nana,
and Nana was mother to Flory, and she bore Sanna." Slowly she recited names,
more than he could count as she spoke them, until at last she ended, "and I am
true daughter to the fourth Margee. The ship's people met with others who
wandered, and so was Padford born in the days of my grandmother's mother. Before
that we lived by the sea to the south. But we came north because of the evil



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there, for suddenly there was a new mountain born, even as it was in the Dark
Time, and it spewed out fire and running rock so that all life must flee or be
utterly eaten up. What of your people, Sander-smith?"
"We came from the south and west, as I have said. Our Rememberers know--but they
are the only ones with such knowledge. I am a smith." He held his two hands into
the firelight flexing their strong fingers. "My mysteries are not theirs."
"To each man his own mystery." She nodded as she swept the cakes deftly from the
griddle and held one out to him. "It is said that the first Margee had the power