"Christopher Stasheff - Warlock 13 - Warlock's Last Ride" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stasheff Christopher)

like Magnus, a true friend who was unwavering in his devotion, even though that devotion was so much
less than a lover's—and what did she want with love anyway? There hadn't been any pleasure in it, only
pain. Oh, there had been pleasure in knowing she was making her lad happy, there had been pleasure in
his passion, in the intensity of his longing for her, his need for her—but no pleasure for her body.

Magnus, though, with the sensitivity under his impassive shell, with the leashed fire of the
emotions that he focused only on The People, whatever people they might be at the moment… if he
were in her bed, might not love-making become…

She shut the thought off with anger. The bards lied, the poets lied, there was no pleasure in love!
Besides, why jeopardize the solidity of their friendship for a romance that might turn sour?

Or might grow to greater heights all their lives …

Poetic falsehoods, she told herself angrily, and went to look for Magnus, already angry with him for
leaving her the victim of her thoughts and feelings. Of course, she could ask Herkimer, the ship's
computer, but somehow she thought she knew. If Magnus wasn't in his stateroom and wasn't in the
lounge, he would probably be on the bridge. What need to ask?

So she strode down the companionway, a tall slender woman wearing loose shipboard coveralls to
hide the curves beneath, long-faced with eyes too large and a mouth too wide, with a nose too small for
the chiselled planes of a warrior's face, a latter-day Valkyrie born to a mortal man and woman rather
than to the gods, in token of which her long yellow hair was coiled atop her head in two long braids, as
though to cushion a helmet.

Up the spiral stairs she came, into the hush of the bridge. It was dark, of course, with only pools of
light at the never-used consoles, to let the projected stars show in the dome overhead, that the pilot
might see toward which star he coursed. She looked up herself, caught in the majesty and grandeur of
the galaxy. She gazed for minutes, longer than she had intended, before she lowered her gaze to the

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solitary figure silhouetted against the powder-trail of the Dragon.

She gazed at him for a few minutes, marvelling that his seven-foot form with all its bulk of muscles
should seem small against that starry grandeur, then looked more closely, feeling his unaccountable
sadness, letting it soak into herself until she shared it, wondering.

Wondering? Why? How should it be unaccountable? For as badly as love had treated her, it had
treated Magnus far worse. She didn't know the details, honored his privacy too much to try to read the
depths of his mind, but from a careless word dropped here and there, she gathered that some young she-
wolf had tortured his heart, whipsawing his emotions from love to utter humiliation not once, but again
and again, for the sheer pleasure of abasing him. At least her lad had done it only once, and then more to
taste the pleasures of her body than of her grief, and when he had spurned her, it was to make sure he
wasn't burdened with a great lumbering lass, not for the purpose of tasting her pain.

Though he had seemed to enjoy that, too …

She shook off the memory of him angrily, concentrating fiercely on the great hulk in the