"Andre Norton - Witch World - Warlock of the Witch World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

long ago into the hills and managed there to exist and carve out some small pockets of
safety. Chief among them was a tall man with the dark, familiar features of the true blood.
He had the seeming of a young man, but that could be deceptive, since the Old Race show
no signs of aging until a few weeks before death—if any of them live to grow old, which in
the past years few have. He was both comely and courtly of manner.

And I hated him.
Bound together as we three had been, in the past we had never reached out beyond
for companionship. After Kaththea had been torn from us, still had Kyllan and I been so
allied. Even so, there had been comrades in arms which had our liking, and some we
viewed with distaste. But never in the past had I known such strong emotion as speared
me through—save when I had cut down some Karsten raider. Yet then my hatred had
been more for what the foe represented than the man himself. Whereas this Dinzil out of
the Heights I hated bitterly, coldly, and the reason I did not know. In fact, I was so
startled by the emotion which filled me when Dahaun introduced us that I hesitated over
the greeting words.

And it seemed to me in that moment that he knew what I felt and was amused—as
one would be amused at some act of a child. Yet I was not a child, as Dinzil would speedily
discover if the need arose.
If the need arose . . . I realized it was not hatred alone which shook me whenever I
looked upon that smooth, handsome face, but also apprehension . . . as if, at any moment,
this lord of the peaks would suddenly change from what he was to something very
dangerous to us all. Still, reason told me, the Green People had welcomed him in
friendship, regarded his arrival as a stroke of good fortune. Since they knew all the
dangers of this land, surely they would not freely open their gates to one who carried with
him the taint of evil.
Kaththea had insisted when we first crossed the fields and woods of Escore that she
could smell out pockets of old dark magic as an ill stench. My nose did not so mark Dinzil.
Yet inside of me some guardian stood to arms whenever I looked upon him.
He spoke well at our council, with good sense and showing a knowledge of warfare.
Those other lords and warriors with him would now and then offer some comment which
laid plain to us a past in which Dinzil had been the backbone of their country.
Ethutur brought out maps which were cunningly fashioned of dried leaves, the ribs
and markings on them serving for points and divisions. These we passed from hand to
hand while the Green People and the men from the Heights supplied pertinent comments,
as did also the nonhumans. Vorlong was very emphatic in his warning of a certain line of
hills which bore, he croaked in barely understandable speech, three circles of standing
stones containing something so deadly that even to fly above them brought death. We
marked out those danger spots which were known until all present recognized them.

I was smoothing out one of those maps when I felt a queer drawing. My scar-twisted
right hand—of it I was seldom aware nowadays, since it had ceased to pain me and I had
as much use of it as I could reestablish with exercise—drew my eyes from the lines on the
gray-brown surface of the map. I studied it, puzzled, and then glanced up.

Dinzil—he was looking at my hand. Looking and smiling a small smile, but one which
brought a flush to my face. I wanted to snatch my hand away, hide it behind me. Why? It
was scarred in honorable war, not from any shameful thing. Yet shame spread from that
scar merely because Dinzil regarded it so—as if anything which marred the symmetry of