"Andre Norton - Breed to come" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

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was then the only one of his years left at the Five
Caves. Nor had he seemed old; his mate had had an-
other pair of younglings that very season, and she was
the fourth mate he had won during the passing of sea-
sons!




BREED TO COME

If it was not that so much of Gammage's blood now
ran in the tribe there might be trouble. Once more
Furtig snarled silently. Tales grew, and dark tales al-
ways grow the faster and stronger. Gammage was in
league with Demons, he used evil learning to prolong
his life. Yet for all such mewling of stories in the dark,
his people were eager enough to welcome one of Gam-
mage's messengers—take what he had to offer.

Only, now that those messengers came no more,
and one heard nothing from those who had gone to
seek Gammage, the stories grew in force. At the last
Trials Furtig's older brother of another birth time
had won. Yet he had not been chosen by any mate.
And so he had joined the far scouts and taken a west-
ern trail-of-seeking from which he had never returned.
Could it be any better for Furtig? Perhaps less—for
he was not the warrior-in-strength that Fughan had
been, being smaller and less powerful, even though his
rivals granted him speed and agility.

He supposed he should be in practice now, using all
those skills for the Trials, not wasting time staring at
the lairs. Yet he found it hard to turn away. And his
mind built strange pictures of what must lie within
those walls. Great had been the knowledge of the De-
mons, though they had used it ill and in a manner
which later brought them to defeat and death.

Furtig remembered hearing his father discuss the
dim history of those days. He had been talking with
one of Gammage's messengers about some discovery
the Ancestor had made. That had been when Gam-
mage had sent his picture of a Demon; they were to
beware any creature who resembled it.