"Roberts, Nora - [magic & fantasy] - anthology" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Nora)

At last, she thought. Praise the powers of life, at last.
"I am your death, Sorak," she said. "As I was death for Clud, your father. On this day, in this hour, I will rid my world of you."
"Keep your world." The king of demons, regal in his red tunic and bands of gold, lifted a small, clear globe. "I go to another. There I will conquer and feed. There I will rule."
His handsome face was sheened with sweat and blood. His dark hair coiled, sleek and twisted, like snakes over his elegant shoulders. Then he bared his teeth, and the illusion of rough beauty vanished into horror.
"Where I go, the food is plentiful. There, I will be a god. Keep your world, Kadra, Demon Slayer. Or come with me." He beckoned with a voice seductive as a caress. "I will give you the Demon Kiss. I will make you my queen and plant my young inside you. We will rule this new world together."
"You want to kiss me? To join with me?"
"You have shed the blood of my sire. I have drunk the blood of a slayer. We are well matched. Together we will have power beyond all imagining."
His three warriors were armed. And a demon king's strength knew no equal among his kind. Four against one, Kadra thought with a leap of her heart. It would be her greatest battle.
"Come, then." She all but purred it. "Come embrace me."
She pursed her own lips, then charged.
To her shock, the demon swirled his cloak, and with his warriors, vanished in a sudden flash of light.
"Where& how?" She spun in a circle, sword raised, dagger ready, and her blood still singing a war song. She could smell them, a lingering stench. It was all that was left of them.
Women were weeping. Children wailing. And she had failed. Three Bok, and their hellborn king, had escaped her. Their eyes had met, and yet Sorak had defeated her without landing a blow.
"You have not lost them yet."
Kadra looked toward the hut where a woman stood in the doorway. She was pale and beautiful, her hair a midnight rain, her face like something carved from delicate glass. But her eyes, green as Kadra's own, were ancient, and in them it seemed worlds could live.
In them, Kadra saw pain.
"Lady," she said respectfully as she stepped toward her. "You are injured."
"I will heal. I know my fate, and it is not time for me to pass."
"Call the healer," Kadra told her. "I must hunt."
"Yes, you must hunt. Come inside, I will show you how."
Now Kadra's eyebrows raised. The woman was beautiful, true, and there was an air of magic about her. But she was still only a female.
"I'm a demon slayer. Hunting is what I know."
"In this world," the woman agreed. "But not in the one where you must go. The demon king has stolen one of the keys. But there are others."
She swayed, and Kadra leaped forward, cursing, to catch her. Frail bones, she thought. Such delicate bones would shatter easily.
"Why did they let you live?" Kadra demanded as she helped the woman inside.
"It is not in their power to destroy me. To harm, but not to vanquish.
I did not know they were coming." She shook her head as she lowered herself into a chair by a hearth left cold in the heat of day. "My own complacency blinded me to them. But not to you." She smiled then, and those eyes were brilliant. "Not to you, Kadra, Slayer of Demons. I've waited for you."
"Why?"
"You call me lady, and once I was. Once I was a young girl of rank who took a brave warrior into her heart, and gave him her body in love. He was killed in the Battle of the Singing River.
"It was a great battle against the Bok and the demon tribes who joined them." Impressed, Kadra tilted her head. She had been weaned on battle stories, and this was the greatest of all. "Many were destroyed on all sides. Many brave warriors perished, as did three slayers. The numbers of Bok were halved, but still Clud escaped and since increased those numbers again to plague our world.
"I watched the battle in my fire, and in the moment my love was struck down, in that moment of grief, I bore a girl child. She who was born to take up a sword as her father had done. She who would be more than those who made her.
You are she. You are my blood and flesh and bone. I am she who bore you. I am your mother."
Kadra retreated one step. Where there had been pity was now anger. "I have no mother."
"You know I speak true. You have vision enough to see."
She felt the truth like a burn in the heart, but wanted only to deny it.
"Humans who are not slayers keep their young. They tend and guard and protect them even at the risk of death."
"So it should be." The woman's voice thickened with regret.
"I could not keep you with me. My duty was here, holding the keys, and yours was your training. I could not give you a mother's comfort, a mother's care, or a father's pride. Parting with you was another death for me."
"I need no mother," Kadra said flatly. "Nor father. I am a slayer."
"Yes. This is your fate, and even I could not turn your life's wheel away from it. As I cannot turn it now from where you must go, from what you must do."
"I must hunt."
"And you will. Our world and another are at stake. I could not keep you then," she stated. "I cannot keep you now. Though I have never let you go."
Kadra shook her head. She was accustomed to physical pain, but not to this hurt inside the heart. "The one who bore me was a warrior, as I am. She died at demon claws when I was but a child."
"Your foster mother. A good and brave warrior. At her side you learned what you needed to learn. When she was taken from you, you learned more. Now, you will learn the rest. I am Rhee."
"Rhee." Kadra, fearless in battle, went pale. "Rhee is a legend, a sorceress of unspeakable power. She is closed in a crystal mountain, of her own making, and will free herself when the world has need."
"Stories and tales, with only some truths." For the first time,
Rhee's lips curved in a smile lovely in humor. "The green of Tulle is my home. No mountain of glass. You have my magic in you, and it is you who must free herself. There is great need. In this world, and the other."
"What other?" Kadra snapped. "This is the world. The only world."
"There are more, countless others. The world from which the demons sprang. Worlds of fire, worlds of ice. And a world not so different from this yet so different. Sorak has gone to this world, through the portal opened by the glass key. He has gone to plunder and kill, to gather power until he is immortal. He wants your blood, wants your death to avenge his father.
More, even more, he wants the power he believes he will gain by making you his mate."